Being with Anxiety

I was really good at problem solving. I was awesome at being able to see issues as they arose and manage them. It was one of my strengths that led me to being successful in my last project. I worked 60/70/80 hour weeks to be on top of everything I could be. I felt stress, worry, nervousness, adrenaline, passion, excitement, fear, despair and others; very intensely at times, and sometimes at the detriment of other things in my life.

That project finished last year. And those feelings were supposed to go. I was going to travel care free, and with a huge weight lifted off my shoulder; I made it. Instead they have stayed. I still feel those things. The context has changed, but the patterns are the same. Different triggers but the same response.

I thought that by managing the trigger, fixing the problem, facing the threat, saving the day, I would feel healthy. It never changed. The triggers always came. I acted in the same way, the same pattern. I felt the same.

I now recognise anxiety. Having a passenger that sits with me and controls one of the futures that I contemplate. That future, anxieties' future, is always bleak and apocalyptic and so so painful. The worst possible world, presented to me as my fate with dolby surround sound.

I have learnt what "to be with" means. Sitting with these worlds. Stopping and holding back the parts of me that want to run and make safe my future by managing whatever trigger has stuck in my side. Recognising anxiety being with me, not being me.

I have calm and strong resolve. I just be with it. I let it show me its, my, nightmares. I hold down sick. I accept it.

Recognising anxiety being with me is not anxiety being me.

I bite down bile and the acid subsides. The idea of that future becomes less intense, less scary, less real. Anxiety is still there, but quieter. I see the world opening up again. I see the space between me and my emotions. I feel sovereign.

I walk with it. Each step a trial. Closer to being.