Anxiety. This feeling is so present and discussed in our current society. Is it the same as fear? How does it differ from it? What can we do about it? Well, as Anna, let me share my own experience.
It’s fairly recently, when I discovered I actually experience quite a lot of anxiety in my life. After some months of therapy I started to realize that yes, there is a state of alert constantly switched on in my body. Gosh, even now as I'm writing these lines tears come to my eyes. It always took me a long long time to truly relax. Just a free evening wouldn't make that much of a difference. Maybe a full weekend free from news, Internet, work talks or any other stressful situation would do. This of course influences my emotions, my pains, my sexual life, well, pretty much everything. Through years I learned to deal with it in various ways, yet probably the most important step was to name it. To name anxiety as my own experience. And to name it in my own language - lęk. Although my therapy was in Polish, for quite some time I would use the English word, “anxiety”, to describe what I felt. I thought there is no good Polish equivalent. Well. There is. And to me it has a much stronger power once said out loud. Hearing it and accepting it as part of me was quite a journey. Then, I started to notice how it comes and how it differs from fear. For me personally fear lives in lower parts of my belly and comes with intensive feelings, often pain, in that area. Anxiety is more like a fog, overalls which stacks all around my body and influences how I perceive the world and react to it. It’s not necessarily connected to any particular situation (although obviously my mind tries to explain it, give it a meaning, find excuses). It just comes. And takes it all - my body, my emotions, my thoughts. I think to some extent it’s present all the time - in the form of alertness I mentioned above - but there are moments when it intensifies. The most difficult in many ways was the first time it came after I successfully finished my therapy convinced that that was it, I won. Well, I didn’t. But now I recognize it fast. I give it space. I know what is happening and can warn myself and the world around me about it. I still don’t understand it much, why does it come in certain situations and not in others? Why I experienced a strong anxiety during the one month preparation of the RIE - Spanish Gathering of ecovillages - when 50-60 people were present in our place all the time, but I haven’t (or I did, but to a much lower extend) experience it when participating in the GEN Gathering with 600 people in one place? Why can I be chilled and relaxed in small talks and informal situations one evening and another I enter and immediately leave, on the edge of panic attack? I don’t have answers. What I know, though, is that the first step is to stop blaming myself for anxiety, which immediately fires shame. Accepting that this is where I am now doesn’t take anxiety away, but I'm sure adding guilt or shame doesn’t help either. What helps me is to communicate my stage to others, especially those I live with. I’m able to tell it to Andrea, I’m still struggling to share it with the community. My belief of having to be strong and independent and dealing myself with my own troubles is still ridiculously strong. And the one of not taking people’s space - which obviously comes also with not asking for help - is also very present. Sounds familiar? Well, not a very successful strategy. But I try to accept even this. If the change comes, it comes from acceptance, not from shame. If you share the same feeling just remember you don’t have to deal with it alone. Strong anxiety, and surely shame, may need a professional support. And it’s ok to go for it. It’s not your fault. It’s your nervous system which is trying to protect you, even if it seems like a weird way. This can be changed. Or at least made easier to live with.
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