Facing Anxiety

Have you woken up in the middle of the night feeling anxious? Anxious about work, about your family, about missing a deadline or a flight? Your brain feels wired and you are not able to go back to sleep?

Lately I realised whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, my body is actually anxious. It is like I have sprung awake from a nightmare. I am short of breath. My chest is tight and my eyes are beaming. Body tensions are everywhere and these hot unsettled particles are yelling at me to initiate the fight or flight mode.

When I find myself in such a state, I have a few options: a) go back to sleep, b) get up, deal with whatever that caused the anxiety or c) meditate in bed and wait for my mind and body to calm down. I know option a) is fruitless because I often end up blaming myself for not being able to go back to sleep as my mind and body continue raving at this raucous party. Option b) is not satisfactory either as when I turn on the light to do some brain work, I find myself more awake than before. So I generally choose option c). Meditation is about maintaining the balance of the mind. I focus on my breath. I focus on noticing my body tensions. I tell myself all feelings are temporary and this experience too shall pass…if only it was that easy.

As we all know being equanimous with anxiety or any bad feeling is no easy feat. We as humans are primed for survival. Whenever there is a bad feeling, our brain works hard to solve the problem or to avoid it. Whenever there is a good feeling, our brain chases after it because it might increase our chance of living. And to meditate is to go against exactly that because when we meditate we are not caught by our emotions and we are simply observing.

Well I certainly find it difficult to meditate when my mind is screaming “get rid of this anxious feeling as quick as possible” like a firefighter panicking in a burning house. So, I have started trying a variation to my usual meditation. Together with noticing my body sensations. I started asking each of my body part “What is the worry here?”. I thought there must be a reason why I am feeling anxious and I was curious to know what these body sensations are trying to protect me against and what danger they are seeing.

So here I am in the middle of the night going through each of my body part asking the tension it holds, “What are you trying to tell me?”. To my surprise, I have found I hold a lot of worries in my body. Some reasonable, some unnecessary but all are not helpful.

My right hip is telling me it is worried about the left hip because the left leg is injured and might not be strong enough to carry the load, therefore right hip goes in to save the day by overcompensating. Good intention by my right hip but I say no thank you as this would only lead to my left hip and leg being underused and weak which then repeats the cycle. My stomach muscles are worried about my bowel movements to which I also say no thank you because this would only tighten the knot further. My face muscles in the nose area is worried that I might not be breathing well. At this point, I try not to laugh at myself and I gently remind myself that there is no use in judging my irrational self. Moving up to my temples, I find myself concerned about achieving my to-do list. This tension is expansive as it extends down my head, neck and shoulders to which I say it is the middle of the night and I am meditating there is no way I am going to pull out my to-do list so let’s not worry for the time being.

I have found once I have been able to verbalise these worries held in my body, my mind can look at and question these worries objectively. As you can see, most of these worries make no sense and certainly all are not going to turn into “dangers” when I am meditating. So I kindly tell my body to release the tensions, even if only for a moment. This kinder sense of energy sees my shoulders dropping, back clicking, chest loosening, worries fading and best of all sleep inducing.

From examining my body tensions, I realised how connected my mind and body are and I have learnt to give myself plenty of compassion as it is not easy being my body holding all its worries. No more beating up my mind and body for its “not good enough” and “should have been”. No more continuance of the raucous party at 3am in the morning.

I hope you too are able to face your own reality with grace and kindness.