Symptoms of Anxiety Cancer
If you’ve ever pushed yourself to do something scary, something out of your comfort zone, then you’ve probably experienced anxiety cancer. I write this from an online course creator’s perspective.
If you’ve never experienced anxiety cancer, it’s a wide spectrum of symptoms designed to stop you from doing the scary thing. Your mind and your body conspire to camouflage ordinary resistance and fear as something that could literally kill you. Of course, it can’t literally kill you. Or I don’t think it can. Oh no, now I’m starting to doubt this.
Anxiety cancer can manifest as a feeling that you’re going to have a heart attack, not that you’re actually having one, but that you will at any moment. This comes complete with chest pains, and other vague symptoms. You may also experience shortness of breath, loss of sleep, terrible scary dreams about the sky falling and never succeeding at anything ever again.
You could have digestive issues like nausea, diarrhea, constipation, and an overwhelming desire to eat things you wouldn’t normally eat (I’m looking at you Cheetos), a loss of appetite, and you could have all these symptoms in the same day.
Anxiety cancer will often be accompanied by thoughts that you are an absolute fraud, you have no business teaching at all, and that no one is interested in the subject you’re teaching.
As this progresses, you will overthink everything in your course, until you can’t make sense of anything you’d put together, at which point you will not be sure if you’re even teaching anything at all. It might be complete gibberish. Who can tell? It’s all a blur.
Anxiety cancer can bring sensations that feel like all the energy has been drained from your soul, as you stare into the abyss known as ‘the empty page’, or screen. Whatever the case may be, it’s equally horrifying. When you are at your absolute lowest, you will look at your email list and realize there is no possible way any of these people would buy your course.
Your course is way overpriced for what you’re offering, and you’re not charging nearly enough for people to show up and do the work. So you need to change your price to that perfect price that everyone can afford and will attract only high-ticket clients at the same time. Not to mention, no matter what size your list is, it’s way too small for this launch. You should probably throw in the towel right now.
Now that you’re malnourished, sleep deprived, mind bogglingly stressed out, and looking like a zombie, it’s time to start your webinars and other live video. Or, like me, you could cling to soft launches like your life depends on it. If you’re not a course creator, a soft launch means not doing any of the scary parts of marketing. Which is all of it.
If you are brave enough to do the webinars and other video, pro tip, wear lipstick. It might make you look alive. If you are a man, or have some kind of issue with wearing lipstick (whatever, you do you), then perhaps distract with something like a cool-looking guitar in the background or film outside and look outdoorsy. That may distract people enough so they don’t notice your zombie aesthetic.
During the launch your anxiety cancer will flare, and you’ll be on the hunt for ways to sabotage the whole thing so you can get out now, before you have to actually deliver your course. You will be afraid that no one will sign up and terrified that too many people will sign up. You should probably just shut the whole thing down now.
As the launch is closing, you may feel like you didn’t get enough students, and that it’s obviously a direct reflection on your value as a human. Naturally, the only conclusion is you have nothing to offer, and everything in the world sucks.
You will scout out which furniture you own that you can physically crawl under to hide. If, like me, you’ve made poor furniture choices and have nowhere to hide, then put on a brave face and don’t fling yourself off of any low-lying landscaping features that just results in embarrassing bruises.
The only cure for anxiety cancer is pushing ahead. Ignore the resistance as best as you can, make a step forward every day. When you have another flare up, perhaps from changing your marketing and seeing a drop in sales, then breathe and remember that this is survivable.
None of this is easy, it takes courage. If you’ve come far enough to experience anxiety cancer, then I believe you can do this. Also, look your anxiety cancer in the eye and say “I see you, and you’re a _____”. Be creative in your name calling, I recommend swearing. It’ll make you feel better. I promise.
This is an ode to my accountability group because I could not have pushed through without the support of the people in my life, especially them. (shout out to Lynda, Jeremy, Camilla, Cynthia and Monica)
*typos and other errors provided for your entertainment.
