Lesson 7: Easy A Cures Panic Attacks

Years ago I was at a festival writhing and suffering and tugging my hair out, alone in a tent one evening. No, it wasn’t a bad trip or drug related in any way, it was just an anxiety attack. Eventually, after an endless-seeming stint in madness, I fired up Easy A on my iPod (this was before Netflix was on your phone) at five AM as the sun was rising. Without realising it, within twenty minutes I was feeling almost human again. To this day, I pray to Emma Stone with every sun rise, shirtless on my rooftop with a red A painted on my face.

Another time, I was spending one of my first nights in a new house entering my third year at university. I couldn’t sleep. I was peeing every five minutes, from about 11 to 4 with no acceptable scientific explanation. I’d had one small glass of water. By the end I wasn’t even sure if I had been peeing or dreaming or just gone plain insane. Insanity seemed more likely each time I looked at my supposed reflection in the mirror above the toilet tank. Existential and identity crises ensued. I began to wonder who I was or if there was another person through the looking glass staring back at me. Yet I still somehow puzzled over my inability to sleep when squeezing my eyes closed and lying horizontally.

Again it wasn’t until about five or six in the morning that I gave up trying and put on Ted Talks about anxiety, and guided meditation videos. I was asleep within half an hour.

Anxiety is like a squalling, tantruming baby. You won’t help it by observing it intensely. Nor by shaking it, yelling at it, crying, or simply willing it to stop. Neither will the old ‘out of sight out of mind’ trick do you any good, hiding the baby in another room and leaving it forever. These are inadvisable parenting strategies.

You can, however, soothe it with love, physical affection, nourishment, or even putting a little Benadryl in its bottle. That last being potentially also inadvisable for parents. I wouldn’t know, I’m not a parent nor do I really know what Benadryl is.

Or alternatively, like a baby, you can jangle something shiny in front of its face to distract it. The attention on its own misery suddenly displaced by a sparkling bunch of keys or a deeply mysterious television remote.

Easy A was the shiny keys to my anxiety, or Ted Talks even when they were about anxiety. Sometimes, having anything external to shift your attention to is enough to break a bad brain cycle, no matter what it is. Which just goes to show how stupid and purely self-perpetuating anxiety is.

So never sit simply wishing anxiety away. Don’t lie down and try to force sleep — that’s a paradox. If you can’t sleep or find respite, don’t. Do something else instead and let your attention bleed into that, away from your turmoil. Put on Easy A. Immerse yourself in a different story to the, let’s face it, totally crap one in your head. The one that has basically one character, you, and though you personally have no acting skills you always take home the fucking Oscar in its apocalyptic scenes. It’s exhausting, self-involved and miserable to watch.

In Easy A’s scenes, Emma Stone, who is much more attractive and much less troubled than you, her biggest problem is that the kids at school think she’s promiscuous when she isn’t. That’s it. It’s otherwise heart-warming, easy-going and funny, and with a single, coherent narrative. A beginning, middle and end. A real story arc, not endless, repetitive scenes featuring you in some sort of peril. Some honest to god closure when she finally gets together with what’s his chops at end. Spoiler alert.

Easy A is suburban and chilled, like a pitcher of lemonade on a picnic bench in a sunbathed garden. A taste of sanity and stability. It settles your stomach. Once you’ve drunk it you realise you can’t remember what you were getting so twisted up about a moment ago.

You’ve lived outside your head and realised its narrative isn’t the only one that exists. You’ve given your body a break from reactive adrenaline and cortisol. Stepping away from the tense, horribly uncomfortable danger response and slipping into the relaxation response: shoulders melting, brain untangling.

You might think, well yeah but what about after the film? Well, the cycle of stress thoughts and reactive stress symptoms has already been long broken by then: you’ve calmed right the fuck down. It’s hard for that to fire all the way up again instantly. And you can go on to be distracted by other things like pogo sticks and pin the tail on the donkey. Or whatever you’re up to in your thirties.

If those things aren’t the case and the spiral does set back in sooner than you’d like, try simply watching another film right away. Play Easy A from the beginning again. Never stop watching it. Is there an Easy A 2? Maybe you have time constraints, and that’s fine, whatever’s constraining you may distract you itself and you can watch a segment of something until then. I only find films preferable, if you have the time, because they’re long enough to bring you back down to zero on the anxiety Richter scale. Enough time to have completely wound down and stopped thinking about your woes at all.

Gotta work though? Watch Easy A on Netflix under your desk and let those numbers crunch themselves. It’s all good. The wave of the future. If you get fired and unemployment spikes your anxiety yet again, at least you’ll know what to do. That’s right. Easy A.

Think high school comedy anyway. Mean Girls. The American Pie series. It’s hard to sell yourself on your absolute misery when Jim is prematurely ejaculating or super gluing his hand to his penis.

Anxiety won’t keep bubbling up in the same way indefinitely. Distract it until the bubbling ceases. It’s not a waste of time if that time will otherwise be spent tugging your hair out. That’s absolutely, without a doubt a shittier pastime.

If you’re looking for good recommendations check out Easy A. Did I mention that I like that Easy A film? Easy A is nice.

Easy A. Easy A, Easy A.

Easy A.

I can’t stop typing it. I need to watch Easy A and calm down.