Recently, I saw an article on my Facebook feed entitled “People With Anxiety Disorders are Hiding These 5 Superpowers (Backed by Science).” The five “superpowers” listed were:
“An ability to sense the energy of others”
“An increased empathy”
“A life-saving instinct”
“An increased IQ” and
“An ability to see through lies”
Today, I'm going to go through every item on that list and debunk them.
Let's start with that first “superpower.” The article tries to back this up by saying persons with anxiety know who to be around, because “negative people make you uncomfortable” and “positive people are a bit easier to be around.” I personally call bologna on this one. Literally everyone makes me nervous, and my friends with anxiety whom I’ve spoken with on the subject tend to agree. I was walking around campus with a friend just yesterday, in an attempt to kill time and we both started to have a freakout moment because of people minding their own business. We couldn’t "sense their energies," and we were not any less or more at ease, no matter who we were around.
Then, we come to “an increased empathy.” The first thing I have to say about that is empathy is not a noun that requires a definite or indefinite article, so please don’t give it one. Grammar rant aside, the author of the article cites that because “people with anxiety are more concerned with the feelings of others.” If I can assure you of one thing, just one, single thing, it's that you can develop empathy without having anxiety. Empathy is a basic human function, and while it may come more natural to persons with anxiety, that doesn't make it a superpower for us.
Neither is having a gut instinct, which the author also claims to be a superpower that we are hiding. First of all, my instinct has never saved my life. My instinct didn't teach me CPR. The article claims that a study published by the European Journal of Psychology found that those who suffer anxiety were “quicker to detect danger and respond.” While that's great, that only happens because many of us view everything as dangerous and react to such accordingly. So of course, when there's actual danger, we've already reacted, but not even fully knowing for sure there was danger.
Giving the author the benefit of the doubt, I did click on the link to the study, which was thankfully provided. Immediately, I could see that author was manipulating their sources; the research was done on people with attachment anxiety, which is only one specific type. I'm not going to try to discredit the source, only the author's use of it.
As for the higher IQ, our author reasons that one out with some research done by SUNY Downstate Research Center in New York, claiming this research (to which no link was provided) found persons with anxiety were smarter. The reason given by the author (not researchers) for this was that people with anxiety over-analyze everything. While this is true, I would again hardly call it a superpower. You can reach the same effect by reading some textbooks (which is by far less emotionally draining).
Finally, we come to the built in lie detector. Our author says that people who have anxiety tend to “see right through the lies.” This is similar to the instinct situation; it's more of a case of thinking the everyone is lying. All the time. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That eternal doubt in the universe and all its inhabitants.
If it's anything, it's a curse.
My resting complaint, however, does not lie specifically with the article and the (albeit bad) points it makes. It lies with the language used. The title is hurtful to people who actually struggle with anxiety. I've had people try to empower me by pointing out the positives of my illness, much like our author seems to be doing.
The truth is, however, you're truly just hurting me, and I can soundly say you're doing the same for others like me. Trying to make light of aspects of my illness is harmful, and it makes me personally feel extremely invalidated and thus insecure. While I can't guarantee what I say is true for the entire community of us with anxiety, I've spoken to enough people about this issue to know that it definitely is an issue.
This is not empowering. This is degrading.
