Halloween was last week. As I waited for the doorbell to ring, with a mix of hopeful anticipation and dread (cute kids v. strangers at the door) I flashed to when I was four or five, crying because the kids in costume at the door frightened me. It is murky – snippets of my own memory combined with family lore, but I do have a sense of cowering behind an armchair as the doorbell rang.

I think I was fearful from the gate, a nervous kid, with anxiety dreams that I still remember. A professional might attribute it to my mom going back to work so soon after I was born, or maybe because I ate way too much sugar. We didn’t have TV (though the babysitter did), and lived in a fairly idyllic small town. Who knows? Maybe it isn’t about blame or reasons or figuring it out. I used to think that if I could point to a particular episode or event, I would be rocketed into a fourth dimension of healing and understanding of why I kept tripping on the same emotional roadblocks, the same fears dressed up in new clothes. It wasn’t that easy. What I came to realize, over time, is that recovery and healing is many layered, with events and episodes and DNA all tangled into one. Nature or nurture? Yes. 

Over the years, those peaks and valleys of my various apprehensions have smoothed out. Nearly every fear that had me grasping on to the illusion of control has happened, and what I’ve learned, time and again, is that I am stronger than I’d thought. I recently read the quote from Brene Brown, "You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you can't choose both." I agree, to a point. I don't always choose courage. And fear may be familiar, but it is certainly not comfortable.  Usually, it is a matter of one foot in front of the other, fearfully or otherwise, drawing on my own experience, strength and hope and that of others who've walked the path before me. Fear of the unknown gets me every time, but if I'm able to move forward without the urge to foresee or attempt to control the outcome, that is courage.

My current bout with anxiety has to do with attempting to see in to the future. I go in and out of nervousness about retirement and all the changes that will bring. Please don’t say, “Oh, you’ll be fine” – that never works. Whether it was a speaker meeting, a work presentation, or a marathon, having someone say, “You’ll be fine,” doesn’t allay my internal tuning-fork energy. I know I’ll be OK on some level, and I still twitch.

I came to realize, in talking with and listening to others, that I’ve been trying to think my way out of emotional turmoil. As I heard in a meeting, you can’t fix a broken chair with a broken chair. As much as I may wish it so, I simply cannot know what I’ll be doing and how I’ll be feeling in July of 2020, or November of that year, or February, 2021. I am right where I’m supposed to be, with some trepidation and some excitement about the next phase of my development. And, I do not need to figure it out. It was extremely helpful to hear someone in a meeting share the question he asks himself when he’s in an emotional wringer. What he said was, “How am I inviting Higher Power into this situation?” What I heard was, “How am I utilizing my spiritual resources?” Not “How hard am I thinking?” but how am I surrendering to the moment? Rather than letting my anxiety run wild, how am I acknowledging my fears then letting them go, whether that is putting pen to paper, talking with someone, meditation, a walk outdoors, or simply taking a conscious deep breath (or all of the above).

Along with reminders for self-care, anxiety (aka future-tripping) is my recurring theme, along with time-urgency. What are your recurring themes? Has that changed over the years? I’d love to hear how you bring yourself back to the moment.