Anxious, much?

Like many of those I work with, I have an anxious mind and body. Anxiety has been a (not-so-quiet) companion throughout my life, ebbing and flowing at different junctures, moving in and out of focus with circumstance. At the moment, the faucet is on and boy, is it flowing. When my anxiety is flipped on and seemingly minor bumps happen, it is like hearing glass shatter. When brains and bodies run on fear (a little different than running on Dunkin...) we become inflexible and terrorized by the hiccups of everyday life. Let me be the first to say… ANXIETY SUCKS. It is painful, exhausting, energy-sucking. To experience multiple glass shattering moments daily… when in truth everything in your external world is more or less FINE? Oh boy, it’s tough. Sometimes the rational part of my mind recognizes the intense mental and physiological response and can say, “Alix, *breathe* everything is ok”… but anxiety does not always go down so quietly. When kicked up, the dust is intense and the fight is GOOD. It wants control. What it really wants is to protect you. The seemingly “nothing” thing, is not experienced as no-thing. Anxiety experiences it as a five-alarm fire. It experiences it as danger.

While anxiety is painful, the truth is… all emotions are messengers just here to deliver us information. Sometimes pleasant, and other times icky, sticky, messes. So while we may want to SHOOT this particular messenger, it’s not exactly advantageous to us. On the other hand if we start to pay attention to our anxiety, get beyond the disproportionate responses, and look just beneath the surface to decipher the message, we’ll start to notice the core places where our being needs attention, healing, and love. The places where our anxiety holds on to beliefs and stories that are no longer true for us (and perhaps never were true.) From this perspective we see anxiety reacting to distorted or outdated perceptions rather than what is actually happening in our immediate environment. Perhaps deep down, anxiety is afraid of failure, of loneliness, of losing control and so these glass-shattering moments are simply manifestations of some deeply tender and vulnerable feelings. Through feeling, acknowledging, and understanding our way through anxious moments, we open up the door to larger transformation and improved mental health. Renovating the foundational blocks that contribute to perceptions that make us Oh So Anxious.

Ok so let me break this down. First we have our own life experiences that generate anxiety. ON TOP OF THAT we ingest conditioning from our family, community, culture, religion, and society. But wait there’s more. We even inherit traumas and fears from our genetic lineage. Fears that live in our very own DNA. You may be feeling things and not even know how they got there… yet there they are, disrupting our day. Because we may not have direct access to the “why”, our physical bodies are a key component to unlocking our anxieties. Our bodies don’t care if we lived it or our grandparents lived it, we feel it anyway. Making space to feel the feelings allows us to shine a light on these fears, the ones we may not have conscious awareness for, but ones that clearly WANT to be felt.

So…no, we cannot shoot the messenger. Even if we REALLY want to. The messenger is only there to let us know that something feels awry internally. That there are parts of us that feel unsafe, unsettled, and scared. That something needs tending to. Spending time getting to know our hypervigilant friend can support us in discovering where the stale fears live that are no longer necessary to house. The fears that are no longer serving or protecting, but instead are causing us unnecessary pain and suffering. Does our perfectionism stem from an underlying feeling of inadequacy? Or does our perfectionism stem from an underlying feeling of internal chaos? Do we become stressed by our kids because we worry that we are failing them as parents? Or do we become stressed by our kids because our nervous systems are in disrepair and we need help learning how to take care of them? Go into the feeling, breathe with it, and become curious about the message that is trying to be relayed to you. Whether we can access the underlying cause or we just have a feeling to go by, the power remains in us to make space for it,  acknowledge it, and release it. When it perks up, let anxiety know that you see it! It will be most grateful for the visit.

Wishing you love, peace, and ALL THE CALM ✌🏻

Dr. Alix