The other morning, I woke up afraid of everything that might ever happen. The day before, I had convinced myself that the strawberries I had put in my oatmeal had been drugged with LSD. For the past few months, I have been unable to drive on the highway without experiencing a panic attack. Getting in the car in general evokes a primordial fear that takes all my strength to combat. Whenever I am in public, I dump out and refill my drink any time my back is turned for fear of someone tampering with it. The world is a much more sinister place than I remember, and I am no longer able to partake in my one true love, caffeine.

Anxiety disorders are common among Americans, and even more common among those who are coming of age. Nearly 40 million adults in the US are affected on some level, and it is most often developed in a person’s early twenties. We could argue that the socioeconomic situation our nation faces is what makes millennials so anxious, or we could talk about the processed foods we’ve been scarfing down our whole lives. There are plenty of resources out there that speculate about the physiological and psychological causes of mental health disorders, but we will not dwell on that here. The only pragmatic use for understanding the cause of a problem is to use that information to work for a solution, and I have a better idea than taking preventative measures. Let's talk about using fear to your advantage.

Fear is what keeps you alive, preventing you from jumping from skyscrapers and walking into oncoming traffic. It is essential to our survival, and is arguably the most important thing we feel on a day to day basis. You eat because on an unconscious level, you know that you will starve and die if you do not. You love others and make friends because you fear being alone. In the words of H.P. Lovecraft:

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”

To spare you from any more of my elaborating, it is rational to be afraid. It keeps us alive. It only becomes a problem when we begin to fear the irrational and it creeps into every facet of our lives. I can speak from experience when I say that it is easy to feel stuck, and to a degree you are. Those irrational fears and notions of impending cosmic doom don’t go away overnight. Or the next night, or the night after. Sometimes they hide, and make you think that sweet normalcy is coming to visit, only to jump out and tell you that its plane went down in the Atlantic Ocean and it was dismembered by a shark. And the shark was devoured by a killer whale, and the whale was butchered for blubber by illegal whalers.

So those fears move in and don’t plan to leave. What do you do? Coping methods are great for when your heart starts pounding in your chest and adrenaline throws you through space as you hyperventilate with the speed of a hamster’s metabolism. But what do you do for the long term? Those fears are still there, eating all your food and ignoring the chore list you made for it.

Look them in the eye and embrace them. Every irrational fear you have weakens you, and every opportunity to face them creates a potential for growth. A life not lived to its fullest potential is no life at all. I have chosen to see anxiety as a unique opportunity to face and conquer things that hinder me. I view my fear of having my food and drink drugged as a unique opportunity to fight and vanquish that paranoia forever.

I am not a psychologist, and my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Follow at your own peril. What I am bringing to the the table is this: Exposure Therapy. Take what you are afraid of and expose yourself to it. You will be afraid, you will most likely panic. The first time at least. Build yourself up to regular exposure to this fear, each time a small victory in a greater battle against the parts of your mind that betray you. If you panic at the thought of driving like me, drive even more than you do already. Re-associate yourself with those daily tasks you once did without thinking. Remember, the worst that can happen is panic, and panic attacks are harmless. Remind yourself that your enemy can’t hurt you unless you let it. Whatever you do, hit back meaner. The only result is growth.