How would you handle a “chill pill” joke? Would you be offended? Would you laugh it off? Would you pull out your bottle of Xanax and give it a little shake? Would you use it as an opportunity to teach others about your anxiety disorder?

Is it weird that I’m sitting on my laptop and blogging from the grocery store? I mean, it’s not like I’ve hunkered down in aisle 9 next to the instant oatmeal. I’m here in the grocery store’s cafe trying to expose myself to panic triggers.

Virtually all of my work assignments would arrive via email. And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if I were only responsible for a mynamehere@mycompany.com inbox…but at my peak, I was working a total of six additional inboxes. Yes. SIX ADDITIONAL INBOXES.

After you ask these questions and receive sufficient answers, there’s a paradigm shift: the doctor no longer puts you on medication. Instead, you choose to accept the doctor’s medication suggestion. (Instead of being sent to camp, you go to camp.)

The bright lights. The swarms of shoppers. The long, tall aisles that leave you with nowhere to hide. (I could go on…and I will.)

Anxiety disorders become more poignant during natural disasters — whether you’re in the direct path or not.

Have you ever immersed yourself so deeply in a task that you don’t notice the world around you? Maybe you forget to eat a meal (because you honestly didn’t even notice that you were hungry!). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this flow.

The last time I took a nap on a bed of paper was in grad school, in the library, on a wide splay of photocopied research studies from various communication periodicals.