alicetiara:

spangley:

…that women have a higher propensity for anxiety? and do you think it’s generational? i feel like way more of my lady friends have anxiety issues (including myself) than in my parent’s generation. or maybe we’re just more willing to talk about it openly.

i feel like it’s more prevalent in our generation though - maybe because we have more pronounced internal & external pressures to be successful, to have a career, a family. to be awesome. to be awesomenly single. to be badasses. but i hardly ever hear my male friends talk about anxiousness. or maybe they just smoke too much pot. (kidding.) (sort of.)

*this break from musical & comical posts brought to you by my anxiety attack at 4:30 am last night/this morning. and overthinking.

I do have a lot of girlfriends with anxiety issues (including myself) and I can’t think of any guys I know. That’s such an interesting point. I do think women have higher pressure to be perfect— I think men worry about being all sorts of other things, but I don’t think they worry about being perfect.

I found http://www.healthywomen.org/healthreport/march2008/pg2.html here that women are 2-3x more likely than men to have an anxiety disorder, but men are more likely to self-medicate with alcohol.

Finally, I think women are socialized to spend lots of time thinking about other people and taking care of others and situations. Which gives us more to worry about. I have rarely met a man who will worry, at a gathering at his house, whether everyone has a drink, is comfortably seated, etc. but I’ve seen women get super hyper tense over the same thing. I think we wannabe-superwomen could use a big dose of male entitlement and, for want of a better word, laziness.

If you two have anxiety issues then so do I.