This is a thread about anxiety. Specifically, having an anxiety disorder. Everyone is different, and this is only my experience. Please consider every tweet to be prefaced by “For me” or “In my experience”.

1/god knows how many

I suspect that for many people who do not have an anxiety disorder, it can be hard to grasp what it means. Don’t we *all* have reason to worry in 2020?

But anxiety’s often more than worrying about things like COVID, the election, the economy—though that might be part of it.

Anxiety can mean having runaway thought spirals about even the most random or inconsequential things, until you find yourself trapped in the center of an ever-shrinking circle. Often these are things that you know, rationally, make no sense to worry about.

Here’s an example.

You’re lying in bed, looking forward to the time when travel is safe again, because you’d really like to take another research trip to England. You fondly remember a trip several years ago where you stayed in a sunny, friendly B&B on the Sussex coast.

And then you suddenly recall, clear as yesterday, asking for toast at breakfast, and the B&B host asking whether you want 2 points or 4—because, he says, they don’t like to waste bread if you really only want 2. You wanted 4 points. You told him 2 would be fine.

Why did he ask you this, you wonder. Do you have the face of a toast-waster? Did you waste toast the day before, and he’d kept track?

Then the “fun” begins. You start to think, obsessively, about what you should have ordered for breakfast that morning—NINE YEARS AGO.

You work through dozens of permutations of traditional English breakfast foods. What will fit on the plate? It’s like tangrams.

Bacon and sausage are easy to cut; you don’t like them much. Beans, too. Your American sensibilities can’t wrap around the allure of canned Heinz.

So eggs. One or two? Sometimes two is too many, depending on the size. One. One egg. Fried or scrambled? You like scrambled, but the English make them with milk. Kind of wet. Fried eggs have a runny yolk, and that requires toast, doesn’t it? Justifying 4 points is important.

So one egg, fried. Now. The tomatoes and mushrooms. You like both. But how much will the host serve you? What if it’s too much, and you waste some? Even worse than wasting toast. Maybe it’s safest to leave them off, to be sure. But then, veggies are important. Healthy.

After circling this for untold minutes, you decide to order the tomatoes and mushrooms, inwardly vowing to power through all of them, no matter what. There. Maybe now you would deserve 4 points of toast. *Deserving* them is important, not just wanting them. You will be judged.

Requests for butter, jam, milk, and sugar are considered.

You start planning tomorrow’s breakfast at home. There are lots of options. This takes a while.

In attempts to disrupt this thought spiral, you make intermittent checks of twitter, news, email.

Eventually, you realize it’s getting light. Your heart is racing—has been, for hours—and your pillow is damp with sweat.

Should you just get up? Try to go to sleep? Maybe you should get up, but your mind is exhausted. You fall asleep, wake up at noon. Good god, it’s noon.

You’ve slept through the time when you should have taken your meds. You’re shaky, physically and mentally. Your breakfast is a cup of coffee and a granola bar. Zero points of toast. It’s too exhausting to contemplate toast. Or make it. It’s now one o’clock.

You’ve traded becoming a toast-waster for being a time-waster, and isn’t that so much worse? What kind of person are you, anyway? Get it together. Gosh.

None of this makes sense. You *know* it doesn’t make sense. Knowing that doesn’t fix it. This is what anxiety is like, at least for me.

This kind of cycle is, I gather, why hoarding is related to anxiety. Every object triggers a paralyzing thought spiral?

For me, it’s why texts and email pile up. I can’t decide what to say. Not until it’s been ages, because then the decision is made for me. There’s only one thing left to say—“Please forgive me for how long it’s been, I’m so sorry, don’t send me any toast, not even 2 points.”

This entire thread is such an overshare. I’m dithering as to whether I should tweet it. As is no doubt clear by now, I am a champion ditherer!

I’m not seeking pity. Or toast. This particular spiral is broken, and I promise to make myself 4 points of toast.

I just hope that if someone else recognizes a pattern, they will feel less alone, or less reluctant to seek help. There are lots of treatments, pharmaceutical and not. It takes trial and error, and there are occasional setbacks and adjustments, but it really can be life-changing.

You are loved. You are important. You are deserving of peace, understanding, comfort, joy, health, affirmation, support, and all the toast you wish.