The Anxiety Pandemic is giving me anxiety
Fearing fear itself
Jeffrey Denny
The internet powered by AI says over 200% of Americans suffer from anxiety.
This makes me anxious. Frankly, so does the internet powered by AI because it seems to lack human emotion. Like the Skynet guy heading the Department of Government Evisceration leveraging his artificial neural network-based conscious group mind and artificial general superintelligence system like in those movies with the former California governator.
The American Psychiatric Association seemed pleased to report that anxiety is surging. But only psychotics would suggest that psychiatrists are pushing anxiety like Sackler pills as a McKinsey-esque business strategy to boost earnings. Forget the APA slogan microtargeting the serene: “Denying anxiety? Get help.”
The radical liberal lunatics, who tend toward anxiety because they’re more intelligent, mindful, sensitive, and unemployable, blame Donald Trump’s destruction of everything for the historic explosion in anxiety that’s giving even cats real reasons to catastrophize. (Full disclosure: Trump, explosions, and cats make me anxious, especially when combined.)
But many influencers also blame Covid-19, social media, climate change, global turmoil, family, work or school demands, what to make for dinner, men, women, gender fluidity, cliffhanger streaming series, and people who say “spoiler alert!” before spoiling the plot.
Yet, according to my algorithm, the Anxiety Pandemic started from an experimental bioweapon virus that escaped from a Chinese wet monkey iPhone lab.
I used to deny the Anxiety Pandemic like the intelligent-divergent did with Covid. My damaged psyche told me it was just a bunch of nervous-nelly scaredy-cat, whiny babies preternaturally given to the willies and heebie-jeebies and seeking attention, validation, identity, community, and excuses for being difficult.
This view makes the People With Anxiety community even more anxious and bludgeon me with dudgeon both high and low, or, if within reach, a candlestick, wrench, lead pipe, or whatever killed Mr. Green, known for his nervous and anxious demeanor. But as I fall from their blows and lay bleeding, it makes them anxious in a cycle of guilt, self-blame and shame.
That’s on me. I learned that bullying an anxiety victim who victimizes anxiety bullies just spreads anxiety.
Then I discovered how even a self-diagnosis of anxiety, using the internet powered by AI, can relieve me from doing anything I don’t want to do. Doing things makes me almost as anxious as people who love doing things, especially doing them together.
I used to say, “I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand.” This sounded misanthropic but solved the problem because, in turn, people sensed my dislike, apparently can’t stand anyone who doesn’t adore them, and stayed away. Win-win.
Someone I know says Covid didn’t give him anxiety. He loved it because Der Kommissar Fauci told him to avoid people, stay home, and build resistance to the virus by eating more and smart with the Taco Bell DoorDash Diet. He also got to tell his family, friends and colleague-frenemies that his Zoom was acting up so he had to jump off two minutes into the calls. Needless to say, the whole back-to-work thing is making him anxious.
Yet he tries to erase the agency of PWAs who aren’t clinically diagnosed and seeking treatment, but merely irritating, self-absorbed ninnies who make people anxious to be around them. This is how anxiety can be contagious.
This horrible person also suggests that the glib misuse of clinical terms such as anxiety trivializes real mental health challenges. And that being nervous about everyday challenges and also opportunities, like going to college, having a job, or giving a wedding toast, is not real anxiety to speak of, but just general nervousness. And that life, society, and the world since all began have always offered plenty of reasons to give you shpilkes.
And, if social media makes you anxious, he disrespectfully said, get off social media and don’t victimize yourself by blaming how it’s addicting you. Also, remember that millions of struggling people all over the world have far more reasons to be anxious.
And anxiety symptoms, such as feeling restless, on edge, or irritable, or having difficulty concentrating, trouble sleeping, and muscle tension, can also be the price of doing things you want and are privileged to do, like having a job, house, spouse, children, family and friends (especially if they’re Trumpers), money, and most of all, golfing.
But this PWA hater got his just desserts (no, not the Taco Bell Cinnabon Delights® 12 Pack) during Covid. Not socializing made him anxious. Specifically, he self-diagnosed that FOGO, FOJI and JOMO gave him FOMO and FOBI.
Fast-forward to Trump’s tariff disaster, he looked at his 401(k) and called an APA-approved psychologist specializing in anxiety.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
