my story

I think I have always been an anxious person. As far back as grade school, I was overwhelmed with worry in ways I couldn't explain. A classmate mentioned his brother had a heart defect — and instantly I was convinced I had one too. A scratch from the woods became flesh-eating bacteria. A teacher's cancer diagnosis became my cancer diagnosis.

In junior high I had my first experience with what I called "The Weirdness" — that feeling of being fully awake but watching yourself from the outside, like you're a character in a movie of your own life. By high school the diseases were piling up: leukemia, lymphoma, brain tumor, stomach cancer, Parkinson's. I never told anyone. I didn't think they'd understand. I know I didn't understand it myself.

I managed to get through college, get a job, build a life. But about three years before I started this blog, everything collapsed. A near-accident on the interstate — my reaction time slowed by cold medicine, a burning building I couldn't stop staring at, my wife screaming — sent me into a spiral I couldn't climb out of. I stopped driving on freeways. Then highways. My world got smaller and smaller until one Saturday I locked myself in my room and didn't leave the house for five days.

A doctor diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. A psychologist later added Agoraphobia and Hypochondria. I tried medication. I tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Exposure Therapy. I made progress — real progress — and then I made this blog, which became something I never expected: a community.

That was 2008. The site went quiet in 2009. The anxiety didn't.

Fifteen years later I'm wiser, but I'm also sadder. I still see a therapist twice a month. We work on childhood trauma, parts work, and healing a nervous system that has been in fight-or-flight for most of my life. I've traded good hours and bad hours for good weeks and hard days — and that is genuine progress, even when it doesn't feel like it.

But I've also had to grieve. Experiences I missed. Things I may never be able to do now. A life lived smaller than I wanted. That grief is real and it belongs in this story too.

I no longer believe I will recover. I've made peace with that — most days. What I still believe is that it's possible to find joy inside this disease, not in spite of it. That's what I'm still fighting for.

This blog is where I document that fight. Honestly. Without the filter.

Originally published on myanxiousmind.com, March 2008. Updated April 2026.