Dealing with Anxiety
I originally wrote this article on May 24, 2014.
This week, I decided it was time for me to face an over-three-year physical problem I’ve been having: With the simplest of movements, I get sensations of shortness-of-breath, heart palpitations, and exhaustion.
The obvious: I started adding some foods and supplements to my diet; and I am making it a point to walk almost every day.
But I’ve also been looking at how anxiety is affecting my health. My intuition tells me that the physical problems are directly related to anxiety. And my anxiety has so much to do with feeling alone in this life and raising my kids, and wondering how I can mentally and physically keep going. I also obsess about my home not being clean enough, yet not having the energy to keep up with my perfectionism–it feels like failure is eating me alive.
So a few days ago, I started saying mantras as soon as I began feeling the physical sensations, or during the times when I normally notice the physical sensations occurring.
First I started out with the mantra, ‘Life wants to take care of me.’ I needed to begin with believing that Life actually wants to help me out. There is a Life Force flowing through me (otherwise I’d be dead), and that Life Force is connected to the entire Universe. Note: I personally find no comfort with the belief that ‘we are all one.’
Then later in the day, it felt good to switch to this manta: ‘Life is holding me.’ And I’m continuing to use this one. With this mantra, I visualize literally being held, carried, cradled by a Love Force. (I don’t concern myself with knowing the science, theory, or religion behind the Life or Love Force.)
I already notice a dramatic change in my physical symptoms–so far, they are now minimal.
I anticipate that, as I continue to say these mantras, my life is going to change in a direction towards pleasure and less of depletion. Of course, I will write a blog post about it.
Life is holding you.
“Oh, sweet little boy, beloved little girl, you are so overwhelmed by life, I know, by the enormity of it all, by the vastness of possibilities, by the myriad perspectives available to you. You feel so pressed down sometimes, by all the unresolved questions, by all the information you are supposed to process and hold, by the urgency of things. You are overcome by powerful emotions, trying to control, or at least influence, everything and everyone around you, trying to hold yourself together, trying to make it all ‘work out’ somehow, trying to get everything done ‘on time’, trying to resolve things so fast, even trying not to try at all.
“You are exhausted, sweet one, exhausted from all the trying and the not trying, and you are struggling to trust life again. It’s all too much for the poor organism, isn’t it? You are exhausted, you long to rest. And that is not a failing of yours, nor a horrible mistake, but something wonderful to embrace! For the exhaustion is pure intelligence, and it says, let go, let go! Stop trying so hard!
“Stop pushing for answers right now. Allow everything to rest right now. Take a sacred pause. Allow questions to remain unanswered, for now. Allow space for yourself to breathe today. Allow everything to fall out of control today. Allow yourself to not be able to hold it all up today. Allow yourself to not know how, to not know at all. Allow the heart to break, if it needs to, and the body to ache, and the soul to wake. Everything is so okay, when you get down to it. So okay, here.
“And know you are loved, little one. Know you have always been loved, long before you were named, long before you were even born, long before overwhelm came to show you the way.”
- Jeff Foster
Warmly,