Tag: Anxiety

An Inventory of Pain

Physical Pain:
The discomfort in my metatarsophalangeal joint waxes and wanes depending on whether I allow myself rest and my level of clumsiness. Low-level fatigue persists, still. Some days I blame myself, and other days it’s simply part of who I am. Dull aches dot my body, radiating from muscles I am working to grow. There’s also a point of irritation where tape flattens my chest and wrinkles into my skin.

Some pains we chase.

Emotional Pain:
The fracture in my heart feels less acute each day, though somehow the intensity remains unchanged. It’s no longer an emergency, but a condition I must manage. Guilt is fading, but there is a minimum that must always be maintained. In its place an anger burns—red-hot and refreshing.

New or increasing pain can be a sign of healing, too.

Psychological Pain:
My everyday anxiety is finally being treated and the racing, jumping thoughts characteristic of ADHD are managed when they have to be, and allowed to reign free where they can do less harm. Even so, the pause between panic and action, catastrophe and reality, still feels like a monumental mental climb.

Relational Pain:
Some losses in love feel closer to autoamputation—a misguided attempt by the psyche to sever what it deems, in conclusion or delusion, a nonviable connection. With immediate intervention, repair is possible, but function will almost certainly be impacted. There are no guarantees.

Either way, healing will be long, and it will hurt.

Spiritual Pain:
I don’t know how to pray. Even when I try, in my way, all that answers is more penance. In my search for heaven, I earned myself a hell. Now when I pray, I’m only speaking to myself, and the “greater than myself” I once held to feels that much smaller. I don’t believe in God, but I know he is in everything. I feel farther from him now more than ever.

Still, I ask myself: Who moved?

Proven Remedies and Comforts:
Mochi ice cream. Changing or adding medication. A kiss on the couch. Five hours on the phone with a friend. The sun. The rain. Permission to forgive yourself. Permission to say no. Seeing your favorite artist in concert. A therapist who tells you the truth in a new way. Crying in the car. Getting on a plane. A good night’s sleep. Screaming. Saying you’re sorry—and meaning it. Not saying sorry when you don’t. Not hurting yourself again.

This post is part of an ongoing inventory of pain and comfort.

What kinds of pain are you carrying right now? Name it below. Healing isn’t linear. It’s rarely ever easy, and all too often we find it endless and ongoing. Share what helps, so others can find a little comfort.

Featured image by Brian Patrick Tagalog on Unsplash

316 // Long-Earned

It’s a long-earned early day home from work this Friday. The weather is nice but I’ve decided to stay in and catch up on some notes and fragments I’ve collected in notebooks and across app timelines. I’ve got a window full of sunshine and Flow State Radio playing on in the background. I’ve got my timer on and a big cup of coffee from the Moka pot. I’m ready to work.

It feels good to be back in my little space, somewhere I have been away from for far too long. The reasons are all so varied it’s hard to know where to begin. Any explanation is only an excuse. Then again, an explanation isn’t really owed, is it? All I will say is so much has changed, I am changed, and I am excited to fill you in and catch you up, little by little.

For now, I simply want to celebrate a whole week of being brave. For those who don’t know, I’ve long suffered from severe driving anxiety. It has hindered my independence, limited my opportunities, and devastated my self-esteem, but this week real progress was made!

My wife and I got a second car this month, and it has been just the push I need to push myself past my fear. Every day I wake with knots in my gut. I want to cry or vomit or both every time I sit behind the wheel, but this week I drove, anyway. I drove to and from work, home for lunch, to get gas, and even to get a flu shot! I have so many more places I plan to go as I slowly, slowly, slowly venture out of my comfort zone.

This may seem a small victory to those for whom driving is nothing to fear at all, but just imagine your greatest fear—heights? spiders? snakes? germs?—and having to face it multiple times a day. This is what I am going through. I have faced it but the truth is I’m still afraid and will be for a long time, maybe the rest of my life, but there is a seed of confidence that grows each time I prove I can do it.

For now, I’m focusing on the positive alone. I am feeling capable, strong, and fully human. I feel good about myself and that turns out to be the most important change of all.

Constructive Use of Anxiety

The capacity to bear anxiety is important for the individual’s self-realization and for his conquest of his environment. Every person experiences continual shocks and threats to his existence; indeed, self-actualization occurs only at the price of moving ahead despite such shocks. This indicates the constructive use of anxiety.”

— Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety (via The School of Anxiety is The School of Greatness)

Follow Your Anxiety

The School of Anxiety is The School of Greatness // Academy of Ideas

“How each person self-realizes will differ in its particulars, but there is a general formula that can lead us in this direction—some have said follow your bliss, others have said find a passion, Kierkegaard would say follow your anxiety.

Each step on the path to self-realization is patterned the same—envision a possibility that could further our self-creation, experience the anxiety that accompanies the prospect of moving forward into an unpredictable and open-ended future, but move forward regardless. If the possibilities we are unfolding in our life are free of the intermediate determinant of anxiety, this is not a sign of mental health, but instead suggests that we are living in a manner that betrays our potential.”

The title to this video “The School of Anxiety is the School of Greatness” is one of the most encouraging and motivating phrases I have ever read in regards to general anxiety and fear. A shift happened while watching from wanting be rid of my fears, toward a desire to embrace it. For some, for many in fact, this may be the only way to finally move forward.

Nothing is Steady

Ask yourself honestly: are you looking for a steady, predictable life? Is this what you want? If so, you must realize that the world cannot offer you this. Everything in the world is in the process of change. Nothing is steady. Nothing is predictable. Nothing will give you anything other than temporary security. Thoughts come and go. Relationships begin and end. Bodies are born and pass away. This is all the world can offer you: impermanence, growth, change.”

— Paul Ferrini (via swissmiss)