First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety—A Personal Journey Through Anxiety and Self-Discovery

by Sarah Wilson

anandamide—the so-called bliss molecule,

This is what else life naturals do: they see a flower. And find it beautiful. That’s it.

This is another thing life naturals do: they can see straight to the positive.

It’s never surprised me that sugar addiction goes hand in hand with anxiety, and that anxious folk hide the vice so protectively.

Yet happiness literally derives from the Middle English word hap, meaning chance or good luck (thus “happenstance” or “perhaps”).

Whippman refers to stacks of studies that show that the more relentlessly we value and pursue happiness, the more likely we are to be depressed, anxious and lonely.

I start, Dear Anxiety, you funny little thing . . . I like seeing my anxiety as cute and endearing in its earnestness, much like the kid at the sport carnival who pushes super hard in the 200-meter race, all red in the face, about to explode. I go on to acknowledge what it’s up to, what it’s feeling. I continue with “No bloody wonder . . .” and validate why it’s got itself worked up. No bloody wonder you’re wobbly—you’ve been left in limbo for three days over a work outcome yet again. Plus you feel like you’re in a rut, unable to get a clear view of why you’re living.

Then I might get just a little bit “walk down the hall of mirrors” with it. Yes, yes, I know it feels like it’s too hard. But you deal this up every time we land here. Let’s just look back on it all for twenty-seven seconds. The shittiest days have always led somewhere. Haven’t they? Last week we fretted all Saturday morning and it was a glorious day and we got paralyzed on the lounge-room floor and it was all such a waste of a glorious day. I know. I was there. And the fretting got worse and tighter. Until we cried. And it all felt good. And we realized we hadn’t cried for the bigness of life for too long. We had to fret to cry to release the pressure. So let’s just sit in this for a bit and see what happens. Let’s be totally grim together. Might as well. We’re here anyway. Cool. Okay then. As I do this I’m also able to offer my funny little anxiety some helpful ways forward. You know what? I think you just need to go for a hike this weekend. Get into the bush. As I sign off, Love, Sarah, I smile at my anxiety.

“You don’t delete a bad habit, you build a new, better one. You feed this new habit, over and over,” he tells me. He draws a new line, this time parallel to the first clump of lines, and thickens it with more and more strokes of his pen. The new thoughts clump, layer by layer, and eventually create a habit that is stronger than the old one. You build habits that trigger the comfort system, instead of the threat system.

It wasn’t about changing myself. It was about creating ease and gentleness around who I was, which allowed me to make better choices.

If you don’t use it, you lose it. This is why it is easier to form a new habit than maintain an old one.

Andy Warhol: “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it . . . almost every day, it’s not good any more.”

Do the anxiety. Then leave it there. This is our challenge.

A study published in 2016 found that the area in the primary motor cortex linked to the axial body muscles (our core) is directly connected to the adrenal glands. Work your core, decrease the stress response. Yoga, Pilates, planking . . . it will all build the right muscles—physical and mental. It makes sense when you think that we’ve always known the inverse: that a stooped posture from poor core strength is a sign of angst in a person.

when you’re an anxious type, meditation is non-negotiable.

by thoughts. So, so many thoughts. Meditation draws energy down from the head. It works to still the mind. It turns the volume down on the thoughts.

You recite a mantra, faintly, in your head, for twenty minutes. That’s it. If your mind wanders, return to the mantra. Don’t worry about your breathing. Or your posture. Or your chakras. Return to the mantra. When thoughts bubble up, that’s cool. Actually, it’s better than cool. Thoughts are little pockets of stress that your consciousness encounters as it descends into calm. When you “think” them, the pockets of stress are released. Pop! And you return to the mantra. It’s seductively convincing to know my thoughts are all part of the process. I’m not fighting myself.

for it’s actually the repeated gentle returning to a quietness that counts.

I don’t jump when there’s a sudden noise. I can stay steady.

As the softness seeps in, even while thoughts do their jumpy dance in my head, it feels like the rigid boundaries of my body release. It’s like I’m undoing a corset, or the button on tight jeans, and my insides are able to gently expand and my cells can stretch out languidly into the space created. My teeth relax in their sockets. The inside of my nostrils release. And if they don’t at first, I focus on them doing so. My fingernails soften in their nail beds. My eyelashes soften. I feel majestic and magnificent and suspended in a duvet-like cloud. Sometimes I get what I call my Michelin Man experience. I’m entirely convinced, my eyes shut, that my body has expanded several feet beyond myself in soft billowing folds, and I feel my “consciousness” expand to meet it. Everything that’s rigid inside my body expands languidly into the softness.

“Stop. And. Drop.”, she would say—by which she meant, stop your head and drop into your heart.

Try pausing your thinking for a minute and drawing your focus down into the space just behind your sternum. Do you feel the shift? Does a “knowing” ooze over you? You only have to touch it briefly for it to work.

Sukshma [sook-shma]: 1. (adjective) subtle (Sanskrit); 2. (noun) the practice of being innocent, faint and effortless.

imagine a sponge gently working its way around the inside of your head, absorbing, mopping up the little anxious pockets. The mantra or breath moves the sponge around. You might find the inside of your head broadens.

meditation is really really hard when you’re super anxious. It can be a bridge too far. The gearshift from a panic attack to a still mind is too dramatic. Know that this is cool. It truly is. So try some deep belly breathing instead at such times.

deep, controlled breathing communicates to the body that everything is okay, which down regulates the stress response, slowing heart rate, diverting blood back to the brain and the digestive system and promoting feelings of calm.

Deep breathing may also affect the immune system. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina divided a group of twenty healthy adults into two groups. One group was told to do two sets of ten-minute breathing exercises, while the other read a text of their choice for twenty minutes. The subjects’ saliva was tested at various intervals during the exercise. The researchers found that the breathing group’s saliva had significantly lower levels of three cytokines associated with inflammation and stress.

breathing counters the fight/flight response and can even change the expression of genes.

Sitting upright or lying down, place your hands on your belly. Slowly breathe in, expanding your belly, to the count of five. Pause. Slowly breathe out to the count of six. Repeat for 10–20 minutes a day.

The focus away from the head slows down new-brain activity. It also activates the comfort system. By voluntarily changing the rate, depth, and pattern of breathing, we can change the messages being sent to the brain. Also, by “massaging” our vagus nerve, which wraps our bellies, meandering its way around our organs and up to the brain, a variety of anti-stress enzymes and calming hormones such as acetylcholine, prolactin, vasopressin and oxytocin are released. Esther Sternberg, physician, researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and author of The Balance Within, puts it well: “Think of a car throttling down the highway at 120 miles an hour. That’s the stress response, and the Vagus nerve is the brake. . . . When you take slow, deep breaths, that is what is engaging the brake.”

At night, after I climb into bed, I simply reflect for a few minutes on five things that pop into my mind that I’m grateful for. And say thank you for them.

This moment of recognition that things are gelling cooperatively makes you feel synchronicity and oneness with the flow of life.

research shows gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that regulates anxiety.

“Climb a tree.” When anxiety struck, it would remind me to abort the downward plunge and scamper to a bush reserve fifteen minutes from the student house I lived in and get myself up a tree.

I think it was the sheer ludicrousness of it all that lifted me out of the spiral.

Because an overly earnest worker will just keep on working and working, long after she’s faked it and made it.

deus ex machina.

This is seriously big and awesome and overwhelming and I might not be a big enough vessel to fully process it all.

Authorities tell us that 80–90 percent of autoimmune sufferers have anxiety/depression. The inflammation that the disease causes can lead to inflammation of the brain, leading to anxiety.

What causes autoimmune disease? There’s generally a hereditary predisposition going on, which can be set off by a virus. Toxins, gluten, acidic foods, overexercising, the toxic effects of electromagnetic frequencies, fluoride and soy have also been implicated. The latest research is pointing squarely at inflammation and gut dysbiosis . . . and, whattayaknow, sugar as a truly toxic trigger.

I breathe in for three steps—left, right, left—and out for four steps, like my deep belly breathing, but in motion. I count and breathe. I focus on drawing energy up from the earth, through my feet and up to the top of my head (two, three) and then I push the beige buzziness back down again through my legs, my shoes, into the earth (two, three, four). I breathe the energy in a loop, over and over. I move slowly and rhythmically like this.

Studies show any movement, but particularly walking, will ease anxiety when we’re in the middle of a stress hormone surge. Indeed, the studies show that a mere 20–30 minute walk, five times a week, will make people less anxious, as effectively as antidepressants. Even better, the effect is immediate—serotonin, dopamine and endorphins all increase as soon as you start moving.

“My doctor calls it positive, neurotic behavior: you do it compulsively because you are neurotic but the net benefit is positive.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin did the same. They both hiked every single day, until old age. Both had anxiety. Both credit walking with taming their heads enough to be able to sort problems and bring their inspired ideas to fruition. “Only thoughts reached by walking have value,” wrote Nietzsche.

Hiking gets us into nature . . . and multiple studies show that folk who live in green spaces have lower rates of mental health issues.

Japanese scientists call the phenomenon Shinrin-yoku, or “forest bathing.” Their recent studies suggest the benefits come from breathing in “aromas from the trees” known as phytoncides, an array of natural aerosols that trees give off for pest control.

One study found that salivary cortisol levels in people who gazed on forest scenery for twenty minutes were 13.4 percent lower than those who did the same in urban settings.

Hiking calms. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a ninety-minute walk through a natural area led to lower levels of brooding and obsessive worry. Brain scans of the subjects found that there was decreased blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex. Increased blood flow to this region of the brain is associated with bad moods. Everything from feeling sad about something, to worrying, to major depression seems to be tied to this brain region. Hiking deactivates it.

even getting out into nature for five minutes at a stretch is enough to give your self-esteem a substantial upgrade. And know this: walking near water seemed to have the biggest effect.

We yearn for something even if we don’t know what it looks like or if it actually exists. — cruel irony #4