John, I have really really bad anxiety. I know in the past you’ve said that you have/had it too. How in the world are you able to do so much with it? (Like go on stage at vidcon or meet so many nerdfighters) Is there some secret I never received? Maybe a memo that skipped me?

fishingboatproceeds:

1. Sorry. That sucks.

2. It’s not easy and I don’t always do it well, but I’ve been living with this for a long time and have a good medication regimen that works pretty well (at the moment at least) and also have a good therapist I’m able to work really closely with. None of that happened overnight, and it’s a difficult thing to live while you’re figuring out how to manage it. But it’s important to know that it can get better, and that you are not alone in this experience.

3. With public events: It’s not something I’m terrible comfortable with. Like a lot of people with anxiety problems, I spend immense blocks of time stuck in obsessive thought spirals that are difficult to pull myself out of. For a couple weeks before Vidcon, for instance, it will be basically impossible for me to think about anything other than Vidcon, and I will feel really scared and anxious and unable to work, which is why I can’t space public events out. (Like, if I did a reading once a month or whatever, I would basically be unable to work half the time. So when we do stuff, we usually do them back-to-back.) 

3a. That acknowledged, for me at least things get easier the more you experience them. I’m a lot more comfortable in front of large crowds than I used to be. (It doesn’t really feel like a social experience to me, so it doesn’t usually engage my social anxiety. Book signings do feel like social experiences, though, so…yeah.) 

4. I wish I could speak to you from some lofty mountain, having conquered the demons of mental health, but I cannot. This is an ongoing part of my life (I had a panic attack today, for instance). But I’m much better at managing it than I used to be. And I’m lucky to not have many of the disabilities associated with anxiety disorders (I can drive a car, for instance). But anxiety is part of my daily life, and it makes life harder for me and for people I love, and I still have a long way to go.