Just Another Antidote to Anxiety

Do you ever go through phases of waking up with anxiety greeting you like a wildly buzzing excess of energy, an uneasy pressure in your chest that seems full of potential to threaten the status quo of your daily existence?

Maybe you don’t describe it quite like that. I know plenty of people who “have” anxiety, like an old friend that they don’t enjoy the company of but also feel rather loyal to keeping them close. They also are unlikely to describe their anxiety like this.

Anxiety is an emotion, a helpful one too, when we listen to what it might be telling us, have meaningful frameworks to process that information and tools to manage the often overwhelming sensations this emotion is associated with.

But when you wake up first thing in the morning and haven’t even had a chance to think about what lies ahead, and yet you’re already feeling that anxiety in your body, like it’s been building during your sleep, then what?

Yes, you can breathe it out.
Yes, you can medicate it away.
You can get up and walk it off, or workout.
You can even lay there and ruminate until your thoughts override the feelings and dull the intensity. Though there is the risk there that your thoughts might take you to places that only amplify the feelings.

These are all legitimate ways to deal with anxiety, and if it’s working for you, then don’t fix what ain’t broke! But if you want another antidote to anxiety, here’s what I’m thinking:

What if that morning anxiety isn’t something you need to get out of your system, try to numb or escape from?

What if that anxiety is your inner intelligence telling you there’s something you need to do, and is giving you the extra energy you need to override the inertia of your habitual mediocrity to go do the thing - the great work - that you’re here to do?

You know what the thing is.
Have the conversation.
Build the thing.
Go somewhere.
Make the change.

Become the person your younger self wanted you to be before adulting got in the way.

Maybe you need this.

You wake up with that extra energy - that anxiety - because you need it. Not to reaffirm your identity as an “anxious person” but to go and do the wild and crazy thing. Even if it’s not all that wild and crazy. Even if it’s just to shift out of your regular morning routine, and start doing something different that will actually move you away from the same old, same old.

The longer you put it off, the more that intensity builds in your body. It’s almost as if that unconscious, greater intelligence within you realises you’re going to need a lot more energy and impetus to make the change. That’s reasonable right? Since yesterday’s “anxiety” wasn’t enough to motivate you out of your old habitual choices.

How we relate to anxiety, and it’s purpose, matters.

Now this isn’t going to be true for everyone, particularly if you’ve got a close and personal long term relationship with anxiety. I myself was not of the generation raised with anxiety on the tip of their tongues. I was only told later in life that I was an “anxious person”, which didn’t align to my self perception at all. And while I took that comment on board enough to develop (and later teach) skills in breathwork and meditation in part to manage feelings of anxiety, I would still rather keep anxiety as a friendly acquaintance rather than have a relationship where it gets to take up permanent residence in my life. (Same goes for the person who was committed to seeing me as “anxious”!)

Still, it is true that I’ve been waking with a tightness in my chest, an uncomfortable pressure build up, and I know this is what anxiety feels like. So sometimes it’s 4am, sometimes 6am (much preferred) and because I’ve got these strategies for managing anxiety so readily available, I did use them: breathing, positive thinking, taking myself on long ocean walks, distracting myself with podcasts.

But I also believe anxiety is just another emotion, a feeling, a sensation that - depending on how I interpret my capacity to face what it is screaming at me about - actually can feel a lot like anticipation, or excitement even. For a couple of days there, I didn’t give enough attention to what my unconscious, deeper intelligence was anticipating. I had to stop getting away from it, to really listen to the message it had for me.

This “anxiety” is matching the more casual conscious acknowledgement that there’s so much I have inside that I want to be creatively expressing and offering now. For the last few years, between relationship breakdowns, moving house and a debilitating autoimmune disease, I couldn’t access the energy for it all. But now, it’s here, the energy is ready and available for me to do the thing - the great work that I am here to do. My daily habits just hadn’t caught up yet.

So, I’m thankful for the early morning anxious energy wake ups, showing me I’ve got the energy, perhaps even an excess of it. That’s what’s needed to shake up those routines that I developed to create space and the right conditions for healing.

Now, I am waking early and some days driving to the pool, to do laps to build fitness for the swim event I committed to do in a couple months. Other days it’s getting up and writing, and quite often it’s about overcoming the resistance to doing the thing that I avoid most, and paradoxically need to be doing the most - working on my art pieces for the exhibition I’ve locked in for January.

That’s where the anxiety really makes sense. I’ve never exhibited my work publicly so it’s a big unfamiliar, unknown, experience that I’m hurling myself towards. It’s about being seen, exposed, but what I fear most isn’t judgment from others, but rather, failing myself.

I can see the vision of opening night so clearly: the gallery space, my work hanging, the pride in what I’ve created and finally been able to bring into the world.

Each morning, I can feel the gap between where I am now and where I’ll be then.

That gap is where the anxiety comes in.
Bringing the energy I need to carry me from where I am now to the future where I’m realising that vision.

If I lay in bed and ruminate, I waste it.
If I try to breathe it away, it’s gone.

So, I let it wake me up and take me to those new places.

Your turn!

I’d love to know if you’ve had this feeling when you first wake, day after day?
How do you make sense of that feeling of anxiety first thing in the morning?

Is it something you fear? Need to get rid off? What would change if instead of resisting or trying to numb it, you asked yourself what could this energy be for?

Sometimes the antidote to anxiety is not soothing it.
The antidote is simply doing the thing.

If you’d like to work with your feelings of anxiety, or other emotions that are coming up for you, find out more about my work or book an emotional clearing session here.