Anxiety is a constant lump in my chest; smooth, hard, shiny, and
solid like a big marble. This is how I visualise my anxiety during mindfulness.
When all the chaos and mixed emotions are cleared away and I am looking at
anxiety alone as a feeling it’s not as big as I think it is. Knowing this I
should be able to function out in the world just like everybody else, right?
I mean everybody gets stressed, everybody gets scared, you just
have to relax, and think about something else. It’s something everybody deals
with sometimes, what makes me so think I’m so different?
The distinction is, I don’t have a reprieve from my worries,
the back of my mind is always ticking over with concerns and things I should be
afraid of. For me mindfulness is not just a buzzword, it is a daily requirement
to be able to get out of bed. I know I’ve got to go to work and make money, however,
without mindfulness exercises I can’t even leave the house.
See, I know how small anxiety is inside my chest because I
look at it every day. I clear away the dirty emotion surrounding this one
little uncomfortable lump. My anxiety is only small but it attracts other
emotions to it like moths to a flame. What starts as a little black marble
becomes a swirling grey mass of pain, fear, anger, hopelessness, anguish,
anxiety about anxiety, paranoia, you get
the picture.
If I don’t clear away these other emotions I quickly become
incapacitated. My brain shuts down, my body follows. I go from an articulate,
some might say intelligent woman to a stuttering, stumbling mess, who cannot
remember even the simplest of her vocabulary.
Since I suffer Generalised Anxiety Disorder, that marble of
anxiety will always be there. Everything is potentially a catastrophe in my
world, if my husband doesn’t say I love you enough he doesn’t love me anymore.
If he says it too much then he must be guilty of something.
We went away for a day and a half on the weekend, I spent
most of the time imagining our house burning down, one of our cats dying,
someone breaking in, the highway flooding so we couldn’t get home for work even
the house flooding because we live close to the river. I don’t mean I thought
about these things and blew them off knowing I was being silly, these thoughts
in my head seemed so scary and real I could almost convince myself they had
already happened.
Of course, we came home and everything was fine. I prepared
to return to work Monday morning for the first time since my Hospitalisation.
Which just means Sunday night gave me a whole new set of concerns for my
anxiety to chew, like a dog with a bone.
Mindfulness is my saviour. Closing my eyes and breathing in
and out slowly ten times thinking of nothing but the air going in and out of my
lungs may seem rude to people around me, but checking out of the conversation
for a minute or two is better than hyperventilating and becoming a hysterical
mess in public.
I have piles of colouring books, rocks I touch for texture,
and guided mindful exercises on my phone. I walk mindfully, paying attention to
the things I see along the way. I even
have tricks for when I am in public. If you see me rubbing my left hand in
circles on my left thigh, you guessed it, I’m being mindful. All it means is I
am thinking about nothing but what I am doing, seeing, physically feeling. I am
bringing myself back from the edge of panic giving myself something to think
about besides the growing ball of messy emotions whirling inside my chest.
Now, I’m no mindfulness expert, but this is the way I
understand it. This is what helps me. I practice some form of mindfulness at
least 4 times a day. Most times it is a quick one or two-minute exercise, and at
least once a day I do a ten or twelve-minute exercise.
Mindfulness doesn’t always work but I am calmer and better
equipped for being out in the world as long as I remember to be truly mindful
and not just someone who can throw a trendy buzzword around.
What activities do you apply mindfulness to in your life?
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