Panic At The Dish Pit-Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the Service Industry

Preface:  I work in a restaurant and I am diagnosed as having generalized anxiety disorder with panic attacks.  This is just my story.  I am not an authority on anything psychiatric.  I wrote this because I know I'm not alone in dealing with this frustrating and complicating problem. I also wanted to write something because the instinct anxiety and panic breeds in to a person's brain is to be ashamed enough of their disorder as to internalize it.  That strategy not only ignores the problem, it exacerbates it.  Anyways, here it is.
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It happened again last night.  I felt my stomach twist and noticed my nausea.  I say "noticed" because at that point I'm not sure if I just became nauseous or if I have been for hours, or maybe all day. Either way, that shitty feeling I'm just now noticing has now instantly become an obsession.  The checklist process in my brain kicks in.

"Could this just be the coffee I drank earlier?  Am I maybe a touch hungover? Oh wait, did I even drink last night... oh my god people often experience nausea right before a heart attack."

Cue full on panic.

"Shit, people always get really panicky right before they have a heart attack too. Is my arm going numb?  Why are my hands shaking so hard?!"

It should also be mentioned that at that exact moment I was driving on a freeway that was limited to one lane thanks to construction.  As always, my anxious mind fixated on possibility, not probability. It seemed, at that moment, completely reasonable that my tire was going to blow out at the exact moment I was going to have a stroke.

I had just delivered a pizza and was rushing back to the restaurant I work at when this all kicked in.  Making matters that much more urgent seeming was my bright orange "low fuel" sign blaring in my face.  Usually this half inch by three quarter inch light isn't a big deal, but with panic tearing through my brain it felt oppressive.  I stopped for gas and pumped something like $6.34 in to the tank because standing in one place for any longer felt literally impossible. Then I sped back to work.

The series of obstacles rearranges itself now that I'm back at my place of work.  The benefits live symbiotically with the negatives.  Yes, I like my coworkers and understand they know who I am and what I deal with and are supportive; which in turn makes me paranoid about alienating people who I care about.  Yes, it's a pizza restaurant and not heart surgery so it's not categorically urgent; but it is implicitly rapid paced and requires a rhythm and degree of proficiency in order to be performed with even a marginal level of competence.  That rhythm, that coordination, can't exist when thanks to some evolutionary misstep, your adrenal gland is misfiring like a goddamn uzi and your heart is palpitating and your eyes are dilated so all of the halogen lights suddenly morph in to white dwarfs and blind your eyes.

Eventually, panic subsides.  My heartbeat returns to relative normality and my hands regain control. A short time after that, after I've regained my breath and stopped hyperventilating, my muscles loosen and I can return to standard operating mode.  Panic seems to strike everyone on different levels and for different amounts of time.  Generally my worst episodes last anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Nine times out of ten I can detect it approaching and calmly motivate myself out of it by reminding myself that it's happened tens of times before and nothing truly awful ever happens.  When that doesn't work, all bets are off.  I've had to step outside mid-rush just to prevent myself from blacking out.  Anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows that a move like that is borderline sacrilege, something that should only be reserved for someone who thinks they are about to die. Believe me, that's about where I was.

I want this entry to be more than a self-pitying narcissistic rant about how difficult my life is, so I thought I'd write some advice to the young anxious individual who's in love with the idea of the restaurant life.  Truthfully the solution to all things anxiety, be it yours or someone else's, can be found in honesty. As a concept, honesty is something everyone is familiar with.  What people aren't familiar with is the raw, uncomfortable feelings that often accompany it.  Let's take an honest account of what a person with an anxiety disorder has to deal with if they want to work in the service industry.

First, the service industry is intensely competitive.  Whether your back of house, front of house, serving, cooking or whatever, you're always trying to maintain your rank or move up.  Yes, the camaraderie is real and you can find satisfaction like nothing else an ice cold shift beer with your co-workers after a brutal shift, but the operative word in that sentence is still "brutal".  Make sure you step in to life in the kitchen knowing somewhere along the line you will be stepped on.  It's difficult for the catastrophically-minded individual to operate in an industry where the traditional modus operandi for shaping young men and women in to respectable cooks is aggressive and repetitive negative reinforcement. This isn't to say that everyone who serves as a mentor in a kitchen is a heartless bully, but it is to say that you learn quickly that you have to totally bust your ass to be a good cook.

Secondly, the powers that be do not give a shit about you.  This is true in almost any profession, but the level of ambivalence doled out to kitchen workers is extreme.  Don't count on finding yourself in a position that awards you benefits, a 401K or anything else that might serve to protect you should the worst happen.  Think about basically every minor pitfall you could endure and realize that most of that shit won't get treated so long as you are working in kitchens.  Hernias, damaged teeth, broken feet, wildly infected burns, the list of things i've seen go untreated by kitchen workers who simply don't have the means to deal with them goes on and on and on.  This doesn't even begin to touch the gauntlet a young person seeking mental health must go through if they don't have benefits.  Our society basically damns mental illness right out of the gate.  Whether you're a normally functioning individual who happens to have panic attacks like me, or the paranoid schizophrenic who is a legitimate candidate to hurt themselves or someone else, you're essentially thrown in the same boat. Every free clinic i've ever stepped in to, every exhausted and overwhelmed doctor who's ever checked me out, have all concluded almost instantly that I'm seeking drugs and can't be trusted.  It should be noted that I receive that level of suspicion even though I'm a white male with zero prior convictions, far and away the most privileged sector of society. I can't even imagine what it's like for other people.

Thirdly, that stereotypical fun fast kitchen lifestyle is hard.  This seems like it goes without saying, but honestly so many of those youthful, self destructive things that make working in a restaurant romantic are the things that completely work to inflame anxiety.  Coffee? No good.  Cigarettes? Nope. Alcohol? Bad bad bad.  Basically anything that dehydrates you and/or speeds your heart up is more or less a recipe for disaster if you're prone to panic.  Maybe it sounds silly to consider these things at all, but look at the other two elements I wrote about up there.  Kitchens start to feel like families, of course you'll want to drink or have a smoke with your co-workers.  And if nicotine and alcohol (or other things) don't sound appealing based on that alone, then just wait for the harsh realities of life to catch up.  When I have a lousy paycheck or a hard day at work, I don't want blended wheatgrass to get me through the night.

Again, I'm just one person with one perspective.  Nothing I am saying should be taken as a general truth and nothing I am saying should be given any credit from a psychoanalytical perspective.  I am writing what I would like to have been told when I was 17 and got my first job washing dishes.

None of what I'm saying is meant to discourage anyone from getting involved in working in kitchens. Truth be told, if I could do it all over again, I'm not sure I'd change a whole lot about the trajectory of my life.  Kitchens have an amazing and empowering feel to them.  It's honest work done by honest people.  Furthermore, generally the people who stick around in kitchens do so because they are creative and interesting individuals who have fallen in to the margins of an otherwise uncreative society.  I spent several months wringing my hands and feeling embarrassed before I told my coworkers what I was dealing with, and the result? Assurance and support, through and through.  One fellow employee even empathized and confided a similar struggle with me. Yes, my panic can be frustrating at times, sometimes even crippling, but I can't say assuredly that my reality would be much different if I worked in retail or some sterile office setting.  Go in to everything you do with honest expectations, prepare for the worst but always, always hope for the best.