Well, of course it isn't, but as this is meant as a companion piece to the previous post, it seems only right to link the titles. So, I hope you weren't left with the impression that I am always in the deepest throes of anxiety: I am not. While I recognise it as the climate of my mind, it is nevertheless not actually the weather, as it were. Sometimes, the sun shines: at others, storms rumble and tear across the skies of my psyche. The good thing is that I have been able to forecast the problems a lot more accurately as I've grown older, and so I've developed several coping strategies which work, more or less. Not always, but they mitigate the worst moments and mean I climb out of any spiral just that bit faster.
It'll blow over
So the first thing is what I've alluded to in my meteorological metaphor - these moments when things are bad are temporary and they will pass. They always have done before, and there's no reason that they won't again. That is a good thing to know, but I still have to be careful of the fact that full-blown anxiety is distorting, pervasive, isolating and self-perpetuating: Knowing this doesn't mean I can avoid it entirely, but it does give me some degree of control over it.
Getting in the zone
Meditation is a huge benefit to me, but it really requires practice and patience with oneself. When I started doing it, I could barely sit quietly for two minutes, and it took a long time to notice how bloody noisy my own head actually was - all sorts of voices, distractions, sounds. Buddhism refers to the mind as a noisy jungle, and that's definitely what I found. One particular 'voice' in my head was constantly telling me to give up on meditation, that I was useless: it was unusually persistent, and took a long time to turn the volume down on.
Very slowly, I increased the time I meditated, and slowly carved out, first of all, a calmer, more overarching voice, and then a space within my own mind - a quiet place from where I could just watch thoughts pass by. Over time, it's got easier and easier to reach this space, to the point now where I can go into it and not even have any 'voices' or thoughts for a while - just the sense of being very present with everything around me. I still get distracted, of course! However, I find it easier now to return to this quiet zone, and it makes the day easier.
This too shall pass - or will it?
One thing that the knowledge of the transient nature of my mental weather and the practice of meditation has given me is this: That emotions are relational - that is, they exist solely in relation to a stimulus. So, if, for example, someone gives me a present, I feel happy and maybe surprised, or if someone, let's say, knocks me off my bike while riding their e-scooter, I may feel enraged. But once the gift has been given or the e-scooter rider has disappeared, do I actually feel anything?
Now, it may seem obvious from what I said that emotions only exist in relation to the thing that cause us to feel something, and when I've meditated, I've actually interrogated myself, as it were. My mind space is a neutral zone which allows me to examine thoughts and feelings from a remove, and much to my initial surprise, it's true - I don't feel happy or enraged at the thing that happened, because that direct stimulus is no longer present. So why is it that I can feel angry about something that happened weeks before?
Because the stimulus is no longer coming from something 'out there' - it is a response to that pernicious thing, memory. In other words, if I recall a situation, my emotions are reacting to that, and to nothing else. If I recall the face of someone I love, I feel love. If I recall a time I was in danger, I feel fear. To put it another way, my emotions are directed at nothing more than the ghosts of my mind.
Future shock
As with recall, so with anticipation - looking forwards and predicting or hypothesising also creates an emotional reaction to a stimulus that exists solely in potentia - just another kind of ghost! Anxiety, I think, is very much a product of this latter reaction - a negative anticipation. That's why it's debilitating, because it limits your beliefs as to what you are capable of doing. It shuts doors in the mind. And, because it's isolating, pervasive, distorting etc etc, you may not even know that it's doing this to you, especially when you get into the habit of not doing things because of some vague, unspecified fear that has curdled into an habitual dislike: 'Oh, I've not done this, because I've not done it, so I don't like this, because I've....' See the pattern?
This leads to one thing to confront and curb anxiety, and one that is actually guaranteed to exacerbate it in the first place, and that is to experiment, do different things, and widen your horizons. This is tough, because it goes right in the face of anxiety and dares it - but sometimes anxiety has beaten you to it, and has closed the aforementioned door to something before you were even aware there was a door in the first place, let alone a room beyond it! When I reflect on the times I've taken risks and really gone for something, I've largely been successful with certain things. Other things, not much so - my love life, for example - but I think I know the whys and wherefores of that, and that is something for another time and another post.
I like to move it!
The last thing I do - exercise. If all else fails, just doing as little as ten minutes of something always works. Personally, I cycle up to 200km a week and do three sessions of workouts, and that feels right by me. It may be more or less for other people, but just like meditation, it's taken time and patience to build up to my routine. If I can't do it, I feel frustrated and eventually get filled with a strange, manic, angry energy - an energy that nevertheless makes me feel stuck and enervated: I feel I want to do something, but at the same time, I can't. It's as if I'm in a glass jar, or something.
So, that's a few things that help me curb the appetites of anxiety. But it still leaves a puzzling question: If anxiety is an emotion, how come it, too, isn't relational? Why doesn't it disappear when there is nothing to cause it? I have a theory for myself, but that, too, like the vagaries of my love life, is for another post.
Oh, and two other weapons: writing. Always writing, the great liberator. And performance - acting is a place of absolute freedom.
My mother was, my sister still is, plagued with mental health problems (manic depression), and no one size fits all in that while there are similarities between them there were/are also differences. I love my sister dearly and have tried to be one of the family members who is there for her when I can be. I recognise that it helps each individual to recognise the signs and try to adopt strategies as you have and she has done. Both mum and sis found writing to be an incredible tool: a sort of form of cathartic self reflection that didn't allow for self criticism because it was creative and required focus. Apart from other benefits, focus prevents the mind from wandering elsewhere. I admire your bravery and honesty in writing this - I so wish more men could do the same.
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