All This is Making Me Anxious

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” [Pema Chodron]

I hate feeling anxious. It’s funny to hate a feeling state, but anxiety is just one of those states I can’t enjoy. Among people 15-54, about 17% of that population suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder during any given year. Anxiety is a step up from worry or concern – it festers beneath the surface and can color every aspect of our perception.

Like a cold or stuffy nose anxiety can dramatically change our interaction with the world around us. Our interface with the world becomes challenged and, more often than not, our filter darkens and narrows.

The “narrows” can be eventually be the biggest challenge, because if something particular has triggered our feelings of anxiety – creating solutions or moving beyond whatever has happened becomes harder the more focused and anxious we become about whatever we think might happen.

After years of working in and with the personal growth community I have learned literally dozens of techniques for calming my anxiety. That’s great news. On the other hand, after seriously working with some of these techniques, my experience is that although most work for short periods of time, our longer, deeper relationship with anxiety is much more complex.  

My own levels of anxiety fluctuate from the mild to the obsessed.  (Sound pretty familiar?) I have found that anxiety isn’t all bad – sometimes it’s the voice of the Universe sending us a message. It’s an opportunity to refine our listening skills.

The most important thing to know about anxiety is that it is a message. Anxiety is not the real issue. It’s the voice of something else lying beneath that’s calling out to you. In all the attempts an techniques I’ve learned to work with (and haven’t been especially effective since I still feel anxiety with annoying regularity – and perhaps a little more so than many since I am also a bit OCD – and my anxiety can be triggered by the most amazingly minor things) the focus has been working on the symptoms, not the substance. I can learn to slow down my heart rate, or adjust my breathing – etc., etc. and while that is helpful. There is still a filter that is connecting with an experience or perception and telling my mind to “catastrophize”.

I have really come to believe that we can adjust our perceptions and minimize our experience of anxiety. We can move beyond the “addressing the symptoms” stage – but in order to do that, we have to be willing to face and live with the anxiety. That can make us anxious.

The anxiety message is simple; it just says; “Stop and listen.” or "Halt! Pay attention." 

When an experience like anxiety is pleading for me to stop and listen, notice that I'm hurting, and I know this, my logical next step is to find that hurt. Duh! Like everything the severity of our anxiety is proportional to the size of what I have to address—so if I feel like I’m going to die, I need to look for something big!

Our bodies are amazing machines – and tailor our physiological experience to what it knows will relate to us best. Its methods of stopping us are varied and some of the common ones are: spinning thoughts, feeling disassociated, heavy breathing, and a racing heart. My body has learned whatever works best so that I’ll finally pay attention. My body is very happy to customize the experience for me. Sort of “Have it your way…” al la Burger King.

I have begun to consider that my anxiety is being maintained by me, for me, until it gets enough of my attention for healing to take place. Whatever I keep doing or ignoring will continue to recreate it until I “rethink” and start to go about things differently. Try on this thought for a little while today and see what you think. 

My own personal, custom designed anxiety disorder came from high insecurity, an excessive need for validation, a frantic quest for completion through relationships, and an inability to acknowledge who I really was. Pretty common stuff. And most of that boils down to being in resistance to whatever was happening at any given point in my life. (Resistance means saying to ourselves or others “That shouldn’t be happening…” instead of simply being aware something is happening and we need to deal with the actuality of it, not our judgment about it).

I have spent almost my entire life running around trying to please others and attempting to be who they wanted me to be. I grew up in a household where attention and love were conditional and I rarely felt I measured up to any of those conditions. There was enough disruption in my childhood to learn that even if I really enjoyed something now, it wasn’t really safe – because something was probably going to change soon to screw it up.

Spending time with anxiety to discover the source of the message and what you have to heal can be achieved in many ways. You have to find what works best for you, but here’s a great series of approaches that seem to help everybody: These came from my friend Lori Deschane’s blog so I want to credit her for these great suggestions…

1. Welcome it. (Anxiety that is…)

Make friends and peace with anxiety immediately. Talk to yourself and the anxiety reassuringly: It’s ok. I’m listening. I want to hear what you have to say. I know you’re just trying to get my attention and that the more directly and peacefully I listen, the sooner you’ll stop repeating yourself.

Fighting with anxiety or resisting it will cause it to persist.

2. Write about it.

I know it’s trite to journal since it’s a suggested solution to most personal troubles, but the slower pace of writing and full engagement of your senses helps you travel down the path of the anxiety message to its source.

We don’t always know where our anxiety is coming from, so we have to take the time to dig and poke. Plus, we’re literal people. Our thoughts are literal. By using a linguistic mechanism the analogy of anxiety message becomes more clear and easier to work with.

3. Laugh.

Bring more laughter in your life. It will help you take life less seriously.

4. Love.

Express love for people, places, and things that you cherish. Be a greater beacon of love.

5. Help others with their anxiety.

The more people you help with anxiety, the greater a vocabulary you’ll develop, and this will help empower your inner dialog for when you’re sitting with anxiety.

6. Meditate.

Anxiety races thoughts and can be very distracting. With a rushing mind, it’s hard to hear the anxiety message and follow it back to its source. Meditation helps tremendously.

If you can learn to notice your thoughts without attaching to them—seeing them as cars passing by as you stand on the edge of a busy highway—you’ll become better at picking out what really matters in this moment.

7. Realize that You Are Enough.

Be accountable, no matter how much “such and such/so and so did” to you. It doesn’t matter. Now is what we have to work with. Tomorrow is what we have to create.

Realize that you are your own solution. You have what you need to look clearly; to hear and to heal. Anxiety is a message born within you, speaking to you through you, and therefore it’s within you to heal.

One of the great gifts of anxiety is that it gets you to recognize your own power with, instead of power over, yourself and your life. It’s a joint operation…how cool is THAT?

All I had to do was listen…

What? Me Worry?

“Just because what’s so is so, it’s also ‘So What?’” Werner Erhard, EST

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” -Proverb

I get that worrying is a waste of time and emotional energy. I totally get it. Of course, getting it doesn’t stop me from worrying. Worrying comes in waves. There are times when it simply isn’t a party of my life. There are other times when it feels overwhelming. This past week was one of the overwhelming waves. A minor tsunami of emotion. It’s passing.

There have been times in my life where worry was my default setting. Mostly worries about money (isn’t that the usual one for people?) although other life circumstances may have also checked in. And, there have been times where worry was completely absent. My monastic period was pretty worry free. I try to follow my own advice, “Let whatever happens be OK…” and don’t stress stuff I have no control over. The challenge comes from trying to figure out what is in my control, or isn’t…sometimes It’s just not that clear.

I think there’s a popular philosophy that by worrying you’re at least doing something. Even if it’s not something effective. Or helpful. Or healthy. Still, I find myself falling into worry fairly easy. It takes conscious intention to move away.

If you think back on the many things in our life we’ve worried about, you’ll probably recognize as I do, that we not only survived those situations, but we also grew and benefited in the aftermath. That has always been my experience. Life stuff came and went – and I become better for it. Amazing how that works.

That’s the funny thing about the “worst that can possibly happen.” If we believe in ourselves, we can always make the best of it. That sounds very cliché but stll happens to be true. Hasn’t that really been your experience?

Whatever happens tomorrow I believe we can handle it, but we can’t possibly handle it before it happens. That really connects with our need to be in control and sometimes all we can control is our response to the now. The future isn’t controllable – no matter how hard we try or wish it to be so. All we can do now is see and work with what is actually in front of us.

Today, if I start to feel overwhelmed by the things I feel I can’t control, I will remind myself to surrender to the moment. Then ask: How can I make the most of this moment instead of worrying about the one that’s coming? 

The Gift of Disappointment

“Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air” Friedrich von Schiller

For many of us, disappointment is one of life’s most uncomfortable feelings. It’s complex, containing a subset of other emotions like anger, hurt, sadness, and many others too subtle to identify. It’s also a familiar zone for many of us. A discomfort zone. Life happens and some things don’t go our way, so disappointment is a natural process. What’s more concerning is our tendency to set things up so that we’ll feel disappointed. A pattern of self-sabotage. Or, the curious tendency to feel disappointed in advance. Before the fact as it were.

Marianne Wiliamson, in her book, “Return To Love”, wrote this:

Our Deepest Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful

Beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness

That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be

Brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous.

 

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the World.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

We consciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others. 

Our deepest fear is that we are inadequate. How many times throughout the process of our growing up are we told what we can’t do rather than what we can? Sometimes this is a blatant statement, like, “You’ll never amount to anything…” and sometimes it’s more subtle such as the implication that you need something outside of yourself in order to achieve your life goal or dream. So we set our selves up for disappointment because (we tell ourselves) we don’t want to be surprised when things don’t turn out our way.

A friend and mentor of mine, Gordon Graham, writes “we don’t get what we want, we get what we expect.” More and more I see the wisdom of how that is true.

Recently, in working with some coaching clients – we’ve talked about some strategies for dealing with disappointments.

1. Let it out.

One of the hardest things to do in a world where everything is immediate—we are all under external pressure, and time is a scarce resource—is to just let yourself experience a feeling.

In our world the news is big for fifteen or twenty minutes and then it’s on to something else. The same dynamic seems to apply to interpersonal relationships. We share something, the other person responds (hopefully appropriately) and then it’s on to something else. Either because we’re uncomfortable sitting with the feeling for a little while, or the other person loses interest (or we think they do.) Be conscious of this. If you’re not ready, don’t move on.

Children (in my limited experiene) will tantrum and cry and scream, or laugh until it runs out and they are genuinely ready to move on.

I’m not suggesting we lock ourselves away for weeks at a time whenever we have been disappointed, but to be aware of any sense of obligation to “just get over it.” When you’re ready, you’re ready. Set your own time table.

However, don’t make the process of dealing with these emotions a career. In the wonderful movie Chocolat, there is an old woman in the village who wears the black of deep mourning. She apparently lost her husband in the war?

“What”, asks Vianne, “That was fifteen years ago?” (The film is set in 1960)

“No”, comes the response, “The First war.”

There is a point where it is time to move on. Know that and honor it.

2. Get a perspective.

Another way of saying this is to take a step back and be a witness. Watch what’s happening inside of you, and out. Notice what expectations you had or created that led you to feeling disappointed. Ask yourself if those were fair, or realistic. (It’s important not to term your expectations “right” or “wrong”). Your expectations were what they were and there is nothing helpful in judging them.

If someone who matters to me forgets my birthday I may feel disappointed, but I really need to ask myself if I communicated effectively that remembering my birthday was important to me, and then provided the details. Not to just assume that anyone who cares about me should know those things (not to mention what to buy). That’s an unreasonable expectation. You are free to feel disappointed but, well, you sort of set it up. Know that.

Having a broader perspective than your own view on a particular situation is always helpful. The critical point here is that you have to mean it.

3. Understand Conditionality.

I am a realist, which means that I know most relationships are self-serving. It’s about me and getting my needs met. I can use all the romantic bull-shit I want about loving the other person – but that kind of higher level of connectivity doesn’t come easily. My agenda is numero-uno…although to be fair, it’s about making sure that numero-uno is the kind of person who enjoys caring about other people and connecting with them. Not someone who cares or connects out of a sense of guilt or responsibility.

This is difficult to grasp, but it is the only way we can offer unconditional love – when we are unconditional about what the other does, because all the conditions, expectations, etc., reside with us, not them. You don’t make me happy; I choose to be happy (or not). That perspective makes it very hard to be disappointed, at least for very long.

I would like to always try to choose to act with love and kindness towards others, rather than with negativity. I make that choice because it feels right for me, not because I’m especially concerned about what other people think about it.

4. Practice acceptance (or “Let Whatever Happens be OK)”.

One of my previous blogs was “Let whatever happens be OK”. That doesn’t mean you don’t have preferences, or that you don’t care what happens. It means that you have some detachment to the outcome, and that your well being isn’t tied to a situation that has already gone south. If it’s happened the focus isn’t on what’s happened (since it’s already happened and there’s nothing you can do about that). The focus is on your response to what’s happening – and there’s plenty you can do about that!

Practicing acceptance doesn’t have to mean you like or approve of something, it means that you have to recognize that it simply already is – and that wishing the situation or circumstance were somehow different isn’t going to be helpful or constructive in any way.

Our playing small doesn’t serve the world. We are capable of handling a lot – so what would life look like if we set ourselves up for winning instead of losing? Knowing, of course, that we could do either. It’s not an easy shift for many of us, but – don’t you agree, well worth a try?

On Winning

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” -Gandhi

It has been a funny news weekend for winners and losers. William and Kate; winners. The folks of the storm ravaged south; losers. The demise of Osama bin Laden – not completely sure where that falls. Could go either way.

When I was younger, I thought of winning in terms of revenge. I thought that if I felt hurt by bullies (of the emotional kind), they won. On the flip side, if I grew up to be successful, that would be the best revenge against anyone who hurt me.

In being happy, confident, and successful, I would have won.

What a sad way to think–that it’s all one giant score card of them against us. That we’re in a competition to come out on top, and anyone who wronged us, intentionally or not, needs to lose for it to be OK.

Or, to talk about winning in terms of relationships – as in Kate Middleton “won” Prince William – sort of a project runway for Royals… (Harry seems to be the next prize – can hardly wait to see who wins him…)

It may feel good to imagine there’s a consequence for treating us thoughtlessly. Or unkindly. But in the end, isn’t it more helpful for us to reframe along the lines of knowing that what we really want isn’t for other people to suffer or have less than us, or to lose. Isn’t what we really want the ability and gift to make peace with the past so that we can know success and happiness that has nothing to do with the burden of keeping score?

Our culture is obsessed with winning.

At school we learn that we have to compete to get what we want. Many of us grow up internalizing this idea and subtly infusing it into our relationships, friendships, career, and even spiritual path. I vividly remember the pep rallies from High School and college where we would actually pray for victory over the other school or team. I remember the huge hand-painted signs, “Beat the Sharks”, or “Beat the Tigers”. I’ve come to believe it’s a strange lesson to teach kids. I wasn’t more than sixteen or so when I started to wonder about a god who somehow favored Notre Dame’s football team over Villenova, or Army football over Navy, or the Ducks over the Beavers (Oregon reference, sorry). I frankly can’t imagine a model of a God who cares about those things. Or a God who comes down on one side or the other of those kinds of issues. So, winning and losing – without worrying about winning or loosing – comes down to how well one plays. That seems more real to me. I can connect with that more comfortably.

How well do we play?

In my early days as a postulant monk, I remember being almost shocked when I began to see that in the quietude of my mind, in that harmless, benevolent peaceful environment, I was secretly measuring myself and others according to how “spiritual” we were. Another monk “smoked” and didn’t have the vast insight I had gained in years of working for churches as a musician… he didn’t understand the liturgy, he didn’t this and he didn’t that – I was constantly comparing myself to him (myself favorably, him not-so-much). Of course he lasted and I didn’t. Funny how that works.

And through that experience, and my subsequent period in the adjoining Seminary, I was trying to be the best. The most gracious. The holiest. The smartest. Even the most urbane – (none of my other seminary classmates drove a Mercedes or had a weekend apartment in one of the great mansions in Portland’s southwest Hills or friends with beach houses and mountain cabins) I was doing many things, some of them ridiculous in hindsight, to be seen as “better than.”

The flip-side of this was that I never felt good enough. Our fixation with winning, with upstaging or topping is an attempt to cover up this feeling of being somehow deficient.

A couple of years ago, I met an old friend, who asked me what I was doing these days. I replied, somewhat mischievously, “Enjoying being a bit of loser.”

His expression was telling. He looked confused. Then he looked sad for me. Then he asked, “You’re joking right?”

“Well, kind of…”

Obviously being a loser can mean all kinds of things, and most of them aren’t states to be desired! But I find it fun to explore this in a more integral spiritual context, where winning and losing are seen as just different sides of the same coin. They are equal and each just a matter of perspective.

Winning or losing can ultimately never satisfy; nor can they degrade one’s value.

So where does one find value?

That is the question I have found very useful to take into the heart in meditation, in daily life, and in relationships. In doing so, I come across a whole lot of forces, some of them quite strong, suggesting that my ultimate value lies in:

•                Approval. Check (Numero uno for me)

•                My bank balance. Check. (Definitely numero dos).

•                My wheels (seriously, how pathetic is that…but it’s real)

•                An idealized view of being a “spiritual person.” Check.

It’s the force in the heart that is disguised as “that which will make me happy,” but is actually “that which keeps me off balance.”

It is a subtle kind of problem—the insidious, weaselly kind, that just cuddles up to you and promises to give you a good time. And then you end up face down in “me” and “why I don’t measure up?”

So, coming back to a very simple place in my heart, I like to ask myself: Can I be OK with being a bit of a loser? Can I recognize that I’ll never snag the person of my dreams, or have the baddest Mercedes SL63 AMG, or the coolest Pearl District penthouse. Can I recognize that I’m really ok without any of those things, and that the greatest paradox is that by allowing myself permission to not have those things, I’m really winning at a whole different level.

And hey, don’t get me wrong, it would be totally cool to win the lottery or have one of my wealthy relatives realize just how much they love me (the lottery has a statistically higher probability) – and end up with the toys of my dreams. But I have to know, to really know, that that would just be stuff I have – not who I am. I know that intellectually, but am still wrestling with it in terms of “heart knowing”.

It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it holds a clear mirror up to the part of the heart that’s always looking for the next thing, scheming about a future, and generating worlds of a nebulous “them” who are cheering me on, or muttering their disapproval. In other words, delusion! Allowing the heart to lose a little, let go a little, and not give a hoot a little can go a long way in releasing from these forces of worry, driven-ness, and self-aversion.

When we allow ourselves the space to be a bit of a loser, our life can open up in surprising ways. Releasing the pressure of pushing and driving opens up a space in the heart that is present, available, connected and sensitive.

We taste the richness of being alive. We feel our feet on the ground. We remember that we can trust in the truth that we are valuable just by being. We feel this value in presence every time we release from intentions projected outside ourselves in another person, in time, or in an ideal of “who I should be” or even “who I could be” with the critical eye that we are either not there, or not sufficiently on the path.

I doubt that the new Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Catherine, won Prince William by trying to hard…in fact, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that way at all. I’m pretty sure that with all the devastation in the south people will discover an amazing relational attitude, and resiliency within themselves that might otherwise have gone un-noticed. Osama Bin Laden took his risks and was certainly intelligent enough to know they came with a price. So perhaps it wasn’t so much about winning or losing, as just being in the flow – and frankly, our giving in to this release, feels a whole lot, curiously enough – like winning.