In the past few weeks I have been assailed by anxiety; heart racing, breath suffocating and waking for hours in the night.
This is not new to me but it has been a long time since I have experienced such a prolonged and unceasing episode.
Old habits rise up and tempt me to ease the sensations, the desire to numb (food, drugs, alcohol) or distract (replacing with the physical pain of self harm), but my commitment to myself and my children helps me to reach for the healthier soothers that I have developed over these years of healing. One tool has been the learned ability to sit with the feelings and witness them unfold rather than a trying to escape them. Ooof! A hard one but it has been enlightening to observe the trail of my thoughts in the early hours of the morning.
Another of my soothers is reading. Falling into a world of delicious and enticing fiction calms me and takes me out of my own world for while, a break from the pressure on my chest. When it’s not fiction, I choose works that inspire me to reconnect with my spirit, to bring me back to faith and trust in the Divine; words & belief that can draw me away from my obsessive and destructive anxiety spiral.
Last night, my early hours were occupied with the words of Dr Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, who experienced a profound NDE (Near Death Experience) that filled him with the ultimate trust in the Universe, in Love and Light. His words and description of his journey between life and death are beyond beautiful and a wonderful reminder for me to hold that bigger picture in my daily life.
When I was growing up, my mother used to say that I would need to meet somebody who could let me fly but who could also ground me. She was half right; I do need to be around people that don’t inhibit my wish to fly, to dive into the world of divinity and philosophical exploration, but the grounding she spoke of was a need to be held back into the ‘reality’ of our practical world and what I have realised over the past few weeks is that it is those details that create so much of my anxiety. Constantly pulling myself back into the minutiae of daily life, I keep forgetting my core belief of trust, I step too far into the fear of left brained conditioning and up springs my anxiety.
Eben Alexander’s ‘Proof of Heaven’ is one of those gifts that reminds me to reconnect with my spiritual reflections.
It’s time to fly.