How to be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations that Dominate!

Chapter 11. Buckets and Butterflies

Doctors will prescribe anxiety medications for just about anything. They're all the rage these days, fitting nicely into a lifecycle of creature comforts that starts with bottles of milk and ends with Metamucil. Acceptable reasons for anxiety medication? Any—and I mean any—concerns about the future, both warranted or contrived.

A cursory glance at the fine print on any anxiety medication reveals the relative limitations of these palliatives. Rarely, if ever, will a pharmaceutical company recommend their miracle pills for the following scenarios: A lion has backed you into a corner, and a T-bone is taped to your jugular; a piano is falling from the sky and, gripped with terror, you have the impulse not to run, but to locate and ingest your anxiety medication; your toddler is running through the house with scissors and, though protected by his replica Batman costume with real vital organ shields, you stupidly forgot to don yours this morning; and worst of all, you wake up unable to breathe and your idiot cat simply will not move from your face, and you cannot scream.

No, anxiety medications are no help in any of the above situations. It's no coincidence: Fear and anxiety are two separate emotions. Whereas fear is an emotional reaction in the face of immediate danger, anxiety is more of a mood or clinical syndrome that stems from the anticipation of future problems. It's characterized by persistent pessimism and is rooted in a lack of control (or ...