Facing the Fear of Fear

Fear is a natural response. The question is, What do you do with it? It's an energy that's also a kind of fuel. You can decide to use it--but for a lot of people, it stops them at the threshold. Because it's so powerful. - Susan Casey

For those of you who know me remarkably well (or for those of you who have been in a room with me when my energy was restless and fidgety and your tools of perception were highly tuned), you will know that I struggle from time to time with pretty intense anxiety. It started off as depression when I was 26, vanished, and then returned as anxiety after the birth of my daughter in 2007.

Anxiety is a fickle friend. It will literally vanish for months and months at a time only to resurface for what seems to be no reason; maybe I didn't get a good night's sleep one night and then, for months afterward, my heart will race and skip, my thoughts will run and my breath will be shallow and I will think that I am dying. Every day. Every day I will worry that I am dying and that I will collapse on the floor and my daughter will be left alone with no one to help her.

See, anxious.

You would think that the simple recognition of how unreasonable these thoughts are would result in a lessening of these fears. You would be wrong. Logic doesn't work on anxious thoughts. Not on mine anyway. Time works. Time passes and eventually my mind calms down, my heart and body follow and things seem good again. This usually coincides with the return of the sun and warm weather in March or April. Again, you would think that the recognition of the fact that the winter brings on the anxious thoughts would help to temper them but, no, it doesn't.

The one tool I have at my active disposal that consistently cuts through the frenetic waves is meditation. It doesn't alleviate the weird palpitations. It doesn't alleviate the fatigue. It does, however, keep me from believing that those feelings are permanent, that anything is fixed or immovable. It takes me outside the limits of my body to feel the extension of energy beyond my fingers, my toes, my scalp.

As I cycle through these feelings once again, I'm trying to take a different path with my thoughts. I'm trying to feel as if my feeling this anxiety can help to take these feelings away from someone else. I'm trying to awaken compassion for those who struggle with similar feelings instead of feeling sorry for myself. I'm trying and sometimes succeeding.

And sometimes a glass of wine helps too.