I’ve had some muscle tension lately. There’s this spot on my back that loyally starts hurting when my mind’s too heavy. Sometimes I just get pain out of being ruthless, others by stretching too hard, but this is really the signature pain of worries.
Then there has been rumination about taxes and things to do. I have some overload recently, so I’d justify some, but I clearly recognize the pattern of solving-only-to-find-new-worries-and-start-over. So it’s not problems that seek a solution, but the mind that looks for things to grasp on.
Then there’s friends who point out I’m more reactive, more solution-driven (that kind of solution-driven that doesn’t efficiently provide any, but needs to fix), I look more anxious.
I used to be an anxious person, I fulfilled many or all the criteria. I am and will always be a mentally active person: I am creative, but I’m also erratic. So circling back to periods where I can soothe less, and some bubbles of over-activation come up to the surface doesn’t shock me nor discourage me. I have a map of me now, I know how signals work: they want to be listened to. So I pick some of the free time I have to investigate:
Anxiety, what are you telling me?
Haven’t we already discussed the precarious, fluctuating, lively condition of being? Why reiterating it, when I thought I passed the test? Didn’t we find an agreement?
My friend — yes, it took a long time to call you that —, I know the drill. I know the just-one-more-problem-and-then-I’ll-relax paradigm. I know it’s a trap, I know how to be solution-oriented without being stuck in needing problems to solve. I know there’s no final stability to be found, no comfortable enough sofa to spend my whole life on without needing to get up again for a glass of water or closing the window. I know I can find solace not just in sofa-sitting but also in glass-grabbing. I know life is moving. Moving and sitting and being in the action you’re currently doing. I know you, my dear friend, lie to me by telling me I can only sit if I’m prepared to get up, and only move with the thought of sitting again. I know. Isn’t knowing enough? No. And I also know this, by now.
Then, what are you telling me? What is not working, what needs attention? Am I doing too much? Perhaps. But some periods you need to. Am I divided between me and me? Surely, but the selves are not always partners, sometimes they’re just housemates. Could you clean the dishes before putting them in the sink? Could you dial down the music when it’s late? It’s a need for coexistence that can’t always be smooth. Is it that the world and the future look scary? Yeah, no way to deny that.
The more I engage in a dialogue with you, the more I understand. You are telling me something new: I need you to remind me the real crazy, sometimes, is being chill.
I’ll go back to — and I am already, as I talk to myself and you — staying in, with, on things. To be just present here where I am. But I also need this reminder of the otherness, the unlivability of some lives, of some places, of some conditions, and I needed to listen to the fact that there’s not just beautiful projects, and staircases to heavens, and healing words, and mind blowing epiphanies.
That hopelessness and worry can, and must, find a spot in our lives. That we heal for two reasons: to stop suffering and to make space for the darkness.
(Disclaimer: the anxiety I refer to here is not the clinical anxiety that makes living painful. I know that one, I respect its burden, and I work to take it very seriously in my job and in my life, to heal it. That is not a healthy reminder, that is a terrible and scary baggage that has no virtuous role in our life except for making us look where it hurts. The anxiety I talk about here is a discreet, integrated, respectful companion that some people decide not to eradicate completely because they know what role it has in their lives.
If you suffer, and worry to a point that impacts your whole life, seek help.)
Empatherapy 