Sitting here, about to write this, I feel the all too familiar signs of anxiety creeping in – sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, chest tightening, heart racing, dry mouth, palms beginning to sweat, nausea, shoulders rising up towards my ears as my shoulder blades draw up and closer together.
Realising that I’m using only the top part of my lungs in short, increasingly rapid breaths, I understand fully that if I choose to let these feelings run rampant within seconds they will develop into a total stress-out and if still left unchecked, a panic attack.
The beauty of this is today I’m observing these symptoms rather than being enmeshed in them, for in truth what I have described was how I have lived most of my life, in varying degrees.
In the past I would use alcohol, marijuana and binge eating to relieve these pressures I daily placed myself under, which brought only temporary relief. As the effects of these wore off I would find myself back in the worry and doubt of my ability to cope and resort once again to self-abuse to rid myself of these unwanted feelings.
I have begun to feel the enormity of the stress and strain I have placed on myself, and those around me, living this way.
It’s the hurts I don’t want to feel, – that when left unchecked develop into fear that what is about to happen in the next moment, next hour, week, month, year or even years, – and is the same or similar to what has happened before and has left me feeling the pain of what I have believed to have been ‘wrong’ choices made by myself and/or others. In this case it’s reminiscent of being in school writing an essay that will be judged by my teacher on being good enough or not, and herein lays the kicker.
Anxiety is this perceived pain that we freak out about because we are terrified of doing ‘it’ wrong and humiliating ourselves in the process. ‘It’ can be making dinner for a friend, a job interview, walking into a crowded room, climbing Mt Everest, talking to one of our children’s teachers or someone we deem more important than us, a staff meeting, boarding a plane, buying a packet of mints, joining an on-line meeting; in short, anything and everything that a human being can do on any given day.
I have chosen anxiety because I have beaten myself up about ‘wrong’ choices made and then felt that I have ‘suffered’ as a consequence.
A wise friend recently shared how appreciative she is of all the choices she has made in her life that had brought her to the present moment. Fully hearing this was a massive weight being lifted off my chest as I realised that my choices have and continue to be opportunities to be more gentle, understanding, appreciative and loving with myself.
I choose now to go into a gentle breath meditation that I learned from an audio presented by Serge Benhayon. This supports me to bring focus to my body as I choose to let go of these unnatural symptoms that do not belong.
This allows me to return to the stillness that I have discovered permanently lays within through the Esoteric Yoga modality and more specifically, the Esoteric Yoga Stillness Program for Women. This along with my commitment to not accept anxiety as something that controls me, has seen a transformation in my daily living beyond recognition of how I once looked and lived
Thanks to the teachings of Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine, its many practitioners and the support of the Student community, I am steadily building a new foundation: one of knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present.
That I have within me true power of what it means to live in this world, my unwavering commitment to be solid in my relationship with myself – with God.
By Julie Ferguson, Mackay
Further reading:
Beating Anxiety Gentle Breath Meditation
Anxiousness – The War Within
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Appreciation is exactly that we understand we are “with God.” And as an equal Son how ‘could-we’ get-in-a-flap about anything! Then why are we not taught this in our schools, as this is a simple Truth? Could it be to keep us from this simple Truth? So as you have shared Julie, “transformation in my daily living beyond recognition of how I once looked and lived” is True for you and can be the same for everyone!
The thing is we can’t be perfect as life is about learning, even the concepts of right and wrong already label and judge instead of allowing us space to be where we are at, and simply assess what’s next.
Do we think that anxiety is only within a small majority of our society? Perhaps because we think that anxiety has to look like panic attacks, we think that only a few of us have it. But perhaps if we brought down the bar on what’s normal, we’ll see that a good proportion of our fellow citizens have anxiety – the anxiety many feel as they walk into the office, the anxiety children have on the bus in the morning before school – how many of us adults have looked at children and been annoyed with them for being loud on the bus? But how many of us have actually seen through that and realised the anxiousness in those bodies and the insecurity as a result of the pressure they go into every day? When we bring an understanding, we cannot get frustrated.
I can relate to so much of what you have written and the many symptoms you describe used to rule my life too; I simply didn’t know how to fix them. Coming to know that any fix would only be temporary and that it was the root cause which needed to identified first, slowly began to make sense of this very challenging way of life. These days, like you, I have come to a place where, if the symptoms arise, I am now “observing these symptoms rather than being enmeshed in them”. Yes, being able to be the observer and to know what to do next, has changed my life.
Anxiety can bubble up when we focus on imagined outcomes.
There is a huge amount of anxiety in the world today. So much so that you only have to hear or read the word anxious and you can almost tap into it as we all pick up on each other’s emotions. I used to have a lot of anxiety but rarely experience it these days so it is good to know that we don’t need to be anxious and there is a way to let it go.
Anxiety is huge, I have noticed it is a real problem with teenage girls in schools at present, they would benefit from some of the support tools mentioned in this blog.
“I have chosen anxiety because I have beaten myself up about ‘wrong’ choices made and then felt that I have ‘suffered’ as a consequence.” Julie what an fantastically honest observation. Beating ourselves up is so unnecessary. We need to be so super loving, kind and compassionate with ourselves, if not, all aspects of our life suffer.
I find this a very important sentence “I am steadily building a new foundation: one of knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present.” It is more than just ‘being in the moment’, it is about clocking where our mind tries to take us into a story about the past or the future and recognising it. Then choosing to bring a quality to our movements that honours the tenderness of the body we have been offered to carry us through life.
“Being in the moment” is such a hugely important way to be, although not always easy to maintain. It is those ‘stories from the past and dreams of the future which have the power to take us away from now and when we let them, we open ourselves up to anything that life may throw at us. But being in the moment, we can catch ‘it’, and then ‘throw it back’, so to speak.
The simplicity and power of the Gentle Breath Meditation is a wonderful tool to alleviate and reduce any signs of stress and anxiety, a beautiful way to re-connect to our body and feel the stillness within that supports the way we then move and express in the world.
The Gentle Breath Meditation is a great tool to support us to not allow anxiety to run our bodies, ‘I choose now to go into a gentle breath meditation that I learned from an audio presented by Serge Benhayon. This supports me to bring focus to my body as I choose to let go of these unnatural symptoms that do not belong.’
What an amazing turnaround shared here in how someone can come from anxiousness to being able to understand the ways they can slide into it, and have tools to support them to stay with themselves … we are not any of our conditions or symptoms.
Anxiety is the body communicating to me that something is going on that I am not dealing with correctly. It is my body telling me I am not feeling something, that is important.
I have spent my life choosing to not feel the feelings that were coming up. With support from Serge Benhayon and Simple Living Global, I am understanding that my body can cope with whatever is going on at the moment, I just need to stop, and feel it. Not as easy as it sounds if you have been running away from your feelings. But it is the only way. When I feel the feelings and sometimes cry, yawn, sneeze, or cough, the anxiety goes away. Amazing!
better than the word cope – we are never given more than we can handle and the more we accept that the even more we can handle!
I like the idea Julie of what we have inside us is everything we need to be equiped with what is in front of us. Connecting to this can subside the emotion of anxiety.
I really like your take on anxiety here Julie and it makes complete sense to me that it comes literally from that ‘pressure to perform’ in life, rather than simply living from who we are and being content with that. I would say the moment we choose to stop just being ourselves and disconnect from that we are joining in with the world that constantly tells us you have to do things in a certain way, and this is when the uneasiness first begins for we know we are going against what we know and feel inside is true. And this applies to every aspect of our lives.
Yes, we know we are going against what we know inside to be true we simply don’t know how to deal with that – or at least we think we don’t!
Understanding of ourselves is huge and accepting of who we are and where we’ve been is deeply healing and the more I understand the choices I’ve made and how they have or haven’t supported me, the more I can feel and see what is next … I’m learning it’s always about how I’ve been moving, and if I bring it back simply to being with me in my body, there is so much more clarity in how I am and how I live, and a huge joy as I embrace more of who I am.
As you described the situations that would bring anxiety it is clear to see it is all about moments we ‘fear’ the future, in other words when we are not present in the moment. It is about bringing ourselves back to the moment and feeling the quality of how we move our body is a great way to do this, just like the gentle breath meditation.
Maybe one of the reasons we fear the future if we do is because we are control freaks and have an idea that we want it to be a certain way?!
The tools mentioned in this comment support us to stay free of anxiety, along with a commitment to not allow anxiety to control ourselves, ‘with my commitment to not accept anxiety as something that controls me, has seen a transformation in my daily living beyond recognition of how I once looked and lived’.
Having that moment to actually feel and nominate anxiety in your body is super powerful. Yep we can certainly just go to numb it – but feeling it allows us the space to know that it isn’t truly us, and from there we have a choice to looking at things differently.
Hurts left unchecked totally do run away with us and make us fearful about many things. And if that is left unchecked again, the fear can get bigger and bigger and bigger. It does pay to check in, otherwise we check right out and we are left at the mercy of these fears. And that can feel super over whelming and quite scary. The Gentle Breath meditation is a super simple, free, quick way to learn how to check in.
Panic is the peak of you submitting to an energy that grabs you by the hands and grabs your body and brings you to a point where you no longer have an anchor, something true you can hold on to. You have embarked in a race so deeply against you that you got to a point where you cannot recognise where you stand. All you can feel is a body in total dis-order: a body that has been experimenting with disorder, pushing the bar of now a familiar landscape that is always unknown as well.
It feels like we are constantly looking ahead, in anticipation, wondering what the next moment is going to unfold and how that is going to look and feel like, right beside our hurts and desires and the past experiences, and that feels rather precarious. What Universal Medicine presents has been a great support for me as well in bringing understanding and healing to how I experience life.
Anxiety I think it is something that everyone either has, even a mild anxiousness constantly running in the body, or has experienced. What I did with this was to ask myself why am I anxious, what is it that I do not want to feel … the answer was to feel just how lovely I am. It is like I am using anxiousness as a dam to stop me just being me. It is a lot better but I have still not completely let go of this yet.
How amazing that you are able to observe anxiety and not get caught up in it and feed it. That is so awesome and should be deeply appreciated in the current state of the world – where anxiety is a normality and we just learn to get on with it. But shifting it to knowing that anxiety is not us but something we choose and something we can also observe is a huge healing.
I’ve found myself in a vicious circle recently of feeling anxious then in an exhausted state withdrawn from others which increases the anxiety. Connecting to myself helps keep me more centred, less exhausted and more willing to connect with others.
Being gentle and loving with ourselves, in all the ways we move and go throughout our day, and appreciating the little things – even the tiniest choice to do something more gently, more lovingly, than we did it the last time – the more we do this the less anxiety has something – the self-doubt, the uncertainty, the wobbliness of when we don’t trust or know who we are – to grab onto, and it starts to slip away by itself, almost unnoticed. It’s amazing how the anxiety deals with itself, without us having to deal with it, when we focus on self love, self care, and expressing what we know is true for us and can feel.
When we allow ourselves to observe rather than get caught up in the emotions of what is before us we are so much more prepared to cope with what is actually being presented to us.
That is very true. We seem to not be able to handle the situation due to our level of reaction we have endured due to the emotions we absorb, so if we learn to observe, our actions thereafter are completely different and collective.
Observing, and not getting caught in the emotions at play, is so much healthier for us.
Anxiousness can easily creep in when I choose to disconnect from my body and go in to the drive of getting things done. When I take a couple of steps back I notice it is the disconnection that then leads to anxiety.
The Gentle Breath Meditation is such a powerful tool to use in any situation in life, it supports us to re-connect back to our essence and to let go of any anxiety or stress that creates a lot of mental thoughts and overwhelm.
It’s interesting because when we get anxious we perceive that we are not prepared or not enough for what’s ahead of us, but perhaps this is simply because we are bringing the future or the past into the present rather focusing on right here and right now and trusting this moment is everything we need to prepare us.
Anxiousness totally holds our potential to ransom.
Thank you for not choosing to go into this anxiousness you’ve described but instead writing this blog and taking us with you on your path of unfolding anxiety. I just love your statements at the end about the foundation you are building; ‘one of knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present.
That I have within me true power of what it means to live in this world, my unwavering commitment to be solid in my relationship with myself – with God.’ Beautiful, it is all about living this quality.
Thank you Julie for a great blog on anxiety, something I have lived with most of my life but kept well hidden until I had a mini nervous breakdown and panic attack, all this unfelt stuff came up. Like you i too have come to understand i am not the anxiety, I have a choice to not be taken over by it, the gentle breath is a great way to come back to my body ‘knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present’
When we focus on our anxiety, the anxiety feeds the anxiety. When we focus on our gentle breath, the gentleness breathes gentleness into our body.
When I look around me at work and also when I listen to the stories about school and university the pressure we put ourselves under and which we accept as normal keeps getting more and more resulting in burn-out and exhausted people everywhere. Great to realize each of us have a choice here and our body supports us with communicating what supports and what doesn’t.
When we have a long time gone to a certain movement in this case feeling anxious it takes time to feel again that there is no need to be anxious as we are here with ourselves. I noticed I get anxious when I am thinking about the future, and this can even be a couple of minutes away but it is when I am not with myself that I am getting anxious beyond control. So it is about feeling that I am with myself and I just have to be here with what I am doing.
I recognize that, Lieke. Almost like the movement is so familiar that we have to give ourselves the space to re-imprint with a different movement.
Anxiety is easy to spot. Easy is also to clock what we do when we are anxious. Life can stop there and in fact the circuit we pay attention to is between the feeling of the ill-being and the behavior we engage in to mitigate it. What is usually obscured (and badly needed) is to understand what feeds the anxiety and how. A reduced version of life always helps to entertain a reduced version of ourselves.
In developing a loving relationship with ourselves, we can feel how precious and divine we are in essence, as it is through this connection we come to understand and know that we are already everything we need to be, we only need to embrace it and allows ourselves to be guided by our loving essence. This has been the antidote for my long-lived anxiety I struggled with – connection.
This is powerful Carola and yet so simple. When we truly connect to ourselves anxiety, stress, overwhelm and others harmful thoughts cannot creep in. When we live knowing and trusting that we are already everything, life is no longer a struggle. The antidote you’ve shared here is accessible to everyone and easy to apply.
It is incredibly liberating when I realised anxiety is a choice, that it doesn’t just appear, I have to choose to run with it for anxiety to be affecting me.
It is such a strong experience isn’t it and yet it is so common for hundreds of millions of people all around the world… How bizarre that people are not taught how to connect with themselves from kindergarten on.
Thank you for sharing Julie ” I am steadily building a new foundation: one of knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present. ” This is an important key for anyone to move forward. Its so important to break the attachment we have to past issues or situation. In simple terms, ” what is was ” and with no attachments the issues and situations become memories and have no influence on the present from an apprehensive point of view.
‘The beauty of this is today I’m observing these symptoms rather than being enmeshed in them, for in truth what I have described was how I have lived most of my life, in varying degrees’. Such a great moment to stop and appreciate the enormity of moments of observation.
Beautiful as this blog asks us to be more understanding and loving of oneself. That anxiety is an emotion that is not our core of our being, but an overall sense of when we miss that understanding and loving of ourselves. Beautiful wisdom shared here and the expansion now here offered for us to tap into and walk along with by our own choice..
We are being asked, constantly pulled up by the love of God to be true to ourselves and others. When we do not accept our greatest beingness (love) we will stumble with anxiety.. Which is the absence of our divine love. When we unfold our beingness (our connection to our body) we can only let go of anxiety that we might have carried.
Appreciation, I am discovering can make a moment one of awareness, learning, understand and evolving. There is actually joy in a mistake when what energy or experience that lay behind the mistake is seen, as the loving understanding this brings allows us to readjust and become more aware of our choices as we continue on in our life.
Thank you Julie, sharings of honesty are those most touching ones!
I like the sharing of your friend to be more appreciative of her choices in life, and how you responded, ‘I realised that my choices have and continue to be opportunities to be more gentle, understanding, appreciative and loving with myself.’ This is a lovely way to be with ourselves.
Its completely ridiculous to hold ourselves in the past, to reprimand ourselves, to look back with regret, and yet many of us typically do just that. The ridiculous part is it keeps us held in that past, not allowing us to move forward and develop the inner appreciation for who we really are.
‘Bringing focus to the present’ is the most amazing gift. Being able to maintain this focus in moments of unrest is challenging, but a learning I am committed to.
Appreciation is our responsibility as it holds us steady. If we appreciate where we are and who we are, fear of getting it wrong doesn’t have a way in.
I too find Esoteric Yoga is a great support in connecting more deeply with what my body is feeling and sharing, this really helps me to be present.
Anxiety is huge in our society, and can be brought on as you say by not wanting to do something wrong or by being uncertain, lacking confidence, in a certain situation, ‘Anxiety is this perceived pain that we freak out about because we are terrified of doing ‘it’ wrong and humiliating ourselves in the process.’
Could it be though us having an image of how life should unfold creates anxiety? If so who creates the image? Can life be about “‘wrong’ choices made and then felt that I have ‘suffered’” if we do not have an image of what is right or wrong! So what is it about us that invents these images and creates this type of situation? My feeling is that it is our spirit who wants to keep us from returning to our “true power.”
I lived with mild anxiety for most of my life and was often filling myself up with things to do or projects to finish to stop me simply feeling my body and what was going on in that moment. I now love the simplicity of connecting to the fine movements I make like feeling my fingertips or my toes in my shoes and this connection not only brings me great clarity to how I move but also stops the anxiety in it’s tracks too.
By choosing anxiety as a way out we are in control, it feels like we bring in anxiety to not feel what is truly asked for and that is to go beyond what is comfortable but in truth the natural flow of life.
This blog raised shiffers on my skin – simply because it reveals a lot.. Like this: ‘A wise friend recently shared how appreciative she is of all the choices she has made in her life that had brought her to the present moment. Fully hearing this was a massive weight being lifted off my chest as I realised that my choices have and continue to be opportunities to be more gentle, understanding, appreciative and loving with myself.’
You just did the same for me.. Realizing that no matter the choice I had made previous – it all brought me to the present moment. Love it. Will take that with me wherever I go now.
The great thing about anxiety is that I have learnt it is a choice and not something I have to accept as part of life.I am increasingly saying ‘no’ to it. One antidote is to focus on my breathing, or go for a walk. Other times if I can, I lie down with my feet up and close my eyes for 5 minutes. I love that I have all these tools that support me to come back to myself.
Anxiety is chronic and mostly accepted as ‘normal ‘ in life . But Universe Medicine is bringing the true marker back, uncovering the root cause and healing anxiety.
‘Anxiety is this perceived pain that we freak out about because we are terrified of doing ‘it’ wrong and humiliating ourselves in the process.’ I am not sure if I understand your words correctly but what struck me in this sentence was the word’ humiliating’, what I got is that when I go in anxiousness I humiliate myself in making myself less and smaller than who I truly am.
It’s interesting to feel how anxiety creeps back in the moment we feel uncomfortable in a new place. Well, at least it does for me. Having recently started a new job, I can feel the anxiety escalating as I find myself with little to do. The need for me to justify my time to my new boss and team creates a tension in my body that leaves me feeling stressed out. It’s a familiar feeling and so it can be challenging to let it go, as the idea of just being ok with not being or looking busy goes against everything we’ve always been taught, and the thoughts around what others might be thinking get the better of me. I do know, however, that allowing the anxiety to make me wrong doesn’t serve me in any way, and only holds me back from moving forward. So instead, I’ll work on accepting that this is how it is, and continue to communicate with my boss that I’m available for more tasks.
As my layers of hurts reduce I am becoming more aware of a low-grade anxiousness, that must have always been there. Although this doesn’t feel great, it is good that it is showing up, as it has been buried previously, I know this too can be healed – thanks to my lifestyle choices and support with Universal Medicine modalities, Esoteric Yoga in particular.
I have personally experienced an enormous shift in the way I am with myself since building my appreciation of myself. What used to feel completely insignificant is now quiet the opposite, and while there are days where anxiety sets in, my new foundation helps bring me back so much quicker. Because there is nothIng wrong with me and everything is simply ok.
We are blessed to have the support of the Esoteric Modalities such as Esoteric Yoga and the Gentle Breath meditation to truly heal and bring understanding to conditions such as anxiety and to not let this control or disempower us in anyway.
” I am steadily building a new foundation: one of knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present.” This is great what you share as I can relate to this too, something I have been working on too is building my foundation.
I too find the Esoteric Yoga hugely supportive Julie, as it allows me to simply come back and feel my body, to stop and take space and then I am able to be with what is needed next without anxiousness.
It is fabulous that there are modalities such as the Gentle Breath Meditation and Esoteric Yoga, which support us to feel the symptoms of anxiety but not go headlong down the rabbit hole. I would propose there is another reason for anxiety. Perhaps we know we could do an amazing job of the interview, presentation etc but we panic to avoid letting that out and be seen.
It’s interesting what you share here Fiona. Using anxiety in this way is something to also ponder on; being fearful of how great we could be and the responsibility of that, especially if our pattern has been to play small and stay under the radar.
As I read this I remembered distinctly that feeling of anxiety in my body. The memories are visceral ones, very real and if I indugle them, very debilitating. Denying them is worse because, as you have shared, it then becomes this enormous fear of getting it wrong. I join you in appreciating all the choices I have made in my life that have got me to this point and throw getting it right or wrong out of the window!
‘A wise friend recently shared how appreciative she is of all the choices she has made in her life that had brought her to the present moment.’ I love this line Julie, appreciation is a game changer and allows us to accept and see everything that has occurred… either good or bad have all been opportunities for us to grow and evolve.
It is so very empowering to observe our emotions and reactions rather than staying caught in them and very healing to look at what lies underneath them.
Yes, it is Andrew, I agree and when we stop to look at our emotions and reactions a bit deeper, the answers to our issues are all there. We know more than we think we do.
This sentence unlocks and completely lays anxiety bare as the mental trick that it is to our bodies.
“Anxiety is this perceived pain that we freak out about because we are terrified of doing ‘it’ wrong and humiliating ourselves in the process.” Bringing understanding that our bodies have to live everything we ask them too, it makes so much sense that stress has a physical impact on our bodies and that we do have the ability to change this, by changing how we choose to live in our body.
Getting anxious is the way to not feel who I truly am and thus avoiding the power of love that I innately am as we all are. Just like you Julie I could get very anxious by the pressure I put on myself to achieve, to not make any mistakes but what I am learning is that making mistakes is actually about growing. Both the gentle Breath Meditation and Esoteric Yoga has brought me back the connection with my body where I feel this endless love and stillness and can accept that life is not about perfection but about our quality in everything we do without the ‘right or wrong’.
It’s so great you share here about the Gentle Breath Meditation and Esoteric Yoga Julie… These have been key for me also in addressing nervous tension, anxiety and the enormity of pressure I have placed upon myself in my life ‘to be more’…
Coming back to a steady and still connection with our own bodies is an absolute fundamental – for us all, and the tools and support are all there for us to do so, thanks to the dedication and work of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. So many lives transformed, as you have shared here, from what would and could so often simply lead to a downward spiral…
A beautiful blog, full of the power of reclaiming oneself – and accepting every step along the way. No perfection required. Thank-you Julie Ferguson, for your honesty and blazing appreciation here, of the turn-around you have experienced in your life.
Victoria I agree it is a beautiful blog full of power and reclaiming oneself, a great inspiration to others to do the same. When we are honest and in appreciation we can feel the strength of our own power.
Thank-you Amita. I would say that most of us (self included) do not embrace such self-appreciation and holding ourselves in a depth of understanding and love, nearly enough – this in itself being a sure-fire way to hold back the expression and lived claimedness of our power. Our power essentially being our capacity to allow God’s Love and all that we are to flow through us.
This is an awesome article on unpacking anxiety. I love how simply you put it about anxiety being a fear we’ll get something wrong. I totally get that and realise that actually so what if I get something wrong, it’s no big deal, anxiety or no anxiety, the possibility is always going to be there, so why not go for it in my complete fullness and whatever happens will happen and I’ll deal with it from there. Eliminating that nervousness before a task would make the world of difference to my day and the tension that I carry in my body. What a revelation.
It’s why we have days named differently, months and years, so we don’t think we are actually going around in circles. We are heading somewhere because today is today and yesterday was yesterday or last week etc. That way when the same thing pops up on a different day, at a different time with a different person we can say well this is the first time I’ve heard that, when in effect it’s possibly not. This paragraph, “In the past I would use alcohol, marijuana and binge eating to relieve these pressures I daily placed myself under, which brought only temporary relief. As the effects of these wore off I would find myself back in the worry and doubt of my ability to cope and resort once again to self-abuse to rid myself of these unwanted feelings.” shows how we try and run from our feelings and in that we can run our whole life in this way if we choose. Ever get the feeling there’s more to life? This for me is the wake up call to say you are running around the same circle and the ‘more’ is the fact that I know this but keep myself distracted etc so I don’t deal with it and hey presto around we go again. Have you ever also noticed how it use to be one coffee and now it’s two or three? At a certain point our awareness grows even in the run and at that point we need more of what we had already been doing to distract ourselves to distract us some more. It’s a never ending cycle and unless at some point you take the lead then you will be lead around and around but you won’t get dizzy, after all it’s Wednesday tomorrow.
Choosing appreciation for all the choices we have made is the best antidote to anxiety. When i allow myself to go into an anxious state my thoughts run away with me whereas consciously choosing to be appreciative of all aspects of my life is so grounding and there is no space for anxiety.
I felt an instant connection to the title of this blog because I spent many years hiding my anxiety even from myself! It used to feel overwhelming whereas once I acknowledged it and was willing to start unpicking the choices I had made that had led me to that point I was able to lessen the heavy burden of anxiety that had weighed me down for so long. Thank you for sharing your experience and your commitment to healing your hurts so that they do not dominate your life but instead you are free to share your wisdom with all of us.
Thank you Julie – a wonderful piece of that which I exactly needed to read..
Whilst reading I become more and more aligned to the truth you have written and identified the behavior I had lived so far (beating up etc.) that lead me to be numb as I requested. But when feeling more now I sense this strong feeling of no longer living looking back constantly at the past and my choices there, but actually moving on and start living in the now! That is quiet a shocker of a realization – but a very good and liberating one! Thank you for bringing awareness to people in life.
Anxiety is so prevalent in our society, we allow ourselves to get caught up in things that disconnect us from our bodies. Then the anxiety we feel becomes us, we are the anxiety, when really it is a set of choices we’ve made, couple with expectation, then when those expectations aren’t met, we become anxious. Then around the merry go round we go. It is up to us when we want to get off the merry go round.
It’s a powerful moment when we realise that every emotion is a choice. We can choose to go into it and lose ourselves for a while or we can chose to stay connected and let ourselves feel whatever there is to feel, knowing that whatever it is, it is just a mere mote of dust in comparison to the glorious magnificence of Us.
‘knowing that within me I have all I need as I let go of the past and take care of the future by bringing focus to the present’ I love this and I love how my understanding of this deepens all the time.
Thank you for unraveling anxiety. It is a condition so present in many people’s lives that we take it for normal and often are not really aware of it anymore. I like that you show by simply observing how much there is already gained and then how that enables oneself to make little changes such as focusing on our breathing and the way we move and are with ourselves.
We live in society that believes that all our answers lie in the world we have created and exists around us. Yet as you have beautifully shared, true answers are found within us, through our connection to our essence. As when we are connected to ourselves we are connected to our inner-knowing that serves only to guide us to live in truth, in honor of the fullness of love that we naturally are. Whenever we leave this quality of presence our bodies are the first to let us know, hence the tension offering us the opportunity to correct our choice and return to love, or to choose otherwise.
Great testimony of the power of choice: that there is nothing, even our own fears and emotions, that we are controlled by, unless we allow ourselves to be. Also the point about using self-abuse as a reaction to feeling an unwanted emotion – great to clock this one and see it for what it is – just another layer, behaviour, distraction, that takes us further away from ourselves.
So true – anything in life can be a trigger for anxiety, but it is a choice away – to come back to the essence of who we are, the part that knows that we are enough already.
Presenting that we have a choice and that anxiety is not us, but a behaviour we choose, is an understanding that could support many others to see anxiety for what it is and begin to halt its control in the way we live life.
“This allows me to return to the stillness that I have discovered permanently lays within through the Esoteric Yoga modality and more specifically, the Esoteric Yoga Stillness Program for Women” The Esoteric Yoga online programmes are great and really support my daily living too.
My body is actually reacting in anxiety when I am not with it but am wondering in my mind, completely ignoring the fact that my body can only be here and now and not in the future or the past and needs my constant presence with it. My body knows that I do not have to worry about anything that will happen as it is connected to a grander whole that has all the resources available to be with any situation at hand.
How gorgeous to come to a place where you are no longer plagued by anxiety of past choices and instead can now embrace moving forward knowing that each choice to come, is one that provides an opportunity for deeper levels of gentleness, understanding, appreciation and love for yourself…. This is a truly beautiful understanding to have and foundation to move through life from.
When our body runs on anxiety we put an enormous amount of pressure on our body, because none of it runs smoothly or with a natural flow, our breath is short, as too is our ability to concentrate. Through the gentle breath meditation not only does it help our connection with ourselves, it also increases the air in our lungs and gives us the foundation of a beautifully natural rhythm as we breathe.
I have found appreciation is the medicine for anxiety, jealousy, fear, lack of self-worth and the list goes on and on. Appreciation also is the antidote for conflict, disharmony and we can never have too much appreciation in our lives. I feel many people including myself are deprived of appreciation, hence why we are feeling the way we feel. But appreciation is free, it is a simple choice to appreciate or not. How amazing is that? We have this gift to bring harmony back to our lives, to humanity yet we forget we hold this power and love in our hearts, our entire body. Appreciation is one of our greatest medicine in life.