GAD

 Generalized Anxiety Disorder:  Chronic, exaggerated worry about everyday issues.

Causes and Factors: "While the exact cause is unknown, they likely stem from a mix of genetics, environmental stress, and brain chemistry.  Factors include family history, traumatic experiences, and chronic illness."

I have GAD written down on my medical chart.  I have been diagnosed with this and it is a real thing and not something I've just made up like almost everything else in my life.  When I try to explain to non-GAD people what it means, exactly, I say: "I used to be nervous about everything and anything, and I still have a tendency to trend into disaster."  There's nothing logical about it.  I have been able to manage it via a combination of therapy, light medication, and thousands of hours of exercise and meditation.  It's still fire but it's in the fireplace most of the time.

Anxiety:  (From the American Psychological Association)  An emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension in which an individual anticipates impending disaster, catastrophe, or misfortune.

Disaster!  Catastrophe!!  My car is in the repair shop!  It will never be the same and it will become a lemon and I'm fucked!

Wait, wait . . . my car is in an accredited repair shop full of highly trained, professional mechanics who deal with damage far, far worse than this and they are working on non-mechanical, purely cosmetic damage and everything is going to be just fine.

Pick one of those and tell me which is more pleasant.

I try to remember that anxiety is a normal, omnipresent human emotion that prepares us for the unknown.  We all have it.  We're all going to have it forever and ever and ever.  I will eternally remember the psychologist who looked at me and said: "What is the anxiety trying to tell you?  What is the message?"  I was so busy trying to avoid it or change it into something pleasant or bury it under a soporific that I never learned the skills to manage it.  Quit trying to run away!  Look for the lesson and learn something for once in your stupid life!

Let's say for example that I'm not getting any hot water in my house.  I go outside and see that there's water leaking out of the heater.  I do not touch the heater because it has hot, scalding, pressurized water in it and there is no good outcome on God's green earth that can come from me having anything whatever to do with the appliance.  I don't even like looking at it.  It could explode, dousing me with scalding water and don't tell me this is unlikely because I have a mole on the inside feeding me confidential information.  So I called an HVAC guy and set up an appointment.  I have the money to fix or even replace the entire thing.  Not having anything but warm water for a few hours is not the end of the world.  Yet . . .  I feel some anxiety.  This is NORMAL anxiety.  I'm okay with this anxiety.  My problem is that if I'm not vigilant I can find myself drifting into the milieu of impending disaster.  There is no impending disaster!  Go take a walk, you idiot, and all will be well!