Is there such a thing as phobia-phobic, a fear of phobias? Is it even a real word?
When I first heard this word it made me laugh. A character on the tv show Scrubs said it. No I don’t watch Scrubs, a friend of mine does. He showed me a clip where one of the characters is going off on this guy she’s dating about all her fears and neuroses:
“Of course I’m holding back. I’m insane you idiot!…I’m racked with self-doubt, I have panic attacks, I’m claustrophobic, germ-phobic, phobia-phobic, I talk to myself, I talk to my cats, I talk to three separate shrinks about the fact that often my cats respond to me in my mother’s voice…”
That’s just a snippet of her entire rant. I found the whole thing fucking hilarious.
My friend said this character reminds him of me. Yikes.
Sadly, I get it. He’s not wrong.
Neurotic ranting (usually silently to myself) is my middle name and is what I do on a daily/hourly/minutely basis. It would also make a good name for a band.
Now while I’m not phobia-phobic (I don’t think so at least) I can fully relate to this character’s tirade on her plethora of anxieties. Anxiety may make for good television, but realistically it just makes you fucking nuts.
So I’m not gonna spew out a bunch of clinical pages about anxiety and the ensuing depression it generally creates. Fuck, everyone and their mother has anxiety these days.
Oh you had to give a speech the other day and had so much “anxiety” about it?
You met some guy at a bar (online more likely these days) and had so much “anxiety” about what to say to him?
You had to endure the holidays and had so much “anxiety” about how to deal with your crazy family?
Fuck you! You don’t have anxiety!
You were nervous and just felt some type of way about those specific situations. Welcome to being human.
Oh, and by the way…get the fuck over yourself!
Sorry but geez, that shit pisses me off. It disparages those of us (you know who you are) who are actually crippled with real anxiety, paralyzed by our own brains so much so that normal reasoning and basic functioning totally go out the window. We get so smacked in the face with anxiety it’s like accidentally walking into a sliding glass door, all fucking day long. Damn, all looked clear so I thought I could just walk on through.
Not so fast!
Smash!!
Anxiety says stop, you are one fucked up human! And it won’t let you forget it. The overthinking, doubt, worry–they all stick with you like the pieces of glass from that door you just walked into.
So this same friend of mine gave me his own view on anxiety and what he said really stuck with me in a good way, not shards-of-glass way. I’ll share as best as I can remember.
He basically said anxiety is self-doubt. It’s the compulsion to incessantly replay in your mind conversations and interactions you’ve had with others because you don’t just doubt you did it all wrong, you know you did, because you always do. The nature of what you said, the specific words you used, your mannerisms at the time – all wrong.
Anxiety is desperation. The desperate need to fix all that.
So you think and think and re-think how to fix it, formulate what else you can say the next time so that your message is clearer.
The next time comes around, you have more of yet the same conversation and since you’re you, you fumble once more and fuck it up all over again.
And again and again and again.
Third, fourth, fifth, 812th attempt at expressing yourself…doesn’t matter. You’ll never get it right because you know you suck at life.
And now you’ve annoyed your loved ones so much they don’t even want to talk to you about said conversation at all anymore and still have no idea what the fuck you were even trying to say in the first place.
And this pattern repeats throughout your life with everything you do and say. It’s like the image when two mirrors face each other. Never-fucking-ending.
Damn, I wish I recorded exactly how my friend worded all that, but you get the gist of it right? Oh you don’t? Damn, do I need to say all this again?
Phew, I’m fucking tired.
Oh, and by the way, you still have to work and get your shit done and be social and have some kind of life in the midst of all this auto-pilot, back-of-your-mind, sanity-blurring rumination. Anything else?
For us anxiety-plagued, conversations of course aren’t the only thing we have issues with.
I needed wrapping paper this year for Christmas. Went on Amazon and spent one solid hour looking up paper because I HAD to look at all the available options.
What if I pick the wrong one?
What if I miss seeing the perfect one?
Okay, think I found the one I want. Maybe I should get ribbon to match?
Or bows?
Or tags?
Tags rhymes with bags. Maybe I should get bags instead of paper? Do people hate bags?
What will everyone think about what I choose? They’ll think it’s shit. I have to explain why I chose this.
Did I put enough effort in? Too little? Too much?
I just wasted so much time. Shit my bathroom is still dirty. Fuck.
Okay, think I finally made a choice.
Wait. Wait!!!
I better go back and re-look at all these options again, just in case. And so starts another hour….
Just in case what though?
Just in case I fuck it up.
The bathroom is still dirty.
And don’t even get me started on social anxiety. Please refer to my post “The Jeezit Diaries” where I spent an entire funeral luncheon next to a coat closet.
Ah but at least there’s always sweet alcohol waving it’s arms saying “look at me, I can take your pain away”, or at least put duct tape on that part of your brain that won’t shut the fuck up.
But the duct tape eventually falls off and the anxiety you thought you had quieted whispers “psst, c’mere, check this out”. Like some shady guy in a dark alley selling watches from a trenchcoat. Well I gotta go look at least. And just like all proverbial dark alleys, this one dead-ends into a dumpster.
Is there nowhere to run from trenchcoat guy? In the movies there’s always one door along the alley that’s magically unlocked. Ironically usually to a restaurant kitchen. So fitting. It’s an escape, for now.
But stupid me keeps walking by this same dark alley, day in and day out, letting the anxiety burrowed deep in my psyche take up permanent residence.
But what if one day I took a different way? 
What is the term for fear of trying something different? New road phobia? Road less traveled phobia? Robert Frost phobia?
Time to take the road to the therapist’s office? Maybe.
Today though, I think I’ll take the road to the liquor store.
Happy New Year!
CM
12/30/22
