“Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows but only empties today of its strength.” -Charles Spurgeon
Anxiety is the next of the five hindrances. I want to emphasize that all of these hindrances, anxiety included, are a part of our being human. There is nothing wrong with us for experiencing anxiety. But, it is definitely not something that is easy to live with. A great many people come into counseling seeking relief from some form of anxiety: PTSD, Phobias, Panic Attacks, Generalized Anxiety, and Social Anxiety to name a few. Unfortunately, anxiety often has a number of close cousins-depression, compulsive behaviors, addiction.
As I’ve depicted above, anxiety can feel like a swarm of bees attacking you. That is all you can see and all you can feel. I know I’m not doing a great job of selling anxiety as a needed or wanted emotion. But, we have all of our emotions for a reason. If they did not serve us, natural selection would have snipped them off a long time ago. How can we make friends with our anxiety when it hurts so much?
Acceptance is the key to pretty much every modality of treatment I’ve encountered so far. There are a lot of different ways to come to acceptance about something. One of the best ways I have found is through awareness. I notice the way my heart beats faster when I am starting to feel anxious. I try to hold that feeling in my body without doing anything else with it, to it, for it. Just let it be. A lot of times, it dissipates on its own in a pretty short amount of time. It might come back again, but for a second I got to experience some space between me and it. That space really helps in the same way that it does for the other hindrances.
A lot of times there is a belief we are holding onto, perhaps a memory from long ago created it. Some even see we carry stories not just from our lifetime but also from our ancestors’ times. Our belief can cause lots of other thoughts and feelings to erupt and anxiety pops up from this place. Without our friend anxiety, we would not be here.
Our limbic system holds our emotions and releases what it thinks we need in any given situation. Does it sometimes get confused? Yes, a lot. But, it also gets it right sometimes and thank goodness for that or we would have all been eaten by lions long ago.
Play around with this idea of noticing what happens in your body, with your thoughts and feelings when you are experiencing anxiety. Try to hold some space just to look at the nature of it. Try to have gratitude for it as it has allowed you to be here. Try to hold still just for a little while, and then see what happens next.
If you can imagine that you are a scientist and this is an experiment-harmless, informative, maybe even fun, you can learn a lot more about yourself and take that knowledge into the future as far as deciding your next moves.