Can I Be Healthy and Still Have an Anxiety Disorder?

If physical health was truly the gold standard for living well, instead of just the perception, I would be the luckiest man in the world. In my adult life, I haven't had the sniffles for more than a couple days. Frankly, my biggest physical flaw is that, as a redhead, my skin burns when I pass a beach-themed vacation poster.

Reality and perception are very different things. While my physical health can be defined as "pretty good for a middle aged guy," my mental health is best described as "dude, where are your pants?"

I suffer from anxiety disorders. I used to be so bold as to say "an anxiety disorder," but paranoia, general anxiety, panic attacks, and an ever present feeling of dread forced me to accept that one disorder just didn't cover it.

If you have ever taken a mindfulness class or dialectical behavioral therapy, then you are familiar with dialectical statements: that, like Schrödinger's long suffering cat, sometimes something can be two things at once. In our society, with the current thinking in place, I am my own paradox, my own dialectical statement: I am both perfectly well and undeniably unwell.

Anxiety Interferes with the Activities of Daily Living

The gold standard for determining all mental illness is the magic phrase "interferes with the activities of daily living." Anxiety disorders, as cataloged in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, are considered psychological disorders. It is healthy, apparently, to have constant anxiety if you are okay with it. If you aren't okay with it then you might be sick.

To what level your activities have to be interfered with is a testy subject for most people. The splinter effect can be seen on every level. People with mild anxiety do all they can to distance themselves from the housebound hoarder at the end of the proverbial block. Are you a worrier or are you paranoid? And, if you are paranoid, are you diagnosable? As with every spectrum, someone is almost on it, but not, and someone is on it, but barely.

Me? I'm in the anxiety game, my friends. If anxiety were football, I wouldn't be sick enough to be the all-star quarterback, but I am sick enough that you would agree I should be on the team.

And, whether we are still inside my football analogy or in real life, I am going to work hard enough that you will want to root for me.

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