What?  Me Worry!?!

For those of you who know me, it is not exactly going to be a bombshell to announce the fact that I suffer from what has been given the clinical name of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Now, most of us have anxiety, and in this job, we can suffer its effects on a pretty regular basis. We feel it in the days that lead up to SOL testing and as we pump in our Pearson passwords and then repeatedly hit refresh as the scores roll in. We feel it the evening before the first day of school, or maybe before we have to present at a meeting for our boss or for our peers. This is all normal acceptable, even helpful anxiety. In an ideal situation anxiety like this serves a purpose. It drives us to make sure that we’re prepared and that we’ve done everything we can to make any situation run as smoothly as possible.

            Generalized Anxiety Disorder is another animal entirely.  GAD will manifest itself differently in just about everyone who has it. For me, it is like living with a huge weight suspended over my head at all times. I live my life waiting for something to go wrong, wondering what it will be, and thinking that if I were somehow a better person, I’d be able to avoid it. When something inevitably does crop up, it only serves to legitimize that feeling. It’s like I was right to be anxious. It reinforces the dread that something is always about to land on my shoulders with a crushing weight, so I start looking around for the next thing that’s going to hit.

        I can’t pinpoint when exactly this started. I suspect that it was sometime in graduate school, probably connected to about the time I began student teaching. By the time I had my own fifth grade class at John B. Dey, it had kicked into full gear. I can clearly recall being, by any measure, a pretty successful teacher, but always feeling that I wasn’t good enough and that it could all come crashing down at any moment. It was at about this same time that I started feeling the very physical toll that living with GAD can exact. Physical symptoms can include muscle soreness and tightness, insomnia, feeling edgy or irritable or stomach trouble like nausea and diarrhea. Over the years, at different times, I have had all of these. I even recall a day when I was basically so paralyzed by anxiety that I was afraid to leave my office. GAD doesn’t limit itself to work. These feelings can affect every part of daily life. I remember an anxiety attack that centered on the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to finish a library book before the due date. Crazy, right, but this is what the condition can do to you.

I’ve tried lots of ways to cope with GAD. I really don’t know what I’d do if I weren’t able to run. That physical outlet is the best way I know how to deal with many of the symptoms that have become a party of my daily life. I’ve tried any number of different medications over the years with varying degrees of success. Maybe the most depressing aspect of GAD was the realization that I genetically gifted it to my oldest daughter. After years of taking her to therapist appointments, I came to understand that maybe I should be spending some time on the couch myself. For the last two years I’ve spent most Monday afternoons with my own therapist and it is the hardest hour of the week. Learning to challenge your assumptions, dig into your past, and change the patterns of thinking that you have clung to for thirty years is not for wimps. As crazy as it sounds, when you’ve been lugging anxiety around on your back for that long, it becomes really hard to put down. After all, I think, it’s gotten me this far…

For the most part I have made my peace with the fact that this is mine to own. I can change the way I interact with my anxiety. I can learn strategies that can help to mitigate its effects, but it’s always going to be here in some form. That’s not always bad. When I can harness it properly it helps me to stay on top of my work. It has led me to try new things like mindfulness meditation which I otherwise would have utterly discounted. Finally, it has informed the way I interact with people. I try to keep in mind that we can never have an idea of what challenges somebody we don’t really know may be facing.

So, why put this all in writing for the VBAESP? Well, for one, so you’ll understand why I’ll never want to be the “reporter” during any group work that may be foisted on us. But, also to know that if I do speak up on an issue, it must be something I feel pretty strongly about to take that kind of risk (and for me it really is a risk). If you find me keeping to myself or avoiding our social functions, you’ll understand that these events take a tremendous amount out of me. I’m not being cold or stuck up, I’m just not really that confident in any social situation.

Being a school administrator is exhausting under the very best of circumstances. When any of us is facing anything extra at all whether it’s coping with something like anxiety, a personal health problem, the loss of a loved one, or family issues it can border on the impossible. This is precisely why having an organization like VBAESP and a group of like minded colleagues is so important. We are far better together than we’d ever be on our own. So thanks to all of you. You have made an enormous difference in my life. I could not do this job without a network of strong and caring peers.