Special gift or disability, or both?
OK, I’m going to give you the grandiose, self-serving spin on anxiety and this metazone thing. Think of those characters in the movies who visualize into the future and see cataclysmic events before they happen and then try to stop them. Quite a burden, right? And dramatic as hell. Seeing trauma unfolding before your eyes and having the awesome task of intervening just in time. Ignore the hyperbole, but picture the sensation of impending calamity with an attendant need to intervene or avoid as part and parcel of at least some types of anxiety. This may be helpful when you encounter an anxious person who is driving you insane. He’s not really trying to control you. He’s trying to keep you and /or himself safe.
Now, like with any sense organ, the accuracy of a person’s anxiety can vary widely. Certainly, there are anxiety disorders that are almost entirely dysfunctional and often result in severe, crippling debilitation (although understanding the experience of these persons still is important). And there are numerous factors that determine whether anxiety can be accessed as a skill — intelligence, psychological mindedness, some sophistication with inter- and intrapersonal dynamics for starters — or will be fated only (and tragically) for useless but consuming pain.
Let’s take one of those precautionary steps back so as not to be misunderstood. Anxiety exists, as much so and even more fundamentally than other emotional states like anger or sadness, and in some ways anxiety (and probably fear) are more basic biological survival instincts than other emotions. So it is not so much a question of whether one has anxiety, but rather how one processes, copes, and uses anxiety. (An apparent true absence of anxiety correlates with psychopathy... imagine the coldblooded criminal). Some cope by denying they experience any anxiety. A particular form of denial is projection of anxiety on to someone else. We often encounter anxiety being handled in this manner by hysterical personalities. This is frustrating because you as the other person know that the anxiety is there, but the person just blows right by it or blatantly contradicts what you know he or she is experiencing.
It’s like trying to deal with someone who says the sky is blue when it’s pouring rain. You’re not quite sure how to engage such a contradictory presentation, especially if observing the contradiction to the person likely will lead to a hardening of defenses and accusations on you. On the other hand, I truly envy those who appear to deal with anxiety seamlessly, as though they really don’t experience the obstacles faced by more obviously anxious folks. Being free from excessive anxiety is a godsend for those so fortunate.
[Blogging genre alert! I get a clear blogging idea, but then meandering sets in and/or I realize what I’m saying might not be really or entirely true, and then I’m off on some tangent only similar to what I thought I was going to write about. That’s the good thing about blogging... You can push along without worrying about poor, disorganized prose. And I can always clean everything up later when the publishers come begging.]
I’ll be blunt. My anxiety is both debilitating and highly accurate. I’m almost always right —- contrary to family legend — at least in terms of predicting what is going to happen if person x encounters person y or event z. In real stats, always right means about a 35-40% hit rate. What I’m often wrong about — probably 95% of the time — is in the calibration of the anticipated traumatic interaction. I often predict the train wreck when the real outcome yields only a fender-bender. The goals for me are making anxiety more adaptive and improving my proportionality function. It would be nice not to lead or front with anxiety but instead keep some in my back pocket just in case.