For those who suffer with anxiety, it can run the gamut from inconvenient to debilitating. The physical symptoms combine with a mental hamster wheel that can feel like torture. Anxiety feels awful. Maybe that’s the point.
There are wonderful energetic tools that can alleviate symptoms (tapping, flower essences, hypnotherapy, meditation). But, they can more often feel palliative rather than curative. It can get better, for sure, but you can hold a niggling fear that it might come back and knock you off your feet.
That’s what it’s been like for me. I do all the tools, and I love them. I’m so grateful. They have quite literally been a life-saver. But when I’m under stress (and who isn’t these days), or a stray thought pops up, and wham! I’m catastrophizing and feeling very unsafe.
It’s at these hard times that I specifically choose to view anxiety as a gift. If my body and mind weren’t screaming at me to stop, to slow down and pay attention, to course-correct, would I have barreled through into something that wasn’t right for me? Maybe anxiety needs to be so loud so we’ll pay attention to it and do something different.
Abraham Hicks talks about anxiety as our thoughts being out of alignment with how our Inner Being views the situation.
When I feel full-body anxiety every time I think about a relationship I don’t know how to fix, maybe that’s why. I’m looking at it as something I have to fix rather than surrender for healing.
When I feel anxiety that I’ll fall ill, maybe that discomfort is precisely what I need to feel to snap out of those fatalistic thoughts and choose to align with a thought that feels better.
As much as I hate being saddled with this disorder, it makes me listen to my body, to pay attention to my mind.
As I’ve continued to do my healing work, I do find that anxiety doesn’t come quite as often, but it hits more loudly. I think that’s a testament to a new baseline. My thoughts are healthier than they used to be. I’m not constantly worried all the time (I sure have my days, though!). Consequently, when something snaps me out of alignment, it feels like a sledgehammer.
What’s the message for you? Does anxiety tell you that you’re in the wrong job, the wrong relationship, the wrong environment?
There may be nothing to do right now other than to acknowledge your truth and surrender it. Pray for guidance, for wisdom, for healing. Use your tools to help your body and mind calm down. And when you notice anxiety, accept it for the message it is and choose a loving thought. Surrender the moment. Ask for grace, for insight, for peace. Be willing to accept yourself exactly as you are in this moment. Choose to see things differently.
The anxiety may not miraculously disappear, but you’ll begin the process of training your mind to a higher vibration. You’ll begin aligning to love rather than fear. That’s all any of us can do.
As A Course in Miracles says, there is only love and fear, and only the love is real.
Shine on,
Jenn.