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“How media has helped me better understand my anxiety”

I’ve always been the “weird” kid. The quiet, soft-spoken wallflower who others think observe life instead of participating in it. Maybe there’s a shred of truth in that, but I don’t care. My brain works differently than other people’s. While that of course has positives and negatives, that fact in and of itself is neutral.

On the positive end, I’m smart, complete tasks quickly, and think outside of the box. This is often seen as a big strength, but it comes with a catch. When your brain is used to working on overdrive for school and work, if you have anxiety, those parts of the brain work on overdrive, too. So, seemingly miniscule things can turn into big worries, even if they’re ridiculous. Imagine having a brain that thinks like that.

Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Mr. Robot, one of my favorite TV shows, paints a very intricate and, in my experience, accurate picture of what it is like living with mental illness. The protagonist, Elliot Alderson, has Dissociative Identity Disorder and even though I do not, his journey has many parallels to my life with anxiety. Seeing a strong character with struggles that I could relate to was so powerful. The voices in his head were manifestations of alternate versions of himself, but the overarching idea of having a little anxious voice in your head is something I think we can all relate to. I certainly can.

The show also explores his relationship with the notion of whether or not those inner voices can be trusted. Is our anxiety a “friend” who just wants us to be careful or is it a joy-consuming tornado destroying everything in its path by lying to us, causing us to unnecessarily stress over things that non-anxious people would scoff at?

For me, it’s definitely the latter and it is for Elliot, too. While his condition actually did “protect” him from a harsh truth about being abused in his childhood, eventually it takes on a life of its own. His alter ego, Mr. Robot, consumes his consciousness. He begins to live his life on his illness’ terms.

Mr. Robot becomes his (faulty) inner compass, directing where he goes, what he does, who he associates with, etc. The intricate details of the storyline are very “meta’, but the principle stands. He is living his life on Mr. Robot’s terms, losing Elliot in the process. This robs him of love, joy, and his humanity. That is what anxiety does to me. Sure, my anxiety is the reason I err on the side of caution in life and maybe that has helped me in some ways, but if you allow anxiety to be the primary lens through which you view the world, you could end up missing out on the experiences that make life worth living.

In one of Elliot’s weaker moments, Mr. Robot asserts that control is an illusion. He’s trying to get Elliot to believe that his attempts to achieve agency in his own life are exercises in futility — desperate, energy expending flails that will ultimately prove fruitless. I think that it’s easy to believe that, to accept that our role in life is passive. It takes us out of the equation, implying that our role in things is minimal at best and nonexistent at worst. Specifically when dealing with anxiety, this idea would further draw us into helplessness and believing that there isn’t anything we can do to overcome it, that it exists simultaneously outside and inside of us.

However, the further you get in your mental health journey, in my case at least, the opposite proves true. Control is not an illusion. It’s not an unattainable ideal. It’s within our grasp if we persist. We create a different relationship with anxiety, allowing it to be there but refusing to let it pull the strings. Sure, anxiety probably won’t completely disappear, but instead of taking on the form of a bully, it can merely seem like a nagging younger sibling you just tune out.

You see, control is not an illusion. The idea that controlling our own mental health is impossible is the illusion — and it’s one I refuse to accept any longer. So, let that anxious voice try its darndest, but live your life anyway. Decommission your inner Mr. Robot and thrive. We had our power all along, it was just hidden on his hard drive.

Frank is an estimator at a construction firm in NYC, but his love for and interest in media has never wavered. He was a media scholar at Macaulay Honors College from 2010-2014 and continues to research the ever changing entertainment landscape. He’s always related to the world through television, films, and music, and media is a great constant to have to bring insight, fun, and even comfort to our lives.

This piece was written and shared during the IDONTMIND Writing Workshop. Learn more about our free, nine-week course and be the first to know about the next workshop here. Visit Mental Health Connecticut’s YouTube channel for a video version of Frank’s story.