Finding Spaciousness: Reclaiming Your Anxiety to Work With you, Not Against You
The best way to learn from our anxiety is to be in inquiry with it through a meditation practice or through a creative practice. Both allow us to connect with our most inner-self, which is the self worth listening to. This is the path to knowing, seeing and loving the authentic self.
ANX·I·E·TY
aNGˈzīədē/
noun
A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
PSYCHIATRY
A nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks.
I've been deeply fascinated with my own relationship to anxiety ever since my very first anxiety attack. I was sixteen.
I was sitting in the back row of Honors Biology and all of a sudden a wave of fear and panic overwhelmed my body in an instant. It was a sensation I had never experienced before and one that deeply concerned me. Was I going to be sick? Was I going to faint? What was happening? My heart was beating very fast, I had shortness of breath. And I didn't know why.
Very slowly I raised my left arm in the air and waited to be called on. I asked if I could be excused from the classroom and my teacher with kind, concerned eyes said yes. I went to the nurse’s office and I laid down in a small room with the lights off and with the door cracked open. The nurse asked me a bunch of questions about how I was feeling but never once suggested that it might be anxiety. I was in her office for a little bit and found that once the adrenaline wore off and the other strange physiological symptoms subsided, that it might be OK enough for me to return back to class. So I went back to class, wondering if this would happen to me again.
High school was the beginning of a long and challenging relationship with my own mental health and wellness with this very first episode of anxiety that later turned into debilitating panic attacks. I had no idea that this would begin a long relationship with the following: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Specific Phobias, Separation Anxiety, Performance Anxiety, Agoraphobia (fear of enclosed spaces), Situational Anxiety, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Social Anxiety. It was also in high school (1 year after the first anxiety attack) that I had my first of many episodes of depression. I was deeply aware of how my anxiety was negatively affecting my physical body, my ability to be present, and the quality of my life.
“WHAT HAPPENS TO A HURT PEOPLE? WE FORGET THAT WE ARE BUTTERFLIES BEARING UP IN THE WILD WINDS. WE FORGET THAT WE ARE TENDER FROM THE SUFFERING.”
TREATMENTS
THERE IS NO ONE OR RIGHT WAY TO HEAL. Finding the right treatment is a process of trial and error. Of addition and subtraction. So much depends on what's available. So much depends on what else is happening in life.
I saw my very first psychologist at age 18. And I still have a therapist today. My first two therapists were women of color and I found that over the years that has been the most effective. In my early therapy days, I was also medicated—prescribed antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication that I took for several years after my first prescription.
About 10 years after that, I found yoga, meditation, and a holistic nutritional counselor.
I started learning about how food affects my mood. I understood that certain foods were triggers — like sugar and caffeine. Three years later, I stopped drinking caffeine. The most severe panic attacks also stopped that day. That was 8 years ago. Since then, I have started working with a somatic psychotherapist as well as employing various alternative modalities like acupuncture, bodywork, sound healing, spa treatments, floating, and rest.
Other medicine: creativity, music, dance, laughter, being in nature.
RESEARCH
WHAT ARE THE FACTS. The biggest epidemic in our society is stress in the body. Stress leads to anxiety and depression when gone unnoticed. It also prevents true self-expression and connection, and it often leads to more serious illness.
Forty million U.S. adults suffer from an anxiety disorder, and 75 percent of them experience their first episode of anxiety by age 22. Women are more likely to have anxiety than men. Anxiety disorders also occur earlier in women than in men. Women are also more likely to have multiple psychiatric disorders during their lifetime than men. The most common disorder to co-occur with anxiety is depression. People of color are also 20% more likely to experience mental-health and are generally less likely to have access to resources.
STUDYING MEDITATION + PERSONAL PRACTICE
I started teaching meditation before I started practicing. It was my job as a neuroscientist.
We were using mindfulness as a treatment and our findings revealed that meditation can change the brain, can change behavior and can heal. It took me seven years after that to start practicing consistently, and I started my practice to treat my own anxiety. This is what inspires, motivates, guides and propels my work today.
RECLAMATION
“OUR WOUNDS ARE OFTEN THE OPENINGS INTO THE BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL PART OF US.”
The best way to learn from our anxiety is to be in inquiry with it through a meditation practice or through a creative practice. Both allow us to connect with our most inner-self, which is the self worth listening to. This is the path to knowing, seeing and loving the authentic self.
Authenticity is more readily accessible and available when radical presence is practiced. From my research, practice and personal experience, stress, anxiety, and ultimately depression occur and continue to exist when there is an absence of authenticity and self-expression. The practice can help to mitigate and reverse this.
DEEP LISTENING PRACTICE
At your meditation seat, try working with these prompts to investigate what your anxiety is revealing to you and how you may be able to make friends with it.
– Anxiety, where do I feel you inhabiting my body?
– What am I present to? What do I notice?
– What do I notice about my thoughts and feelings?
– Where can I create more space for ease in this chaos?
– How are you affecting my breath right now?
– Can I feel into what you might be telling me?
– Can I trust that I am safe and will be OK?
Making Friends with Our Shadow: Why Loving Ourselves Requires the Deep Work of Integration
Somewhere in our development, we have decided certain things about ourselves are bad or wrong. There's always another side. These very same things can protect us, guide us and keep us out of harm's way.
“Embracing our dark side gives us a new found freedom to be with the darkness in others. For when I can love all of me, I will love all of you.”
SHAD·OW
ˈSHadō/
noun
A dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to:
(1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or
(2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious.
In short, the shadow is the unknown side/ the "dark side."
I've been aware of my unknowns, my “darkness” from a very young age. I'm a Scorpio moon— it's no surprise, really. I have always felt things deeply. I cried a lot as a child and I cry a lot now. I feel things fully with my whole heart and my whole body. And I'm constantly learning to be OK with that.
While I've always believed that my joy is my sorrow, unmasked, I never saw this as a bad thing or a thing I would want to change about myself—self-expression and feeling things fully is my most highly valued currency.
Not everyone agreed.
For some, I was/ am “too much." Too sensitive, too emotional, too expressive, too opinionated, etc.
While Jung is known for establishing the concept of the shadow in modern day psychology and spirituality, this part of ourselves has long been recognized as a ubiquitous aspect of being human. Although the shadow is an innate part of our human existence, the vast majority of us are willfully unaware of its existence. We hide our negative qualities, not only from others but from ourselves. To do this we might judge, criticize and condemn others which is a projection of ourselves. We might even do this to ensure that the focus (our focus, their focus or anyone’s focus) does not fall on us, our own faults and mis-givings. We might go through life with a false sense of moral superiority and a belief that while others are problematic, we ourselves are wholly, better-than, virtuous and always right.
Because it is easier to reject, deny or ignore the least desirable aspects of our personality, the shadow can feel largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects which may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people who struggle with low self-esteem, anxieties, unworthiness, undeservingness and false beliefs). To know oneself, one must accept all parts of the self— even the negative, the shadow, and the wounded parts that need healing.
“In trying to express only those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us the acceptance of others, we suppress some of our most valuable and interesting features and sentence ourselves to a life of reenacting the same outworn scripts. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have relegated to the shadow is the most reliable path to actualizing all of our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes a divine map that—when properly read and followed—reconnects us to the life we were meant to live and the people we were meant to be.”
When most people are confronted with Shadow Work, they are also confronted with resistance. Shadow Work is an important way for us to confront our subconscious patterns. It's also a way for us to understand and tend to what parts of us might still need healing. And furthermore, Shadow Work allows us to integrate all of Who We Are.
Somewhere in our development, we have decided certain things about ourselves are bad or wrong. There's always another side. These very same things can protect us, guide us and keep us out of harm's way.
Repressed contents (emotions and experiences) do not merely disappear, but rather, they function independently of our conscious awareness. In other words, the shadow has the capacity to override our conscious ego and take possession of our being, showing up in our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The unconscious will that our shadow can exert also accounts for the self destructive behaviors so many individuals struggle with and are unable to control— despite consciously knowing they would be better off not engaging in them.
“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.”
It was maybe date three. I can't be quite sure. We were setting up our space to receive a sound bath. I turned to him and I said "I think I need to befriend my shadow."
He didn't ask me what I meant or why I was sharing that with him in that moment. He didn't look at me with a judgy face. He didn't give me a side eye or move further away from me. He looked at me with warm eyes and said kindly, "Let me know how I can support you in that."
This idea of “being friends with my shadow" required a level of self-acceptance that I hadn't yet been able to hold, nor articulate out loud before to another person. And certainly not a romantic partner. Why DID I tell him that?
In that moment I felt something come up with him that was my shadow— something from the past that was an old and untrue narrative. Something that in the past I would not have investigated in the moment, but rather try to bypass or cover up with a "cool girl" performance. But I felt safe with him and I wanted to make sure that those feelings were also safe.
I wanted to include this particular part of my personal work with someone who I was letting into my life; someone who was present and a witness to the things I was working towards integrating. It felt important to name. It was my declaration of honesty, authenticity, intimacy.
And the work has continued.
ABOUT LIGHT + DARKNESS
“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”
What might it mean to work with the dark, the unconscious and the unintegrated?
INQUIRY
We heal a little bit of our hearts each time we witness ourselves in our entirety.
We all must learn to love the hardest parts of ourselves back into softness.
What happens in the shadow?
What is underneath?
What needs integration?
What are we not talking about?
What are we afraid to feel?
“Sit with your friends; don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.
Surge like an ocean,
don’t scatter yourself like a storm.
Life’s waters flow from darkness.
Search the darkness, don’t run from it.
Night travelers are full of light,
and you are, too; don’t leave this companionship
Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,
don’t slip into the dirk like quicksilver.
The moon appears for night travelers,
be watchful when the moon is full.”