The magic of anxiety

Anxiety struck last night. My daughter was supposed to be inducted into an honor society at her school. I wasn’t able to go because of travel obligations with the other children, but her dad took her. She was excited about the event, and we had even rescheduled her therapy appointment so she could attend – turns out she needed the therapy more than the honor. She got all dressed up and looked lovely.

Then the ugly head of anxiety reared its head for some reason. She entered the room where the students were gathering and left about two minutes later. Her story to us was that it turned out she was supposed to be wearing black and white (which she wasn’t), that the kids were looking at her like she was a dork because she wasn’t dressed right, and that the teacher who was sponsoring the honor society gave her a disapproving look and sighed angrily. So she left, certain that if she had stayed the teacher would have “yelled” at her and was about to send her home anyway.

What I knew at the time was that the written note she had brought home told the students to dress “dressy” and gave some examples. It did not say they needed to be in black and white. I also knew – but only because I kept asking her until she finally answered – that my daughter had not actually spoken to either teacher in attendance, nor had either of them actually said anything to her.

Tonight I called the sponsor and asked what had happened. It turns out the kids were not required to be in black and white, although many of the band students had worn their band clothes, which are in fact black and white. And it further turns out that the sponsor hadn’t even seen my daughter in the brief time she was there. So not only was she dressed appropriately, there were other students not in black and white, and the teacher who was supposedly about to yell at her never even saw her.

Anxiety – the kind that psychiatrists treat, not the kind that makes me not sleep well before a big speaking engagement – is like that. Contrary to what it sounds like to those of who do not suffer from anxiety, my daughter did not lie about any of the events. She really truly believed all those things. But her “truth was made up of misinterpretations, incorrect assumptions, and added information that came completely out of her head to shore up the assumptions she had already made.

Her therapist calls this “distorted thinking.” So for example, when she saw many kids wearing similar outfits, she leaped straight to the assumption that they had done so because it was required. Then, based on that assumption, she “saw” the look of disapproval from the teacher. Then, based on the clear disapproval from the teacher, she jumped to the “logical” conclusion that she was about to be in trouble and banned from the event.

There were a lot of big jumps in a very short time, and she made no effort to slow down and check any of the information she was assembling. She knows she gets things wrong, but because everything is absolutely believable to her, she hasn’t yet learned when to doubt herself and check with someone else. It’s hard for me to watch this kind of thinking, because it is so incomprehensible. I can’t imagine going so far off track that what I believe doesn’t make any logical sense. But I’ve seen her do it over and over and over. When you point out to her that what she is saying or doing or thinking doesn’t make logical sense, you can see the confusion on her face.

It’s like watching a character in a movie that sees some magical act for the first time. They know it is unlikely, and yet they are seeing it with their own eyes. In my daughter’s case, she understands the illogic when you point it out, but rather than take that as a cue to think maybe she got something wrong, she takes it as a moment of deep confusion as to how something so illogical could be true.

My daughter's world is full of magical moments, but it's not the good kind of magic.