Anxiety is a Bitch

I continue to struggle with anxiety.  There's an irony to that as it relates to my last blog.  In doing my Headspace meditation for anxiety, the concept of identifying the feeling and noting it recently was added to my process.  My daughter had warned me that this might be too much to add on to the meditative process.  I think that I understand why.  The feeling that kept coming into my head was fear. What am I afraid of?  It is definitely ironic that I just related my inability to run a faster 5K despite what appears to be adequate training to the fear of pushing hard enough.  When we're afraid, we certainly try to avoid that fear.  We try to find other outlets.  We try to avoid the fear.

My typical approach to identifying the things that are bothering me, the things that bring about my anxiety, are to dream about them. My wife asked me if I write these things down.  I said sometimes, but in fact, it's rare, except the occasions that I blog about them.  Writing them down is an important technique, and something that I need to practice.  When the anxiety provoking thoughts and feelings find their way to the surface, they need to be captured, so that they can ultimately be dealt with. Instead, letting them sink back into the subconscious is certainly not an effective way of dealing with them.

The subconscious. That's where all of these anxiety provoking feelings hide.  It's why, at times, I can feel the swell of panic rising in my chest for no reason.  Not because something has happened, thought it might have, that triggered that specific emotion.  In fact, it's usually because the volume of stuff floating about in my subconscious has just gotten too big. That's when I feel unsettled.  In those meditative moment that I can note the feeling, perhaps I can identify where it came from.  Then, and only then, can I address it, deal with it.  Anxiety is a bitch, but anything can be.  If we ignore it, it doesn't go away.  We have to deal with it.