如果这和它一样好吗？
Twenty years into therapy, our columnist considers a future where anxiety is just something he has to live with.
二十周年纪念日是pretty big deals, I’ve been told, so I guess it’s not all that surprising that coming up on my 20th anniversary of my first panic attack has me feeling contemplative. Call it self-awareness or call it the worry spiral of a depressed person on a winter day when the sun set at 4 p.m., but lately I’ve realized that my symptoms—and their frequency and intensity—haven’t really improved over the last two decades. It’s led me to an unfortunate question: What if my anxiety never gets better?
老实说，从许多方面来说，今天我比2002年经历了第一次恐慌袭击上班时更加焦虑。那时，我仍然可以开车去上班！（我已经有10多年的时间无法开车，此后不久我就被迫退休。）在过去的时间里，恐慌袭击并没有放松他们的束缚。我有成千上万的人，即使这些天，我也知道确切的期望。几乎每天晚上3:30我仍然在噩梦中醒来，几乎每天晚上我仍然无法入睡。
I’ve done everything I could think of to relieve my panic disorder. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in therapy, group therapy, and meditation. I’ve worked with a psychopharmacologist to try every SSRI and benzo available to me. I’ve read every damn self-help and anxiety acceptance book, even the ones Joe Rogan recommends. I got a medical marijuana card. I write a monthly mental health column. I have an unshakable will to improve the quality of my life and I have never once stopped trying. The fact that my symptoms haven’t improved after 20 years of treating my mental health as a fulltime job is extraordinarily frustrating.
My symptoms may still be brutal, but that’s not to say my quality of life isn’t better now. I’m more accepting of my symptoms and kinder to myself. I’m not locked in a fight-or-flight state indefinitely—I know it will pass, even if I can’t prevent it from arriving. I’m not self-medicating for relief anymore. And lately, I’ve thrown my arms around an uneasy mantra: Sometimes things suck and they don’t always get better.
对我来说，这是真正的激进接受者 - 一个没有人卖书，药丸或在小时聊天的情况下会告诉您。我自己的医生不喜欢我的口头禅。当我告诉她我愿意接受我的症状而没有改善或改变的希望时，她做了一个悲伤的脸，就像我向她展示了Bambi妈妈被枪杀的场景一样。I’ve offered to take any of her “cured” ex-patients out for steak and lobster, but I still haven’t met the person who completely overcame their panic, PTSD, or anxiety, despite insistence from my docs that these people exist in real life.
Look, they might exist. But so do plenty of us who are still mired in our struggles. As part of the latter group, I’ve done the only thing left—learned to live with my anxious and terrified feelings. I experience a full life as a person with anxiety (which is different than living a full life as someone without anxiety). Sometimes it just sucks. Instead of wishing or hoping for a symptom-free day or week or month, I accept my reality every day. It’s an act of bravery to do anything in the world when you know it’s likely to result in a panic attack—but I’ve still gone out there and done it.
Pretty much, anytime I’ve lived my life in the last 20 years, my friend anxiety has followed. Here’s what that looks like:
我每天的烹饪学校都有惊恐发作。
I had a panic attack at my agent’s office when I signed the deal for my cookbook.
I had a panic attack at my book’s launch party.
我在纽约州北部和新英格兰的书店中都遭受了惊恐发作。
在接受采访时，我的恐慌发作如此糟糕，我被播客的客人被裁员。
I had a panic attack while filming a segment on Lidia Bastianich’s cooking show.
我在全球10家最高餐厅中的四家中遭受了惊恐发作。（这并不是说我在其他六个地方很冷，我还没有去过他们。）
我在世界大赛，NFL季后赛和NHL开幕日发生了惊恐发作。
我在埃菲尔铁塔（Eiffel Tower）遭受了惊恐发作，但我仍然认为这是成功的，因为我在那里的路上没有惊慌。
I had a panic attack at St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square.
I had a panic attack at the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, but I still managed to sneak a pic of the famous ceiling.
I had a panic attack at Sydney Opera House.
I had a panic attack on a high-speed bullet train to Mt. Fuji. The next day, I had a panic attack at the base of Mt. Fuji.
I had a panic attack on a sunset cruise in Maui.
在亚利桑那州塞多纳的一座山顶上，我在一次药轮仪式上发生了惊恐发作。
I had a panic attack during savasana at yoga class taught by Sri Dharma Mittra so bad my legs shook, and I used my meditation skills to let it pass without reacting.
You might look at that list and see a whole lot of panic attacks. I look at the list and see the cool things I’ve done in the last 20 years. The point here is not the number or intensity of my panic attacks. The point is, I still did all these things knowing full well that having a panic attack was possible. Probable, even.
如果我等待我没有焦虑的生活，那就是那个清单上什么都不会发生。通过接受焦虑是我本人的一部分，它剥夺了它的一些力量，从而使我无法阻止我做自己想做的事情。也许有一天，恐慌发作会消失。在此之前，我将继续留下回忆。
