What if the anxiety you feel is a GIFT instead of a burden?
Last year I basically peeled an entire layer (100 layers?!) of myself away and discovered I am not who I thought I was. In a good way! I found I had been living in a constant state of control, rigidity, perfectionism, and just trying really damn hard to be EVERYTHING to EVERYONE, except for myself. I discovered by body has been telling me for a long time that things weren’t right, but I pushed that down and down until it had nowhere to go but out via an overnight in the hospital.
I truly believe our bodies tell us in so many ways that something isn’t right. Do you ever have physical symptoms that pop up only when certain things are going on? I have neck and back pain, plus anxiety that manifests through vertigo and nausea and an inability to take a deep breath. I can also look back and pinpoint certain times in my life where my body was screaming at me to pay attention, but I just wrote it off.
Now I have been listening to what my body is telling me. Because it is a gift! She tells me to slow down, give myself grace, to lower the bar on the perfectionism and control aspects of my personality. It’s hard, though, because often when I experience these physical symptoms that tell me something is wrong with my interior, it isn’t convenient.
I’m learning to honor that more. To listen to what my body is saying, To take deep breaths, to take a walk, to not rush through the yuck and just say, “hey, I am overwhelmed/anxious/scared.frustrated.” It’s okay to feel these things and to sit with them a bit. They will pass, maybe not in a day or a couple of hours like I want, but they do pass. I take a walk and choose the next thing that will feel good, and then the next, until it passes. Sometimes you just have to sit with the unease and anxiety and not resist it. I resisted it for so long until it exploded out of me, and let me say, it is better to feel it for a couple for days here and there. There is no “fixing it,” but I can feel it and then patiently wait until it feels better.
What is something you struggle with that you can consider a gift? What is it teaching you?
