-----Thoughts on Anxiety -----
For me, anxiety is difficult in a number of different ways:
1) Anxiety is difficult to predict.
2) Anxiety is difficult to weather through.
3) Anxiety is difficult to discard, to dispose of, to uproot and toss away.
4) Anxiety is difficult to heal from.
5) Anxiety is difficult to prevent.
Yet most of all...
6) Anxiety is difficult to accept - and I refuse to passively accept it as if its over-saturated presence in today's world is normal, as long as it is as common as it is in my life. No, I cannot realistically fight it off; no, I cannot do away with it entirely without first learning how that can be done, and I don't know that process or method or saving grace well enough yet, if at all - if there is one thing, or more, that can be such a saving grace. I believe that such solutions exist, though - but I haven't perfected and lived any such conclusion so far, so I also won't hold my breath.
I do, however, know that I can let it, at times where I know how to let it do so, enter and then exit me within moments where my mind does not latch onto it, obsess over it, and amplify it. Without my focus on it, it lacks much power, and is closer to a passing suggestion of how I should feel.
I do, however, know that I can let it, at times where I know how to let it do so, enter and then exit me within moments where my mind does not latch onto it, obsess over it, and amplify it. Without my focus on it, it lacks much power, and is closer to a passing suggestion of how I should feel.
It's like the words one might hear from a friend that hates some kind of food: "Wow, that fish looks disgusting." The last word is a statement of opinion, and such an opinion carries the implication that anyone would consider fish disgusting...and that in turn carries an implication, and a tempting one to consider. One that comes, oftentimes, disguised as a question: "Don't I consider the fish disgusting?" And then, "After all, everyone should consider it disgusting. If you don't, why don't you...?"
The problem is that, in my past and present experience, if I seriously consider the question asked by the emergence of anxiety into my heart - "Why aren't you anxious?" - one can become anxious. After all, not knowing why one is not afraid when something that is within you is telling you to be can be, in-and-of itself, disconcerting and unsettling to say the least. Combine that with a serious examination of whatever has created or led to the thought or idea of anxiety in a person, and they might start to go from thinking about anxiety, to feeling anxiety.
And once one is feeling anxiety, it is harder to stop feeling it until one has uncovered where the feeling came from - what form of thoughts, logical or otherwise, gave rise to the feeling and prompted the suggestive question of "Why aren't you anxious?" - and uproots it, discards it, disposes of it.
And for a long time as people, it has been in part a very good thing, at times, to feel anxiety; it has helped us to hunt and avoid being hunted; to hear, see, smell, and otherwise sense and detect and evade danger; to avoid those plants and fungi and phenomena that would kill us if touched, tasted, or interacted with; and to otherwise navigate and survive and, in some cases, even thrive out in the natural world where nearly anything within the realm of physical possibility goes, provided a living creature or a force of nature, on or beyond the planet Earth, can do it.
But we nonetheless must become better - much better - at dislodging this anxiety from ourselves when it takes seed and does us wrong by way of its influence on us.
In today's world, we have seen the damage that anxiety - both as a continual mental health affliction, and in moments as simply a feeling, a thought, and sometimes a problematic or even dangerous action - can do. In our world, the rate of suicides is a disturbing thing that has grown, and strangely so given the supposed claims to fame on the grounds of advancement of technology and human knowledge that major cultures and societies profess to have made. After all, can we not understand why people are hurting, and killing, themselves, and others and their lives, too? There is serious pain going unaddressed in the world, and a lot of it does start, or gain further danger and impetus, in part on an anxiety-centric, anxiety driven level. Though a function of the mind may be fear, fear in too great a seat of power does indeed ultimately become a dangerous mind - and a fatal human - killer.
So, let's work on this. Let's work on discarding the anxiety, discarding the fears, and when they come back, being both calm and also resolute in saying, recognizing, and making real the fact that we've already tossed that reaction aside. Make clear that you will not be anxious if anxiety has nothing genuinely valuable to offer.
In today's world, we have seen the damage that anxiety - both as a continual mental health affliction, and in moments as simply a feeling, a thought, and sometimes a problematic or even dangerous action - can do. In our world, the rate of suicides is a disturbing thing that has grown, and strangely so given the supposed claims to fame on the grounds of advancement of technology and human knowledge that major cultures and societies profess to have made. After all, can we not understand why people are hurting, and killing, themselves, and others and their lives, too? There is serious pain going unaddressed in the world, and a lot of it does start, or gain further danger and impetus, in part on an anxiety-centric, anxiety driven level. Though a function of the mind may be fear, fear in too great a seat of power does indeed ultimately become a dangerous mind - and a fatal human - killer.
So, let's work on this. Let's work on discarding the anxiety, discarding the fears, and when they come back, being both calm and also resolute in saying, recognizing, and making real the fact that we've already tossed that reaction aside. Make clear that you will not be anxious if anxiety has nothing genuinely valuable to offer.
And if you fail, and hurt yourself or others, repeat the uprooting and flinging away of what isn't needed; make amends where you can if needed, too. The same if the anxiety overstays its welcome; your body should be treated as the temple for you that it is, and left to linger for too long, anxiety does damage the body, does detract from health, does deplete one's ability to survive. Any and all things, in too much abundance, can be bad, especially for a kind of being made up of many things in various different measures and quantities, but never of one singular thing...like a human being.
But still, keep up the practice. Anxiety can be filtered out of our systems, out of us, and simply allowed to swiftly enter and exit our awareness without us ever bothering to take the suggestion of fear that it brings too seriously. It takes time, and a good sense of how to be and hold a steadfast calm - and I am by no means an exemplar of that in every moment (and am sometimes quite the contrary) - but this idea of non-attachment to our anxious thoughts, and our anxious feelings, is something that can be of good and general use. I don't think it's a cure-all, and I don't think we should just rely on ourselves and hold solely ourselves, and ourselves alone, to the task of moving beyond the fear that surges through many of ourselves and others around us; we are a communal and social species for many reasons, and have been for dozens of thousands of year,s and that got us here through all of the anxieties and hardships of truly ancient times.
And, as such, just as we succeeded in overtaking our anxiety when it mattered most in ancient times, so too we can now do the same, no matter how 'difficult' anyone's anxieties might suggest the task ahead might potentially be.
So, let's do this. We owe it to ourselves, and to each other, if nothing else.
...and yes, I have anxiety about that, to a degree, in a sense, given what I have seen and still see form human beings. But, hey - no sense in not giving this effort our best, after all.
But still, keep up the practice. Anxiety can be filtered out of our systems, out of us, and simply allowed to swiftly enter and exit our awareness without us ever bothering to take the suggestion of fear that it brings too seriously. It takes time, and a good sense of how to be and hold a steadfast calm - and I am by no means an exemplar of that in every moment (and am sometimes quite the contrary) - but this idea of non-attachment to our anxious thoughts, and our anxious feelings, is something that can be of good and general use. I don't think it's a cure-all, and I don't think we should just rely on ourselves and hold solely ourselves, and ourselves alone, to the task of moving beyond the fear that surges through many of ourselves and others around us; we are a communal and social species for many reasons, and have been for dozens of thousands of year,s and that got us here through all of the anxieties and hardships of truly ancient times.
And, as such, just as we succeeded in overtaking our anxiety when it mattered most in ancient times, so too we can now do the same, no matter how 'difficult' anyone's anxieties might suggest the task ahead might potentially be.
So, let's do this. We owe it to ourselves, and to each other, if nothing else.
...and yes, I have anxiety about that, to a degree, in a sense, given what I have seen and still see form human beings. But, hey - no sense in not giving this effort our best, after all.
