MEET MR. ANXIETY

Draft Version 1.1 | December 22, 2011

© 2011 Howard McQueen

I’ve struggled with three bouts of anxiety this past week, after having a relatively anxiety free three months.

When I speak of bouts-of-anxiety, I mean that I feel dramatically depressed. 

I withdraw.

I want to go hide.

I don’t want to be bothered.

I don’t feel like I have any confidence to face the world.

I am learning that the prelude to anxiety, feeling anxious, is a recognizable early warning sign.  When I recognize it, I become alert to how easy it is for me to loose my ability to remain anchored in the present moment and centered in my body.

Anxiety, for me, is a numbing-down of my body and my mind.  My rational mind is distracted out of the present moment and drawn into an old, well played out pattern.

This pattern has physical, emotional and mental components, making it a “believable” substitute for what is really going on.  Here is the enticement each component offers to seduce me away from what is real:

Physical: The gut of my stomach feels tense and my stomach churns and becomes painfully sore.

Emotional: I becomes confused and stop feeling my real emotions and just seem to become stuck in numbing uneasiness.  There is a sense of dread, a sort of paranoia that everything has become and will continue to become very unsafe.

Mental: I inwardly focus on the pain in my stomach (which is real) and the numbness damps down my senses and my perspectives on the outside world.  I begin to think (and believe) that I am incapable of responding to whatever challenges will be presented, especially if (and when) they become increasingly risky and threatening.

As a result of buying into this alternative reality of anxiousness, I will withdraw into myself and not want anyone to bother me.  I will begin acting brittle and if my wife asks any questions which disturb me, I will eventually snap at her like a petulant, rebellious and disrespectful fourteen year old.

My behavior makes others feel unsafe and not want to be around me.  I hold as important goals in my life’s work to become increasingly intimate with myself and others and to bring into the world an expanding and deepening sense of community and sharing and a sense of gusto and celebration.

With some hard love and compassion from my wife and my men’s group, I’ve learned more about what goes on inside me to allow this anxiety to bloom and create separation within me and with those I love.

Anxiousness (pre-anxiety) is an early warning sign.  More in this shortly.

Anxiety (the numbness) is a result of some inner tapes running within me, reminding me of prior experiences when I was overwhelmed.  When I translate the messages into words these are powerful blame and shame statements, which repeat, over and over

            You are Overwhelmed!

            You won’t be able to measure up!

            You can’t finish anything!

            You’re stupid!

            You’ll fuck it up!

My numbness stems from being confused and therefore unaware that these messages have been actively running (perhaps for a few minutes, or less) and are being seriously believed by my lower-level awareness.  My rational mind had yet to arrive on the scene and begin to dispel these beliefs.

My return to health (and my current secure reality) is to first confront these messages and recover my presence.  I as I do this, I can quickly challenge these lower-level beliefs and dispel them as untrue in my current external reality.   I do this by making conscious acknowledgements inwardly, sometimes outwardly to my wife and friends.

            I am not dumb or stupid

            I am capable

            I do finish things

            I’ve created a wonderful existence, where nothing in my life is threatening

I then am freed of the numbness and can feel my real emotions, which are shame, fear and a sense of being powerless (to the point of feeling paralyzed).  By reconnecting to my real emotions, it is like they come out of an anesthetic fog and back into the warmth of sunshine.  My emotions fill up with confidence and my anxiety dissolves.

By the way, while I am in the state of anxiety, I have used the words “my anxiety” in a way that feels like I am on a first name kind-of-friendship with Mr. Anxiety.  Hmmmm.

I am remembering the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, in which the main character’s mind invents then invests in several fictional characters that keep him company in college.  He then believes them to be completely real and follows them into a fictional world, leaving his wife and real world without any of his presence.  He becomes obsessed to the point of being hospitalized.  His path back toward’s health and relationship is to confront his mind-made characters with compassion and conviction and advise them that he will henceforth no longer be conversing with them and will be ignoring them.

Like the main character in the movie, I need only bring my awareness to my anxiousness (before it blooms into anxiety), so that when the tapes first begin to play, I can say “Hello old acquaintance, I won’t be buying into your fiction any longer.  I’ll be ignoring you now and every time you start playing your tapes.  You no longer hold any fascination or power over me.”

Acknowledging our past pain and trauma

Once upon a time

  and on several other times

  In my childhood and youth

  I was caught in the web of surprise

  and overwhelmed

  and felt so very vulnerable and scared.

Not knowing what to do,

  I stored my pain and fear into my stomach

  then escaped into my mind.

As I grew past puberty

  I learned new strategies to try to cover over my fear:

     I could be invisible and hide

     I could be proactively angry and try to intimidate

     I could just be any combination of passive-aggressive

      reactivity to externalize my anxiety.

Until I begin to realize that the wounds of my past, are like the experiences we’ve all had.  These wounds I’ve been incubating and harboring will keep returning,

Not to haunt me in a malicious way,

  but to give me the opportunity

  to call upon my awareness

  and shine the spotlight

  on the inner machinery manufacturing all the judgments and lies.

It is the healing, not haunting

  that keeps calling for my loving attention.

Ahhh. 

To be kind and compassionate under stress

  is to see our stress for what it is:

  - Sometimes an opportunity to grow-up

  - Sometimes an opportunity to man-up

  - And sometimes an opportunity to just stand up and

    dispel the inner lying machinery

    we’ve spent so many years powering up.