“In this war zone my gut-wrenching anxiety was like a tsunami that I steered towards, turning it into a great wave I wanted to ride to safety. Adventure was a way to numb the anxiety. I pushed for greater thrills to relieve a gaping hole in my solar plexus. I’d been anxious ever since age eleven, when a fire had destroyed my family’s kitchen, put my father into the hospital, and changed all our lives into Before and After. The volume was not normally turned up so loud; usually it was more like a rumbling of a 747 jet.”
~Excerpt from Chapter 1, “Afghanistan Ambush,” from my memoir, My Journey Through War and Peace: Explorations of a Young Filmmaker, Feminist and Spiritual Seeker, Book 1 from the Pathfinder Trilogy, an adventure spiritual memoir series.
When I work with a client as a homeopath I look to see what type of anxiety you are experiencing. There are three broad possible causes to examine. The first cause is when you are in real DANGER. For example you’re driving in a blizzard, and the roads are icy and dark. This is healthy anxiety that triggers your body and senses to go into hyper-alert. The adrenaline is going.
Let this anxiety be. Sometimes if you are in extreme danger you may experience where time stops, you see everything in slow motion, you are in the ISNESS of it. All you have to do is remember to BREATHE and FEEL your toes. This awareness keeps you in your body while you deal with the imminent and real danger.
The second cause is when you are about to do something new or go into an unknown situation. It can be as simple as learning to horseback ride. The anxiety is often misunderstood as excitement because the body feels them both in similar ways. It takes time to differentiate between them, but you most likely know what I’m describing. The best way to handle this anxiety is to observe the feeling, relish it, move through it. Usually it takes doing the new activity four times before you will feel at ease with the new experience.
The third cause is when there is some habit, something you’ve grown used to, and it no longer serves you. It could be a friend who invites you to dinner but is rude to the waiters when you’re at restaurants. Or maybe you don’t really want the job you’re in. You get the picture.
Now if you ignore this anxiety or try to rationalize it, saying things like, “I don’t want to hurt that person’s feelings,” or “I need the money,” then this anxiety, if you keep pushing away the message, can turn into depression. Often we know what serves us but we don’t take action because people will judge us, or we feel we are not good enough. It feels easier to stay with the status quo. NOT SO! This acceptance of ‘tolerating the intolerable’ as my shaman friend called it when the volume increases to a deafening cry (which always happens eventually if no action is taken), then chronic anxiety often steps in. It is much easier for you and everyone else to act immediately when you feel this third kind of anxiety.
Note: When you’ve identified the situation causing the third form of anxiety, and you take ACTION (or stop doing something that has been bothering you), you’ll most likely feel the second form of anxiety, which is actually EXCITEMENT!
“Now I’d ridden the anxiety to Afghanistan. Each adventure I felt called to in life was an opportunity to test myself, validate my existence, and connect to something much greater than myself. I experienced this as a kind of an obligation: a giant YES filling my body, my cells pulsating, freedom beckoning, as I said “YES” to each new idea.”
~Excerpt from Chapter 1, “Afghanistan Ambush,” My Journey Through War and Peace
We’ve all faced danger and do not need to go to a war to experience it. Looking back I did this courageous act as a way to deal with the constant anxiety I felt growing up with an alcoholic mother. By going into a new situation, way beyond my comfort zone, my everyday anxiety diminished. Over the years by finding the edge where I knew my passions laid, I could discover new opportunities. I learned how to work with my anxieties to heal them, to gain insights into what I needed to do next and to understand that my body will ALWAYS tell me what is going on!
“But that didn’t mean I was without worry. The angst was there always, even while the ‘YES’ brought clarity and opportunities. I’d settled on a kind of counter-intuitive balance, a letting go, my own version of non-attachment: use fear to release fear, to discover a new self and reach a state of wonder.”
~Excerpt from Chapter 1, “Afghanistan Ambush,” My Journey Through War and Peace
SPECIAL ATTENTION: If you’ve been taking medications for a long time for anxiety and/or depression, you can apply all the methods described already. My recommendation, if you still feel chronic anxiety is to work with your doctor and a homeopath so that the deeper issues (sometimes masked by the medications) can be healed with one-on-one support. If there is a history of long-term use of medications, sometimes the anxiety gets more intense before it reduces.
NOTE: If you find you don’t know what is bothering you, then I would use the journal exercises in my book, Four Methods of Journal Writing: Finding Yourself Through Memoir, to discover what no longer serves you.
