Anxiety is a good issue. And by ‘good’, I mean difficult. And hard to work with.

An issue is anything that keeps us out of being present, and anxiety is a fantastic example of the way that an issue keeps us out of being present. I have a lot of personal experience with anxiety, I know it well. I've experienced it in my life, I've felt it choke me. It's something I've had to meet face on. It can be very challenging, and I find that talking about it helps bring awareness into it. It was the only way I could personally meet it and move through it, and work with it on an ongoing basis.

When we talk about anxiety, we're not talking about fear of the moment.

Anxiety isn't what you feel in the moment that you're in the street, a car is coming at you and you have to jump out of the way. That's not anxiety, that's a survival response that the body needs.

Anxiety is when you are worried about something that could potentially happen in the future, processing and trying to manage something that has happened in the past, or usually a combination thereof.

That fear of whatever has happened in the past or whatever might happen in the future becomes so great that it affects us on a physical level, on an emotional level, and a psychological level. It makes it absolutely impossible to just be in and appreciate the moment. 

When I talk about anxiety in the context of a VortexHealingⓇ class, I will ask people who are comfortable enough to raise their hand if they have ever had a panic attack. Usually about half the people in the room raise their hand, including myself, by the way. I think it's so widespread, it's important to address it. It also has a stigma. People are afraid to admit to how deeply an issue like that can really interfere with your daily life.

Anxiety can be very complicated, which is why it's so useful if you can keep your wits about you and track where it comes from and what's going on.

It can track to other emotional issues, and physical issues. Issues are complicated. They don't have simply an emotional or physical expression, there's imprinting all over the place. Anxiety is a great example of that. On the physical level, anxiety really kicked in for me when I hit perimenopause. 

I think it's fair to say that I’m tightly-wound by nature. I like to be in control, I like to keep things organized. It's in my nature. But when I hit perimenopause, the body level anxiety really arose. It took the issues I already had -- for example, my fear of losing control, and multiplied them by ten. By the way, that is an extraordinarily common symptom of perimenopause that doesn't often get talked about.

So I had this body-level anxiety that just arose, and then I was looking for a justification for it. I couldn't really track where it was coming from, I was just anxious. I think any one of us could look at our lives and come up with a list of things to worry about. Any one of us could justify any of the anxiety that we have. I really noticed that the body and emotional connection was very strong for this issue.

VortexHealingⓇ can be very helpful for anxiety.

I found that working on the enteric nervous system (the gut brain) to be very helpful. Scientists call it a second brain, but it's really like a second emotional body. There are all of these neurons that operate our digestive system, and that was really very directly related to my anxiety. They also say those neurons are tied to depression as well. Working on that on a physical level helped enormously. Sometimes I could just feel it arise, and I thought I was going crazy. It can sneak up on you, which makes it worse.

One time, I was sitting in a class with my teacher Ric Weinman, who's the founder of VortexHealingⓇ. I was working on an issue, using my tools to dig into a certain kind of anxiety. And I found it! Seek and ye shall find. It happened very suddenly. I was sitting in a room of about a hundred people, in the front row, and suddenly my heart just began to beat faster. My breathing started to change. It began with an incredible sense of overwhelm, which made me think, "This is too much, I can't do this anymore." That experience of overwhelm scared me, so I had the initial overwhelm response, and then a reaction to that response. I could see very quickly how it spiraled. I was afraid to feel what I was feeling, and that made the anxiety worse.

Class was paused for a break, and I put my sunglasses on. I had to leave. I remember turning to a friend of mine, who's also a very gifted healer, and asking "Can you meet me outside? I think I'm having a panic attack." She laughed, and thought I was kidding. But she did meet me, and saw very quickly that I wasn't kidding at all. By the time I had removed myself, I was very scared. She gave me a healing. She has all the highest level tools. But beyond that, what she brought was a willingness to just be with me. She just said that we would sit there until it had moved. She was willing to just be with me, which gave me permission to feel how I was feeling. 

She just sat with me without judgment. She ran energy, and I allowed myself to receive and just breathe. That level of anxiety moved through very quickly as soon as I was met in love in that place. I realized how rarely we allow ourselves to meet and be met in love in that place where we're really afraid. That was quite a learning experience for me. I learned that the quickest way to cut through it was to not judge it, and to meet it in love.

We have a natural resistance to feeling bad, don't we?

If I feel bad, it must mean that something is dangerous. But if we can feel safe enough to just allow that experience to happen, and fortunately we have tools, tracking where that anxiety came from taught me a lot about my other issues and how they sat.

Trying to manage anxiety can be overwhelming. Which is why we go to management techniques. Anxiety is linked to addiction -- what people have to do in order to just get through the day.

Here's another story. I was spending a romantic weekend away with my handsome husband. He was being just great. So loving and supportive. We were walking in the woods, and it was snowing. It was so quiet -- just the crunch of our feet, and little forest creatures (Bambi and Thumper) playing. It was a really beautiful moment, and my stomach was in knots for reasons I couldn't really explain. I could feel myself trying to justify all of the reasons I was feeling anxious, but I couldn't help but realize that everything about the moment was perfect except the fact that I wasn't in it. Why couldn't I just relax and enjoy the beautiful moment? I really needed to dig deep, and find out what is holding this anxiety theme together. 

I found for myself, that aside from the physical part of the issue, it also tied into a deep issue of loss that I have. For me, I could see very quickly that a lot of what I was experiencing was the fear of losing all of the beauty that I had in my life. Sometimes when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. And then there are moments when you feel so blessed. I could feel that my fear of losing Robert, and that happiness, clouded that present moment. It's different for everyone, of course, but that's just an example of how anxiety reflects other issues in our system.

We're so busy trying to push anxiety away.

We try to manage the feeling and make it go away, because it's uncomfortable. We're afraid of feeling uncomfortable because we're afraid of what it means to be uncomfortable -- does it mean that something is dangerous? So we push it away, and miss the opportunity to learn what we can from it. If we don't judge it, if we're willing to embrace it and bring out tools to it, it can be transformative. I'm not a doctor, a therapist, a psychiatrist or a psychologist. If you're struggling with this, talk to someone. Get help. All we're really doing here is bringing awareness to the issue and meeting it in love. We're creating a framework for how to befriend or meet our issues without judgment, which can be a profound healing in and of itself.

These are difficult times. The news is everywhere. There aren't any quiet moments unless you create them for yourself. I'm not one to believe that we should live in a bubble and just shut the news off and not be part of the world. We need to be part of the world, we need to take action and engage. We just need to find a way to do it where we can be more present in it. If we're driven by our anxiety and fear, then that is what we bring to the table. From a place of anxiety and fear, we're not really listening or interacting. The challenge is to find in ourselves what is driving our behavior. 

Being a Virgo, I'm a big fan of structure. Having some sort of daily practice where I can tune in, give myself permission to feel how I feel, find that center, and bring that presence into the world. If we can bring presence to each other, we can help ourselves and each other. If we allow our fear and anxiety to drive us, we don't even see each other. That's what our issues do. They create self-protection and shut us down from seeing each other and really being in the world from a place of integrity. So we have to feel safe enough in ourselves to address everything else that's going on. It's an ongoing life process.

Many of us are afraid that we're not strong enough.

We're afraid of the unknown, which is the scariest thing of all, isn't it? To feel safe in the face of that is an incredible challenge. It is so easy to allow ourselves to be distracted. With social media and the connection to our phones. 

I remember the day when I could get my email on my phone. I thought it would save me so much time. But I quickly realized that I had developed expectations of myself to be continuously available to anyone and everyone. As social media and cell phones have developed, there's this understanding that you're always out there somewhere. I can call you, text you, email you, and you're supposed to be available. For me, that's incredibly stressful. There has to be time when I know that I can just find time to find my center. To feel safe. And then I'm much more effective. If I've taken time to anchor in my own sense of presence, I do much better. 

So I create structures for myself in terms of how I connect with people. I have students contact me in a particular way, via email, so that when I answer I am in my own space and more effectively here. Everyone has their own structure for how that works for them, but I would encourage creating some kind of practice or structure for what that really looks like for you. Without that structure, it's so easy to become overwhelmed by everything. We're afraid to see other people's pain because we're so afraid of feeling our own pain. 

We can use our anxiety as a guide to find out what we're really afraid of.

It sounds ridiculous, but in taking a look at the things I'm anxious about, taking it to a worst case scenario can be helpful. What am I afraid is going to happen? And what does it mean if that happens? Following that through, I can see that whatever it is, it may be awful, but it's not really the core of my anxiety. The core of my anxiety is about the unknown. Meeting it does transform it. That's what we do in VortexHealingⓇ -- we meet our issues, and they transform. Then we get more freedom and space around them. So it becomes not just one healing, it becomes an ongoing process of meeting the places we're shut down.

Trust is an issue that is often associated with anxiety. If you don't trust the process, trust life, or trust the divine, you can't feel safe. So something seemingly small begins to feel dangerous. Anxiety kind of feeds off itself, and tends to spiral quickly. The first step is to not judge it when it comes up. Just because you're having anxiety doesn't necessarily mean that you're in danger. Differentiating between the two is huge. 

The responsibility of making a decision, even a small one, is part of overwhelm. In Foundational class we have a practice of tuning into our sense of the divine, and asking yes/no questions. Tuning into our heart, and allowing our heart (in the sense that the divine plays through the heart) to make the decision for us. I find that to be a very valuable practice. The moment of getting centered, and feeling in my heart what feels right. Not just what I think is right, or what seems more logical, but what do I actually feel is right? That's different from how we make decisions much of the time. 

Taking that moment to tune into the heart is okay. It allows us to step out of the drama of the story that has been created by believing there are consequences for making the wrong decision. We all have that. Just giving yourself permission to recognize that you can figure it out at a different time, and it doesn't have to be right now, can be very helpful when you're dealing with a situation that's giving you anxiety. If a situation is actually life or death, then you're not operating from a place of anxiety -- it's all survival reactions. Oddly, in those life and death moments, I've found myself not thinking at all, just doing. The consciousness of someone who is making life and death decisions is actually quite calm.

The connection between anxiety and addiction is definitely worth looking at more. We reach for (fill in the blank) when we are trying to manage something that we're feeling that we're not comfortable with or we're trying to avoid our pain. It's a very rational thing to do, so it makes complete sense that when you stop using whatever you're using (be it smoking, drinking, shopping, etc), then that thing is right there. It's been there all along, it didn't go anywhere. I'm not an addiction counselor or anything, but in my observation, managing that original issue, such as anxiety, is an important part of working with addiction. Being able to meet that and get support, however that looks, is imperative. The rational response to feeling poorly is to go back to the addictive behavior. Then having had the experience of trying to stop and 'failing', there are so many judgments that come into that. Which makes it all that much more difficult.

Procrastination is another coping mechanism. That's another way of dealing with our anxiety, is just sort of putting it off. When something feels too big, it's a very rational response to just put it off for another time. I've noticed how anxiety ties into other issues, and making decisions became so much more scary when I had people I loved in the picture. When it was just me, living alone, there wasn't a lot of anxiety. But as soon as I fell in love, and there were kids, I was making decisions that not only impacted me but also my family. It's absolutely terrifying. The anxiety of getting something wrong, of causing pain to someone, or losing someone I loved, it became painfully obvious that there was a deeper issue at work.

Giving yourself permission to have the experience of feeling anxious can stop the spiral very quickly.

When you're feeling anxious, pause and notice it. I'm feeling anxious. What is this really about? Is it about a particular scenario that I'm afraid is going to happen? Asking the question allows you to step out of it a little bit, and then you become an observer. Our issues are so much easier to work with from that perspective. 

There is a world of difference between, "I am anxious" and "I am experiencing anxiety". One is part of who you are, the other is just something going on in the moment. When you have a little space from that, you can start asking questions. Breathing also helps, especially alternate nostril breathing from yoga practices. It helps balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. I was talking about the enteric nervous system before, also known as the gut brain. When you look up ways to work with that, experts tend to recommend relaxation techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy, and breathing exercises. Just being able to take a few breaths will give you that moment to step out of the situation, and it becomes more workable.

If you want to read more about the issue of anxiety, you can see Lorraine’s interview on the subject on the cable access show Oneness and Wellness here.