UNFREEZE YOUR MIND

ALL MY LIFE, I THOUGHT I WAS A COWARD. THEN I DISCOVERED THAT THE REAL NAME FOR WHAT I'D BEEN FEELING WAS ANXIETY- AND I WAS IN GOOD COMPANY.

- JON IRWIN

I SAT IN HIGH SCHOOL French class, listening to the incomprehensible words spoken by the teacher. My own thoughts were easier to understand: Katie. She sat directly in front of me. Every day I thought to talk to her; every bus trip home I chided myself for not doing so. The cycle repeated for most of my freshman year—and then far beyond.

That was 25 years ago, and I chalked it up to adolescent nerves. Only recently did I learn that being racked with self-doubt and frozen with fear isn’t a character flaw. And it didn’t have to be this way.

THE DESCENT

For years, my cowardice hung over me like a black, laughing cloud. Simple tasks were excruciating. Many were common, like not taking the big shot. Others were so specific they were funny: I once brought my didgeridoo to a lecture by a world-class didgeridoo player, only to keep it hidden under my chair for the whole talk. I blamed some part of myself.

I’d tried therapy twice—once as a teenager after my parents’ divorce and again with my spouse, to keep us from the same path. Both helped to a degree but were short-term fixes for immediate problems. What began as inaction festered into

a nagging concern about some unnamed and insurmountable issue. I’d notice a lump on my neck in the mirror. The next week it would consume me—this bump that was surely something invasive and deadly. It never occurred to me that I could feel like my body was breaking because of what was going on in my mind.

THE RECKONING