Anticipatory anxiety is always louder than its trigger

Some major stuff on the horizon

👍👍👍

Happy Friday. Happy first of November. Happy fall in full swing! (Are these happy? I don’t know. I’m just starting a conversation the way most people do when they aren’t sure of what to say.)

I’ll try again: next week feels like a big one. On Tuesday there’s a little thing called the US general election, in which I’m told the future of America’s democracy is at stake. Sandwiched around this event is the New York City Marathon on Sunday, in which I will be running, and the introduction of my parents to my lovely fiancé’s (!) parents on the following Saturday. I’m anxious about all three of these events.

34 years into building an understanding of and relationship to the low grade anxiety that perpetually hums in my body, I see this pretty clearly as a case of anticipatory nerves that are likely far more intense than the actual experience of living through the events themselves. Put another way, I don’t have anxiety around these because I think they will go poorly (well, I don’t know about the election, but what are you gonna do). I have anxiety around them because I have anxiety, and it spikes near occasions that are important to me. Attempting a landmark physical achievement, hoping to live in a country run by a reasonable and smart person, and starting to merge my family with another: these things are very important to me. I have a vested interest in how they play out.

There are times in my life when the anticipatory anxiety has been so strong as to prevent me from engaging fully in a given experience, or even participating in it at all. That’s a shame, and indeed something I would like to avoid happening in the future, because it’s a pretty good way to develop regret—a feeling I very much do not like for its insidious power to dominate my thoughts and actions. When I sense this as a possibility in the throes of anxiety around something on the horizon, I try to remember that it’s actually good to feel it. The spike means there’s stuff going on in my life that I really care about. The rush means I’m alive.

There is, of course, the potential that anticipatory anxiety begins to rear its head before relatively inconsequential events—which I won’t list out because that’s a pretty subjective view. In fact, to some (or even many), it’s plausibly the case that running a marathon, watching presidential election results roll in, and introducing your partner’s parents to each other land as pretty inconsequential events. To them, there’s bigger shit to worry about. Or nothing to worry about at all. I can’t really argue with that. It’s all relative, which suggests that whatever I see as unworthy of run-up anxiety could feel like the end of days to another. There’s no real comparison to be made on the events themselves. Only the intensity of the feeling as that end-all-be-all day approaches.

What I believe to be true is that in every case, regardless of the feeling, the day(s) will come and then it (they) will go. All days do.

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