Before I take another step, I’ll just say “Wow, what a good week”. Credit where credit is due; mindfulness practices, careful choices, and a will to avoid misunderstandings and assumptions are all making a huge difference, or so it seems so far this week, and the vibe at home is very supportive and inclusive much of the time, which fosters growth and change.
This morning I woke anxious after a good night’s sleep. It wasn’t the sort of major panic that brings me to my feet in alarm and puts me in motion before I can think things over, but it was there and my attention was on it when I woke. A glance at the clock and I was relieved that it was definitely to early to bother get up – it’s a Saturday – so attempt 1 to deal with it was somewhat dismissive and irritated, and of the ‘roll over and go back to sleep’ variety. ( If you have an anxiety issue, yourself, you likely know how that went – the derisive hoots of laughter can be halted any time. lol.) Yeah, so I dozed a few minutes, woke up again – still anxious. ‘F*ck it’, I thought, I am so not getting up early today. Attempt 2 was a trip down the hall for an old school fix ‘get a drink of water and go back to bed’. Right, right. Sometimes it takes me a while to learn new things. After another few minutes of napping, I was awake again, and this time the clock was pretty near to meeting my morning’s internal ‘suggested waking time’ for the day… damn it. That‘s when I re-engaged my actual brain, and went through some basic breathing and mindfulness exercises I’ve been practicing all week… and my heart rate started to slow down, my breathing became deeper and more relaxed, my jaw unclenched…and the feeling of anxiety subsided. I was just about to get up when…I realized I’d fallen back to sleep! After my unexpected nap, I woke in a much better place, feeling gently aligned inside myself and pretty calm and centered. I’m not sure what else to say about this morning…somewhere there’s a hippie thinking ‘I told you so’? lol. Damn it. Nothing to do now but have a quad latte and do some yoga. 😀
So, here it is, Saturday at the tail end of a good week. I think I’ll leave the ‘why am I anxious’ questions off my To Do list completely – because I don’t think ‘why’ actually matters right now. I think I will also refrain from making any assumptions about the feeling itself, as it comes and goes unexpectedly, today. I’m not going looking for answers about anxiety this morning – it’s a lovely easy Saturday, and I will enjoy that about my experience and continue to practice letting small things go, and not taking other people’s experience personally. So, maybe a walk later, and an opportunity to snap some close ups of small things, and a couple errands, and later some plotting and scheming…er… ‘planning’… Sunday dinner. (One of my most fun things every week is cooking Sunday dinner for all of us, and this week I don’t yet have even a notion what I might like to do.)
I hope the Saturday ahead of you is wide open with possibilities and that your choices bring you only the best outcomes. If it gets weird or scary for you, hang on for the ride, and take a minute to just chill and breathe. It’s been working for me, pretty well. 🙂
Evening Light 
In high school, Speech was one of the graduation requirements, and the teacher told a story about being coached before she zip-lined down a mountain (or across a gorge or something). I don’t actually remember her story well enough to repeat it, but question she was asked (at least thrice) was “What do you feel?” until she went past the “scared, nervous, anxious” and onto her physical status of “slightly nauseated.” The point was this: emotions don’t happen in our head, or at least not just in the head. They have physical symptoms: the tightness in the diaphragm that comes with fear, the trembling hands that come with nervousness, the weakened knees that come with relief.
One day many years later, I was the only driver for a very long excursion, At the foot of the mountain I was bound for, I stopped to make a purchase, and while writing my check I found my palms were damp and my hands were trembling and my pulse was just a little quick. I was baffled by my uneasiness. I’d written checks before; I’d even written checks at that store before. I was doing nothing wrong. I had nothing to fear.
And then I realized: uneasiness was my interpretation of the symptoms, not the cause of them. I had had far too much caffeine for my very low tolerance, because I preferred seeing my destination to killing everyone along the way, and I know how I am. My energy drink of choice at the time had a warning label on the side (how well we pay attention to those) listing anxiety as a possible side effect. Awesome.