Am I Nuts II (page 3 of 4)

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Illustrated by Ingo Fast

Some quirks make us unique while others can signal an underlying problem.

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Magical thinking is normal for a four-year-old -- but definitely not for an adult.

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Serious psychopathology, or just a quirk?

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When you get right down to it, there's no such thing as "normal."

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Serious psychopathology, or just a quirk?

Leave me alone! I'm reading.

Falling Feelings and Irrational Fear

Question:
Sometimes I feel like I'm falling. Doesn't matter what I'm doing -- sitting, standing or lying down. I never actually fall, but I feel like I am. Is that nuts?

All our experts have the same advice: Go see your doctor this week. There are a dozen possible causes for your condition, from an innocuous side effect of a medicine you might be taking to a dangerous brain tumor. There's no way to know unless you see your physician, who may order brain scans and refer you to a neurologist. This is serious. Please make that appointment.

Question:
Why do I waste energy worrying about stupid things that couldn't possibly happen, especially when I'm lying in bed in the middle of the night? I have full-blown scenarios of how I'll be captured by insurgents and tortured. I have a plan to survive should the wings fall off the airplane when I fly. And I know exactly what I'll say if I ever get fired. I know intellectually about the insurgents and the plane wings, and my boss just gave me a raise. So why do I always expect and plan for the very worst?

Psychologists and psychiatrists saw a surge of anxiety about terrorism after 9/11. There really are people trying to kill us, and some measure of anxiety is natural and understandable. In fact, says Joseph Himmelsbach, PhD, a psychologist at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University, "to be totally anxiety free is an impossibility. Indeed, part of the work you do in therapy is to handle the stress that's just part of everyday life." But it sounds like you may work yourself into more of a lather than you need to, especially if you're losing sleep worrying in the middle of the night. Adds Himmelsbach, "You've developed a fantasy that's a receptacle for all your anxieties. And you think if you can come up with a solution to these fantasies, you can delude yourself that you can deal with anything that comes along."

It's good you can recognize that these scenarios could not possibly happen. Gitlin notes you should also recognize that your plans "wouldn't work anyway." He wonders if you're not like some hypochondriacs, "people who, if they have a cough, think they have lung cancer. Anxious people, probably because of some link in the brain we don't yet understand, gravitate toward a catastrophic interpretation of events."

If your worry is occasional, see if you can reason your way out of it. But if you feel it's more in control than you are, consider talking to a trusted friend or therapist. If your anxiety spikes into panic attacks, see your doctor. There are meds for this.

• • Normal or Nuts
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