GODDESS SPEAK - THOUGHTS ON ANXIETY 02/17/2012
Once upon a time I asked my guides why people didn’t change; their response to me was because it’s painful, uncomfortable, and hard. I was in a channeling group at the time, and was told by the person running the group (and his followers) that nothing was hard unless I said it was hard and if something was in fact hard (because some things are) I was advised to rise above the negative feelings (pain, anger, anxiety, etc) and find and focus in on the (present and coming) gifts of the hardship. This was called being a positive person and that was the goal, to be a positive person, because otherwise I was going to create all kinds of negativity (hardship) around myself. One of the problems with this kind of unconscious (New Age) thinking is it splits you off from your true (negative) feelings around the hardship, and lands you in your head. At least that’s what happened to me. There I was telling myself to accentuate the positive, there I was looking for gifts, even though my feelings were screaming, “what the fuck is going on?!!, and whispering sweet invalidations along the lines of, “you’re going to die old, alone, fat, and poor,” and/or, “your mother was right, you really are crazy.” At this point I would usually shut down the feelings because of the anxiety. To shut down (rise above/repress) one’s feelings is to split-off from them; a few years of creating an entire world on top of split-off feelings and I started feeling like I was sitting on Pandora’s box. I went to see a psychic/alchemist and told her, “I’m keeping the demons down but I don’t know for how much longer I’m going to be able to do that.” “Perhaps you could open the box and see what they want,” she said. Now that was a new response, lightening hit the tower, and the old ways of being started to come down. Talk about anxiety! About that time I found witchcraft, the Sacred Feminine, and Jung, and I have never looked back. In my work as a healer and mystic counselor I am reminded daily of the intrinsic dangers of the all pervasive, cultural presence of New Age thinking; what I refer to as partial truths masquerading as whole and nothing but. What is perceived as negative (bad), anxiety for instance, is as important and intrinsic to life as the systole and diastole is to the heart. Change and the process of change create anxiety; refusing to change when change is called for creates anxiety; re-claiming the pieces of self creates anxiety; the holiday season triggers anxiety; grandiose plans trigger anxiety; skipping important parts of the process triggers anxiety; the list goes on. Psyche, the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious, is your best friend. Anxiety is one of your psyche’s ways of saying you need to look at this. When anxiety is not processed and shoved down, it will morph into panic; what most people don't know, what I didn't know some thirty years ago when I was trying to drink my anxiety to death and suffering severe panic attacks in the process, is that anxiety when used correctly moves you forward. What you can be sure of if you are experiencing anxiety is that you are moving and/or being moved towards some kind of GENUINELY BENEFICIAL change; it can be quite small, it can be nervous breakthrough large, it can be anything in between. Years ago when I was just verging into the lanes of light and shadow the guides told me that all feeling was neutral and that it is our judgment of them that gives them their sting. When you hate your anxiety, when you’re judging it and you as crazy, you’re hating, judging, a feeling piece of yourself, a piece that needs to be held and rocked. Saying I don’t want to feel this way is perfectly normal but somewhere along the lines you’re going to have to accept that you ARE feeling this way or there is absolutely no possibility of change. I remember the first time I decided to try to accept my anxiety, I said out-loud, "I accept this as part of me," and instantly felt ill. On some level I thought/believed it made me “less than,” flawed like sheets sold for seconds. “But why do I feel so flawed?” I remember thinking and that's when I bumped into the fact that I was judging myself against an impossible ideal, and a familial, cultural script that I did not author. Yes in the eyes of the script I was flawed, at the time “less then,” for not being able to rise above and get on with life and living; I was flawed because I couldn’t and wasn’t living my life the way the script said I should, and in that moment, knee-deep in the ground zero of my feelings, for the first time in my life I seriously questioned the validity of my script and programming. In that moment, like Scarlett O’Hara swearing she’d never be hungry again, I refused to spend the rest of my life judging myself against someone else’s paradigm. That was thirty years ago and it's not been easy; at the same time it's never been boring and I would not trade my life for anyone's. Acceptance is both an intellectual and feeling experience. Nothing can be released, transformed, transmuted, until it is fully accepted; to try to release, transform, transmute, something without fully accepting (owning) it is like trying to return something to a store you didn't really buy. In my experience the most effective way to work with anxiety, or any feeling that’s giving you the jumps, is to place your hand over your heart and a little to the left, and say,“ I deeply love and approve of myself.” Wrap that statement around the anxiety, wrap that statement around you’re uncomfortable feeling self, wrap that statement around your entire being and keep wrapping it; daily. This moves you, moves and tracks the energy, towards self-acceptance, and loving our-selves warts and all. If your anxiety is off the charts and moving into panic mode then get yourself a good energy worker or therapist who actually knows what they’re doing. You do not need to be fixed; to approach overwhelming anxiety or anything overwhelming from the need to be fixed, or the idea of fixing it, is a recipe for failure. Yes they can give you a pill to take the edge off and in some cases that’s DEFINITELY needed but the resulting numb and dulled edge isn’t going to change anything, it’s akin to pausing a DVD because you need a break from what you’re hearing and watching. Ultimately though, to heal, to move on, to live happy, joyous, and free, you’re going to have hear, to pay attention, to what the anxiety is trying to tell you. Dig deep, try not to judge it, and most of all be gentle with yourself. To be human is to feel. To rise above, to split off from all the so-called “negative” feelings we are taught and told are defects of character, is to cut our humanity off at the knees. Why? Because everything contains it’s opposite, not in terms of opposing but in terms of compliment. To lessen the value of one is to lessen the value of the other; to deny the value of one is to deny the value of the other. If the 99% hadn’t been feeling so powerless, so fucked over, by this country’s economic policies and institutions, the resulting powerful action that is Occupy Wall Street and the rallying cry of “the needs of humanity before the needs of profit,” would never have happened. One of my friends swears the opposite of anxiety is relief, still another says it’s peace; I say the opposite of anxiety is ease. Whatever you want to call the opposite of anxiety, clearly there is a balm-like quality to it. That’s where the anxiety is pointing you; towards peace, ease, and relief; your peace, ease, and relief, not someone else’s. Intellectually you can know that, but it’s highly unlikely or reasonable to expect yourself or another a person to FEEL, “oh goody I’m anxious, ease and relief is on its way,” when anxiety hits. That would detract from the purpose of the discomfort and anxiety is uncomfortable for a reason; that’s how it gets our attention. Going sane can be the most insane feeling ever. Live loud, love fierce, and suffer no fools. Kat Comments04/22/2012 9:22pm
Kat, Leave a Reply | 
Kat Manaan
writer, healer, priestess, teacher, activist, wryd, counselor, runner, reader, divorced single mom, sober, friend, lover, irreverent, compassionate, bitch, cheerleader, angry, funny, energy shaper, light and shadow worker, happy, fighter, daughter of humanity, member of the tribe of women. Archives |
RSS Feed