“So, depression and anxiety are like two sides of the same coin?” The Chaplain asked.

We were standing in the kitchen one morning. I’d just walked in the door after a night shift. It had been a busy night, partly because I had floated to another floor. I didn’t know where anything was (including my patients’ rooms), and had more patients in my assignment than we have on my own floor. I didn’t have the entry code for the supply room. It was like a field trip where all the doors were locked and there wasn’t a map. I didn’t mind it.

As usual, though, I was exhausted, and hadn’t had time for a real break. Instead, it had been five minutes here, five minutes there. On one of those five minute breaks, I’d come across a research article entitled “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks, published in Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014. Sometimes journal articles bogs me down, but overall, I’m a fan of reading about research studies. (If you didn’t already know I was a nerd, there you are.)

I don’t spend much time reading about anxiety, though. The thought of reading about it makes me anxious (really). But I’d been reading Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, by Jenny Lawson. Among other things, Lawson talks about her anxiety. And it wasn’t stressful to read about. Instead, when I wasn’t laughing at her characterizations, I was feeling a sort of kinship with her. So when Design Mom’s weekly link up included a list of books for people with anxiety, which led me in a round-about way to the research paper, I was curious.

I requested a couple of books on the list from the library. Not the super academic ones. Because while I consider myself a nerd, and I really enjoyed the “Get Excited” article, I prefer to read about anxiety with a side of comedy. Maybe it’s the old, “if you can’t laugh about something, you’ll cry.” I’m not ready for self-help books, and certainly not scientific treatises. I’d rather just read other people’s stories for now.

So when got home, I was telling the Chaplain about the article, and re-framing anxiety as excitement. The concept sounded like the kind of mind games I used to play on long runs, and I liked it.

Describing depression and anxiety as two sides of the same coin didn’t resonate with me at all, though. Instead, Jim Henson came to mind. “You know those two critics on the Muppets? Depression and anxiety are like that. The louder one laughs, the louder the other laughs. And the two of them are always there to give you their crappy perspective on your life.”

The frustrating thing about this characterization is that when you describe depression and anxiety as two outside sources pumping negative stuff into your head, you ignore the part where it’s all actually part of you and how hard it is to figure out what is true. When I’m in my darkest place, I know it isn’t real, that it’s just my own brain that has dimmed the lights on the world and made it a sad, scary place. That doesn’t make it any easier to separate from the feelings of hopelessness or the need to crawl out of my skin.

But somehow, reading about someone else’s experience with anxiety is strangely comforting. There’s some, “well, at least I’m not THAT bad,” and also, “Wow! She gets me.” Instead of causing anxiety, it creates a safe place to laugh about our shortcomings and struggles, and maybe even be open to reading some more on the subject.

In talking about my shift with the Chaplain, I was trying to sort out why I had been floated to another floor. Intellectually, I understand why: it was my turn to float; our floor has a list to keep track. A day later, I remembered. I had prayed specifically on my way to work, to have a break from getting report from the new nurse whose assignment I’ve been getting every time I work. Report had become something I dreaded. It was long, unhelpful, often full of information that either didn’t make sense or wasn’t true. And it was followed by an entire shift of picking up the pieces, fact-checking, and generally trying to mop up whatever had been left behind. In getting floated, I did not get report from that nurse, and so even though I didn’t get a break that shift, I Got A Break.

I should probably add that the image above is a screen grab, and I’m sure it’s the intellectual property of the Muppets.

Keep an eye out next week for a more in-depth review of Furiously Happy.