You’re waking each morning in a state of angst. Your heart is racing, the bed sheets are tossed and rumpled, and you feel sweaty and slack. Something is wrong; very wrong.
Before you swing your legs out of bed and begin your day, you stay lying down and take a moment to analyse your life.
“What is going on with me?” you ask yourself, “I’ve been feeling this way for weeks!?”
Your start to scan your life, thinking of everything that could be making you feel this way.
Am I not eating right?
Am I not working on my chakras enough?
Am I not paying enough attention to my business or to my creativity? Or do I have a problem in my relationship? Or is it, perhaps, my children?
Your mind is racing. You’re trying to think of everything.
You’re going through every aspect of your life, looking at them from all possible angles. You’re analysing the details, ruminating over your choices, pondering whether you should or shouldn’t have, whether you could have done more, given more, been more.
Whether everything you are doing is enough, or whether it isn’t …
Your mind is unstoppable now. You’re on a fast train bound for confusing and meltdown. All because you’re trying to figure out why you feel anxiety in the mornings.
All because you can’t work out what is wrong with you.
Heart is pounding. Head is thumping. Sick and cramping feeling in your stomach …
Then it hits you. Smack bang. The dreadful thought:
Could it be that something bad is about to happen? Is this a sign that 2018 will be a difficult year, more difficult than 2017? Oh goodness! Is my intuition trying to tell me, warn me of something? If yes, what!?
Now you’re hyperventilating. Your angst has sky rocketed and become terror.
What if there is something dreadfully, seriously wrong with me? And what if, I can’t work out what it is?
Your body and mind are in lockdown. You can barely breathe; you’re frozen in terror. And the truth—it’s been half an hour and you’re no closer to an answer, and you feel worse than when you woke!
You’re spiralling downwards into panic, confusion, and despair … A cycle of depression and negativity you know well, but loathe …
Oh, why does it all have to be so hard!!
You feel doomed and so does your life …
Suddenly, for some reason, you remember something you read weeks ago. A blog or article about mindfulness and how “sitting” with your feelings instead of analysing them can illuminate what is truly causing your anxiety. This thought somehow breaks through the panic in your mind.
Oh yes, I remember! What is it that I need to do, though?
Then you remember some more: how your mind isn’t emotionally intelligent but your body is and that you need to find the source for your anxiety in your body not in your mind.
Ok. Ok. Go to the body. Go to the body.
Then you remember even more: how you need to focus on a part of your body—your chest, hand, leg, etc.—so the mind has something to focus on, because the mind is an eager task-master and needs something to do.
Ok. Ok. Yes, I remember. Pick a body part and give the mind something to focus on.
So you bring your attention to your chest and begin to breathe deeply and gently, all the while holding your awareness on your chest region.
This doesn’t feel comfortable—your chest area feels constricted and tight. It feels sore and sensitive, but you do it nonetheless. And with all of your might and focus you hold your awareness on your chest area, because you also remember reading that the mind will want to jump away, that your thoughts will take your away from your body, so you need to be diligent in your focus.
Breathe. Breathe. And with all the focus I can muster, hold my awareness on my chest region.
This you do. For some minutes.
And the results are nothing short of miraculous.
Although your mind kept wanting to jump away from your focus on your chest, you held it there. And as you held your focus there, and continued to do so, the “fight” and anxiety in your mind became less and less.
Soon the panic and mental fog had lifted and you felt calm and clear. It did take some time for the pain and pressure in your chest to abate, but the more you kept your awareness on your chest—the more you felt into your body and ignored your mind—the better and better and clearer and clearer you felt.
Then, as you keep your awareness on your chest and feel into your body:
After 5 minutes the “sick” feeling in your stomach completely leaves.
After 8 minutes the anxiety leaves.
After 11 minutes you feel completely clean, clear, and ready to start your day.
You sit up, swing your legs out of bed, and as your feet hit the floor you’re suddenly aware of why you have been feeling panic in the mornings:
Christmas is next week and you’re worried about seeing your mother for the first time in 5 years.
Oh, yes! That’s it! So true! That’s what I’ve been worried about all along!!
We’ll now that I know this, if the panic comes back and I start to get worried again, I just feel into it until it diminishes. And later today I’II spend some time thinking—Oops! I mean “feeling into”—my anxiety about meeting Mum. Last time we spoke it didn’t end well, but I want things to change. Yes, I really do. And I’m sure Mum doesn’t want it to be hostile between us, too. I don’t think I need to be anxious about this; being anxious is a waste of time. I need to change it.
As you walk out of your bedroom and towards the kitchen, you’re thinking, “Yep! I can handle this, and all other bad feelings that might come my way!
You are beginning your day feeling on top of the world.
with love,
Belinda
