I spent the week-end managing my anxiety, or trying to manage it. Let me say from the beginning that I realize that my anxiety is just a pale shade of what many people suffer. My anxiety is the type that might occur if Dread and Anxiety had a baby, a baby that was cute but had tantrums and sour moods, while Dread and Anxiety had a whoop-it-up kind of night but then sobered up in time to go to work.
I have no idea if that metaphor would make sense to anyone else, but it came to me this morning, and I wanted to record it. This past week-end, my infant anxiety slept fitfully, which meant I had some peace here and there, but I spent much of the week-end pacing the floor with the infant in my arms, trying to calm it back to sleep.
So what was making me anxious? Let me make a list so I remember:
--I was worried about the housing market, about all that we should do to get our house ready for sale, about the pricing of the house that we have yet to get fully ready to put on the market (touch-up painting, that kind of thing, nothing major). As I wrote to a friend: "I worry that we'll price ourselves so high that no one will even make a counteroffer."
--Several weeks ago, I was anxious that we would sell the house before we had a place to go, but now I'm anxious that we'll have months of both mortgage and rent payments.
--Saturday morning, my spouse wasn't feeling well, so we couldn't do the touch-up painting we planned to do. And then we took a long afternoon nap. I haven't been sleeping well, so I was both grateful for the sleep and anxious about all that we didn't accomplish.
--Sunday I was in charge of church. Now being in charge of church doesn't usually make me anxious, but since the pandemic, we have added live streaming, which means there's a technology piece that I didn't feel completely confident of my ability to make happen. I understood the process of setting up the camera and the internet, but I had never done it all on my own before. Happily, it went well, but that anxiety was an undercurrent to much of the week-end.
--There was also some dread about the future. The condo collapse in Surfside, Florida seems like a harbinger of climate doom, along with the record setting high temperatures in the Pacific Northwest. The COVID-19 variants seem like a news story we'll be tracking for years, as we wonder if we need booster shots, or just how to get everyone vaccinated in time.
Throughout the week-end, I was able to be aware of my simmering anxiety and to do some self-soothing: cooking, sleeping, reading good books, watching the comfort TV of cooking shows or home design shows, the ones with beautiful camera angles and lighting. Unlike my younger years, I didn't handle my infant-grade level of anxiety by lashing out at those I love or going out on a punishing run.
And along the way, I was able to get some of the chores done and some of the work of preparing the house: some weeding, some sorting.
Most important, I was able to remember one of the lessons of kairos time: if the next step of a project isn't coming together, some times, it's best not to force it. If you let it go for a bit, it might be easier in the not-too-distant future. Or it might mean that one should put the project aside for a longer time.
I realize the hazard here is to determine what's a laziness issue and what's a kairos time issue. But with time, it's easier. I'm also better at knowing when it's good to push through lethargy, and when it will be downright harmful either to myself or to those around me.
I have spent much of my life wondering why I can't avoid my anxiety; if I can realize the fact of my mounting anxiety, why can't I short-circuit it? But during my onground intensive for my spiritual direction certificate program, I heard that we may not ever be able to avoid our negative feelings, but if we can recognize them and be aware as we are making decisions and working in and around those negative feelings, then we've become more spiritually evolved.
So I'm going to call this week-end a win in terms of caring for myself while in a state of anxiety.
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