An Anecdote About Male Anxiety
6'2, 200 lb guy fights a thunderstorm.
I’ve lost track of how many times a friend of mine has called me and said:
Bro I’m having a panic attack, wtf do I do?!
Anxiety is rampant.
The girls, to their credit, seem to be far more open about it.
They speak freely about it over texts, in their group chats, they aren’t afraid to have their floating head circling an IG reel about having a panic attack in the elevator at work.
Men, however…we have a tendency to try and “eat it”.
Look, I get it.
I’m not saying guys should be reposting anxiety TikToks or injecting therapyspeak into their everyday conversations.
But there’s a grey area between “advertising your anxiety” and bottling it until it explodes.
Something’s Gotta Give
Any mental health professional worth their salt will tell you repressing emotions simply does not work.
Whatever you’re trying to bury in the alliterative backyard of your brain is going to expose itself sooner than later.
It probably already is in the form of physical maladies- I’d say The Body Keeps the Score is worth an annual re-read for most.
Drinking, drug use, short-fuse tempers, chronic pain, digestion issues..a lot of these ugly facets of human life are downstream effects of psychological repression, and anxiety is high on that list.
Facing emotions like this head on sucks, point blank and no sugarcoating it.
How would I know?
I’ve tried the “bottle it up, wear the mask, deny it” method.
How did that turn out?
I ended up having to pull myself out of polite society for like a week straight.
Sparing you the rest of the details, I write posts like these so you the reader can hopefully avoid such a fate.
While my battle with anxiety has gotten exponentially better, it still rears its ugly head.
It forces you to deal with it in the moment.
That’s why I was oddly grateful last week when some brutal tropical weather forced my hand.
Man vs. Thunderstorm
I haaate thunderstorms when I’m by myself.
That’s right.
Big guy with a mild case of cauliflower ear and a lifetime winning percentage of ~94% in the “you look away first bro” ridiculous male territorial posturing game, gets his cage rattled by some thunder and lightning.
When I’m with family, friends, or a romantic interest or whatever?
Different ballgame.
That’s an interesting psychological aspect in and of itself.
Perhaps it scratches the “protector” instinct itch, maybe it’s a tribal thing, “me and mine vs. this threatening environmental stimulus”.
Who knows.
Point is, it all goes out the window solo.
The dark sky, the extra decibels of the Gulf Coast variant of thunder blasts, the teeming heavy rain.
It’s historically been a one way trip to rumination, feeling unsettled, a general sense of irritability.
I can guess all day long the root cause, that’s a variable.
All I know is my reaction is a constant.
So that’s what I focused on when the MyRadar app told me I had an inbound fight on my hands.
We’re Not Doing This Today
Disgust can actually be a healthy emotion in the right context.
This was an example of that.
As the shiny blues and greens of the golf course out my window gave way hastily (in true Florida fashion) to ominous grey and black, a familiar feeling came over me.
The body tension.
The quiet.
The narrowing vision.
That’s when I said to myself: enough.
We’re not doing this shit today.
Part of my current programming is a bodyweight day.
Pushups, planche progressions, core work, all that fun stuff.
What was supposed to happen at the end of my work day was going to happen right here and now.
So, as the rain got heavier, the branches of the tree outside the window did that circular “horror movie sway” in every direction, I got down on the floor.
Diamond pushups synced with those insane flashes of lightning that are the same color as stadium lights.
Planks held as the telltale time between flash>boom shortened and shortened.
All the way telling myself the raised heart rate and sweat was due solely to the exertion.
Just like that, the fight was on.
Flawless….Draw?
The bodyweight medley matched the length of the storm almost exactly.
I’m sure it’s no coincidence they both hit their crescendo at the same time.
This is probably where you’re expecting something “rah rah” about defeating anxiety, conquering your fears, etc.
Let’s look at the facts, though:
I ended this session on the floor, drenched in sweat, a bit of an adrenaline dump, catching my breath.
All the same symptoms of a man who just got his ass kicked.
However, the usual aftershocks of anxiety?
The lingering headache of overthinking or feeling “trapped inside your mind”?
Nowhere to be found.
So perhaps it’s fair to say it was honors even.
A draw.
Not bad for a scenario that would usually be, what we refer to in hockey terms, a scheduled loss.
I hope this helps even one or two people reading this, and if you want more of these type articles, let me know.
Writing sounds like a great activity for the next time the storms roll in.
Lotta love!
-John Abbate
3.26.2026