I’ve written and spoken about this topic before, but it’s worth returning to once in a while. Fear - especially fear that comes with disordered anxiety - wants ALL the attention. All of it. All the time. Sometimes that looks mean, rude, and selfish.
What does it look like when your anxious fear starts throwing a tantrum and demanding all the attention? What happens when anxiety and fear demand to be the most important thing all the time?
You might feel compelled talk about how you feel the minute you feel ANYTHING. If you find yourself automatically describing everything you feel to anyone within earshot, that’s fear demanding attention.
You may get angry or irritated when you think your fear is being ignored, invalidated, or minimized. When you’re sure that something is really wrong but nobody else around you seems to agree, do you find yourself getting annoyed because they “don’t understand” or are not “supporting” you?
Sometimes you want to see success stories, then immediately get annoyed at those stories because your fear will insist that those people didn’t have it nearly has bad as you because you are clearly “worse” than everyone else. Does this sound familiar?
Do you find yourself in an argumentative state when your fear is confronted by friends, loved ones, or other helpers? I’ve been the target of many colorful words over the years when I dare to suggest that just maybe that fear is wrong and doesn’t have to be the most important thing in the room at all times.
Have you ever taken a break from social media because seeing people being happy or living their lives makes you angry? That’s your fear demanding that you keep it in the spotlight. Happy? WTF???? Don’t these people know that (insert your current scariest thing here)?!
Your anxious fear LOVES cliches that insist that the world must revolve around it. It will totally scoop up the memes that declare your fear to be a sign of intelligence, creativity, or enlightenment. You know these:
“If they can’t handle me at my worst, they don’t deserve my best”
“Highly intelligent and creative people suffer from anxiety”
“I can’t help it if I feel so deeply that you can’t handle it”
Sometimes anxious fear will literally build its own personal brand based on intentionally being “too much”. You might be doing your best to hide your anxiety or fear, but that’s not always the default. Sometimes anxiety and fear decide that they are just gonna openly run the show and they are just not interested in who doesn’t like it.
There are two common threads here. They are REALLY important:
YOU are not mean, rude, or selfish. The fear is. The disorder can be all of those things and often is at varying times. This list is not designed to make you see how horrible you are. It’s designed to shine a light on how powerful fear can be in demanding the spotlight all the time.
A sure way to trigger an angry, rude, mean, or selfish outburst is to have someone disrespect your fear or turn their back on it. I don’t mean disrespecting YOU, but irrational anxious fear often needs to be disrespected or it will run run roughshod over everything. YOU are always worthy of respect as any human is. Your fear? Not so much. Can you see the difference?
If you ask a recovered person about this, they will nod their head and totally relate to how things changed when they started to recognize all of these patterns and started acting in opposition to them. Fear wants to be heard? Stay silent. Your partner “doesn’t understand”? Try understanding them for a few hours and following along with them. Want to start an argument or disagree with someone on the Internet because they dare to suggest that you can get better? Take three steps back and two deep breaths, then try to imagine what would happen if they were right. You get the idea.
In these situations, doing what I suggest will feel quite wrong. Dangerous. Reckless. Irresponsible. Your fear will NOT be happy that you are putting it on the back burner and ignoring the tantrum it is throwing. It does not like to be ignored. It wants ALL the attention all the time.
In many ways, the recovery process is all about unmasking this tendency, then learning how to starve anxious fear of its need for constant attention. Think about your anxiety and your fear as an obnoxious co-worker that just HAS to be the center of attention at all times. Loud. Aggressive. Unreasonable. What would you do with that obnoxious co-worker? How would you handle that?
One more thing before I wrap up. Remember that there a certain amount of meta-ness I this whole thing. When you are afraid, but choose to leave that fear alone without following it, often you will wind up MORE afraid. That’s the nature of fear. So if you feel like turning your back on anxiety and fear is just too scary or risky, join the club. Everyone thinks that. Recovered people thought that too.
Until they started doing it. Then the attention started going to things that really matter. Which made all the difference.
Have you listened to this week’s episode of The Anxious Truth podcast? Check it out out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or my website and YouTube channel.
193. Your Fear Wants ALL The Attention