How I Learned to Talk Back to Anxiety
Anxiety, in my house, is about the size of a hamster, and it has very soft gray fur.
I know how that sounds. But the first time I really saw it, it was sitting on my desk at nine o’clock at night, right next to my math notebook and a mug of cooling tea. It had round, worried eyes, small pointed ears, and a tail that curled up like a question mark. And it was whispering directly into my ear.
Tomorrow is the class presentation, it whispered. You are going to forget everything. Everyone will stare. You should say you are sick and stay home.
I put my chin on my hand and my shoulders sagged. I had heard this speech before. I had heard it before every test, every phone call, every time I raised my hand. And I had always done one of two things. I either obeyed it, and stayed quiet, or I shouted at it in my head, Go away! Leave me alone! And that only made it whisper faster.
That night, I did not do either. I was simply too tired. I just sat there, cheek in my palm, listening to a very small gray creature tell me that the worst was about to happen.
What if it’s right?
What if I never learn to stop it?
What if I am always this scared?
The reply nobody taught me
The next afternoon, Zoe found me on my bedroom floor with a pillow over my face.
“Let me guess,” she said, sitting down beside me. “It’s whispering again.”
I lifted the pillow. “How did you know?”
“Because I have one too.” She tapped her shoulder. “Mine is purple, and it mostly shouts about how I am talking too much. Have you ever answered yours?”
“I tell it to go away.”
“How does that go?”
“It gets louder.”
“Of course it does,” said Zoe kindly. “Imagine somebody tells you to be quiet while you’re trying to warn a friend about a puddle. You’d just shout the warning louder. Anxiety thinks it is helping. So the secret is not to silence it. It’s to talk back, the way a calm captain talks to a nervous passenger.”
“A captain?”
“Someone who says: I hear you. Thank you. I’m still steering.”
She pulled a stack of blank cards from her bag and a pen from her curls, and laid them on the rug between us. “Three sentences,” she said. “We’ll write them together. Then you can practice.”
The first card said Thank you, I know you are trying to protect me.
The second said I hear you. That is a big, scary feeling.
The third said I’m going to do it anyway, scared and all.
I read them twice. They did not sound like anything I had ever said to my anxiety. They did not sound angry, and they did not sound afraid. They sounded like something a very steady person would say, someone who was holding an umbrella and was not planning to leave the house any slower than usual.
Practicing out loud
That evening, we sat on the soft knitted rug, with the string lights glowing and the window going dark. Zoe set a cushion on the floor. “Imagine your gray friend is sitting right here,” she said.
And somehow, I did not have to imagine. He was there, perched on the cushion, with his tail curled around his paws, looking at me with enormous, worried eyes.
I held up the first card. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “Thank you,” I said to the creature. “I know you’re trying to protect me.”
The creature blinked. I do not think anyone had ever said that to him.
“I hear you,” I read from the second card, a bit louder. “That is a big, scary feeling.”
His ears lowered, just a little. He did not look pleased exactly, but he looked less like someone bracing for a fight.
I took a breath and read the third. “I’m going to do it anyway. Scared and all.”
Zoe smiled. And then she handed me one more card, which she had written herself, with a tiny heart in the corner. It said You are brave.
“That one isn’t for him,” she said. “That one is for you.”
I held it for a long moment. A small, warm feeling spread in my chest, as if someone had opened a window. It was not a loud feeling, and it was not the end of being nervous. But it was the first time I had spoken to my fear, and it had listened.
Walking to school with Fidget
We named him Fidget that night, because he never stopped moving his paws. It seemed rude to keep calling him “the anxiety.”
The next morning was the presentation. I woke up before my alarm with my heart already racing, and Fidget was on my pillow, whispering at my ear. You will forget. Everyone will stare. Stay home.
I sat up, took the first card out of my pocket, and said, quietly, “Thank you, Fidget. I know you’re trying to protect me. I hear you. I’m going anyway.”
And then I did something that surprised both of us. I made him a tiny cup of tea.
I carried my bag out into the golden morning and started walking down Maple Street, past the white picket fences and the orange trees, with the sun low and the leaves drifting around my shoes. Fidget rode in my tote bag, sleepy and small, with his little cup in both paws. Every few steps, he gave a small worried squeak, and every few steps, I said, “I know. I hear you.”
My presentation was not perfect. My voice wobbled in the first sentence, and I lost my place once and had to find it again. But I looked at my cards, I took a breath, and I finished. When I sat down, my hands were shaking and my face felt hot, and I was smiling so hard it hurt.
Fidget did not disappear that day, and he has not disappeared since. He still wakes up before I do, and he still has plenty to say. But I know how to answer him now. I do not shout, and I do not obey. I say, “Thank you. I hear you. I’m still steering.”
And if the feeling ever gets too big for one girl and one small gray creature, I know that I can tell Zoe, or my mom, or a teacher or a counselor. Asking for a bigger umbrella is also a very brave thing to do.
Sometimes, on the hard days, I even say the fourth card out loud, the one Zoe wrote with the tiny heart. You are brave. It still sounds a little strange in my own voice. But Fidget always lifts his ears when he hears it, as if he agrees.
I used to think being brave meant not being scared. Now I think it means having a cup of tea with your fear, and walking to school anyway.
Most mornings, though, Fidget just curls up in my tote bag, and we walk to school together.
With love,
Lina
