I Am Anxious... Sarah LaBrie
The TV writer, memoirist, and librettist discusses the two versions of herself, small talk anxiety, and being "a body in space."
Sarah LaBrie is a TV writer, memoirist, and librettist. She was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (HBO MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her fiction also appears in Guernica, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Sarah’s memoir, No One Gets to Fall Apart, is out now from HarperCollins. It has been named an Oprah Daily Best Book of Fall, an Esquire Best Memoir of the Year and was featured in the New York Times as one of twenty-one new books to read in October. This is her first book.
You can find her on Instagram, TikTok, and on her website.
How long have you been an anxious person?
I’ve always felt like there are two of me: the nervous, animal version and the person version. They’ve always been in a standoff, and one is always waiting for the other one to give in. I’ve never not been aware of that tension. I’ve just felt the person part grow stronger.
What are some of your anxiety triggers? What makes you most anxious?
Running into someone I sort of know, and making small talk then walking away, then bumping into them again and having to decide whether to smile, make more small talk, or walk quickly past. I will leave any location to avoid this scenario.
Small talk in general stresses me out. I start to worry immediately that the person I’m talking to wants to end the conversation but is afraid to tell me. I don’t care at all about what people think of me but I care a lot about others’ emotional states. It’s something I’m always conscious of.
I live in a neighborhood with a lot of famous landmarks nearby. When strangers ask me how to get to those places, I get scared my instructions will somehow get them lost and that they’ll come back and yell at me.
When I’m writing, especially if it’s going well, I’ll sometimes feel certain I’m going to die in a freak accident.
How do you feel physically and emotionally when you’re anxious?
Sometimes it feels like a random song snippet playing over and over in my brain. Sometimes it feels like insects clawing their way out of my head. Sometimes everything gets too bright.
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What do you do when you feel anxious? How do you take care of yourself in those situations? Do you have any anxiety management tips or tricks?
I did Ketamine therapy, which is a kind of talk therapy where you get injected first with a hallucinogen. Even though the effects weren’t permanent, they lasted long enough for me to understand what’s going on with my body when I’m anxious, which is that I react without thinking and exist in sustained fight-or-flight mode. So now, when I notice my body entering that state, I’ll stop talking and just wiggle my toes. I’ll feel out where I am in space. That helps a lot when I can remember to do it. I also try to spend as little time as possible thinking about myself. I visit friends. I look at trees. I hike with the dogs. I try to be invested in other people. I think, for me, at least, the answer always lies in integration with the world.
How do you feel your anxiety affects your family, friends, and overall social life?
My husband is the child of two developmental psychologists, and he has a sixth sense for when I’m losing the thread completely. If I start ordering and returning too many packages, not sleeping, scrolling incessantly, he’ll know something’s up. He’ll plan a movie night or a day trip with the dogs somewhere.
Once, he just walked over, placed his hands on my shoulders and pushed them gently down. I realized they’d been all the way up to my ears, and I also realized that I’m a body in space, not just a crazed brain.
How do you feel about the portrayal of mental health and anxiety in Pop Culture (books, movies, music, etc)? Do you feel it's accurate?
In my specific experience, anxiety looks like walking around and living my life and doing my job and thinking in the back of my head, in secret, “kill yourself, you stupid bitch,” understanding that I don’t think I'm a stupid bitch and I don’t want to die, but I do have to have thoughts like that to release a kind of internal pressure that will destroy me otherwise. I imagine that’s some form of OCD. It’s weird to me that I don’t see that specific experience depicted more often, because I don’t think it’s uncommon.
What are some of your favorite examples of Pop Culture that gets anxiety and mental health right?
I think about Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation all the time. It’s a novel about a woman with a dead-end job at an art gallery who orchestrates an elaborate plan to sleep for months at a time. She takes sleeping pills and I think has a roommate who wakes her up so she won’t starve to death. Moshfegh said it’s a book about grief, and I think it’s the most authentic depiction of depression I’ve ever read.
The movie I Saw the TV Glow, directed by Jane Schoenbrun, also offers a great conceptual visualization of what depression and anxiety feel like. How they can take over your life over the course of years and years and create a kind of prison if you don’t do anything about it.
What is the best advice you've ever received?
“Throw your phone into the sea.”
Is there anything else you would like to add?
If you’re a writer whose anxiety keeps you from writing, please check out The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I think they’ll help.
Editor’s Note: This interview was edited slightly for length and clarity.
Thank you so much, Sarah!
I had a chance to read an early copy of Sarah’s debut memoir No One Gets To Fall Apart and found it beautiful, poignant, and incredibly important. I highly recommend checking it out!
If you are interested in being a part of the newsletter in the coming weeks and taking the I Am Anxious… questionnaire, please email me (scott.neumyer@gmail.com) and I’ll get you on the list. I’d love to have you!
Be well and keep talking.
DISCLAIMER: I am, by no means, a medical profession. If you need help, please seek qualified medical attention. This newsletter, while informative and fun, is no substitute for the real thing.