WTF?

Literally, wtf. Actually, wtf. That is pretty much how I felt by the age of 6. WTF! This is a tribute to her, she’s a cool one. But she also held the beginning of a scorching anxiety that would burn her from the inside out up until she moved. I honestly can’t describe anxiety to you other than wtf, which I think I’ve said enough. But I can offer you a close second explanation of being in fight or flight even while staring at the fruit in a produce section. Or in my case, avoiding the entire grocery store for over a year. It uprooted me and left me running.

Now imagine the start of a ball of fire and let it boil away for 10 years. No matter where I wondered or ended up I could trust my anxiety to stay true. But truthfully nothing about the anxiety was true. It created false scenarios, it drowned me just to bring me back to the surface because hey we are kinda in danger, the fruit in the produce might just send us into a panic. Anxiety is very normalized, it’s very common, but what is so common about it? Why? I don’t know and I think when I stopped trying to fight with it and instead tried to work backwards in hope to understand it, things changed. I knew I couldn’t really overcome it by fighting with it because that’s kind of what had been going on for the past 10 years. I think the most frustrating part is knowing you have to embrace something to love it, and like the majority of people, I hated my anxiety.

My therapist told me something that truly changed my outlook from a fighting stance to nurturing one. She said, “When you feel your anxiety start to arise, and your fight or flight begin to kick in where it’s not needed, tell it that you appreciate it trying to protect you but it’s not needed right now”. For some reason I think it’s easy to forget anxiety IS something we should all have in healthy amounts, anxiety party! There is a happy medium. Don’t beat down on yourself over what you feel, work to bring it to a healthy level. We should feel that fight or flight feeling in certain situations, being somewhere we feel unsafe, a life or death situation, any emergency, and even just some tough life shit. It can be what can save us one day, so how does it become something that can also kill us? And HOW do we find that balance?

One thing that helped me was to view my anxiety from a third party perspective or ‘catching myself in the act’. When I started observing my symptoms it humbled the shit out of me to realize some of the things I was stressed over. Mindfulness and tapping into sensation. I’ll bring back my example of the fruit in the produce section; I’m standing in the produce section trying to pick what fruit I want and my heart is racing, I’m sweating, uncomfortably sweating, anxious sweats. Is there any immediate danger? No. Well that about sums it up! I’m joking. I get it’s more difficult than that. But seriously, even that one question can make you check yourself. 

In whatever way you feel your anxiety or what triggers it, cool, but don’t let it control the hangout. What color is the fruit? Which color draws your attention? Are there any cool designs or bruising that catches your eye? Why is the fruit the most important thing right now? Why are you kinda digging this moment between you and the fruit? Why are you suddenly kinda chilling out? Boom. You’re present. Mindfulness.

Viewing anxiety as intuition? Another realization that my anxious brain couldn’t grasp until I really sat with it and experienced it. It’s easy to become frustrated with anxiety and try to push it down when deemed “unnecessary”, but what about when it is necessary and trying to communicate with us? My first big aha moment within the idea of changing my perception around my anxiety was with a job I got. I knew almost immediately something was out of balance. I had been working so closely with a health coach and my anxiety had dwindled so low, to feel it all come back and slap me in the face tore me to shreds. On the days I worked it was the classic heart racing as soon as I woke up, zero appetite and nauseous, tears, lots of tears. Imagine me trying to sit and meditate with snot and tears rolling down my face an hour before my shift, yeah, humbling as shit. So guess what I did? I quit, because life is too short and I can live whatever life I want to live. I chose me, I trusted my gut, for once I trusted my anxiety. That created a domino effect and shaped the relationship I had with my anxiety. That intuition guided me, and now I have a job I absolutely love with amazing lifelong friends. You see what I’m doing here, shifting the way anxiety can be viewed, learning to coexist.

Gratitude!!!!! The one thing I will emphasize and I will most definitely write about is lifestyle habits and mindset shifts. In my case my anxiety led to hormonal imbalances which led to gut issues, which landed me with not only anxiety but IBS, go figure. This is a whole other topic to be written about so I won’t dive too deep, I’ll find you in another blog post. But had I not struggled with anxiety I would not have found my deep appreciation for cooking, whole foods, healing, yoga, meditation, vulnerability, connection, and a depth within myself I wouldn’t trade for the world. I know her, she knows me, do you know how awesome it is to say I know myself? I’m grateful, I am, but that doesn’t mean it takes away the suffering I had to go through to get here. Life is all about balance, give and take, hate and love, disagree and agree, dance in the middle of it. 

Sit with it. Is that not what the majority of us are doing everyday? Sitting with it and coping with it are things I’ve come to find to live separate from each other. To cope with it is to move the energy of anxiety around, to mold it, prevent it, project it. To sit with it is to feel fully into sensation. I didn’t want to give generic advice towards anxiety because at least for me, it never clicked. You’ll find as you read my blog I am a lover of discomfort, which as I’m writing this is definitely going to be its own blog post. I sat in my room and freaked out a mind numbing amount of times. I scribbled some of the most unruly bullshit on paper. I drew weird pictures to try to explain to myself how I was feeling. I let myself feel hate for what I deemed at the moment an unfair world. I became my beacon for pushing my anxious energy out, for hearing it. But to be honest I could’ve freaked out like that everyday. To make it more progressive, I wrote my frustration; I wrote what I did and didn’t want, I spoke logically as much as I was probably writing illogically. I just showed up as I was, and sometimes we just have to be. Not many people will tell you to be a safe and responsible mess with your emotions but how can you move forward if the goal is not to feel? (how to feel it safe and responsibly? Feel free to reach out) The goal should always be to feel, just deciphering a healthy and safe way to feel. I think the message to not feel confuses people like you and I who feel a lot we can’t put words to. You’re free to feel, I’ll feel it with you.

In the mess that anxiety can be, there are ways to coexist. Within learning to coexist, there’s hope that one day you gain the peace within turmoil. I want that for you. No one should have to struggle, but the casual aspect of life is that we all do. At the end of the day we wouldn’t have the depths to us as humans without it. It tears apart as much as it unites, whether that’s from others or ourselves. Balance. Catastrophic balance is still balance. I hear you, I feel you, I get it. I think my goal with writing this is to make something heavy, lighthearted, real but forward. Not that it needs to be anything else but heavy, because sometimes, shit is just heavy. Balance. If you’ve read through this, you’ve been vulnerable with me in the way I’ve been vulnerable with you. Thank you for that. I hope this lands itself in a way that brings peace; for the time being.