I say that tongue in cheek. If you’re panicking, that pink sign won’t help, but it’s a nice colour.
Today I’ve been thinking how anxiety, in some form or another, sits behind most of what goes horribly wrong in the world. It’s not always the direct cause of economic crises, widespread addiction and illness, relationship dissolutions, wars and other violence, but it’s usually in the mix - a whispering poltergeist.
Sometimes anxiety is the obvious, main event, but other times it’s veiled, masquerading as sadness, anger, bravado or cold avoidance. Sure, it’s a fundamental aspect of human functioning, designed to keep us safe, but the world we live in is too chock full of constant, unnatural micro-stimuli for our anxiety and stress levels to be working as nature intended.
Much of the world-wide demand and addiction to alcohol and other drugs, pain meds and anti-anxiety medications is about people looking for relief from anxiety - existential, financial, relational, all the anxieties…
Many of us live with humming background anxiety all the time. That means, when a significant stressor inevitably arises, we may be quickly over-loaded because we’re already living at the edge of our emotional resources.
We need strategies in place to reduce our base levels of anxiety everyday, so that we can cope better with the bigger stuff as it comes, as well as feeling less on the edge everyday in general.
What do you do?
Writing helps for me. Getting things out and sharing my thoughts so I’m not having to keep them all inside. So we can relate.
I exercise even though I don’t love it, because I know that physical movement, however we can do it, is a primal kind of release that the animal in us needs.
Then there’s a mindfulness practice - whatever you can make work for you…It can be very simple, short and humble, but we all need something to ameliorate anxiety.
If you can find a way to it, I whole-heartedly recommend a few minutes of quiet sitting and observing your thoughts and feelings regularly (sometimes called meditation or mindfulness practice, even yoga.) It doesn’t have to be in a group, in leggings, woo-woo or ‘spiritual’ in any way. It just needs to be watching the contents of your mind for a few moments, non-judgmentally - ‘shifting gear’ from a doing/busy mind state to a just being/watching mind state.
I’m going to share some resources for learning or reminding yourself how to do this now. Here’s something to listen to as well. And another below…a guided relaxation/intro to mindfulness practice from my yoga teaching days.
That being offered, the internet is full of a lot more. We just need to use it. Daily, if possible.
The idea is to cultivate the ability to step back emotionally and make good decisions around how we react, essentially how we manage our anxiety. With regular practice in calm, low-stress times, we can develop the emotional muscle to cope with the really heavy lifting of life when it comes on. Also speaking to myself here!
Love to you as always,
Well, I just completed your guided meditation in an infared sauna set at a temperature of 55 degrees and it made the experience pleasantly tolerable. I was very relaxed, yet present and focussed on your voice. My mind only drifted a few times. Thanks Deb, will definitely use your recording more regularly.