I am startled – and discomfited, and somewhat embarrassed, but I suppose also intrigued – by discovering, while doing this cognitive behavior therapy for depression, that underneath the depression is a wide pool of anxiety, nerves, fear. Anger and hostility, insecurity and defensiveness. Hysteria. Panic.
It's a bit weird, really. One of the things about depression is it's sort of, well, cool – it's not embarrassing or ridiculous; pitiable perhaps, but fairly dignified. Anxiety is not at all dignified, and panic is certainly not.
The past two weeks: acid reflux, acid stomach; a throbbing pulse in my ears at night; occasionally a twitching muscle in my left eyelid; odd aches and unpredictable drops/surges in energy. Not a lot of those things, not constantly, but enough of them to startle me, and make me feel their barely concealed importance. The presence of all this – what is I suppose best termed anxiety – does make perfect sense, of course, as it explains the very existence of the depression as a covering strategy, not to mention its stability; but the anxiety remains a surprise. And, unlike balloons and birthday cake, it is not my favorite kind of surprise.
Therefore tonight, when a suddenly homeless, divorce-threatened friend – no, let's be accurate: acquaintance – wants to sleep on my couch, I have refused to allow him to stay for more than one night, and I have been entirely inhospitable: I just don't want this guy around, I don't want to hear his story, I don't want to help him talk through it. And therefore I feel embarrassed and angry at myself, and angry at him, that I can't be nice about this, that I am a Bad Host. At one point he came in where I was working to say: I just got the most abusive text message (implicitly, of course, from his soon-to-be-divorced wife), and it says... but I barked at him: This is exactly what I can't deal with right now: just stop.
Heartless, of course – what kind of human being am I not to help this guy out? – well: I'm a human being under stress. And although I know that there are human beings under a great deal more stress than I, I am, more precisely, a human being who is determined to handle some of his reactions to stress – to end up with different patterns over the next couple of months, different levels of self-management. So I simply can't accept his problems, talk about the miseries he's going through – a bit of overbalancing of my emotional life, and any prospect of really changing myself will go out the window.
It is embarrassing. Not impressive. Not dignified. But somehow necessary – so necessary I have thrown all politeness and hedging out of the window, even with this guy, who is frankly perfectly nice in his own way. But I find myself unable, or more accurately absolutely unwilling, to be, even for a moment, normally kind, pleasant, helpful.
Appalling behavior, in everyday terms. But, I think: entirely appropriate....
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