This is hard to describe, because obviously I don’t know what being stressed feels like for other people. It’s like the colour thing- is your red my red?- but with more potential for embarrassment, because I might be about to spend the next 750 words describing a universal experience and pretending that I’m something special1. With that disclaimer in mind, I think my experience of being stressed might be different to lots of other people. Not only that, but I think my experience of being stressed is a good window into the broader experience of what the cool kids are calling “scrupulosity”.
It’s like this: the more stressed I am, the more tightly I feel compelled to hem to a sort of imagined moral perfection, and the guiltier I feel when I inevitably fall short.
I think a lot about moral philosophy and ethics anyway, but in this case it’s more of a felt standard than an explicit or coherent set of moral principles. Sometimes it feels like a kind of desire for self-flagellation2, a kind of hair shirt thing. I’ll feel mild-to-moderately guilty for spending money, especially on non-essentials, but also for driving (think of the emissions), eating dessert, using a lot of hot water, or spending time on stuff that’s not productive or “improving”.
Other times, it turns outwards; the worst example of this was the Primark letter, one of those weird diatribes you sometimes scribble down that have a kind of mass-shooter feel when you read them back in the cold light of day. Fortunately, I no longer have the original, but from what I can remember it was a kind of random screed about how overweight, lazy, ungrateful, and disgusting the customers of a Primark I’d been to were34; not only that, but I remember being upset by the way they strolled around, fingering random items of clothing and then discarding them seconds later. What kind of bloated, decadent, God-emperors did these people think they were, waddling around this warehouse of indulgence and discarding each luxurious item as not rich enough for their bloated frame? Didn’t they know how disrespectful, what a slap in the face this was to the people who’d made the clothes, who’d transported them thousands of miles for their perusal?
The letter goes on in this vein for some time, and although I obviously don’t feel this way normally, I’m kind of scared by the memory of how real and important it felt at the time. I don’t even remember what was actually stressing me out, only that once it was resolved the anger and disgust literally evaporated.
Maybe everyone feels like this under stress, I don’t know, but to me it feels a lot like what Holly Elmore talks about here, although she- and other writers- seem to see it as quite closely related to OCD; there might be some overlap, as well as with stuff like eating and disorders, but- at least in my case- I see it more as a slightly odd personality trait56.
I wish these periodic episodes would manifest as blocks of incredible productivity and effectiveness, even if it comes from a place of guilt- a clean house is a clean house, after all. Unfortunately, they just give me a kind of heavy, oppressive feeling of persistent guilt that drives me perversely towards things like Instagram reels, social media, and porn- not really for relaxation but just for enough stimulation to briefly relieve the weight of guilt. You don’t have to be super-duper smart to realise that once those moments are over, the guilt comes back multiple by the shame of yet more sin and sloth, and that cycle can last on-and-off for days to weeks until the source of the stress resolves.
The thing that seems to help most, probably unsurprisingly, is forcing myself to deliberately relax- not playing competitive sport, but aimlessly riding my bike around like a kid in summer. Not watching a worthy documentary, but sitting down for an episode of the kind of froth that my girlfriend sometimes watches, while she scratches my head. I don’t know whether it’s the exposure effect- look, I watched a whole Love is Blind without immediately being cast into Hell!- or just giving my body and mind the break that its obviously signalling a need for, but once I manage it’s like someone digging out a thorn that you didn’t even realise was bothering you until it’s gone.
Having a little more understanding also helped, and I liked Lee Baer’s “The Imp of the Mind” both for me and for sharing with loved ones. I don’t know, maybe everyone feels like this- maybe everyone feels waves of weird, snobby revulsion whenever they’re having a bad time at work? Or deep shame, wanting to hide away so as not to contaminate those pure around you, when they have a deadline coming up? Maybe let me know.
On the the other hand, if the worst that can be said about my writing is that I accurately describe a universal experience then I’ll take that.
Not nearly as fun as it sounds like it should be.
Obviously, I don’t actually think this.
Amusingly, the fact that I myself was in the Primark didn’t seem to me to put me in this despised group.
The distinction between an unusually strong personality trait and a psychological disorder is not clear to me or, I think, anyone really.
I mean, sure, reading the obsessive-compulsive personality disorder stuff was like looking in a foggy mirror- but those things are like horoscopes, right? Like they just put stuff that sounds specific but is actually universal so that you’ll think you’ve uncovered some meaningful truth about yourself? Right?