Anxiety. A hot topic these days and for the past several years in fact. I’d like to share my views on the topic, even though I know they fly in the face of what many believe about it. So relax, it’s just another perspective.
I had an interesting conversation yesterday where the person I was speaking with was talking about some discomfort around difficult relationships. I asked what they might be afraid of, and their response was, I’m not afraid, I have anxiety…
How interesting that there is a view of anxiety as being something other than fear. I suspect the fact that so many are being ‘diagnosed’ with anxiety and prescribed anti-anxiety medication as the way to deal with it has somehow divorced it from what it is, fear. When asked ‘what are you afraid of?’ all too often people very quickly respond with I don’t know, I’m just anxious. It’s always a clue when the response comes too quickly that it is something we don’t want to see if we were to be honest.
We have become afraid of being afraid in our culture! We are afraid to be present to our fear so we call it anxiety and do what we can to suppress it, or we go straight into our heads and worry about the future or ruminate about the past which is another way of avoiding the feeling itself. We sometimes distract ourselves with addictions or by making ourselves very busy or with ‘retail therapy’. We have developed so many coping mechanisms for fear that we don’t even know when we’re afraid or what we’re afraid of! To say nothing of the fact that they don’t deal with the actual cause.
Before I started spending time getting to know my own feelings, I too felt a lot of fear and didn’t even know it. But it ate away at my stomach (and who knows what else), and it was behind much if not all of my defensiveness and resistance and the limitations I placed on myself as far as what I could and could not do. Not that I don’t feel fear anymore but rather I see it for what it is, and I’ve learned to address it, to be present to it, to wonder about what’s going on in my head that’s causing it and to question my own beliefs and assumptions which are always behind the fear and to let go in surrender. (I know, there she goes again with the surrender but it’s my favourite go to healing tool!)
Everything begins in consciousness so that’s where we must go to deal with fear in the end. Whether it has been running so long it’s part of our anatomy now or if it’s milder and more recent, if we want to get to the root of it, consciousness is where it’s at. There are a lot fewer side effects going to the source too.
Namaste
