“Hard times require furious dancing." ~ Alice Walker
Anxiety has been my companion for about as long as I can remember.* It doesn’t matter what’s going on – a mistake in my work, a bump in a relationship, a party I’m planning, an unprecedented presidential election – whatever it is, I get anxious about it.
My anxiety feels like one big messy thought spin cycle.
Anxiety, as Jud Brewer points out is different from fear. In the Happier blog this week, he writes:
in contrast to fear, which is an instantaneous response that originates from very old parts of the brain (evolutionarily speaking), anxiety affects the prefrontal cortex, or PFC, a newer part of the brain that helps us to think and plan for the future. The PFC works well when there’s enough information to make a good prediction, but when information is lacking, our PFC can spin out endless versions of what might happen and what you should do. Eventually, the PFC might shut down entirely, creating the conditions for panic.
And these days, information is lacking like crazy. There are pundits, polls and predictions but who are we kidding? We all know that nobody really knows what’s going to happen in the next few minutes, let alone the next few weeks, months or years. Everything feels like a bonkers, bananas mess.
Which creates for many of us, an internal landscape rife with anxiety.
One helpful approach is to look at the thoughts, emotions and behaviors that sprout from anxiety. Dr. Luana Marques, clinical psychologist and researcher at Harvard, invites us to ask, “Okay, what thoughts am I thinking? How do they make me feel? What do they make me do?"
For me, just asking these questions is huge since when I’m caught in the anxiety spin, I forget that my thoughts, emotions and habits around them are all real but they don’t necessarily reflect reality. That is, it’s true and real that I’m thinking and feeling what I am but very often they are not based on what is actually happening right now (aka reality).
So yes, looking at anxiety as a habit, as something we can build a different relationship with is helpful. To look objectively at what I’m thinking, how those thoughts feel and what behaviors they fuel, is a way of disentangling myself and at least slowing down the spin.
And yet, these days things feel particularly chaotic, unsettled and frightening. The world is turned up to 11.
And in times like these, my years of teaching have shown me three other things help shift anxiety: movement, community and action.
1. Movement
Anxious thoughts, feelings and actions all show up in my body as tension. My stomach grips, my shoulders freeze, my chest tightens. So any kind of movement – ANY KIND – helps release that tension. Shaking or bouncing works great, but so do walking or yoga or smashing the bejeezus out of a pickleball. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be formal. And you don’t have to do it for long. When anxiety clamps down, take a breath and move yourself any way you can.
2. Community
Anxiety makes me feel alone. When I’m anxious, I tend to fold in on myself (even more so if there is some depression woven in there – and that’s a post for another day). I tend to think I’m the only one panicking at the headlines, obsessing about the mistakes I made, worrying about the weather. Connecting with other people can soften the edges of my pointy black crow of anxiety. Either in real life or on the phone/Zoom (texts and writing are good, too, but I find that the humanity of in-person or voice-to-voice works best), even one other person, even a stranger on the walking trail or in the check-out line, reminds me that I really am not alone.
3. Action
Campaigns will tell you that canvassing, phone banking and other volunteering are actions that will soften your anxiety. I’m all for putting your own elbow grease into causes that you care about (I’m surprised to tell you that I enjoy phone banking more than I expected and have a whole set of blue markers for post card writing). These aren’t the only actions I mean, though. Weeding your garden, making a meal for yourself and/or others, holding the door for a stranger, saying hello to someone who looks like they are having a grim day are all actions that can ease – even for a few moments – my anxious spinning self. **
Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön teaches that “things are as bad and as good as they seem. There's no need to add anything extra.”
My anxiety is “extra.” Finding ways to develop a different relationship with it both internally (thoughts, feelings & behaviors/habits) and externally (movement, community & action) is a way of shedding the extra and being with everything as it is.
* When I was about 11, my sweet Mum gave me a Worry Stone, a smooth, flat, pink stone with a divot for your thumb to rub. I carried it in my pocket for a long time, until I broke it in half from rubbing it so much. That, friends, is some worry.
** And if you’re looking for a way to do all three, join us for
Move for Kamala: A Fundraiser for Harris/Walz on Saturday, Sept 28 from 3-6pm at *** NEW LOCATION *** the Charlottesville Jazzercise Studio in Downtown Charlottesville behind Cville Coffee. In addition to three different kinds of movement (salsa, dance cardio & Nourishing Movement), there will be snacks and art and other goodness to enjoy. Come play all afternoon, come hang out and eat cupcakes, come with friends or come to make a new friend. Just come. No movement experience needed. All bodies welcome.
Facebook ~ Move for Kamala: A Fundraiser for Harris/Walz in 3 Movements
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