Yesterday I was officially invited to speak at the TEDx talks at Carleton College on October 12th! I will be working on my first draft of the full speech this month, then I guess we go from there (there are speech buddies and TED coaches... it's a real thing, man) I will be talking about anxiety and panic attacks, drawing from my own experiences as somebody with the glamourous anxiety disorder OCD. I'll also be drawing from YOU. One major reason I had the courage (or poor judgement, jury's still out) to audition in the first place was all the amazing connections I've made with people since I started to talk about this stuff here on my blog.
Having an anxiety disorder can feel so lonely at times. There's so much pressure to just suck it up and get over it (whatever
it is). How many times have we heard "don't worry about it" and felt like that was impossible? If you start listening for it, it's amazing how often people are told how they should feel. Don't be nervous. Don't feel bad. Don't be shy. Cheer up. Calm down. How about
shut up? Most people mean well, I'm sure. But to somebody like me, these "helpful" bits of advice sound more like "you're just not trying hard enough." And that can hurt. It can also drive us anxiety-having slackers further underground. (it reminds me of the scene in X-Men when Iceman's parents ask, "have you tried
not being a mutant?" even though I know the whole thing was an allegory for being gay, not crazy)
This all is to say, that part of doing this talk will be to raise awareness of what having an anxiety disorder really feels like, from the physical and emotional pain of a real panic attack, to the social struggles of trying to get those around us to understand that we don't choose to be anxious any more than people choose to get cancer. And hopefully through that embolden more people to speak out about their own struggles. Because we aren't alone. There's actually kind of a shit ton of us.
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