Alison's Unnamed Fear

"Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalized_anxiety_disorder

aka free floating anxiety or

Unnamed Fear

Today we welcome as our guest, Alison Bruce's Unnamed Fear.

I ain't unnamed. She gave me a name years ago. I'm Fred.

She named her Unnamed Fear Fred?

Yep.

Why?

She said that if she named me I wouldn't be so scary.

Did it work?

Seems to. For a while I became more like a guardian angel than a free floating anxiety. Kinda tied me down. She's a nice lady. I don't mind so much.

Has she always pictured you shirtless with a cowboy hat?

Sometime's I'm in biker leathers and a cowboy hat. Sometimes it's a oilskin coat and cowboy hat. I'm guessing she has a thing for cowboys 'cause she rarely pictures me without the hat.

How do you really look?

When I was an Unnamed Fear, I looked like whatever scared her the most. First time I showed up, I was a gunman in a black stetson and a riding coat. I showed up in a recurring nighmare at high moon and gunned her down. Don't know where that fear came from cause she was just a little bit at the time -- no more than five or six years old. Now I'm a white hat.

Does everyone have an Unnamed Fear?

Damned if I know. It's not like we hold conventions you know. I'm not sure there's many that get a name, that's for sure. Takes a certain kind of imagination to put a name and a face to your anxiety.

Same kind of person who give a nighthawk the job of hosting a blog?

Finest kind.


Note from Alison: GAD is real and can be debilitating. I have experienced it. I really did create Fred as a coping mechanism. Then life got to the point I was too busy worrying about real things to worry about the imagined. Still, I'll always be grateful for Fred for being there when I needed him.

Next week: Sadie from Cheryl Kaye Tardif's Children of the Fog