I’m deathly afraid of the stomach virus to the point where I have a legitimate phobia of throwing up. Believe it or not, this fear is incredibly common, and it has a name: emetophobia.

Having an anxiety disorder affects my life quite enough the way it is. Throw something as big as house hunting into the mix and it’s very easy to become overwhelmed.

I want to make a baby, and I don’t want Baby swimming in SSRI soup.

The mall wasn’t open yet and the door was still locked. Laughing, I realized that I’d never had this problem before. I’m never early for anything.

Tell us how you overcame anxiety this week, even if only for one fleeting moment.

It’s so easy to remember the bad times while discounting the good times, isn’t it? Why do we do such a thing?

“If you don’t like Celexa, you don’t have to continue taking it,” my doctor said. Yeah, I thought. I’ve heard that story before.

“I think you’d feel much better if you tried some medication other than Xanax,” he said. His concern was genuine. “Instead of treating your panic as it happens, we should try to prevent it.”

As I grumbled through redundant tasks (like adding and naming worksheets and copying and pasting cells into over 300 Excel files — seriously!), I found time to ask myself a bothersome question: why am I here?

All I wanted to do was drink my coffee and eat my grilled cheese and then call it a night. The pressure to participate in the upkeep of friendship was too exhausting to even consider. Why bother?