In Praise of Freaking Out
A confession: With due respect to the many pieces my colleagues and I have written and edited in recent weeks about how to soothe your anxiety, I do not want to do those things right now. Any of them.
My anxiety currently feels too big to soothe. It’s not a question of trying to stuff a square peg in a round hole; it’s trying to stuff a battering ram in a hole carved out for a tiny peg. What I want to do, to muddle some metaphors, is ram it into something.
Really, what I want to do is throw a tantrum, something I realized after reading this Slate piece by Jess Zimmerman over the weekend. As she puts it: “It never hurts to look after yourself physically, emotionally, and (whatever this means for you) spiritually. But I don’t think we’re giving enough consideration to another significant factor, which is that NO! NO! I DON’T WANNA!”
An adult tantrum doesn’t have to mean lying down on your stomach and yelling yourself hoarse, though by all means, go ahead if that sounds appealing. The point, Zimmerman explains, is to do things that are nakedly unproductive, things that are bad for you and…
