The Part of Healing They Don’t Talk About

The last few weeks I’ve noticed an increase in my anxiety and a decrease in the length of my nails. It finally ramped up to the point where I couldn’t sleep for 2-3 nights, my dreams becoming wild hallucinations of anxiety ridden scenarios, me overplaying them in my head time and time again. I must admit, I’m thankful that up until this point I’ve never truly felt the impact of anxiety because this has been an incredibly wild ride and for those that have been experiencing it this way their whole lives, I commend you.

I firmly believe that even if I had experienced anxiety in the past, I had numbed myself to most of my feelings so I never noticed when it would creep up, thus causing coping behaviors I was unaware of. The part of healing that they don’t talk about, however, is that when you learn to feel your feelings, you learn to feel them all in a very BIG way. It’s wild to think that I probably had felt it that big before, but I just wasn’t aware of it. The other side of the coin, however, is that the same efforts that caused me to feel more, are also the efforts that caused me to heal more. I now have to tools to ride the waves of anxiety and deep breathe my through the experience. Previously, I would have felt it and distracted by eating to numb it, shopping to numb it (I also noticed my desire to do this!), or working to numb it. Now, I am sitting in the discomfort of my anxiety, attempting to assign it colors and textures so that I can conjur up other colors and textures that soothe the sharp edges. I’m doing 4X4 box breathing and attempting to tap my way through the feelings that create the thoughts that create the feelings that create the thoughts, etc.

The part of this that makes it frustrating as someone dedicated to the art of self awareness is that it makes me feel like I am going backwards. They aren’t kidding when they say that it’s so much happier to be ignorant because it’s true. I know consciously I am not going backwards because that isn’t possible, however, it feels like a lot of the work I’ve put into self growth has really only led me to more discomfort. At first this can feel defeating, but the longer I am in this space, the more I am reminded that I know how to move through it because I’ve learned how to create safety within myself - something I wasn’t capable of before. While the sharp pointed orange cones of anxiety radiate through my chest, I’m able to envision a fluid teal & lavender iridescent liquid calming the intensity before the wave hits again. In between the waves, I now reach out to the people I love the most, confiding in them about the experience my body and brain are going through so that I can be assured that I’m not crazy and to be provided with suggestions and solutions to ride it out. I also ask myself “When was the last time I felt this? What else has happened around this time of year? What patterns can I notice?” and I was able to trace this recent experience to the trauma of both my Mom & Dad going through their processes to become diagnosed with cancer and tumours. While my Mom made it through, my Dad’s decline was steep and it was evident in March. Now that I am finally facing the experiences of what I went through when Dad was in the hospital in my next book Homecoming, my brain is encouraging me to move through the difficult emotions that I pushed down 17 years ago. This has been the undercurrent anxiety for the month of February, now tie that in with an upcoming trip, a packed schedule of course creation, and of course, the scenes of an ongoing genocide in Gaza and all of the other world upheavals. It’s too much.

So, now I get to decide how I want to move forward. While I am in the process of putting out the anxious fires, eventually they will stop until they rear up again, so I like to be prepared and use that as a sign to take action. Here’s a few ways that I plan on relaxing this nervous system:

1. 1 week/month off social media (I’m taking the month of March off completely)

2. Reduced caffeine

3. Daily meditation & breathing

4. Increased movement + water

5. Increased time in nature + heat

6. Prescribed laughing & crying

Other than that, I will ride the wave, becoming a skilled surfer over time. If it continues to be persistent as I track it and become aware of the catalysts that cause it to flare up, I can make tweaks and adjustments, potentially even consider medication if it’s required to get me through - something I never thought I would say. While I’m not 100% sure what’s increased my anxiety as high as it is, the reality is is that it’s happening and I have to learn to manage and move through it at the moment. I’m thankful for the skills I’ve learned and the growth I’ve endured in order to be able to stay relatively calm while experiencing a relatively uncomfortable thing. I will continue to heal and therefore I will continue to feel, letting it lead me to answers instead of to coping.