or waiting in delicious anticipation for a bingo number to be called are all
more stressful than writing a monthly report, but few people would con-
sider avoiding these activities because of the physiological strain.
The kinds of things that Randy has to do to get by in his job—staying
with boring tasks, figuring out ambiguous situations, speaking in front of
groups, and saying no to people who make unreasonable demands—are less
pleasant. The physiological sensations they elicit are similar to excitement,
but the thoughts we have about them are different. These are the stresses
we wish we could avoid. We don’t, because we consider them necessary
to succeeding at our jobs, to our developing as human beings, or maybe
we just think other people are counting on us. Frightening as these tasks
are, we do them, and by doing them we develop the strength to do more.
We see ourselves as having a choice in the matter. We’re committed to our
work, so we take on the things we fear and make them into challenges.
Most often, we make these choices automatically, never thinking that they
keep us from getting stress-related disorders or developing mental illness.
We just do what we need to do, regardless of how we feel about it.
On the other side of this vast psychological gulf are emotionally
explosive people who, by attempting to avoid negative emotion, invariably
experience more of it. Randy doesn’t do the difficult parts of his job
because he sees them as reflections of his boss’s incompetence. If Jim
would just do his job correctly, Randy would have no problem with his.
The logic here is a bit thin, so Randy plays it over and over both inside
and outside of his head, in a vain attempt to convince himself and every-
one else that his pain is someone else’s responsibility.
Sometimes people who see their stress as someone else’s fault will
explode directly at that person. We’ll deal with them in the section on
anger, but I’ll tell you now that they’re rarer than you might think. Most angry
people pick safer targets, like people who love them.
Though Randy’s thought patterns might lead to anger in someone
else, he—like most people with fear disorders—prefers the passive
approach to aggression: Run awayrather than fight back.
Not that it makes much difference. Other people don’t distinguish
between active and passive aggression. They recognize and respond to
attacks, whether they take the form of directly complaining about what
they tell you to do or just forgetting to do it.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder ❧ 131