Yes, We Still Feel Anxious

Summary: We're still working out the kinks in this whole podcast/audiophile thing. I'm a long way from being pleased with the final result, but we learned a lot this week and hopefully, next week will be better. Thank you for listening and reading. Our family has two dogs. The eldest is Belvedere, a hound mix who is about as chill as any hound dog can be. He is, more than anyone, our family Dude. He spends his days curled up in the most comfortable spot he can weasel for himself, sleeping away. Then, there’s Hamilton. Hamilton is a 90-pound black lab/pit mix who is the most anxious creature I have ever met. Like all our pets, Hamilton is a rescue and was roughly ten months old when he came to us so we don’t have any information on what he was like as a pup, but we can only imagine there were some problems because this dog has severe abandonment issues. When we took him in, we did so thinking he would be Kat’s dog since we’d had Belvedere over a year at that point and he and I had bonded strongly. That didn’t happen, though. Hamilton decided that he needed to be my dog as well and in the years following, I’ve often thought I should have named him Shadow because no matter where in the house I am, he’s there with me. He often naps with me and he’d sleep with me at night if I’d let him. If I change rooms, he needs to know where I am. If we’re separated, he cries. If I walk out the back door, he stands there waiting until I return. If I leave for a doctor’s appointment, he gets upset that I’m not where he can see me. Let there be a sudden noise outside and all 90 pounds of him is going to try and sit in my lap. I’ve never seen anything like it and the older he gets the worse his condition. Anxiety is a significant issue in the United States and around the world. In the US alone, the <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder.shtml">National Institute of Mental Health</a> calculates that 19.1%, roughly 71.5 million people, have a severe enough level of anxiety to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Of those, women are almost twice as likely to experience anxiety as men, and younger adults ages 18-44 are significantly more likely to have some form of anxiety as are those who are older. Over 30 percent of the US population, more than 110 million people, experience some form of diagnosable anxiety in their lifetime. Anxiety is very real and can impact how we live our lives. Before we go much further, we need to define how we’re using the term anxiety. We all experience momentary anxiety such as when we’re about to go for a job interview or one’s spouse sends you a text that says, “We need to talk.” That type of anxiety is typical enough and usually goes away when the situation passes. For a person with a diagnosable anxiety disorder, though, that anxiety does not go away; it’s always there, lingering in the background, can get worse with time, and can dramatically interfere with what we are able to do. Anxiety is a part of PTSD, panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and any number of phobias in addition to generalized anxiety disorder messing up people’s lives on its own. Like a number of mental health issues, most anxiety disorders can be treated with therapy and medication to some degree, but finding the right prescription and the best therapist can take a lot of time which often generates increased anxiety in the process. The American Psychiatric Association <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/majority-of-americans-say-they-are-anxious-about-health-millennials-are-more-anxious-than-baby-boomers">conducted a poll</a> in both 2017 and 2018 showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans were “extremely or somewhat anxious about health and safet...

Yes, We Still Feel Anxious

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