A Blanket for My Therapist

For those of you who experience what is now sometimes referred to as SAD, or Social Anxiety Disorder, everything that follows will be very familiar. You may find yourself responding by recalling your own similar experiences. My advice is to do this in small doses and walk away before you start hyperventilating. For the rest of you, my hope is that this will give you a little more insight as to why your dear friend won’t join you at the pub tonight. Or any other night.

Anxiety disorders come in all flavors. There’s GAD, also known as “we have no idea what makes you freak out” Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Once you’re diagnosed with GAD, you can relax because you’ve been authorized to feel anxious anywhere, anytime, for any reason. You don’t need to provide motivation. It’s a big, fat umbrella painted with the word Generalized in random colors. In other words, unspecified things make you nervous.

SAD, which may or may not be an oxymoron, is more specific. This disorder has a defined parameter. It means once there are more than one of you in the room, you’re entitled to flee the joint. Wait! Now that I think about it, there doesn’t have to be another person in the room. If you even imagine it happening, your brain will take over and issue the requisite adrenaline for flight.

It’s estimated that a little over eighteen percent of the adult population in the United States suffers from some form of chronic anxiety. This is totally different from the kind of anxiety that slams us all upside the head whenever a tree falls through our roofs, the water rises over our rooftops, or an earthquake makes our roofs slide off. Everybody gets a big dose of RUN adrenaline when things like that happen. That’s why adrenal glands were invented, so the brain can tell the body to be afraid and either fight or flee before we know what we’re doing. That’s just common sense.

However, for some lucky folks, the brain never shuts up and the adrenal glands go into perpetual hyperdrive. That’s why it’s called chronic. It’s very fatiguing; it leads to all sorts of physical disorders; it’s a primary creator of avoidance issues; and it makes it hard for us to get out of bed in the morning. If it’s not GAD, it’s SAD or some other AD, which is really hard to explain to people who don’t have to live under its magical spell.

I’m not complaining. This blog is not a plea for sympathy. The anxiety prone of the world have the honor of having saved the planet from extinction at least twice and certainly have prevented the annihilation of rest of the population from death due to lack of foresight. We’re essential for the continued existence of the human race.

GADs/SADs can foresee the dragons hiding behind the next building and anticipate starvation on the way to the beach. We make plans to ward off all kinds of Bad Things That Happen. We make backup plans for the backup plans. We’re the ones the sane people turn to when they’ve run out of sandwiches or have gotten so lost they’re stuck in sand dunes. “Suffering” from anxiety has its advantages. It’s also sometimes very funny.

The first words my father taught me were “Be afraid.” No he didn’t. That’s a line from “The Croods,” an animated film about a Neanderthal family. He didn’t really say “Be Afraid.” He said “Watch out!” Also, “Be careful!” Then there was the ever-popular “Don’t put your finger in the light socket!” By the time I was three, I was nauseous every morning in dread of the day’s onrushing terrors. To make matters worse, there were those 5,000-year-old genes inside me telling me someone outside intends to murder me, so it wasn’t all Daddy’s fault.

Eons ago, I was regaling a co-worker newly arrived from Sweden with tales of my encounters with social anxiety, most particularly about my first dinner date. A lovely young man was taking me out to dine at a Chinese restaurant. Soup was served. You know how it’s done in Chinese restaurants? With pretty bowls and small shovels instead of spoons?

To my horror, I discovered that whenever I tried to move the shovel to my lips my hand shook so badly I splattered soup all over the tablecloth. I never could get it to reach all the way to my mouth, even though I was slumped over the bowl. Fortunately, my date pretended to not notice. But that was it as far as the soup was concerned. I’d dip in my shovel, watch it splash soup back into the bowl, and never get to taste a drop. Mortifying it was. Yep.

When I told my Swedish co-worker this, she said “Oh, that’s nothing. The first time I went on a dinner date I started smoking to calm down. As soon as it was time to shake the ashes off the cigarette, I was so nervous I tapped them into the open sugar bowl instead of the ashtray.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she added “My date said ‘You’re dumping your ashes in the sugar bowl.’ I replied to him, ‘Yes, I know.’ And then I smoked and dumped ashes on top of the sugar for the rest of the meal.”

That’s what we SAD people do at dinner dates, assuming we can force ourselves to remain at the table. I’ve discovered three solutions in addition to the ever popular “I just remembered I left the iron on and I have to leave right now before the house burns down.”

Solution One is to not eat. Just push food around your plate as if you had been eating and keep your dinner dates enthralled by your rapt attention to their every word. If they notice you haven’t eaten very much, say this: “It’s fabulous. I loved every bite but I just got filled up quickly. Here. Have a bite. Taste it. You’ll love it.” Then slide all your food onto their plates. You can make a sandwich when you get home if you’re suddenly hungry.

Solution Two is to start drinking before you get to the dinner table. Timing is important. You have to be sober enough land upright in your seat. But if you get getrunken enough before the antipasto or soup arrives, everything will taste delicious; your companion will be the most fascinating person in the world; you won’t be able to stop talking with your mouth full; and you’ll lick your plate clean. It doesn’t matter whether you start with wine or whiskey or both. The trick is to be able to leave the restaurant without falling into someone else’s soup.

Solution Three requires either a sympathetic medical team or “knowing a guy.” Since I’ve never been good with drug dealers, I prefer the sanctioned approach. Fortunately, I’ve lived long enough to see the day when it is safe to walk into a room, raise my hand in greeting, and say, “Hello. My name is Carol and I’m on anti-depressants.” With Solution Three, I am able to arrive at a restaurant, order a meal, and stare at it while I tell my lunch dates all about my latest hobbies, one of which involves crocheting afghans as a form of anxiety reduction.

My daughter has caught onto my system. Now she won’t listen to anything I say unless I first take a bite. “I’m not listening to anything you say until you’ve eaten half your sandwich,” she tells me. If I start to talk, she interrupts with, “Eat first; then you can talk.”

This is truly sad and ironic, all at the same time. You see, when my son was little he’d be starving but as soon as the food arrived he’d get so excited that he’d start talking and wouldn’t eat. I’d have to interrupt him every two.point.five minutes. “Eat!” He’d take a bite and start talking again. Two.point.five minutes later, “Eat!” Now that he has a family of his own, he doesn’t need to be reminded to eat. Now his mother gets reminded by his sister.

Still, what with zen, meditation, acupuncture, reflexology, Ayurvedic herbs, vitamins, and lots of Xanax I can go to a restaurant and eat half of what’s on the menu, including the soup. So what does this have to do with a blanket for my therapist?

She is the most wonderful person in the world. We should all be so blessed as to have a therapist like her. Recently she suggested we should start looking at some of the childhood events that triggered my social anxiety. Perhaps identifying the triggers could help lessen the discomfort. Sweet woman, what a lovely idea.

I did what she said. I regressed all the way back to age three when I got yelled at for spilling my milk. That’s nice. Now I can remember that I was always afraid of getting into trouble and my solution was to hide behind the couch. Unfortunately my brain still thinks that’s a good idea. No matter how hard I argue with it, I’m too late. It’s already got the adrenaline primed, pumped and circulating.

She means well, my therapist. She hasn’t given up on me. There are people out there with serious problems, yet she still wants to make it easier for me to get in the car and go places without having a heart attack because I might be late. So I decided the next blanket I work on—while I’m listening to my daily hour of political news and wondering what’s going to wipe us off the planet first—is going to be for my therapist.

I’m halfway through with it. The colors are pretty, I think. I couldn’t promise that because, you know, color blind, but they make me smile. The blanket will be finished by the time I’ll be able to see her in person instead of chatting on the phone due to Plague protocols. I’ll bring it to her in a 13 gallon white plastic trash bag, because that’s how all my blankets are delivered (don’t ask), but I’ll hide the trash bag inside a nondescript paper bag. I’m not sure if therapists are allowed to receive gifts from patients. That’s okay. I’ll include a note that says the blanket has been heat infused to kill viruses and she can dump it into the washing machine after she lets it self isolate in her garage for a week.

That’s the plan. I’ll let you know how well it worked after the Plague has passed and/or I’ve been allowed to enter the medical center by passing the paper bag under an x-ray machine. We do live in interesting times, but I’m able to plan ahead for all those contingencies. You know, a backup plan for the backup plan so I won’t be late. Or anxious.