Anxiety spiral pt. 3

Hi again, following up on anxiety spiral pt. 1 and 2 to say that my fourteen-year old is now with me a lot of the time. Whenever I feel anxious, I check in with her, ask her how she’s doing, hug her, make her a hot chocolate. There is a lot of grieving involved as I am realising how difficult life was for her and how lonely she actually felt. I have managed to be kinder towards my anxiety (although I still sometimes get annoyed by it because it just costs so much energy and often time), also because I have learned from my former therapist that anxiety is just energy with nowhere to go, that there is always some other feeling underneath it that’s not being given the space and care it wants. I am regularly practicing somatic release, just letting my body shake things out, and it is helping, but I do sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t just take a break, give myself some time to just be as I am right now and not constantly work on myself. I used to always be super busy to avoid feeling my feelings and now just resting, not doing anything, feels very scary and unsafe, like there will be some bomb going off somewhere at any moment. Do you have any thoughts on this? Thank you.

 

Answer:

I think that is a brilliant idea and here is why. When athletes are in training, there is always a plateau week. During this week (something like week 4 of a training regimen), they have weeks where they let their bodies acclimate, and take time to basically honor all that they’ve done to get to this new level. It’s not time off, but it is like a recovery period – they are still training, but with less intensity. It is possible that both your brain and your body are ready for a recovery period from the emotional growth work you’ve been doing. A time to say, “Thank you.” A time to celebrate. A time to rest.
It makes sense that you feel unsafe and scared if you think, “A bomb could go off at any moment.” Of course you feel this way. Let’s say for now that the result you’d like to create for yourself is to feel safe and okay with deciding to rest. What do you think you’d need to do to lean into the idea that it’s safe and okay for you to rest? What feeling would inspire you to take those actions? What thoughts would create this feeling for you? I’d like for you to keep the idea of the minimum baseline with you as you think of what you’d need to do to create this result. You don’t have to be giving 100% (or 90% or even 80%) all the time to see a change. Come back when you’ve worked through this with part 4. You’re doing great work. We’re here to support you with what you need.