For the past week or so, I have had that song Take Away My Anxiety by the Black Eyed Peas running like a soundtrack in the back of my mind. Perhaps consider playing it while you read these meandering thoughts about anxiety. You know, to really set the tone. 

I didn’t know what it was until college, but I have experienced anxiety off and on for my entire life and had a bit of a rough patch with it recently. This rough patch was different than previous ones, though, in that I discovered I am starting to observe the anxiety as well as feel it. Although I keep humming about taking away the anxiety, I know that what I really want is to make peace with it. 

Through what I believe is a bit of serendipity I have been reading a book called First We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson. In this book, Sarah shares her experience with life-long anxiety, among other pretty major health challenges, and how she has learned to accept this “beast” as part of her. It is one of those books that has useful tidbits on every other page, pages bookmarked endlessly for things I want to come back to, and if I hadn’t promised to loan it to a friend I would probably start right at the beginning as soon as I read the last page. All this to say, while I have been reading this book I have felt like shouting from the rooftops to everyone who has ever experienced anxiety, or experienced someone who experiences anxiety that they should read it. I wish I was Oprah… you get a book, and YOU get a book! 

I didn’t know I was ever ashamed of feeling anxious, but it dawned on me recently that I have typically viewed it as my ‘burden’ or the thing that I ‘suffer’ from or ‘have to deal’ with.  This viewpoint shifted while I’ve been reading this book.  Now it feels more like something I experience, that is just a part of me, and I truly don’t believe that I am suffering. 

To get to this point has not been simple or easy. There has been a lot of exploration to discover where these feelings come from and to learn what to do with them when they come up. And by no means is this exploration over - I may have peeled back just the first layer. Thinking about how I pulled back this layer has helped me recognize the ways in which I have learned to start making peace with these feelings and the ways in which I manage them and cope. And I feel inclined to share those here because I feel strongly that mental health is something that would be much better handled if we all just TALKED about it, instead of whispering about it at therapy and feeling ashamed to feel anything less than awesome. 

Here are some tactics that I find helpful when I am feeling my most anxious:

Checking in- Like Frankie says, checking in with Joann, my subconscious. (Anyone else been Netflix binging Grace & Frankie for the third time, or just me??) Going inward and acknowledging the feelings for myself, which sometimes means following the anxious thoughts all the way through, instead of resisting them and trying to run the other way. 

This looks something like this: “I’m worried that X.” Instead of battling to steer my thoughts AWAY from X, I try gently going straight towards it, “Ok, if X happens, then what? Will I survive that outcome? Will I die? Probably not, so that’s probably ok” …more or less. It makes it less scary when I think it through and discover that the outcome I’m so fervently guarding against may not be the end of the world. Sometimes I do this in meditation*, although, when I’m really feeling anxious, meditation can feel overwhelming. So, instead, sometimes I find ways to check in while I am on a walk or with someone else nearby to talk through it with me. Which leads right into the next tool: 

Saying it out loud - expressing it to someone and having external acknowledgment is also helpful. Having a particular person(s) I can tell and know that they really hear me, but don’t feel a need to solve it starts to normalize it. It makes it feel less shameful or taboo and more matter of fact. As in, this is how I feel today. I also ate a sandwich. It’s just part of the day, it doesn’t have to take over my world. 

Tethers & Guides - therapy is serving as both for me currently. Someone to sit in it with me, explore it, and to pull me back out when needed. Sometimes just knowing that someone is there in that supportive role even means that I don’t need it. But boy, they’re amazingly helpful when I do. And sometimes these tethers are simply people I love who love me back and don’t run away when things get weird.

Distractions:  In the height of the overwhelm, I often give myself the option of distraction. My favorite one is listening to the Harry Potter books on audible (which I highly recommend anyway, they are great books and the guy who reads them is top notch). When I’m feeling anxious, It sometimes feels like I have multiple channels running in my head, but if I can occupy just one of them with Harry Potter, it calms me down enough to be able to function otherwise. It’s not sustainable long term, but it is incredibly useful when something flares up and feels like too much to feel all at once. 

There are many other useful, healthy distractions I’ve discovered: getting out for a walk with one of my roommates, going for an ocean swim with a new group of people, playing music, cooking and sharing meals, or even reading a book about someone else’s anxiety. Most of these are not distractions to the extent that I am not going to deal with the anxiety, they are ways of keeping myself occupied and moving so that I don’t have to deal with ALL of it right this minute. This gives me space and permission to face it and feel it in digestible pieces and on my own terms, to some degree. 

 Identifying more specific feelings- in other words, not letting myself lump all uncomfortable feelings into the ‘anxiety’ category. Instead, I try to recognize, “I’m feeling sad because...” I’m feeling disappointed, overwhelmed, frustrated, uncertain, nervous...being specific, and for me, expressing the specifics, helps take away some of the mystery. I think anxiety feels amplified by its mysterious quality and wading into the mystery to deduce more specific feelings reduces its power.

*Meditation really is quite amazing. It is possibly the only practice I have found to be unanimously encouraged across every discipline, culture, etc. I find it most helpful when I make it part of my routine (to the small extent that I have one). It is not effective for me while my anxiety is at its peak. When I’m in that state it can be incredibly overwhelming. It is more effective as an ongoing tool to help stabilize my baseline. And breathing goes hand in hand with meditation in my opinion. Breathing is great. I highly recommend it, always. It can also be a starting point of something to focus on when anxiety starts to overwhelm, as well as a physiological tool to help calm the nervous system. 

Earlier this year I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson and two concepts really stuck with me. 

1. The idea of Radical Responsibility. In this case, I feel that it is my radical responsibility to accept that anxiety is part of me and does not get to rule me. It is my body and mind’s way of communicating with me and it leads me towards lessons that I don’t think I would encounter otherwise. 

2. The next great adventure is to dive deeper, rather than continuing to chase new experiences. This one is relevant in about 6 different ways for me, but here I am choosing to use it to explore more deeply the origins of my personal anxieties with the help of several trusted resources and people nearby. It has given me the courage to face these feelings head on and learn how to Make The Beast Beautiful.

I hope that anyone who reads this might feel comfort in knowing they are not alone in feeling uncomfortable in the ways that I have gained comfort reading it from someone else. I hope that with transparency and vulnerability in talking about mental health we will be able to foster more conversations, understanding, and ultimately make peace with our beasts.