I thought I’d found the cure for my anxiety, until…
When I was around 19 years old, I started to notice that I could use my fairly high levels of anxiety as an advantage. I could use it as a fuel to get stuff done.
I even noticed that if I felt anxious I could use outlets to not only be ‘productive’ but as a way of calming myself down. Blasting heavy metal and getting in a workout was a popular choice for me at the time.
It worked both ways though, so if I needed to get some work done, I could use that anxious energy to motivate myself. You see? Two birds, one stone.
Everything fell into place.
I kind of saw it now like I had never really had a problem to begin with.
Like, I have this feeling of anxiety or stress or whatever you want to call it, but it’s not a bad thing. It’s just like my body’s natural way of summoning strength to do stuff that I have to do.
Think about it… it’s just a natural biological adaptation. We use stress as a motivator. Just like in a survival situation.
Anyway, fast forward about 9 years…
…and this mentality has defined some key parts of my life. Like my career for example. I chose teaching because I knew that I wanted something that would be sufficiently stressful and challenging that I would get that same catharsis that I was getting from working out and playing sports at Uni.
I kind of thought that a ‘standard office job’ wouldn’t be sufficient to meet the needs of my inner demons or something like that.
But it’s not just my career: I’ve overcome many social anxieties that used to trouble me, on the basis that I can harness that feeling itself to get out there and be social. Weird I know.
I’ve grown in many ways from seeing the world like that and from using whatever anxieties I’ve had to my advantage. And even whilst writing this reflection, I see this mentality for what it is. Useful. Pragmatic. Integral.
But I’ve been reflecting recently and there’s a problem…
Strangely enough, I’ve thought back to two lessons that I learned way back when at school:
(1) The News Anchor Who Had a Panic Attack
I think it was an R.E lesson, or a philosophy lesson.
We learned about this news anchor who was motivated to be the best through what sounded like an intense and potentially debilitating anxiety that he had always had. He couldn’t stop working. He used his anxious energy to drive him until he had a panic attack on air and then decided to quit altogether, instead now devoting his time and energy to the pursuit of mindfulness.
This is the video of the guy, if I remember correctly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18vnOJUtc4w
I now realise that this is the same person who runs a very successful podcast that I used to listen to. Dan Harris, you might recognise him.
(2) Anna Freud’s 10 Defence Mechanisms
This one was an A Level Psychology lesson. We just covered what the main defence mechanisms are.
The theory goes that when faced with difficult emotions, it is human nature to resort to different coping mechanisms to deal with them: regression, repression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against the self, reversal, and sublimation. A quick google will tell you more about them.
One of them that stood out to me was sublimation.
There are lots of definitions, but I kind of see it as putting your demons into getting stuff done or being productive. Using negative energy from trauma to put into something positive. For example, if somebody was bullied as a child, they might put all of that pain into going to the gym and working out.
It’s an interesting one to me because it sort of seems okay on the surface, the idea of using bad for good. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have many of the best contributions to humanity without them.
But obviously it avoids dealing with the problem and so you’re never going to really feel content and calm using this strategy.
So what am I getting at anyway?
So I had a moment a few days ago where I thought about this news anchor, and I thought about Freud’s defence mechanisms, and I thought about my own life.
Now, I’m pretty confident in saying that I have a fairly balanced and healthy range of emotions including anxiety. And I don’t feel like I’m at risk of having a panic attack any time soon. But…
I’ve been teaching now for 4 years. It’s quite an anxiety inducing job and it’s quite demanding so yes, I often use negative affect and anxious energy as a kind of fuel to get me through.
But 5 years ago I saw teaching as a way to displace or to place my anxiety, almost like an outlet, because I had learned that I could use this feeling to my advantage. Textbook ‘sublimation’.
But the thing is that 5 years on I still have the same baseline levels of anxiety as I did then.
So that means that from the rare Sunday where I find myself with not much to do and the opportunity to simply do nothing, to the Wednesday night where I am working late to get everything done on my crazy to do list, the problem that I had identified 9 years ago still persists. I still feel worried. I’m still overthinking. I still feel wired.
And I think that my conclusion isn’t that I should change career and become a monk. It’s not that I should stop using exercise as an outlet. It’s not that I should stop pushing myself outside of my comfort zone (for example socially) because I might exacerbate any anxiousness this way.
My conclusion (I think) is that I should look for alternative strategies to supplement this one. I should find a balance.
Because whilst using sublimation as a technique is no doubt useful and whilst I’m also a pretty happy person as it goes, I can quite clearly see now that anxiety isn’t just going to subside through pure activity. It’s not like you can just use up all of your anxiety and it will just go away. Outlets aren’t a cure. It’s more like you have your baseline that you will always return to.
So, moving forward, I will look for ways to calm myself. I will seek out some mindfulness opportunities. I will keep up with my journaling and writing practice as I find it to be therapeutic and I will spend time with my cats.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
