A cartoonist walks us through her brain’s not-fun theme park : NPR
It’s 2018 and designer Gemma Correll is not doing well. In the midst of a panic attack that has lasted for a week, she tries everything to calm her nervous system. She tries taking long walks around her Northern California neighborhood, using meditation apps, magnesium, and all the alcohol in her house. Lying on the ground in the fetal position is her preferred method. But nothing works.
Instead, she lies awake at night, gags at the sight of food, and, because she can’t concentrate, ignores work deadlines. A week turns into several. It comes undone.
Her spiral takes her on a rickety wooden roller coaster into “The Abyss” of exhaustion and she begins to give up. Sitting on the floor crying for her husband, she says she has to go to the hospital. Her husband agrees.
This is where Correll’s new graphic memoirs are located Land of anxiety begins – but that’s not where its relationship with anxiety begins. To do this, she takes us back to her childhood and guides us through her life in a terrible theme park called Anxietyland.
A picture of The land of anxiety.
Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
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Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
The theme park contains rides such as the Emotional Roller Coaster, Worry-Go-Round, and House of No Fun. Yes, there are even clowns (so many clowns) in Anxietyland – and they come horribly from a therapist’s office. You want to tell her to run, to run as fast as she can to get out of there.
Since she was a child, Correll has felt this ever-present pit-in-the-stomach feeling that she calls “the bad feeling.” His cartoon representation of bad feeling is a sickly pink blob with pointy teeth, wicked eyes, and claws. He hovers over her and tells her unpleasant things to scare her. When Correll learns that she is too sensitive, shy and even weird, The Bad Feeling kicks her while she is depressed. She struggles to fit in, find friends and feel safe. Her mind is often turned to worry and she is hyper-vigilant to protect her cat Oliver from countless perils.
A page from Gemma Correll’s new memoir.
Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
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Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
Then the book flashes back to his life as a young adult, covering things like college, moving, and paying the bills. She tries therapy but has no luck, so she puts off “The Bad Feeling” with alcohol and work. It’s a band-aid for now.
Then it’s the present, where Correll deals with his panic attacks. She ends up going to the hospital and finds an outpatient mental health clinic to help her learn to cope. There she learns the words for The Bad Feeling are Anxiety and Panic Disorder. She learns to manage her mental state and her emotions. She treats, makes friends and takes medicine.
From The land of anxiety.
Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
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Gemma Correll/Books Gallery
The greatest contrast in Land of anxiety for me it comes from the fact that the world Correll draws is so confident. His line art is impeccable, his characters impeccable and his dialogue quick and witty. It’s almost a shock to learn how much she struggled because the version of herself she’s always presented, while self-deprecating, seems authentic and in control.
As someone who struggles to manage anxious thoughts, I know that a person’s inner world and outer presentation can often be contradictory. Thanks to his confessional, I felt seen. But I selfishly wish more attention was paid to the present, where she is learning to cope; I was always waiting for a new nugget of information to ease my own anxiety. But this is not a self-help book. It is a story of struggle and perseverance. About how we perceive ourselves and how we want to be perceived. About how everyone just wants to be accepted as they are.
You see, the problem with anxiety, Correll writes to his child in the latter part of the book, is that you can’t get rid of it completely, but you can learn to cope with it. Through his art and therapy, Correll learned to cope and continues to be a strong voice in the cartoon world.
