“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…
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