As this weekend draws to a close, I find myself noticing that there seems to be a lot of anxiety around at the minute, related to upcoming events.
For some of us, it's as simple as our sporting teams playing in the finals. For others around me however, it's much more personal. While one friend heads into this coming week with a daughter being married next Saturday (surely that must be scary), another's Dad has just been operated on. One is worried about job security, while yet another is concerned about her unborn child.
So I am reminded that for most of us, anxiety is a very painful emotion to sit with. It can mess up our food intake and our sleep routines, it makes it hard to concentrate. Almost always, I find that it leaves us feeling inadequate to the tasks ahead, and fairly sure that if another had our challenges, they would meet them in some better way than we can. And yet this is not true; as Rainer Maria Rilke says "Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain?'
Now while I would never pretend to have a way out of experiencing these feelings, I want to say just two things if you are feeling anxious tonight. Firstly, that for most of us, it helps to get some validation. Talk about what is worrying you to someone you trust, be they a family member, a friend, a counsellor or your trusted journal. Just seeking another's perspective might clear your mind a little and give you some new ideas.
Secondly, try to be kind to yourself about what it is that you are feeling. Often when we face adversity, inside our own minds we can be so self-critical. According to Mindful Self-Compassion principles however, we get far better results and are more able to cope, just by speaking kindly to ourselves, or in fact speaking to ourselves as we would speak to one of our friends. Things usually degenerate in an argument when we get to name-calling and blaming, and yet both of those things often show up when we are talking to ourselves. Try saying to yourself instead "yep, this is a scary time, I know! Is there anything that could be done right now to make this any easier?"
It might sound crazy, but current research, and my own experience tells me that it works! And finally, remember this quote from Robert Tew, which says "Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming".