Don’t worry, be happy
WITHOUT doubt, these are anxious times for everyone. Yet some people always seem better at handling adversity than others – no matter what’s going on in the world around them.
Yet for those of us who are olympic standard worrits at the best of times, it’s been like a stress safari park!
I’ve always had an overactive imagination and a dancing monkey for my attention span. This has been great for a career in comedy, whilst making me aafull at everyday stuff, like remembering where I’ve parked me car at Tesco, or when I’m in there, worrying about not doing anything about the packet of parma ham that somebody had dumped next to the own brand Hob Nobs in the confectionary aisle.
By the time I’ve eventually found me car I’ll be ‘catastrophizing’ all the way home about being complicit in the poisoning of a short-sighted grandad by not putting the ham back into the refrigerated section.
This angst has actually seen me get home, get back in the car, drive to Tesco and put the ham back in the refrigerated cold meats. Then once I’ve found me car again, I begin to stress that maybe putting the ham back was even more deadly than doing nowt as I had no idea how long it had been festering under the hot store lighting.
Hells bells, I’d put it back when it was probably deadlier than one of
Saddam’s bioweapons!
They had me on camera, they’d see me putting it back. I was going to jail!
Such freefalling mental gymnastics and torture, going from the meat aisle to prison in minutes is a daily occurrence, it can be exhausting!
It’s true – I’ve been bursting and buzzing to write this article for over a month, but sitting my bum down to write this stuff has been like doing time. I’m staring at the screen like a chav trying to read a Starbucks menu. It’s the typing equivalent of erectile dysfunction.
It’s always been this way, every assignment I ever wrote at university was always last minute. Even my anarchist flatmate said I needed to organise better.
One of the biggest symptoms of anxiety is your flight or fight system is basically jammed on like a knackered car alarm.
This stress system, which was initially designed to help you survive encounters with sabre toothed tigers, was meant to go back to normal once danger has passed. With anxiety the tiger is in the cave, drinking your beer, flicking annoyingly through Netflix and texting dirty messages to your lass.
You constantly slosh with stress hormones, it’s like the natural opposite of being off your nut at an early nineties rave – you are more a physical embodiment of a Smiths song.
Hell! – now I mention it – even songs caused me anxiety, I avoided travelling to London until me midtwenties because I heard ‘Down In A Tube Station At Midnight ‘ by The Jam.
I was fifteen and it terrified me. All this poor bloke had done was spend all his money on a takeaway curry and was on his way home to his wife. He knew she was expecting him, polishing the glasses and pulling out the cork. What a nice bloke. Why not just leave it at that? Let’s have a happy commute. Sheena Easton’s bloke took the early morning train and then he took it home again, and nowt happened to him.
But no, this was a Paul Weller song – and an early Paul Weller song at that – you knew it wouldn’t end well! As for ‘Babylons Burning With Anxiety’ by the Ruts - why? It made me ill before the chorus finished. Think of the anxious bairns songsters! More ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy ‘ please.