Category Archives: Personal
Introducing the Therapy Log
I recently went back into therapy, and I’ve decided to track my progress — and lack of progress — in a series of videos. Below is the first in that series.
Anxious disclaimer: this video is longer than it probably ought to be. Future installments will be shorter.
The “Tales from the Amygdala” Project
Today marks the formal beginning of a new video project here at The Monkey Mind Chronicles. It’s a project I’m calling “Tales from the Amygdala,” after the putative seat of fear in the human brain. (Alternative title: The “It Might Not Get Better” Project. But I’d like to stay optimistic.)
The idea is to post an original video — every Monday, if possible — from people who have struggled or are still struggling with anxiety and panic. The videos should be on the short side, two-to-four minutes or so, and the guiding prompt is simple: What makes you anxious? If you have an anxiety-horror-show story (you know, like the time you were so nervous you vomited on your history professor) please tell that. If not, then just say what anxiety means to you personally. What role has it played in your life? How have you coped? How would you define your relationship with your anxiety?
Today we have a great video submitted by the standup comic and writer Jason Good, whose hilarious and original blog I commend to everyone. And now, without further ado, enjoy basking in Jason’s insanity:
Please submit links to all videos (uploaded to Youtube, Vimeo, etc.) to [email protected]. And here’s another great video, from the standup comic and soldier Benari Poulten.
The voice in my head
Heathre Contant, our very talented and clearly very strange engineer on the n+1 podcast, edited an audio file of me (this is from a forthcoming interview with editor and author Keith Gessen about the publishing industry) to produce what sounds uncannily like the voice that plays in my head beginning at around 5am and continuing until breakfast.
Telling the World
Monkey Mind comes out in about seven months, and as the final changes get implemented (a word my editor has banned me from using due to some horrible prejudice), and I continue to drive the copy editors, proofreaders, and sub-editors mad with all my niggling worries about commas and semi-colons and line breaks and the like, one worry does not seem to have me bolting up at night in a cold white panic. This is the worry of what people keep calling “exposure,” as in: “Dan, aren’t you worried about all the … exposure?”
What they mean to ask is whether I’m nervous about people knowing the towering extent of my anxiety. Strangely, I’m not. (more…)
