Tag: Anxiety

Let’s go surfin now

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Let’s go surfin now
Everybody’s learning how
Come on and safari with me
(come on and safari with…)

Those are the lyrics to “Surfin’ Safari” by Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Mike Love, which are my latest earworm. Maybe they can bring a little feeling of summer to this crazy-temperatured winter, swinging here in Dallas from 32 degress this morning to 76 degrees earlier in the week. Thinking about actual surfing is not my intent, however, or the impetus that embedded that song on repeat in my head.

The concept of “riding the waves”, rather, has been on my mind because of the concept of mindfulness and it’s usefulness in coping with the stresses of daily life. As we attempt to manage what life throws us, riding the waves is an apt analogy. In the midst of bad stuff, of whatever type–anxiety, grief, depression, cravings–it’s pretty human to feel that the conflict or stress will pull us under, swamp us, knock us down, literally drown us. Most of us tend to lose sight of the big picture, focusing instead on the looming tsunami of our lives. Especially if we’re prone to negative thinking, brains run on repeat: “I’ll never get over it,” “It will always be this way,” “I can’t stand it any longer.” Of course we feel overwhelmed.

Bring in the concept of surfing the waves, however, and challenges become manageable. Troubles, of whatever type, do have a natural ebb and flow. After every wave comes a trough. The power that threatens to sweep us away is replaced by the calm. In the midst of negative feelings, it’s extremely helpful to step back and notice. Watch your anxiety, even timing it with a stopwatch. You zero in on the worry, and it dissipates a bit. Examine your cravings: you must have that Krispy Kreme one moment, and the next minute your mind has moved onto something else. Charting your hunger over the course of two hours shows definite dips and peaks. Allow yourself to vent your anger, or sob through your grief for twenty minutes, and just like the waves, calm rushes in. You’re cried out–for now. Illness wrecks your week, and the next week, everyone is well.

It’s a powerful exercise to step back, notice what you notice (in the words of Stephanie Eldringhoff, a new teacher I’ve enjoyed discovering), and see that just the act of noticing can begin the shift.  Be reassured that after every pounding wave, there is that drift to calm.  Sure, sometimes the waves come faster and more furiously than we feel we can stand. That’s the point to give up on holding the stance, and ride the waves instead. We can manage so much more when we are mindful of that fact that there’s bound to be a break soon. Trust that relief will come, the intensity will lessen, and you’ll hang on and ride that surf.

Call it a mindfulness safari, and venture into it with open arms.

 

Face Your Fears Day

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Fears. We all have ’em. Fear of public speaking is the most common. Fear of missing out is the newest I’ve heard, with a handy acronym: FOMO. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of spiders. Fear of being alone. Fear of flying. Fear of messing up as a mother. You name it. Facing our fears is the basic human condition, as pointed out in one of my favorite films, Defending Your Life.

When the clock radio turned on this morning, the DJ announced that now, to address this most basic human state of anxiety, we have a day dedicated to facing those fears. Face Your Fears Day. Today’s the day, the second annual to be exact. In that spirit, I’d like to toss out my favorite mantras for doing just that.

Fear lies!

And the corollary: Don’t believe every thought you think.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

It’s just anxiety, not reality.

Self-compassion is a good place to start, loving yourself, fears and all. Giving yourself that validation, rather than chastising yourself for being fearful, aka for being human, means you can drop the ‘second dart’ of self-criticism. The first dart is the visceral fear; the second dart, unnecessary, is that judgment you impose upon yourself. I don’t know that many people who don’t have a few, steering their lives, even if the fear is lurking deep below the surface. And the fact that we’ve dedicated a day to the concept is further proof that fear is a pretty universal condition.

And my second favorite way to cope: exhale. Everyone touts deep breathing as a way to calm yourself. Even these supposedly simple directions can add stress: fear of breathing wrong! Or not finding time! The bottom line, in terms of the nervous system, is that taking a great big deep breath IN actually activates the alarm system of the body, telling your body to prepare to fight or flee. Let out a big deep EXHALE instead, and you send a message to your nervous system that there is no danger, and it’s safe to relax. That’s it. One move. Repeat as needed. Simple. Practice it just like blowing out birthday candles; we all conquered that skill when we were three.

What are your fears? What’s your favorite way to conquer them?

 

 

 

Another thought about life’s pits

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While I don’t usually do ‘themes’ over several weeks, lately I seem to keep finding more to say about navigating the really tough parts of life. Part one noted that all of life involves struggles, and we fool ourselves if we believe 1) that life is harder for us than for others and/or 2) that we can avoid this part of life if we just behave in the right way. Part two stressed that the challenge of life is to navigate these trials; just see that they are essential to the path we’re living and we don’t have to like them. Reading while I enjoy my breakfast on a patio this lovely spring morning placed part three squarely in my face.

Too often, when faced with unavoidable challenges, we wish we were stronger to face them. We don’t want to be we scared by them. We believe if we were stronger/smarter/more well-adjusted, the tough mess we’re about to have to tackle wouldn’t seem so awful. Again, second guessing of our abilities is powerful. Lacking confidence, looking around, we are certain others don’t shirk from their challenges. Confidence would mean breezing through, unphased by the bumps in the road, right?

Wrong. This morning, in Everything Happens for a Reason, Mira Kirshenbaum reminded me what it’s like to be inside someone who is confident. Mira says:

“Confidence only means something when you’re talking about a task that’s difficult. If the task is easy–something like making toast–you wouldn’t even use the word confident. It would sound pretty weird to say “I’m very confident I’m going to be able to toast this slice of bread.” If the task is easy, you just do it without thinking about it.”

The inner world of confidence in the face of difficulty means trusting that 1) yes, it will be tough to navigate the challenge ahead AND 2) I can do it. That’s how confidence manifests itself: that you have an inner knowing that you will be able to survive whatever happens. This is the best script I know for getting through anxiety, depression, loss, and other bad stuff. In other words, the usual path of life. You know it will be hard, AND you know you will be able to do it.

As Mira says, “deep in the heart of confidence is a shrug, not a swagger.”

Shrug on, survivors.

Once is enough

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Self-compassion is a favorite focus of mine–with the goal that we all want to beat ourselves up a little less each day. In our human habit of black and white thinking, there’s the tendency to think that means letting ourselves off the hook for any mistakes. That would be dysfunctional, unhealthy, like we’re getting away with proverbial murder.

It is healthy to evaluate our failures in order to correct our course and grow. But need to punish or judge ourselves, for character building, exists once. But only once. Would you have a criminal punished again and again? Isn’t that what we do when we relentlessly chastise ourselves for our human failings?

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz addresses this human tendency to make ourselves pay for a mistake thousands of times. Other creatures make a mistake, learn from it, and move on. True justice, says Ruiz, is paying only once for an error. True injustice is repeatedly punishing ourselves, through guilt, shame, and self-derogatory talk.

When I was a teenager, learning to drive, we had a three foot diameter maple tree on the absolute edge of our home’s driveway. This tree abutted the black top–no grass for buffering error. Backing the car out of the driveway meant the tree loomed and teased, begging me to scrape up against it, every time. Most of the time I drove my dad’s VW Beetle, so it was easy to miss the tree. After I’d been driving some months, my dad let me drive the big fancy sedan, necessary to haul our little Sunfish sailboat, to the local lake. He was so worried about me taking the big family car and driving an hour away, boat on top. I promised I’d be so careful, and I worried all day, even making my friends walk farther across the hot parking lot in bare feet, boat in the air, so I could park FAR away from other cars. All went well. No scrapes for the car, all the way to the lake and back. We unloaded the boat, and I had to back the big car out of the drive once more to let my sister out of the drive with the VW. The sickening sound of the driver’s side front fender on that tree, on this final backing, is forever burned in my brain. As is the shame. My dad wasn’t even that mad–but I felt terrible. Even though my big sister had driven this same big sedan into a HUGE ditch the year before, miles from civilization in a Canadian campground, and she’d survived.

Not only do we punish ourselves on multiple occasions for the same flaw, we often punish those we love as well: every time we remember their mistake. We label, categorize, and judge–based on one incident. Whether we are judging ourselves or others, once is enough. Talk it out with yourself or your loved one, and let it go. If it recurs, revisit the issue. Otherwise, offer some compassion, remember the ratio of good to bad, and move on.

I think I’m ready to let go of that visceral memory. Here it goes: floating away like an errant helium balloon. Have any of your own balloons to release? Join me–I feel better already.

Feelings: trusted signals?

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“Trust your feelings”–truth or fiction?

We’ve all heard this old adage. We use this phrase to urge others to act on gut feelings, usually suggesting that the recipient will “just know” the answer they need. These cultural underpinnings imply that actualized, emotionally healthy persons wisely let feelings be a guide.

Since my mind constantly locks onto these discrepancies in our use of language, I issue a hearty “who says?”

Sometimes, yes, we do want to trust our feelings. However, like so much of our thinking, this phrase is dangerous if we lock into feelings in a black and white way. Feelings aren’t always an indication of “Truth.” Feelings aren’t always effective guides. Take two of the most common feelings: guilt and anxiety.

In most cases, guilt is not factually-based in wrong-doing. Most of our guilt is driven by inaccurate beliefs, largely fueled by a powerful “should.” “I should be happy, I wanted this baby” when you’re overwhelmed by depression, grieving the freedom of pre-baby life. “I should spend more time on X,” when in actuality you find X boring–or you’re doing the best you can to allocate time to X. “I should feel thankful for Y,” when you’re overwhelmed by stress and having difficulty focusing on the positive. We plague ourselves with guilt for not feeling some prescribed way, rather than trusting a favorite adage of mental health professionals, i.e. that “feelings just are.” Maybe it’s ok to be where we are. Maybe we don’t need to second guess our experience.

Anxiety is an even more powerful signal that we seem to cast as reality. If I’m worried about something, we reason, there must be real danger. We give anxiety such power, translating the biochemical process of stress revving through our bodies as a signal to be heeded. Just like guilt, irrational beliefs (e.g. “it will be a catastrophe! Everything will be ruined!”) abound. Much of the time, worry and anxiety are based in conditioned responses. Our bodies habitually respond with this runaway action. As Rick Hanson says, maybe the tiger in the bushes isn’t really a tiger. We’re paying on that debt we may not owe. We’re anticipating future angst, to use a Bible verse (Matthew 6:34) shared with me this week: “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

I preach (and try to practice myself) to first stop and evaluate, and then hopefully, to dismiss anxiety and guilt. Is this a real worry? Do I truly have anything to feel guilty about? Call it what it is: energy spent in a direction that is not necessary or helpful. “It’s just anxiety–not reality.” “I have no need to feel guilty–I’m doing the best that I can do.” Talk back to those feelings, saying what you would tell a friend. Offer yourself self-compassion, which I’ve taught for years as self-care, and now has credibility, with mention in The New York Times.

The majority of the time, there’s no magic message in anxiety and guilt. Let those feelings go.

Worry dies hard–for worry die-hards

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One of my all-time favorite movies, Defending Your Life, features Albert Brooks in “Judgment City” after his untimely death, defending his behavior during his just-ended life. A central tenet of the film is that anxiety is a given in human beings which we must all struggle to overcome. In the film, Brooks’ character will either ‘move on’ to the next level or get sent back to tackle his anxiety one more time.

Examining my own life and watching the lives of others unfold has convinced me that this is an innate truth.  Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, who I heard speak in January, talked about how our brains are conditioned in this way for survival. A prehistoric human, obliviously waltzing through the meadow picking flowers, was likely to be the victim of a sabre-toothed tiger. Snap, crack, crunch–end of that lineage. Only those worriers who were constantly wary, watching for danger around every bush, survived to reproduce. This means most of us have the worry habit pretty well locked in, after eons of reinforcement.

Face it: this habit is no longer necessary for survival. Worriers often argue that point, feeling that the energy invested in worrying does somehow protect us. We think that if we relax our brains, and don’t tune into all the negative, we may miss a chance to protect ourselves, to react in time. Proponents of positive thinking insist the opposite is true. The more we invest in looking for negative, the more it’s what we see. This is what Hanson said, too: each time we fuel that habitual worry with attention, the related brain connections are strengthened.

Time to banish this energy-draining habit–or at least reduce it’s hold. Anxiety need not be the basic human condition. My favorite tools to reduce anxiety are:

1) labeling the anxiety as just that. “It’s anxiety–it’s not real.” This is powerful for me, leading to a deep breath and letting go. Just because the habit has kicked in and the brain circuits are activated, doesn’t mean that’s TRUTH.

2) Mantras: mind vehicles. These are phrases I repeat to make NEW brain connections that eventually will override the old habits. You may have your own; here’s the latest that’s really speaking to me:

Fear is a down payment on a debt you may not owe.

I detest paying good money for something I’ve not yet received and that may never even be delivered. These words have been a great reminder, as a way to activate the idea behind that little charm on my key ring to “free your mind from worries.”