Letting Go: Some Thoughts On Anxiety
WHAT WOULD A FIRST DATE BE without that garden of butterflies in your body? What would a moment before jumping off a high diving board—or a bungee tower!—be like without that dizzy, sky-blue high? We wouldn’t feel alive without the common symptoms of stress.
But anxiety, especially over the long-term, is a different atmosphere all together. Anxiety is everything from a heavy dread that you can lug around through daily interactions in elevators, meetings, lunches and events—to an explosion of full-on panic in such places as planes, crowds, bridges or small spaces.
One student I worked with said she woke up most mornings in a state of alarm, as if “ready for an emergency.”
Another had serious health problems after years of chronic stress.
Someone else called her rigid, on-going stress, “my frozen fear.”
Many people want to “get rid of” their anxiety. My sense is that we need to, gently and safely, let go into it. Sound confusing? Or even a bit scary? When I work with people who have long-term anxiety, they often mention that their relief came most fully when they finally let their guard down enough to feel what they were actually experiencing underneath their intense stress.
But how to we get to a place where we feel safe enough to let go into feeling?
I’ll return to this central question shortly. But first, it helps to find ways to reduce stress in the moment.
Simple Ideas For Reducing General Anxiety
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT MOVIE, MEMENTO, where a man loses his short-term memory every five minutes? He tattooed reminders on his body about what was most important to remember. Sometimes we, too, have mild amnesia around the simplest stress reducers. Ink, please!
– Take a deep breath. Deep breathing calms us and carries more oxygen to our body and our brain. We can feel more grounded and make clearer decisions in the moment. A deep breath is often all we ever need.
– Sleep eight hours a night. On-going stress exhausts us, mentally and physically. Many clients experience an increase in anxious feelings after a week or two of late nights, or a long period of overworking.
– Exercise a few times a week. Anxiety feeds on excess energy & insomnia feeds on anxiety.
Does even reading this To Do list of suggestions heighten your stress a bit? If so, try taking a deep breath.
Fill your lungs.
Hold for a moment.
And then let out a long stream of breath, like a balloon flattening as it blows out its air.
Your work is done!
Here’s a few more ideas…
– Eat well, and drink lots of water. Avoid sugar and caffeine—and keep an eye on chocolate and soft-drinks which often contain caffeine. Water is also a remarkable cleansing agent.
– Use progressive relaxation techniques. Tensing and releasing calms our bodies; we simply cannot be relaxed and tense at the same time. These exercises can really help before bed as a sleep aid.
– Consider developing a contemplative practice. Pilates, Yoga, Akido and Tai Chi teach inner control. Anxiety can arise out of a longing to control the uncontrollable. Our appetite for outer control lessens with inner focus.
– Become aware of the personality of your anxiety. Try keeping a daily log for a week and recording your anxiety levels between 1 and 10 (10 being very high) at intervals throughout the day. Jot down anything of interest: the times your anxiety rose or fell; what events happened as your anxiety grew or lessened. Write down items such as hours of sleep, how much coffee you drank, how well you ate, who you avoided or confronted. Simply note how your life decisions impacted your stress.
Letting Go Into Anxiety
At the beginning of the blog, I mentioned how some clients felt the most relief from letting their guard down, and surrendering to their anxiety. This letting go is gentle and slow work. And it often feels risky, if not downright threatening, to our very sense of self. We need to take our time acquainting ourselves with our stress, and what’s underneath it, especially if it’s been around for a long time. We developed our anxiety for a good reason. It likely first arose to kept us together when some form of pain was too much to bear – a loss, a shock, a shame – and we needed to become tense just to survive. Anxiety likely allowed us to get our tasks done and to not fall to pieces at home or at school. Over time, though, and with repeated patterns, we can grow a skin as thick and impenetrable as titanium. But our bodies need a holiday from being a defensive shield. From being guarded and tight and unstoppable and vigilant. At some point, we need to loosen and let go. Let someone else take care of things. Trust that the world, our own, or the world of others, will continue on just fine when we are weak, even for a moment. We need to collapse. To be.
How to start? Sometimes, to begin this process, all we need to do is take a breath. Slow ourselves down. Ask gently, “What do I need right now?” And take the time to listen to what answer our body gives. Perhaps the answer today is “Sleep.” “To cry.” “Ask for a hug.” Perhaps, one day, at the right time, it will be, “Fall, gently and with support and love around you, to pieces.”
“A Soft Place To Land” by Kathleen Edwards
NOTE: As the factors that lead to anxiety are as complex as we are, I have written my thoughts into three more blog posts, which will follow every two weeks into the spring. The themes will be similar (a mixture of techniques and an emotional exploration of anxiety) and the topics will focus on panic attacks, case studies and the questions around using medication to treat anxiety.
