The Subtle Signs You Have High-Functioning Anxiety
Anxiety and other mental health disorders in men are still largely stigmatized. Beyond first recognizing and identifying the condition, there are vital steps men can take.
My life is a dichotomy in that I’ve spent years in tae kwon do, love football and rodeos, but have an affinity for frozen yogurt and watching Netflix with a good cabernet and wood wick candles next to my cats, Thelma and Louise. I attribute my temperament to genes and California hippy tap water.
The origins of personal traits, to include anxiety, can be biological, environmental, or inadvertently “seed-planted” by anxious parents. Male anxiety (a.k.a., “manxiety”) is clinically contagious if you’re around it long enough. My dad, a manly victim of indecisiveness, often had me second-guessing my own life choices, or not making one at all. To this day, I’m often paralyzed by an Applebee’s lunch menu or a yellow traffic light.
Men are stalwarts of resolve with an uncanny ability to chug beer, char meat, and kill one another. We recognize that our cars and lawn mowers need tune-ups and diagnostic tests, but we rarely wash our feet in the shower, let alone visit a physician for our own check-ups—especially for anything regarding the brain. And when we don’t prioritize our own well-being, neither do others. If you’re a man with anxiety, however, the norms become skewed and irrational.
I grew-up a hypochondriac certain that every pain, rash, bump, or twitch was something malignant or terminal. I visited the hospital countless times per year while spending the equivalent of a Range Rover full of backup dancers on annual copays. What I thought was testicular cancer was an inguinal hernia from doing deadlifts. What I was certain was genital herpes was an ingrown hair. What I feared was Lyme disease was an allergic reaction to grass. And what I accepted as a heart attack turned out to be…anxiety.
Only twice did I not go to a hospital when I should have. The first was at 18 while suffering intense chest pains and labored breathing because I had unknowingly collapsed a lung. In my defense, I thought it was heartburn. The second was when I intermittently peed blood over a 10-month stint. A rational man would interpret hematuria as the ultimate motivation for a hospital visit. But the only thing worse than my fear of potential hospice was the anxiety of a pending cystoscopy.
Consequently, I settled on platinum-level denial until I landed in surgery and chemo. Ignorance is a prickly muse. With chronic male anxiety, it’s torturous to determine what warrants an ER visit versus antacids. And when it came to my mental health, I handled it like most men: denial, distraction, and drugs. In that order.
Most men with anxiety have no idea what’s wrong with them—like Bill Bixby in The Hulk, they just feel “off.” Denial and distraction are why so many men walk around as functioning alcoholics or addicts. In the absence of knowing any better or a willingness to seek help regarding male anxiety, we plug the holes however we can. But if you treated any other ailment by ignoring or avoiding it, the outcome would be similarly grim. You can ignore asthma and diabetes for a while too. But every disorder has its dues.
Since anxiety, depression, and all disorders of the mind are still largely stigmatized among men, my first coping tactic was denial, lest I appeared weak and vulnerable among my peers. “While some may consider this a stereotype—that men do not seek help for mental health issues—it is statistically correct…men are much more stigmatized by any admission of a psychiatric illness and are much less likely to seek treatment,” says Sammie LaMont Moss, M.D., a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente in Denver.
This is particularly troublesome as depression and anxiety in men are more likely to manifest in substance abuse and suicidal behavior. “We often see in the clinical setting that an attempt to address anxiety can manifest in different ways. For example, men will turn to substances like alcohol or cannabis for some immediate relief, which can cause long-term, harmful effects,” says Moss.
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