The Wisdom of Anxiety

by Sheryl Paul

  Mornings are the liminal hour, the vulnerable time between night and day when we’re in between two states of being: the unconscious, where dreams occur, and the conscious state of our daytime hours. A hallmark of the liminal zone is feeling vulnerable, out of control, disoriented, and uncertain. It’s when the bedrock of our familiar life falls away and we’re left floating around in the middle of the ocean without a compass or rudder.

  Mornings are yin (feminine consciousness) time, when our normal defenses soften, and we’re offered a portal into the soul. Mornings are soft, fluid, and round. In a healthy mental state, this softness gives rise to creative and spiritual openings and is often when lines of poetry or a creative idea bubble up from the dark, sacred world of psyche. The veils are lifted, and we see things as they are.

  When you’re in an anxious state, this time offers a window to see the anxiety without the normal distractions of your busy day. In the quiet of morning, the messages of anxiety, which may bang on the doors of your mind during your loud, busy day, now only have to tap lightly for you to listen. Since the habitual response to anxiety is to withdraw and run from it, the mainstream advice for morning anxiety is to get up and get moving. This is, of course, the same message that most people receive about all of their uncomfortable, “negative” feelings: Get over it. Get up. Get moving. Exercise. Take a shower. Get going with your day.

  Instead, I urge you to find the courage to walk through the murky portal of the morning hours and explore the anxiety with curiosity as you remind yourself that it carries a message and it’s here to teach you something important about yourself. If you try to ignore it, it will only follow you throughout your day in the form of intrusive thoughts and their corresponding physical symptoms. Since you can’t escape it, you may as well embrace it.

  For as far back as I can remember, a journal has sat on my bedside table, and before my dreams or early-morning musings can take flight and become lost in the sea of my day, I write. When I begin my day by connecting inward and making time for soul, the rest of my day unfolds with more equanimity. Even in the depths of my dark night of the soul throughout my twenties, I would begin and end each day by turning inward in some way. Again, it takes courage to meet these inner realms, especially when anxiety is at the fore. But remember, if you don’t meet them lovingly, they will find a way to meet you, often through increasingly alarming intrusive thoughts and other uncomfortable symptoms. When you turn to face your fear instead of waiting for it to catch you, you take one more step in the direction of growing your inner parent and reducing anxiety’s grip on your life.

  What will your exploration of the anxiety that manifests in the mornings birth for you?

  PRACTICEMEETING WHAT ARISES THROUGH THE FISSURES OF TRANSITIONS

  At the beginning or end of the day, after you step away from tablets and phones and people, spend at least five minutes in solitude. Let yourself dwell in the pause, between consciousness and unconsciousness, between masculine and feminine. If you notice longing or sadness travel up to consciousness through the fissure of the transition, consider moving toward it instead of brushing it aside. Notice what thoughts arise in response to the feeling, then gently bring your attention to it as if it were a fairy or a precious gem.

  Within this intentional liminal zone, trust where your body wants to lead you. You may want to do some gentle yoga; you may want to dance. You may feel called to sit near an open window and listen to the wind or watch the stars. You may gravitate toward the moon.

  If you find yourself face-to-face with the moon, listen to her wisdom. Watch for a poem or painting that may arrive. Trust the feelings that long to emerge. Pay attention to longing. Honor the images that float from unconsciousness to consciousness. Even if you’re tired and really “should” get to bed, find a way to express what comes through. Write, paint, dance, breathe, do nothing. Even your silhouette next to the window, drenched in moonlight, is an expression of the divine. Simply being you is enough.

  NOTE

  I’ll be following the arc of the seasons according to the rhythm of the Northern Hemisphere. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll need to reverse the order.

  5

  MONTHS AND SEASONS

  Attuning to the Rhythms of the Year

  The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”

  The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into fall — the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

  E. B. WHITE

  Charlotte’s Web

  While transitions can be challenging in that they illuminate our stuck places, when we attune to the rhythm of the year, we’re not only able to name and process the core feelings of grief or vulnerability as they arise but we’re also able to harness the gifts of wisdom that the natural world offers. Anything that helps us align with a deeper rhythm will calm and contain our anxious soul, which longs more than anything else to know that we are safe and to trust that things are being handled. We are animals first and foremost. Yet because of our technological advances and the mounting speed of our culture, we’re becoming increasingly cut off from our animal nature and our soul. We’re forgetting how to live in alignment with the natural world and the seasons. We’re forgetting that nature can aid us on our journey through this life, and that, just like in the great myths of the world, the arc of the seasons is another ally that offers help and clues along the way.

  The following diagram will help you visualize the invitation of each season.

  FIGURE 1. SEASONS OF TRANSITIONS

  Autumn: The Season of Letting Go

  We have all experienced that moment when the scent or feeling of fall arrives on a summer breeze. The air may still be hot with summer’s breath, but the winds of change signal that a new season is arriving. Although summer officially begins on June 21, the solstice marks the shift where the days of increasing light turn to days of diminishing light, creating the paradox that characterizes all transitions: just as we are expanding into summer’s fullness, we’re simultaneously contracting into the shorter days that will reach a decrescendo, when autumn hands the baton to winter. In this sense, autumn has been breathing inside summer’s aliveness all along.

  Autumn is the quintessential season to illustrate the key features of transitions. Where winter is the season of reflection, spring the season of rebirth, and summer the season of celebration, autumn is the time when we align with the action of nature and ask ourselves the central question of any life transition: “What is it that I need to let go of?” Perhaps it’s your habitual thoughts of worry or anxiety; perhaps it’s your tendency to nitpick or criticize your partner; perhaps it’s getting angry at your kids; perhaps it’s the inner critic, the voice that’s constantly telling you that you’re not good enough. Whatever it is can be blown down to the ground alongside autumn’s leaves and decompose into the earth when we choose to focus consciously on what needs to be released.

  Autumn is also the time when memory often floods the emotional body. As your kids leave for the first day of school, you may remember those early school days from your own childhood. Whether the memories are positive or negative, you might find yourself pausing for a moment in the bittersweet realm of nostalgia where you become exquisitely aware of the passage of time. Another summer over, another school year beginning, another autumn at your doorstep. If the memory is positive, you might dwell for a few moments in the happy feelings. If the memory is painful, it’s an opportunity to allow the feelings to swell up inside you until they bubble into tears and you notice how they roll down your cheeks like the leaves dropping outside.

  As the leaves change color and fall, as you sit in front of a crackling fire, as you watch the golden, late-afternoon sunlight cast itself across t
he yard, ask yourself, “What is it time for me to let go of?” And when the answer appears, throw it into the leaves and the fire and the sunlight and ask for autumn’s aid to help you let go.

  September Anxiety

  The slightly crisp air. The sight of school supplies lining the aisles of the drugstore. The sound of the school bus. Autumn leaves. The loss of light at the day’s end. Every year around this time my clients share dreams about showing up at school without any clothes on or forgetting to study for a test.

  Why does September bring anxiety? One reason is because it reminds us of school. And, as we discussed in chapter 1, for many people school was a place where their freedom, creativity, love of learning, and social exuberance were clamped down and, quite often, annihilated.

  I often think about the one-room schoolhouse my grandparents attended in Upstate New York. Back in the 1920s, school was a luxury, a place where farm children could escape their chores and learn the essential skills that would help them elevate themselves and attend college, which would then secure a career away from the drudgery and physically demanding work of farm life. (I find it interesting and ironic that there’s been a “back to the earth” movement in recent years; I wonder what my grandparents would say.) While still dependent on the luck of the draw regarding one’s teacher, I imagine that, for the most part, school was an experience that kids looked forward to.

  That’s not always the case these days. I, for one, loved school through sixth grade, but when I had to change schools in seventh grade, I experienced insomnia for the first time in my life. With the introduction of tests and grades, my genuine love of learning was replaced by the pressure to succeed. Being exposed to social hierarchy and cliques — which seemed largely based on being well dressed — for the first time, my social ease was replaced by the need to please. Where school had once been a place of joy and freedom, it now felt like a prison. September, once an exciting time when I looked forward to clean notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils, was now fraught with dread.

  My school experience was a walk in the park compared to what I hear from many of my clients. I’m amazed and heartbroken by how many people who find their way to my work — struggling with anxiety and self-doubt — suffered at the hands of bullies in their school-age years. If I had to give a rough estimate, I would say at least 75 percent of my clients and course members were bullied. Why would this be so? Bullies often target the sensitive, smart, introspective, and introverted kids, which describes my clients to a tee. Perhaps the bullies themselves were highly sensitive babies whose very sensitivity was judged, shamed, and trampled down so early in their life that they couldn’t tolerate sensitivity in others. Whatever the cause, when you’ve been emotionally abused at the hands of your peers, it’s very difficult to trust them later in life or even to trust life itself. When your heart has been shattered, it’s difficult to believe that it won’t shatter again. It’s this old pain that you might find arising in early autumn.

  Aside from school anxiety, September heralds the change of seasons, and on some level, either consciously or subconsciously, we’re attuned to this sense of loss. Here in Colorado we taste the first intimations of autumn’s arrival in August. There’s a morning chill in the air before the day’s heat rises into the nineties. Some of the leaves respond to the shift in temperature and start to turn color. There’s an ending, a death, as the season of water and heat descends into colder and darker days. As the world turns inward, psyche follows suit.

  The healing response is to turn toward the difficult feelings instead of pushing them away with judgment, shame, resistance, or minimizing. (“Silly self, why are you feeling sad when it’s still summer? Nobody else is sad. Get over it.”) If grief arises, we breathe into the grief. If a bubble of emptiness hollows the chest, we breathe there as well. If memories of earlier transitions punctuate a moment of day or night, we make room for them and remind ourselves that loss triggers loss, transitions trigger transitions. When we dive fully into the fray of the transition, allowing ourselves to surrender to the feeling of being out of control, vulnerable, and groundless, allowing the tears to flow in response, and transposing the experience into creative expression, we find ground in the underlying and overarching sense that it’s all okay.

  Winter: Season of Stillness and Gratitude

  From the letting go of autumn, we shift into the stillness of winter. This is the quintessential liminal season: no longer grieving but not quite ready to emerge into rebirth. For many people, stillness and solitude are two of the most challenging experiences to endure, and our culture does an excellent job at distracting us from these states. We plan, party, celebrate, consume, and socialize until, on the other side of December, we descend into nothingness. It’s here, when the party ends, that the anxiety you were running from has an opportunity to share its wisdom. Listen closely; this is often the time when new patterns, ideas, dreams, and creative projects are born.

  Holiday Pain

  If you’re like most people, there’s probably an element of pain, dread and/or overwhelm as you enter the holiday season. The rush to consume, the pressure to feel joyful, and the expectation of experiencing perfect familial bliss set against a Norman Rockwell backdrop is enough to send any human being under a gray cloud. To that, add being a sensitive person who can veer toward anxiety or depression, and the recipe for implosions or explosions is laid out on the holiday table alongside the turkey and cranberries.

  The holidays are a setup for disappointment and pain. Whenever we expect to feel a certain way (blissful, connected, happy), the other emotions inside us clamor for attention, until we break down in some form. As discussed in chapter 2, we balk in the face of expectations. And the expectation itself for pure joy is, in a word, ridiculous. Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to feel one way just because of a calendar date? We treat ourselves like robots that can turn on certain feelings and turn off others just because it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hanukkah. Then, because we don’t honor it consciously, the inherent pain around holidays and transitions sneaks and sidles through the back door into psyche, and we find ourselves picking a fight with our best friend or crumbling into anxiety or depression.

  Every human being carries pain and heartbreak in some form, and it’s latent pain that simmers to the surface during the holidays. For some, it’s the pain of their own divorce that has shattered their intact family and sends themselves and their kids into preholiday stress, loneliness, and overwhelm. For others, it’s the pain of their parents’ divorce that sends the now-adult children into separation and distance as they try to navigate blended-family stress. For others, it’s the heartbreak of a recent breakup. For still others, it’s the grief of having no family or partner at all with whom to celebrate. I could write on and on. The point is: nobody is living the Hollywood Father of the Bride dream where pain is airbrushed out to reveal only the perfect house with the perfect family and the perfect life. It simply does not exist.

  The most challenging part of inviting pain to our holiday season is that we believe the pain shouldn’t be there. If you don’t even believe it exists, how can you send it an invitation? We carry a fantasy about everyone else’s bliss (and social media surely doesn’t help in this regard), so that when pain in any form arises (disappointment, loneliness, frustration, sadness), the knee-jerk response is to kick it out the door with a doggy bag of shame for the road. This sounds like: “What’s wrong with me? I should have it all together. I have no reason to feel sad.” As soon as the healthy and understandable pain is met with shame, the pain quickly morphs into anxiety. In order to head anxiety off at the pass, we have to be willing to feel the raw pain.

  PRACTICEINVITE PAIN TO YOUR HOLIDAY TABLE

  Next time the holidays approach, set aside time to sit down with your journal and allow yourself to write about how you’re feeling. Invite your pain to the preholiday gathering. Scoot aside for disappointment. Pull the throne over for heartbreak. You may actually want to crea
te handwritten invitations addressed to Grief, Disappointment, and Heartbreak. Place them in a homemade mailbox created specifically for them. Anytime we can ritualize our feelings, they move through more quickly. As you invite these states inside, write about any memories, stories, images, or sensations that arise; then put your pen aside to allow your body’s pain to simmer up to your heart and eyes where you can have a good, big, full-bodied cry. In this way, you will connect to the raw and human feelings that the holidays evoke. In doing so, anxiety will step aside, and you’ll make room for genuine joy and gratitude to arrive at the table as well.

  The Holy Days: An Opportunity for Gratitude

  There’s a vulnerability on the planet during the holiday season. I see it in people’s faces: beneath the stress and tightness and frantic pace lives the softness of an open heart, as if the emissaries of grief travel from broken heart to eyes and soften the edges. I see the longing for connection, the most basic human desire to break through our isolation and sit comfortably in others’ company. I see the desire for peace. I see the longing for love.

  It happens in small moments as I walk through my day during the holiday season. I catch the eyes of a driver in the parking lot and smile. She smiles back. A meeting of strangers. I drive out of the parking lot and wave at the homeless man on the corner. “Can we give him anything, Mommy?” my son asks. I know I don’t have any small bills. I reach into my wallet and hand my son a large bill, and he rolls down his window and hands it to the man. The man sees the bill, chokes up, and turns away, then turns back to stammer through tears, “God bless you.” I put my hand on my heart, and my eyes fill with tears, too. I turn back to look at my son to see his smile radiating as big as his soul. A holy moment.