Holding Space in the Midst of Anxiety

I feel a sense of something impending. Not doom, but pain, maybe? Or the danger of emptiness? The haste of the avoidance? I’m angst-y. Unsure. On the cusp of quick, rapid breaths. The ones that take you to the edge of the cliff, where you feel like you might fall off. The worry is echoing. Caught in the swirl of emotions and the tornado of thoughts. Get still, I tell myself. But the stillness is SO LOUD. And sometimes claustrophobic. I’m learning to hold space in the midst of anxiety. But damn, it’s hard.

Today is a hard day. And there’s no particular reason. That’s one of the hardest things about anxiety. We want to make sense of it. Find a reason. Because if we find a reason, then we can fix it. Make it go away. Get rid of the discomfort of dizziness, and the heaviness of it all. Pretend it never happened. 

Sometimes these moments are fleeting, and just that, moments. Today, it looms overhead for hours, like a dark cloud awaiting the release of rainfall. It’s not a comfortable place to be. But I’m learning to sit with it in acceptance. To hold space for it. A solution isn’t what is necessary. My being is trying to process something here. Or in true anxiety form, it’s probably trying to process ALL the things. Find the paths to answers for all the unknowns. Ahhh…but that’s the thing, right? There aren’t always answers, and the unknowns don’t always become knowns.

In my life’s journey, the places of pain and trauma have taught me (and still teach me) that there isn’t always a known. The why isn’t always discovered. And no matter how hard I try to find those answers, it expends energy I could spend on healing. 

It’s all just part of the process of living. Feeling, searching, seeking. Sometimes we find what we’re expecting. Sometimes we don’t. However, in the midst of it all, we must learn acceptance. We must learn to hold space. To sit in it, until we are through it. I’ve written many times before about processing pain; how there are no short cuts. No ways to avoid it, in the long run. 

That’s the thing about anxiety. It’s sticky. Like those sticky, rubber hands on the end of a long ‘string’; the ones that come in those little plastic bubbles in claw machines and vending machines. You know the ones I’m talking about? The ones you can hold on to the end of the string and fling it at a wall or table, and that little sticky gelatinous hand sticks? THAT IS ANXIETY, my friends. At least for me. I can try to toss it, throw it, rid myself of it. But no matter how hard or far I try to throw it, it sticks and gathers. It sticks and gathers more freaking anxiety, just like those little hands gather all the lint and dust from wherever they land. 

So today, as much as I want to throw it, toss it, rid myself of it – I realize the harder I try, the more it will stick. So I sit here in stillness. Inhaling. Exhaling. Focusing on slowing my breath. I light a candle. I put on some jazz music. I write. I make space for it. I accept it. And I realize that accepting it doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t. But if I sit in it. If I make room. If i lean in, let go, and stop fighting it. It teaches me something. And there is peace in that, even if the peace comes after, and not during. 

I’ve often said, I write the things I need to hear. And if this serves you today too, then it’s even more of a gift. For all my loves feeling on the edge of the cliff today, in the midst of the swirling emotions and a tornado of thoughts…settle in, make space, and breathe. Let it be. As it is. 

It will be okay. We will be okay.