persistantly, palpitating, pulsing panic

driftwood confusion

This is the intro to a workshop I'm delivering tomorrow......

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"Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pains have you endured that haven't as yet arrived?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When does worry turn the corner? When does worry take hold of your guts wrenching it to a point where it sends out prickly electricity from its source? When does worry shackle you to the sofa or to the bed or to a corner in your room, away from all others? When does worry lead you to seek mind numbing sustenance in order to find that elusive sleep, or to deaden those sparks of electricity? When does worry take you closer to the precipice, where your footing is affected by the moving stones once part of a solid foundation? When does it transform from heightened excitement to head pounding fear or from numbness to heightened ecstasy? When does worry slide into a place called anxiety?


You’ve arrived at anxiety when you you’re overcome with unrelenting fear. Darkness prevails. In fact, Anxiety feels like a ghost town littered with rusted faith ……a place where you arrive to find no solace, and no one to make it go away. It is a lonely town where heartbeats fluster and palpitations interfere with even breathing. Dread, fatigue, cluttered thoughts overwhelm the air in the place called Anxiety. If you listen closely, the most predominant sound is a breath cutting wincing wail of confusion.

Your first thought is to run away…..FAST…….to get away to the next town… to find the light glimmers of faith. Away……away…….from the pain and sorrow…..towards calm and safety….towards ANYTHING to find control again.

Anxiety can feel like you’re dying.
What is more fear producing than facing down our own mortality?
So, we seek out life affirmation,
whatever the costs,
no matter how cognitively unrealistic the actions may be because anxiety shuffles our thinking.

Most try to avoid it at all costs, though some, possibly numbed by trauma to a point where they aren’t feeling anything addictively search for it by taking huge risks, pushing the envelope, cutting, lashing, reaching for mind alterations, seeking release, pulsing release.

Anxiety is a paradox….a drug to avoid OR a drug to seek out as we fight the loss of faith.

It is a contagious leech with the propensity to affect others who are within reach. Like a vapour in the air, it is invisibly powerfully debilitating……..physically and emotionally, spiritually. Don’t think it can’t touch you because if you’re not paying attention while the mounds of stress begin to build it’s fortress all around you, Anxiety will thump you on the shoulder, gobble up your breath, surge your blood pressure with its obsessive compulsive claustrophobic, agoraphobic, intensiphobic exuberance.

So what to do? Anxiety serves a purpose if you’re in tune with it….if you’re able to capture its essence…..if you’re able to wrestle it long enough to reclaim calm. Gotta do the wrestling. No way around it as far as I can see. Fear can be captured and sent running away with it's tail between it's legs.

Ring any bells for anyone?? I think we've all felt it at some point in our lives. Perhaps some of us are facing it down today.