Imagine this scenario. Harry wakes up on a typical workday, a Wednesday, in a mood—a frighteningly intense mood. A free-floating anxiety courses through his body, making him edgy and angry. When he gets up and goes into the kitchen, he hears his roommate opening a bag of chips to put a handful in his brown-bag lunch. The crinkling of the chip bag sounds like the roar of a jet engine to Harry; it’s that irritating. He wants to scream at his roommate to quiet down and just go away, now.
He keeps it together enough to let his roommate get on with his day, but these feelings scare Harry. He feels he may be losing control altogether. How can he concentrate? How can he work with others? Perhaps he should just go back to bed and curl up in a ball, but no, he’s been there before. That could take him in a downward spiral of indeterminate length, a deep, dark funk.
Harry stands there frozen in the kitchen, teetering uncertainly between alternative versions of hell, barely able to find a sliver of stable ground to walk on. He holds his head in his hands and starts to cry. He…
