Something to soothe us
on anxiety, panic attacks, ladybugs, crying in corners, alzheimers, imperfection, and better questions
Hello Friends!
Preface: my mind is cluttered, my writing lately like a maze. Follow it or not. But take this as a reminder to unapologetically present yourself as you are. This is what I am doing here.
As I wrote with , her Note saying:
“Just got a text from a friend telling me I need a grammar editor. Wow. It stung a lot.
I write essays over a few days. I am my only editor. Maybe I do need someone. There are mistakes. Awkward grammar. Typos. I know it isn’t perfect…”
I get this and wrote:
“Of course we need to try to write well, but I personally feel that when I check too much, it takes away from authenticity. I begin to change the original spontaneous dialogue and content. When I am the most courageous, I don't check at all. I prefer to write as if I am speaking. And this often comes out imperfect in writing. I like to see the imperfections as Kintsugi pottery. Those who get me (and will want to keep reading) will feel the light coming through. This is just my personal choice as a writer, but also as a reader. I love free writing which is usually rule-less. Like poetry. So for me, you can keep doing what you are doing. I feel your light and love it.”
Our imperfection offers more of us. Let's begin with this quote:
“The blanket we use to cover up our flaws can suffocate our virtues.” -
Hi again…
I’ve been doing something new lately. I will circle back to it in a few moments. But first let me ask you…
Are you a worrier?
Because I often say that I am not a worrier. I actually repeat these 5 stringed-together words a lot.
I am not a worrier, I tell my mom who says she does not want me to worry about her being sick. I am not a worrier, I tell my daughter before she heads off on a long trip. I am not a worrier, I tell my husband as I read the local news and know that my barely 17 year old is out and about past midnight in what her protective father would refer to as barely dressed. I am not a worrier, I tell myself as I watch the heart-sinking, breath-stealing footage of the latest global event.
Me, a worrier?
I mean gosh…
I am the one who at 25 met an Italian on vacation in St Maarten and after a week decided to spend the rest of my life with him despite so many signs telling me that it would never work, decided to throw away the law career despite my minus 65,000 bank status and open a food counter without ever having cooked in my life, at 27 moved to Italy not knowing a word besides ciao, pizza, and nutella. I am the one who gave birth to daughter number one in Costa Rica with only my husband and a scarf as a baby carrier, in and out of the clinic in 16 hours after 16 hours of contractions and an emergency C-section. I am the one who gave birth to daughter number two, this time with only hubby and daughter number one, still no baby props… and tranquilly leaving her tiny body and big cries with the mom of the mom-and-pop hotel we stayed in so that I could take a stroll with my husband after only 28 hours of meeting precious BiancaJade….
Who sold my house and gave away most of the stuff in it to live day-to-day in small, temporary spaces. No fixed income. No plans. No worries.
I am not an adventurer. No, not this. Too squeamish with blood and against voluntarily putting myself in a situation to break something to take risks.
While walking down a flight of stairs in the dark, I will hold on and go at the speed of a 105 year old, triple feeling each step so not to take the slightest risk of falling.
(This is almost serious)
I am also the one who watches Grey’s Anatomy and Prison Break through the cracks of my closed fingers. Yes, I am that one.
But a worrier, nah.
(
thank you 👆)My natural thought process: do it and then you will smooth out the kinks as you go. I like to confront problems as they arise. Because darling (speaking to myself), planned or not planned, prepared or not prepared, ready or not… there will always be problems to solve. It is a natural law.
Note to anyone who needs the reminder: better to practice being in peace with the unplanned than being that perfectly planned person.
So are you a worrier? Maybe. Maybe you were pratically born one (even though we can probably blame it on your folks for making you look left and right 1,000 times too many while crossing that infrequently used, bike path or warning you not to take candy from strangers, not even from your strange aunt) or…
maybe you are like most other people I know, a stable, sensitive human being who has difficulty dealing with the state of things.
Don't worry. I'm not gonna list ‘em. This letter is here to soothe us.
(Btw, are ya breathing honey?)
But roughly…
I am speaking about our never let it drop lifestyles, increasing cases of disease and the dis-ease of the whole, giant, crazy world, and also things like being requested to constantly confirm that you are a human with those puzzle thingamajigs…
and passwords…
Creating passwords cause dis-ease in me. Maybe just because I am human!
… that I haven’t had someone look directly into my eyes in days and it is making me feel unsettled and I am thinking that this is NOT AT ALL OKAY.
And with this, anxiety. You feel anxious.
I feel you.
Some thoughts…
Anxiety is self-inflicted. (???)
Anxiety, you may think to yourself, when did this happen? I wasn’t like this!
Anxiety is sucking the life out of most of us.
Anxiety… waking up with that feeling “this is really happening’ or ‘what the heck is going on’, or ‘oh no I just don't know’.
This last one. I get this big time.
Hey Google! But honestly, is there anyone on this planet that does not suffer from anxiety nowadays?
But seriously… can't we see that Googling everything is the problem too?
(We can be so weak. This makes me so anxious.)
What is on the top of your anxiety trigger list lately? Please feel free to share. I promise that it will take some of the weight off of the ‘what is wrong with me’ sensation. And I will answer you. You are not alone.
kind of a detour…
I am thinking now about my dad-in-law. If you read my last letter, you know that he has Alzheimer’s. And with this (although I cannot know for sure, just as much as we can know why small dogs bark so much), he (his name is Orlando) does not worry or experience stress about personal matters or the world anymore.
Sometimes I forget it is the dementia and find him incredibly inspiring. So zen. Sometimes I feel happy for his new state of bliss because he was definitely a high level tragic-news-watcher/(over)thinker/planner.
Orlando can't remember anything more than a minute, but he is fully present to every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch in every moment.
(I am tempted to say, ‘give me some’.)
What are we lacking when we are not here? When we close ourselves in the dark room of the mind and act as if we have lost the key, as I told my husband the other day.
wonder! yes. this.
(Ooooh… how I want this back.)
Orlando is wondrous now. Even when speaking about an apple. This experience with Alzheimer's is teaching me so much.
a brief story…
All of his life, Orlando has been terrified of bees. Last summer, he was stung by a swarm of them while trimming his rose bush. He had no physical reaction at all. No pain. No swelling. Zero! A man who would blow up like a beach ball from a single stinger.
When asked how he felt, Orlando replied, 'I feel great! And do you know?!… those bees and I both love these roses!"
Lovely, no?
The incredible world of Orlando.
(The mind is incredible... our best pal or worst enemy.)
So circling back: I am trying something new.
When I feel anxious, I ask myself:
Do I have a problem now?
This is it. Let me explain.
What this does is trigger me to narrow my life down to this moment. Just this moment.
A visual: It is like taking your mind’s eye off the storm that is crashing everything down around you by placing it on the lady bug that is making her way slowly and tranquilly across a single leaf of the dill in your herb garden.
This question invites us to become the lady bug.
She’s not feeling anxious about the possibility of getting trampled by a tumbling tree. She is just in the moment and doing what she gotta do. Walk and smell the dill.
Your life situation may be full of problems — most life situations are — but do you have any problems at this moment? Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, not even 30 seconds from now. But now.
I ask myself, in this moment...
Am I (still) safe?
Am I breathing?
Am I loved?
What would your answers be right now?
I had a panic attack only once in my life. Before kids. I was in a boutique that sold accessories. I was with my sister-in-law, returning a Christmas present. An awful, vomit colored foulard someone gave me. (Probably a regift, but no judgment here. I do it too sometimes).
The store was packed. People wanted to be served right now. There was only one saleswoman. The owner. Poor dear was losing it. The twinkling lights and tinsle wrapped around the counter was the only holiday spirit left in this itty bitty place.
I remember the space closing in on me. Like being stuck in your junk drawer, the one that you can't open because it is so cramped and something like a diagonally placed, rusted screwdriver or broken, zodiac keychain (probably another regift from 10 years back) is blocking it from budging.
Complete disorientation of mind. Unable to consume air.
Without a word, I went outside and took a few breaths. This was long before I had a consistent yoga practice. But instinctively… breathe in, breathe out. Slow down your breath. Come back.
Come back. This is what these questions do for us. They bring us back to what is instead of what may be sometime or someday. It brings us back to a place where we can cultivate enough calm and inner strength to eventually deal with whatever will arrive when it actually arrives.
Surely, the lady bug will not waste her last moments in a state of anxiety if and when the tree falling from above becomes her end. On that last breath she is going to be able to say, I lived and loved my life fully. And I did not miss a thing.
I cannot think of anything more beautiful than this for a life.
When anxiety strikes. When you feel a panic attack in the making. When you enter into that Land of Overwhelm, ask yourself:
Do I have a problem right now?
Am I truly here?
And instead of obsessing over how many thoughts you have swirling around up there, maybe you can ask yourself: What is absent, what am I absent to? What am I missing?
Are you being absent to the ease that does exist in your life? The easy moments. The easy people. An easy sight of the day. Now. Are you being continuously absent to the easy nows?
This breath in. This breath out. Can you feel it as you read this?
When you are feeling anxious (or worrying) Ask yourself: Right now, where are you? How are you right now?
And if your answer is ‘I AM NOT OK’… then what? Because this may be the answer sometimes. What do you do with this?
A step further: practice being ok even when things are damn hard. As Ruth King asks:
Can things be uneasy without them being a problem?
It takes practice, but the answer is YES, they can be.
When the answer is N O, this is what I do.
I sit. I embrace an extra moment of silence. I remind myself that I do not have to like or enjoy or desire what my mind is bringing to me or what is really happening in my life.
But can I find ease in this space?
Maybe just the fact that, no I cannot always ease off the anxiety, stress, fear or frustration, but I can always treat whatever it is as an opportunity to grow. Reminding myself to use it instead of allowing it to use and abuse me.
When I remember this everything changes. I feel changed. I become the author of my life and even of my suffering mind, I am no longer the victim. I can move forward.
This is when I return to my practice. It becomes living. I remember that I can survive imperfection. I can survive damn hard. And (just like when I am in an excruciating yoga pose for what seems like an eternity) when I do, I am better for it. No, I do not wish a tormented mind or life, but I can always gain something.
And more importantly, I will be ok.
This thought alone calms the tremors. And I see a glimpse of light shining into my dark room. A light that I can follow…
follow towards better inner diaologue, ask myself: What am I NOT seeing?
If nothing else comes to mind, I see resilience, strength, acceptance, and love.
I become a person who experiences anxiety or any other inner demon with love. I stop resisting what is and work with it.
And lastly, remind yourself that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you and that you are not alone. I am here too (along with 19.1 million other people in the USA alone).
a last thought
One of my yoga students suffers from anxiety before going to work. In the past, she had a panic attack in front of her colleagues. I asked her what she is worried about the most. She said, What will others think about me and my panic attack?
Often it is the belief that we must have it all together that produces the most anxiety.
I must appear as if I have it all figured out. People expect me to be perfect.
A mind lie.
Nobody expects this from you. Except you (and maybe a few people whose opinion we don't care about).
Most of us want to see your messiness. We want need to see the most real…insane/blotched/unorganized/emotionallyinneedofrepair/healingbutnothealedyet/fully human you so that we can stop searching for the unstained versions of ourselves. We want to end the race towards appearing perfect. We want an end to our own inner demons telling us that sloppy is subpar.
"be yourself
so the people
looking at you
can find themselves.”
By you being true, I can finally give myself the same loving permission.
A soothing mantra: I can stop showing a filtered, triple checked version of myself.
end of letter
During the pandemic, I remember waking up every day with that feeling. I would have to breathe for 20 mintues before I could even get out of bed. More than fear of a virus, it felt like the world was ending. But now that I look back, even though my mind was trying to convince me otherwise, I was in no true danger. Actually, I was in a pretty beautiful place. In the country. With my family. Healthy. With time. Having everything that I needed to thrive. And not having to deal with lots of things that caused me stress prior to the start of the pandemic. So what was the problem?
The same that it is now or any other moment when I feel that oh no tormenting thingy in my heart. Fear of the future. Thinking that the world is ending. Feeling like I cannot handle life or that I am doing it wrong.
Worry. Anxiety. The physical and mental reactions to mostly irrational fear…. Different names, same life limiting result. And that pit in your stomach caused by the inability to trust. This is what I am working on by asking these questions.
Trust.
Can I faithfully come back to trusting myself, life? The Universe?
For some, maybe just trusting the next door neighbor with the untamed lawn who you imagine in the corner of her bedroom, drunk in her torn stockings and crying over her mangled life while planning to somehow upset yours or the guy who may not have washed his hands before coming out of the bathroom or after blowing his nose. Trusting that they are made of love and aren’t out to get you… no more than the Universe is.
Being here with trust and in love means reminding myself that the world is not ending and if it should, I do not want my inner demons to command my last show. I want my joy and peace and love for this life to.
And accepting. Accepting that even with devotion to our practice, sometimes our very best will be crying on the floor in some corner, anxious as hell. And here too there are lessons, there is growth.
As a follower of my YouTube channel and I wrote to one another:
Fully human requires a full experience. And full experience is the only way to feel connected. This is our last reminder of this letter.
Hope your day is a peaceful one, but if not, may it be filled with your love. xo Danni 🐞
Mentions this week (what held me, got me going, and/or touched my very center):
on substack
"Be yourself so the people looking at you can find themselves". Love that quote. I try (my best) to not let the emotion of fear or worry control my actions or state of being too much. It's interesting how much one can worry about something that another doesn't even give much thought to at all. Loved reading this Danni, thank you for sharing your insights and for the shoutout! 💚
Thanks for the shoutout...I will have to come back to read the whole thing. I love all of your thoughts...