On Anxiety

What are you afraid of? he asks me. Which such awful things could happen in the future that you never, ever sleep soundly and always wake up with a cloud of worry over your head?

There is nothing in particular, and everything together at the same time, I respond.

Anxiety has no obvious staring point and often no clear end – once it’s cast its long shadow, it follows you like a faithful dog, only minus the joy of having the dog by your side.

Anxiety crawls under your skin, and it lives there. It poisons everything you do, it smears the white, it dulls the bright and it inserts pins and needles into every little move.

Anxiety provokes sadness and it sucks joy out of the most wonderful times – and you are left feeling guilty, with a layer of guilt on the inside, wrapped around the core of guilt, worry and the sense that something is about to go very wrong…

I have climbed out of the anxiety pit and stayed above ground for some time now, but I will not forget the years of the sword of Damocles hanging over me.  

That is why I will not treat anxiety lightly. It is real. And it is debilitating.  

And I also know that you can work your way out of it. You can go into battle, and you can win.

You can stay rational, you can stay empathetic and you can actively seek joy.

Because very few things give us as much joy as granting the permission to yourself to feel it.

Joy – 1

Anxiety – 0

And this is to the young Gen Zedders who struggle with the overwhelming anxiety, as much as to their bosses, who regard it with thinly-veiled scepticism:

To you, leaders: Offer the tools to dig themselves out of the anxiety pit.

To you, Zedders: Don’t readily surrender. Anxiety is a rite of passage, not a life sentence.