Everything I Was Secretly Worried About

And why my car catching on fire was a good thing

When I was in my late 20s, I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. This came as a shock to no one. My life has been a string of esoteric worries that would likely never come to pass, most of which only go away when another takes its place.

When my mum is trying to paint a picture of what I was like as a child she will often tell people about how I refused to go to school on my first day because I couldn’t spell washing machine and was terrified I would be tested. Never mind the fact that I couldn’t spell my last name.

Through years of therapy, reading, and worrying about my worry, I have moved past all bar one fixation. After a year where I was in and out of the hospital and doctor's appointments, I was left convinced that the slightest change in my body was the harbinger of death. My arm suffered some nerve damage after a particularly strenuous Pilates class my arm went numb. That, coupled with an ill timed and caffeine induced heart palpitation meant I was having a heart attack, obviously. While I am almost free from panic, occasionally I still feel the zaps of panic.

When I was thinking about my health anxiety, I was reminded looked back over the other fixations that I’ve had and laughed at how rediculous some of them were.

These were not passing worries, they were deep-seated fears that consumed years of my life at a time. I haven’t included more realistic fears that I had, like being outed during high school, because they aren't as funny.

Piranha

In the mid-90s, piranhas were a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon in cartoons like the anvil. Any time I entered a body of water, I had to do a quick scan to ensure it was free from toothy fish.

The school across the road was accessible over the summer, and we spent hot afternoons splashing about in the frigid water. There was a pipe flowing into the pool, and I convinced myself that piranha could swim down the pipe and munch on the 12 children fossicking in the shallow water.

If Google had been more readily accessible when I was a child, maybe I would have known that there are about 30 different species of piranha and very few of them look like the ones I saw on Saturday morning cartoons. I would know that they seldom attack humans and that even when they do, the injuries are rarely life-threatening.

Drowning

Having grown up around the water (by demand), this could have been a very real worry. However, like most people with GAD, my thoughts about drowning were constant.

When we would go to the beach, I would constantly be quietly searching for rips. One Christmas, while we were visiting my grandparents, my mum took us to the beach. Just before school had broken up, we had a unit at school about beach safety, so I was distressed when Mum told us that we didn’t have to swim between the flags today because the water was calm (despite having done it for years prior).

In the same year, I caught a glimpse of my sister watching Titanic on VHS. I was about six, so I wasn’t allowed to watch the whole thing but what I did see was the scene of the old people lying on their beds before they were engulfed by the Atlantic waters. That week we went to stay at a beach house of a friend and me and my sister had to sleep outside in a tent. I was convinced that the waters of the beach (that was probably half a kilometer away) was going to rise slowly in the night, and I would meet the same fate as that old couple. The next morning, I was shocked to wake up alive and vowed never to get on a boat; the sea is none of my business.

Necrotizing Fasciitis

When we first got Sky TV (like Foxtel or Cable), I would stay up whenever I could and watch the insane documentaries on the channels over 100. My favourite one was about whether Hitler was a witch or the Sphynx. One night, long after everyone had gone to bed, I watched a documentary about rare medical cases. From this show, I got a few new anxieties, but the flesh-eating bacteria was the most prevalent.

Coincidentally, the summer I moved to Melbourne, there was an outbreak of necrotizing fasciitis, and I thought I was a goner. Someone I know did get necrotizing fasciitis from a pool in a cruise, so now I guess we can add cruises to my list (not that I was ever going to go on one).

Bermuda Triangle

There was a point where, if I knew someone going overseas, I would secretly plot their flight path in an atlas to see if they were crossing the Bermuda Triangle. On a Wednesday afternoon, my gran helped out in the school library (and more importantly bought me and my sister ice creams on the way home), and she noticed that I was repeatedly checking out books on the Bermuda Triangle and told me it was silly. I was devastated. She made some valid points about rapidly changing weather patterns, and although I have never checked her theory, I’ve decided to believe her.

Real Estate Agents

There was a time when the ring of my phone or a knock at the door would throw me into a wild panic. During this time, we were living in a terrace house in Ascot Vale, and a knock at the door reverberated down the dark hallway.

It wasn't that I was scared of Real Estate Agents directly; it was more of a domino effect. After moving to Melbourne, it was near impossible to find a house, which led to several weeks where I was frantically running around a city I didn't know and crying in suburban train stations. When we finally found a house, I was so scared of losing it that the thought that our property manager was at our house to do a surprise inspection (which is illegal) filled me with dread. When someone knocked on the door unexpectedly, I would often hide. One afternoon, when I was home alone, I hid in the corner of the lounge until I worked up the courage to open the door. The knocker was already walking away, it was an aggressive charity salesman. Bullet dodged I guess.

My Car Catching On Fire

Shortly after getting back from an overseas holiday I had to buy a car because I was changing jobs and my new one was too far away from the train.

Because I had spent all my money while overseas, I took out a small loan to buy a car. I knew that I wanted a Holden Astra. Shortly after purchasing my white Holden Astra, the engine light came on. Many mechanics told me to ditch the car because it would be too expensive to fix. I couldn't afford to, so I drove around worrying that one day it would spontaneously combust.

When I talked to my psychologist about my concerns, we both laughed it off. If we were talking about my anxieties, we would reference my fear that I would die in a car fire as something extreme and work on reframing.

As part of my new role, I was upskilling, so I had to sit an intense exam. During the holiday, I spent every day at home studying for hours at a time. I needed a coffee to perk me up.

I went down to McDonald’s for an iced coffee, and on the way back, I had a cigarette. When I stepped out of the car, I could smell smoke but didn't think anything of it because I'd just had a smoke.

An hour later, I decided to procrastinate further and go get something for lunch. Most of my procrastinating that year was centered on food.

When I walked down the hallway, I could see a lady frantically running up and down the street. I opened the front door and yelled, “Are you alright?” at her.

She stopped. “There’s a car on fire!”

“Ugh, it’s probably mine. Hold on.”

It was my car on fire. When I ashed my cigarette, it had flown back and landed on my jacket and caught.

I strolled over to the car, opened the rear door (it was broken and didn't lock). Pulled out the jacket and stamped on it. The lady who discovered the fire was behind me screaming, so I sent her away to get a fire extinguisher. I was calm.

I had spent three years worrying myself to distraction about the possibility of my car going up in flames, and when it did, I was measured. It took me two minutes after getting back inside to post about it on Twitter, and I used it as an opening anecdote for months.

When the fire engines turned up, they were lovely. We had a great laugh, and I hit on the tall ginger one a bit. The cops turned up too and tried to shame me about smoking.

“Well, you shouldn’t be smoking anyway; it’s not good for you,” he said

“Thanks,” I was over his attitude at this point “I wasn't aware of that.”

Spending six months driving around in a car that was semi burnt out, windows down to air the smell of smoke, was a reminder that I’m good in a crisis. I have a support network that will help me through anything, and I should have more faith in myself to deal with adversity.

Even though I hadn't been to my psychologist in months, I considered booking an appointment the next day. Not to work through the trauma because there wasn't any, but to gloat that the thing she told me would never happen did, and I was fine. I didn't need her reframing exercises, I needed to light my car on fire and see how I would react. I will probably still try the reframing exercises, though I can't see myself throwing caution to the wind with necrotizing fasciitis.