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In the small North Carolina town where I grew up, downtown was only a block long. The tracks for the Norfolk and Southern steam locomotives were just past the stores. The freight trains were slow enough that it was safe for us kids to try to walk balanced on the rails.
At the start, balancing on a rail is fun. Then comes the anxiety. I was sure that, sooner or later, I would lose my balance. The longer I maintained my balance, the more anxious I became about losing it. When the anxiety was more than I could tolerate, I gave in to it and stepped off. Stepping off ended the anxiety, but it left me dissatisfied that I had given in to the anxiety.
Baseball was similar. I could hit the ball fine in practice. But in a game, people were watching, and I couldn’t even swing at the ball. To swing would mean I was trying my best. To miss was - as I saw it - to be an utter failure. Little League baseball was too stressful to be fun as an eight-year-old.
Fast forward to adulthood. I now hear clients talk about COVID. They say they are sure they will get it no matter how hard they try to protect themself. So they can't bring themselves to always wear a mask. Even though they are adults, they are like a kid who steps off the rail or who can swing at the ball in practice but not in a game.
We all want to protect our ego.
- If we try our best and fail, we feel like a failure.
- If we try less than our best and fail, we can protect our ego by saying didn't really try.
This brings us to a serious question. Is protecting our ego more important than protecting our life?
As an example, I posted online about a local merchant who refuses to comply with COVID regulations. Here is a response I got.
These store owners KNOW that there is no such VIRUS. They KNOW it's a BIOWEAPON that's in the FLU SHOT AND THE SHINGLES SHOT, and that the BIOWEAPON does not spread. YOU have to be dumb enough to get those shots.
Those that got those shots and those who will be duped into getting it again, do not spread it to anyone else. It does not spread. It's NOT a 'virus'.
The next coming fake vaccine is not a vaccine. It is full of past and present plagues (aids, HIV, cancer, smallpox, ebola, H1N1, all manmade plagues rolled into one).
Go get the 'vaccine' when it comes out and that will put you out of your misery, permanently.
It's the vaccine TAKERS who will be all of the ones who are dying. vaccine TAKERS. Not the other way around, as they will tell you.
As I see this, the person controls their anxiety about COVID by denying COVID exists, and that people are dying from something else, something he will survive because he is wise enough to avoid the real problem, vaccination.
What is our anxiety really about? Is anxiety about not existing? Is it about losing face? Is it about being unequal to others? Is it about being unworthy of love, or even of acceptance?
If I ask a client what they are most fearful of being revealed, they can't answer. The question is not answerable because we protect ourselves from the answer via unconscious defenses. Unconscious defenses cause us to arrange everything - our thinking and our living - to keep what we fear is true about ourselves out of mind.
Treatment for personality disorder, according to James Masterson, M.D., causes the client to see how they have been keeping themself from being aware of something they want to be unaware of. Once a client is aware of how he or she is keeping that thing out of mind, that particular defense doesn't work anymore.
The psychological distress about that awareness is then “worked through” so the information no longer needs to be hidden away. As therapy continues, the person's defenses - one by one - are revealed, and the unacceptable information it kept out of mind is made acceptably.
As the process continues, reality needs to be less distorted. As illusion becomes less necessary, reality becomes increasingly acceptable. At some point, I realized that failure, after trying my best, felt better than success when less than my best was called for.
Is there a really practical way to deal with pandemic anxiety? Yes. We can neutralize anxiety-producing thoughts by linking them to a memory of being with a calming person. Doing so produces what attachment theorist John Bowlby called an internal working model of secure relationship.
