Jen Kirkman has made a hell of a career out of telling jokes in her own spotlight on stage. But with her latest venture in the podcast game, however, she’s shifting the focus elsewhere, in hopes of breaking the stigma around a tough topic.
With her new cast, Anxiety Bites, the Needham native delves deep into the raging waters of anxiety as she sits down with experts on the matter to talk about the ins, outs, and little details in the struggles of mental illness. While only a few episodes in, her vision for the show is shining through, as she’s already received substantial feedback as to how important and helpful the words and advice of her and her guests have been, and she’s excited to see where it goes from here.
“I love that it’s out in the world, and it’s a good feeling because I think it’s a good thing to have a podcast where people talk about anxiety,” Kirkman tells Vanyaland. “So far, the feedback has been super positive. I mean, you’d also have to be a real jerk to contact me just to tell me it sucks when I’m interviewing people who are experts in helping other people with anxiety.”
While she does attribute her sense of humor to bettering her lifelong bout with generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, ADHD, and a variety of phobias, Kirkman wants to stress that this isn’t a “comedy podcast” in the sense that some might think before tuning in. That’s not to say that humor isn’t present in the conversations, as Kirkman isn’t looking to be a buttoned-up version of herself and has been pleasantly surprised by the wit of neuroscientists, but she’s focusing more on presenting the generally difficult conversations that surround mental illness with less intensity than is usually attached to it.
More than anything, the desire to start a project like this was born out of Kirkman looking back and wishing she had had something like this to help her along in her adolescent years, but now, as she continues to work toward daily healing, she’s hoping she can offer that perspective that wasn’t presented to her before.
“I spent a lot of years thinking something was wrong with me, and that it was unfixable, having anxiety and panic attacks that I had to hide,” says Kirkman. “It’s really weird to be sitting there in your high school class thinking that you’re dying because you can’t breathe, but you’re just sitting there acting like nothing is happening because you can’t just run out of the room. If I had known that, and it was a normal thing to talk about when I was younger, I feel like I would’ve had a lot of relief a lot sooner. So, on one level, I wanted to put that out into the world.”
Throughout the course of the show’s 46-week schedule, Kirkman will be sitting down with experts on the subject at hand for the majority of the time, and at other times, she’s planning some solo episodes to share her experiences a bit more in-depth. Regardless of the delivery, however, Kirkman is just looking forward to breaking the stigma around discussing the topic, and reminding listeners that they are not alone in the struggle.
“As a comedian, one of the most common things you hear from the audience is how the topics you joke about have people coming up to you to tell you ‘I thought I was the only one who thought that,’ and the reason I do the jokes is because I know I can’t be the only one thinking about this. My brain is not that unique. We’re all human, and we tend to think the same things, but it just so happens that comedians tend to say them out loud,” says Kirkman. “It goes the same for anxiety, where so many people are suffering unnecessarily, not just because they have symptoms, but because there’s the added feeling of thinking they’re the only one. They might know in general that everyone has anxiety, but they might think they’re only one who thinks they’re about to die or that they’re going to float away. I just want people to know that none of this is unique, in the best possible way.”