I have been struggling with anxiety for a few years now which is something that I have had to learn to adjust to. Admittedly it is a bad sign when a person feels the need to take anxiety medicine every work day just to function. I think that anxiety is a physical response our bodies are having when we live and work in a high stress environment long enough for it to result in our adrenaline valve getting stuck wide open, leaving us with the feeling of fight or flight at all times. I wonder, if all we do is medicate chronic anxiety long enough our bodies might start responding to us like the boy who cried wolf. What if one day we truly are in danger but chronic anxiety has resulted in extreme fatigue, then we may not have the ability to either fight or flight and then we end up, what, dead?
Although anxiety certainly is a challenge for me, I would not normally consider myself to be depressed. There have been periods in my life when I have struggled with feeling low. Or maybe a better description would be that I felt concerned about the fact that I seemed to go for periods of time having no discernible emotions either way. As if my feelings were numb. But numbness did not seem normal so it felt like something was off.
When I have an anxiety attack I feel desperate to take something or do something as soon as possible to relieve it or numb it in some way. But when I am feeling low I am just waiting for something to part the clouds, weather it is the sun or the rain. The ability to feel is life. Without feelings we are just biological machines. I can understand people who self harm to get the adrenaline rush because it fills them with feeling where previously there was none. But there are other, safer, ways to break through the fog.
We are always actively seeking out things in our lives to generate a feeling of happiness, even if we are not consciously aware of doing so. But all our feelings are fleeting. So we spend our lives searching for our next fix. And like a drug, what brought us happiness in the past might not be enough to evoke that same height of emotion at a later time in life.
When we get sad we treat it like we caught the flu. We buy over the counter medicine, eat better and rest to treat ourselves well so that we might recover as quickly as possible. We are grateful if it turns out to be just a 24 hour bug.
But happiness is not the only valuable emotion. I think sadness can be a useful tool. To clarify, I am not referring to extreme depression where a person is feeling no hope at all. I am talking about periods of sadness that we all experience when we are cognizant of the feeling and we have the desire to rise out of it because we can visualize life on the other side. It is tempting to self medicate during these times. And, yes, that will bring temporary relief. But that works about as well as applying a face full of makeup over your pimples so that you feel presentable enough to attend a party. The trouble with that is when you come home that evening and wash your face the pimples are still there.
What if we don't try to make the feeling of sadness go away or cover it up?... Stay with me here... What if we take a different approach and sit with it. Whatever the feeling is, welcome it. Pull out a chair for it. Offer it a cup of coffee. And sit with it as if there is no shortage of time. I think it is possible that if we stop running and start listening, sadness is just one of the ways that the "still small voice" uses to speak to us.
Emotions are messy and uncomfortable. Just like the ride home from the beach in winter when you were accidentally knocked over by a rogue wave while wearing jeans and tennis shoes. You only planned on talking a walk on the beach. You didn't plan on getting wet so you didn't bring a towel. As you drive down the freeway headed home you can feel the grit of the sand which somehow made it's way into unspeakable places. And you are shivering because it is 60 degrees outside and you are soaking wet from top to toe. It is because emotions are uncomfortable that we are always trying to avoid them the way you avoid your Great Uncle Bill because you know that once he gets started he will talk your ear off for over an hour.
But we can not avoid the mess of life altogether. If we try to run from our emotions instead of listening to see what they are trying to tell us, then the mess will just end up hitting us somewhere else. In fact in might be possible to mitigate the mess of emotions if we listen to them when they first come on instead of putting it off.
I think that meeting with a counselor, discussing your feelings with a trusted friend or reading self help books can be a good way to open up a self discussion. Increasing our knowledge and experience allow us to explore more thoughts and concepts. But I have found that when I sit with my emotions there have been times when a concept that I was familiar with had been brought to the forefront of my mind in a completely new way as a revelation to myself. It is those revelations that bring me joy. I would not want to give up my periods of inner turmoil if it meant missing out on what I consider to be my secret treasures.
