The Rules I Learned Without Asking
Anxiety isn’t always a disorder—sometimes it’s the body responding to the pressure of pretending.
An Art of Drinking Water reflection · 5 minute read
Anxiety didn’t come from nowhere.
It came from rules I absorbed quietly—
rules no one sat me down to explain,
rules everyone seemed to know anyway.
How long to make eye contact.
When to laugh.
How much emotion was acceptable in public.
Which parts of myself were welcome and which should stay hidden.
I learned these things the way you learn a language by immersion—
by watching what was rewarded
and memorizing what caused discomfort.
I told myself I was just being polite.
Just being aware.
Just reading the room.
But my body was working overtime.
Every interaction carried an internal checklist.
Every gathering required rehearsal.
Every silence felt like a mistake I hadn’t identified yet.
Anxiety thrives where expectations are unclear but enforced.
Social norms don’t usually feel like pressure—
they feel like gravity.
You don’t notice them until you try to move differently.
I learned how to smile through unease.
How to nod even when I didn’t agree.
How to translate myself into something easier to digest.
It wasn’t deceit.
It was survival.
The anxiety came from the constant question running underneath everything:
Am I doing this right?
And the fear that the answer might change depending on who was watching.
Over time, I stopped trusting my instincts.
I deferred to the room.
I edited my reactions before they could fully form.
The cost wasn’t just nervousness.
It was disconnection.
From my own preferences.
From my natural rhythms.
From the quiet signals my body sent before my mind intervened.
Water doesn’t follow social rules.
It follows gravity.
It follows need.
It follows the shape of the moment.
No one tells water how loudly to exist
or how much space it’s allowed to take.
Learning to loosen my grip on social norms didn’t mean becoming careless or rude.
It meant becoming honest.
Letting my face reflect what I felt.
Letting pauses exist without filling them.
Letting “no” arrive without an apology trailing behind it.
At first, the anxiety spiked.
Because when you stop performing comfort,
you risk making others uncomfortable.
But slowly, something shifted.
My body began to trust me again.
I wasn’t scanning as much.
I wasn’t bracing for invisible infractions.
I wasn’t rehearsing every version of myself in advance.
I was just… there.
Present.
Imperfect.
Human.
This is what I’ve learned:
Anxiety isn’t always a disorder.
Sometimes it’s the body responding to the pressure of pretending.
And relief doesn’t come from mastering the rules.
It comes from remembering that you were allowed to exist before you learned them.
Like water—
unconcerned with approval,
responsive to truth,
finding its way without asking permission.