There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality.

Individuals who rate high on the so-called Anxiety Sensitivity Index, or ASI, have a high degree of what’s known as interoceptive awareness, meaning they are highly attuned to the inner workings on their bodies, to the beepings and bleatings, the blips and burps, of their physiologies; they are more conscious of their heart rate, blood pressure, digestive burblings, and so forth than other people are.

No wonder I’m anxious: I’m like Woody Allen trapped in John Calvin.

I smile gently while churning inside and thinking about what I’ve learned is a signature characteristic of the phobic personality: “the need and ability” – as described in the self-help book Your Phobia – “to present a relatively placid, untroubled appearance to others, while suffering extreme distress on the inside.”c.

Studies of the DSM-II found that when two psychiatrists consulted the same patient, they gave the same DSM diagnosis only between 32 and 42 percent of the time.

A panic attack is interesting the way a broken leg or a kidney stone is interesting – a pain that you want to end.

We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer,” he writes in “The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry,” “a sexual partner, an ‘other-directed’ executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of film, years of TV time; that such a man has somehow betrayed his destiny as a human being.

Some people say that in stressful situations I can seem unflappable, and I think that’s partly because I’m always kind of internally flapped.

Generally speaking, the anxiety will pass, which is easy for me to say when I’m not in the middle of an anxiety attack. When you’re in the throes of one, it’s hard to feel anything other than utter misery and terror.

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I’m like a duck – paddling, paddling, paddling.