I wanted to re-frame a breakdown into a breakthrough.

I’m always on the lookout for people who share their mental health stories both openly and eloquently, and Salome Tibebu is one of those people. She recently spoke about her OCD at a TEDx event in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

Does watching the evening news make your anxiety worse?

As an anxiety sufferer, I try to avoid reading and watching too much news. After all, so much of it is negative. It’s like junk food for my brain: a dose of bad news will sugar-rush me into worrying sick about health care or politics or some other major societal issue that I can’t control.

I’ll spin around in a mental tizzy for an hour or so until I finally come back to the here and now.

I can’t avoid news altogether, though. Here’s why: today, a particular news story on my local TV station has me laughing harder than I have in weeks. 

WNEP-TV reports:

Just before noon a body was discovered in the Susquehanna River in the Williamsport area.

Sometimes, things are not quite what they seem, and in this case that is a good thing.

The body was discovered floating face-up in the river just below a spill-dam, an area that has seen drownings before.

Police and the coroner were on scene, fully prepared to investigate a drowning. Sue Hubbard was under that impression, she first spotted the man’s body in shallow water.

“I saw him down there all by myself, second thought was oh my gosh,” said Hubbard.

You might be questioning my sanity right now. After all, I was cracking up at this story. They found a body! In a river! And it was floating! Not to mention that the body was spotted from a running trail on which I occasionally manage to go for walks. What kind of psychopath am I, laughing hysterically at a news story about a body floating in a river?

Watch as I explain why I do what I do and why I feel so comfortable sharing all of my panic and anxiety-related sorrows, triumphs, dilemmas, and baby steps with the world.