My Anxiety Used to Be Funny Until It Wasn't

For much of my life, I was convinced that my anxiety was an important, and beneficial, part of my identity. Not only did it protect me from danger, but it was also what made me and my writing interesting and funny—like Larry David, just less grouchy and with more hair.

But this all changed for me about 10 years ago when I began to be plagued with a strange sensation of a roll of socks down my throat. That choked-up, need-to-swallow-it-away, lump-in-the-throat you get when your significant other dumps you, or you learn a loved one has died. But those socky moments are often temporary.

These socks were different. They remained lodged in my throat like a stuck pipe that needed to be snaked.

For months, the feeling accompanied me to work. It rode shotgun during my long commute and distracted me during important meetings. At night, I propped my head up on my pillow in just the right position so that the sensation wasn't noticeable, but as soon as I dozed off, it would feel as if someone had grabbed hold of my Adam's apple. My heart raced; I panted like I'd just run a 10k.

I was convinced I had a heart condition, so I wore a heart rate monitor to sleep to monitor my BPMs. As soon as I'd wake up with a start, I'd check my heart rate to make sure I wasn't in full cardiac arrest.

This made me irresistibly sexy to my wife, Diana.

"You're not having a heart attack, Jon," she said.

"Well, then what is it?"

"You're just stressed."

But that was the weird thing about it—I wasn't particularly stressed. Work was going well. I was in love. I lived in a beautiful, sun-drenched apartment in Los Angeles. There was no reason for the lump and heart palpitations. No singular event or existential worry seemed to trigger them. The feelings just happened for no reason at all.

My thoughts about the lump went something like this:

There is nothing I can do to fix this feeling. It will be with me for the rest of my life.

Why can't I just stop thinking about it?

Okay, stop thinking about it and focus on something else.

I can't focus. I need to focus.

Why are you so weak?

It's just a stupid feeling. It's not killing you.

I'm dying.

"Maybe you should see a doctor," Diana suggested one night after I’d leaped out of bed, pacing around our bedroom and checking my heart rate monitor.

"You think so? Do you think it's that serious? Like it's really bad?"

"Jon, I really can't talk about this anymore. I need to sleep."

Seeking answers

I went to my primary caregiver. He thought it might be heartburn and told me to avoid cheese. "I can take an X-ray of your heart just to rule out any complications," he said.

I agreed to the X-ray, although I wasn't a fan of the word "complications."

A few days later, a nurse called to say that the doctor wanted to see me back in his office. I asked her if everything was ok, and she said the doctor would explain.

"The good news is that your heart is perfectly fine," the doctor told me the next day. Then he pointed to an amorphous black blob illuminated on his computer screen, just under my jaw. "But I do see a mass near your thyroid area."

A mass? On a scale of terrifying words, mass is up there with "Demogorgon." He referred me to a thyroid specialist who confirmed that it was indeed a mass. But she called it something much more non-threatening— a "tumor." They would have to do a biopsy.

I was 38 years old. These were supposed to be my peak years, but in my imagination, I was already six feet under.

The biopsy involved jabbing what appeared to be a 5-inch needle deep into the side of my throat--the results came back inconclusive. The only way we would be entirely certain the tumor wasn't cancerous was to do a thyroidectomy and surgically remove half my thyroid.

At the time, I had a terrible HMO health plan, so I was at the mercy of a sketchy medical network that operated out of a decrepit hospital in Culver City with peeling paint and vomit green floors. I met my surgeon, the only one on my plan. He was a low-key guy with greying sideburns and a kind voice.

“You’ll be fine. I’ve done this procedure thousands of times,” he said with a reassuring wink. 

It was at that moment I realized he had a wandering left eye.

I'll cut to the chase. There was no cancer. The mass was something called a benign adenoma, but Dr. Wandering Eye said it was one of the largest adenomas he'd ever seen.

After surgery, I thought the socks-in-the-throat feeling would disappear. And it did—only to be replaced by a new sensation of tingling and clenching in my upper chest. That area eventually became so sensitive I couldn't wear T-shirts without feeling like a 20-pound dumbbell was plopped on my chest. I replaced all my crew necks with V- V-necks, or I would unbutton my Oxford shirts practically to my navel, making me look like I’d just walked off the set of Saturday Night Fever.

When I wasn't trying to do my job, I was on Google trying to diagnose the problem that no one else seemed to understand, or worse, believe.

I read an article about gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which causes muscle spasms in the throat, so I went to a gastroenterologist who stuck a tube down my esophagus to check for obstructions. Nothing was there.

I joined an expensive PPO health plan and visited another endocrinologist to get a second opinion. Maybe they had missed some of the mass? Perhaps I needed to have my whole thyroid removed? No, he assured me. They got it all, and my remaining half thyroid was healthy. 

Getting my head checked

Diana was now in graduate school, studying to become a therapist. She had long been convinced that this was more a mental issue than a physical one, and she begged me to see a shrink. I had no objections to mental health professionals, even if I couldn't square how a feeling like this could be in my head when it was so clearly in my body. But I relented.

I met with a psychologist, who listened patiently as I ran down the laundry list of my symptoms. As the words slipped from my mouth, I became slightly embarrassed revealing all my fears to a complete stranger. I imagined him going out for a drink with his shrink friends later that day saying, “You’ll never believe the nutjob I met with today.”

But he was remarkably nonchalant about the whole thing, almost bored. Towards the end of the session, he detonated a life-altering bomb on me.

“Jon,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “Those feelings you’re having are normal and nothing to be afraid of. You have GAD.”

“GERD?” I asked. It was all starting to make sense. Too much cheese.

“No, GAD. Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

This was a new term to me. Somehow, I’d missed it during my late-night Dr. Google sessions. But GAD sounded relatively harmless. I liked that it was "generalized," like it was rated G for all audiences.

But when I did a deeper dive, I realized that GAD is…all-encompassing.

Welcome to the Anxiety Society

The American Psychological Association defines GAD as:

Excessive anxiety and worry about a range of concerns (e.g., world events, finances, health, appearance, activities of family members and friends, work, school) accompanied by such symptoms as restlessness, fatigue, impaired concentration, irritability, muscle tension, and disturbed sleep.

So rather than being anxious or phobic about specific things--say flying on airplanes or getting in elevators--I was generally worried about life itself.

Great.

I will confess, however, that there was some measure of comfort in knowing that the anxiety I was experiencing had a name. I wasn't completely nuts and, even more reassuring, I wasn't alone. Other people suffered from GAD. Many, many other people.

More than one-third of all U.S. adults have experienced some sort of anxiety disorder in their lives, according to data from the National Institute of Mental Health. Perhaps they have tried some of the more mainstream anxiety treatments:  therapy, medication, and mindfulness apps. 

Even more unsettling is how oblivious, or perhaps hopeless, we all feel about the sense of impending doom that weighs on our weary shoulders. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (boy, they must have some fun office parties), only 42 percent of those afflicted by GAD seek any kind of treatment. Well, let me rephrase that. Like me, they might think they’re seeking treatment—by simply worrying their butts off.

Anxiety is an exhausting game of whack-a-mole. It pops up in one place, you knock it down, and then it appears somewhere else. Sometimes you don't feel anxious at all--and then you feel anxious about not feeling anxious. Sometimes you don’t feel the effects of anxiety until days after being anxious. Then you get anxious for feeling anxious.

Anxiety is not something you can just think away. It is an addiction reinforced by years of destructive thinking and bad behavior. And like any addiction, it's a hard habit to break. It takes time, practice, effort, and a willingness to accept that anxiety harms you rather than serves you.

Next week I will talk about a few techniques that I have tried out to combat my anxiety and whether they worked. Just thinking about this gives me that sock-in-the-throat feeling again. So, let me stop right here before I reach for the heart monitor.