This week I had an epiphany about the root of my anxiety disorder and I couldn’t WAIT to tell my therapist about it. So at our most recent session, I did:

Me: “So, this one time when I was in 6th grade, I got off at my bus stop, and once the bus drove away, this girl hopped out of a parked car and came running towards me. And for absolutely no reason at all, she began screaming at me ‘what are you looking at, bitch?!’ And of course, what I was looking at was her, because she was running towards me like a lunatic. I was terrified. And confused. So I just kind of stuttered ‘um, nothing…’ and then bam! She punched me in the face. Then she kicked me a few times. And then she just ran away. It was one of the most bizarre moments of my life, and for a while I was scared to get off at the bus stop by myself, so my friend Michelle came home with me every day for weeks. Then, I don’t know, eventually I just kind of forgot about it and never really actively thought about it again. Until recently, when someone jokingly startled me, and the memory suddenly came back. And that’s when it clicked! What if all my adult anxiety can be traced back to this one crazy moment in my childhood, when my innocent little dorky jewish girl bubble of a life was shattered by this freakish event, and so internally there was this shift, this realization that nothing can be trusted, that life can just knock you down out of nowhere and for no reason, and so I’ve generalized that feeling I had in that one moment and I’ve let it color every aspect of my adult life, in a post-traumatic-stress type way?  Don’t you think that makes so much sense? That it totally explains this formerly inexplicable fear I constantly carry around with me?”

Therapist: “No. Absolutely not.”

Oh. Ok.