I’ve taken a month or so off from posting due to our apartment move, but I should be back next week.
If there’s one thing that this move has taught me is that sometimes the things you fear the most (like change, for example) end up being what you need the most.
In our case, this move has come with so many positives…including a major purging of belongings that has created not only physical space, but also some much-needed headspace.
There is a certain lightness of being that releasing possessions we don’t need or use anymore has brought us.
This is just what I needed coming into Thanksgiving season. Granted there have been some unexpected and painful changes too, but I can be grateful for what we have had and enjoyed thus far.
So if you celebrate Thanksgiving, make sure to take time to consider all the things around you and, regardless of whether they’re good or bad, what they have taught you.
You may be familiar with the old story about the award-winning singer Carly Simon’s stage fright which prevented her from performing in front of an audience for 14 years.
Performance coach Tony Robbins famously compared her anxious reactions to those of superstar Bruce Springsteen (yes, I realize I’m dating myself) who would describe his physiological responses to going on stage in the same way that Carly did, but he associated them with excitement and not fear.
Anxious responses weigh heavily on us…but what if we could reassign their meaning? (Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash)
At least that’s how the story goes. And although I think some of this is an oversimplification of Carly’s experience, there is a lot of wisdom to breaking down both performers’ reactions to the point where we recognize that what we feel in our bodies can be interpreted in very different ways based on what’s going on in our heads.
I grapple with this issue myself when I am offered unexpected opportunities that can propel me forward in career and life…but which also cause me agony in terms of my fear of change.
What to do?
What has worked for me is to identify the sensations that I’m feeling. Naming them makes them less overwhelming and it’s a big plus if I can describe what my head feels like, what my chest feels like, what my belly feels like. I try to understand each sensation’s role in creating the overall experience.
Then I try to image that the emotion these individual sensations lead to is one of positivity and excitement. It’s the anticipatory “butterflies in the stomach” from doing something that seems amazing rather than an upset stomach arising from wanting to flee.
And I sit with all those things, bringing in reasoning too: thinking about the positive consequences while allowing the feelings and sensations to be there. Understanding that they are simply sensations and not dangerous on their own–they are physiological responses that evolved to help us out when we needed an extra boost of energy (think “fight or flight”).
Thinking about all the good stuff that opens up to us when we leave fear behind… (Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash)
I call this reasoning “mental calisthenics”. It takes some massaging and can even get a little metaphysical, but at some point I usually manage to get a grip of that good feeling as if I were gripping the edge of a wall and then pulling myself around to “turn a corner”.
Trying not to overthink it. Just allowing myself to feel into the sensation while giving it a positive spin. And then imagining myself “doing the thing” that I fear…and being good at it.
When particularly anxious, I may even exert myself physically to allow my responses to exercise to meet and match the fast heart rate and breathing that I’m already experiencing.
And that’s about it.
As with meditation, this is a practice and I have to keep reframing the situation in this way to remind myself that change can be unsettling but “unsettling” isn’t inherently negative. It may take a succession of days or weeks to come to grips with the new situation and that’s okay. Patience is the key that leads to progress, and every day that I reframe my sensations is another day that I improve my mental situation.
Hope this helps you too!
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Important: this is not about “toxic positivity”. There are some situations that are truly bad and understandably elicit an anxious response. Rather, this is realizing that our physiological reactions–the ones that evolved to protect us–may be holding us back because we associate them with fear rather than seeing them as the excitement of possibility arising from change.
As the saga of our building’s leaky pipes continues, this experience reminds me of some of the best advice I received for getting through my cancer treatment.
How could cancer relate to a plumbing emergency? In how I perceived the news and possible outcomes. My cancer diagnosis was terrifying because I had grown up understanding that the disease meant difficult treatment and a real possibility of death. Now that I was dealing with cancer, I was jumping to conclusions, driven by FEAR.
And the leak in our unit? That meant a huge disruption in our lives as workmen enter and our belongings are piled together. But even more so, FEAR of the future, as we didn’t know the extent of the damage and whether we’d be able to to keep living here.
Getting a first glimpse of restoration. Lost some ceiling, light fixtures and a lot of kitchen cabinets.
The thought of moving brought anxiety about higher rental rates, dealing with belongings after nine years in the same apartment, even simply fear of change and uncertainty.
But that best bit of advice that I mentioned above? I found that it applied well to this situation also. And it goes like this: don’t try to tackle everything at once; take it bit by bit.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, the experience was nothing if not overwhelming. So many new terms, treatment options, possible outcomes. It was too much to handle. Someone I worked with suggested that I deal with things on a day to day basis. Not obsessing about the future, only what I needed to get through for today.
This was not easy for me, as being FEARful came naturally to me. But I understood what he was saying, even if I struggled to actually follow this advice at the time.
As with cancer, so with plumbing. My mind had already “gone there”, struggling to afford another unit (this is an older unit with rent lower than other places around us), staying up day and night to pack. Ending up in an even worse situation with inconsiderate neighbors…
But reality was not like that.
Behold, the FORCE AIR 2000EC! This monstrosity is the heart of the asbestos abatement operation. The workmen couldn’t fit it back in their truck so we’re babysitting it for a couple of days. Also, it looks like it was built by orks, but that has nothing to do with anything.
Within a weekend we had moved much of the kitchen and dining area. And really overhauled our possessions — even something as complicated as draining our 20-gallon fishtank and relocating its inhabitants to my husband’s office was not as difficult as anticipated.
I had time. I had time to move things, I had time to reorganize, to declutter, to stop and think about what was next. I had time because it wasn’t all happening at once. Stopping and breathing and noticing all the space around gave me space inside my head.
Discussions with our landlady suggested that we would take it one day at a time. No one was throwing in the towel yet…
…and even if the worst case scenario happened and we had to move, there were other places that were available (all with air conditioning, which we don’t currently have), and the rental cost would have been similar to what we pay now. In some cases the places were newer and most allowed pets (!), which I’ve been longing for.
All of a sudden, things didn’t look that bad. The options seemed promising.
Taking it bit by bit gave back a sense of control. All those fears slowly fell away.
And now, I find myself hovering with acceptance. Not landing on an expectation that THIS or THAT will happen. I don’t know what will happen and I’m finding a comfortable place to simply hang here, not gripping or holding on or needing for anything to be different.
Quite a lot has happened here in less than a week and it deserves a bit of an introduction.
It started with a leak last Wednesday. Water dripping from a ceiling fan…which isn’t supposed to happen! I got the upstairs neighbors to check their plumbing — their carpet was wet. And it got worse from there as plumbers found several gallons of standing water contained within the studs in the floor above us, coming from cracks in our neighbors’ kitchen drain pipe, now starting to overflow those confines.
Yeah…I’m pretty sure this is not a good thing.
That water was searching for low points…which happened to be overhead electrical spaces in our unit: ceiling fan in the dining area, wires coming through our kitchen cabinets, even the overhead kitchen light. Soaking the ceiling as it traveled.
The water looked toxic.
We live in an old-ish building with old-ish pipes that are showing their age. We have had quite a bit of water damage and leaks already, some of which required strict restoration measures since there is asbestos(!) in the ceilings. The current incident is no different except that this time the repairs will be more extensive due to both the asbestos and growing mold, requiring the removal of kitchen cabinets, some carpeting and lots of ceiling.
When things like this happen, the HOA’s insurance covers all issues from the walls into the interwall spaces and the homeowners’ insurance covers everything inside the unit. As risk-averse renters we have our own insurance to protect our belongings, but we are not the owners of this unit. Regrettably, our owner did not have the unit insured. This poses uncertainties that we have yet to address.
This part of the ceiling has been marked for removal…
First things first, however: a restoration company marked out the spaces that were wet and from which we needed to clean everything out. We spent all weekend doing so. And that brings me to the point of this post.
When you have a lot of stuff, it’s easy to keep holding onto it because there’s no real impetus to get rid of it. And even if you try, it’s too easy to talk yourself into not letting go. If you get rid of it and then have to repurchase, that’s like twice the cost, right?
…and this carpet has to go…
Except that I’ve come to believe that space = money. There’s so much that we have that we’re not really using. Maybe it was on sale, maybe it was something you needed one time, maybe you decided to splurge. But if these things are taking up space unnecessarily, they are costing you. I know they take an expensive toll on me in terms of headspace, making cleaning more difficult and our living area less inviting.
So this weekend was about purging. And wow did we PURGE. It felt amazing.
…as do the cabinets and ceiling in our galley kitchen.
Old glassware, shopping lists, aged spices, an extra bathroom scale (from a time long ago when we have two bathrooms), chipped plates, dollar store containers, plastic utensils, old computer cables, and the list went on. We emptied the 20-gallon fishtank, relocated its few inhabitants to the aquarium my husband has at his office, and realized that we could probably get rid of the cart that the tank sat on too.
There was so much that we’d been holding on to that simply was not necessary to have. And the more we got rid of, the lighter I felt. Buoyed by the sensation, I started going into areas not marked for restoration and getting rid of unneeded items, because I believe a big change is imminent. Something has been put into motion that will require big decisions and big action.
So in the midst of having the majority of our kitchen items and the entirety of our dining room stacked up in the living room area, I should be stressed out. But I’m floating in quiet acceptance, staying present and reveling in the lightness. I never expected to feel like this, so positive. Maybe it’s because all those things we held on to were weighing us down?
The main reason why I started a meditation practice was because I had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was, to put it mildly, freaking out.
As a naturally anxious person, the diagnosis blew the roof off my ability to cope and plunged me into a nightmarish situation. Anyone who’s ever dealt with severe anxiety will tell you that nothing is more important than making it stop.
Over the years, my anxiety gathered enough power that it was able to blindside me. Cancer anxiety practically wrecked me.
When my radiation oncologist recommended mindfulness meditation, I felt empowered by the thought of gaining control of my runaway anxiety without the need for medication.
I was hoping meditation would enable me to sit in peace in the midst of chaos. But I imagined that as feeling no stress, as in, being numb to anxiety-provoking stimuli.
That simply doesn’t exist. I wanted to not experience any stressful situations, but there is always stress. We can’t change that. Mindfulness meditation was only going to help me change the way I reacted to it.
So here I am, more than six years after initally starting a daily meditation practice and guess what? I still have stress, I still feel anxiety.
However, what did change is that I can define it now. When I become aware of agitation and anxiety, I know to pause and bring attention to how it manifests in my body.
What does it feel like? Tightness, heat, rapid breath?
Where does it show up? Face, temples, chest, stomach?
Is there a color or sound or smell associated with it? Does it have a “texture”?
Does anxiety have an odor? Next time stop and take a whiff.
I can relax my muscles, sink into the earth, breathe deeply and notice the qualities of anxiety. By pulling apart what is happening, I slow time down. Instead of being hit by a locomotive full force, I walk around the train cars. I can notice how I feel as I pass through the experience.
Is it pleasant? No. Does it always work immediately? No. However, I can see it coming, and as a result, I relax into it. It is the awareness of the anxiety that helps me through it, not a numbness to it. This leads me to acceptance of the situation instead of bracing against it.
On one level, it’s a little discouraging to still be dealing with the unsettling nature of stressors. But I am heartened by the empowerment that mindfulness offers. I have evolved enough that I know I don’t have to go back to being thrashed by the whirlwind. I can sit inside it and watch it swirl and pass through. Every time I do this, it gives me more confidence for the next time.
I try to avoid “stream-of-consciousness”posts, but occasionally I’ll let one through.This one stings a bit…
I am tired. Physical fatigue is easy for me; getting emotionally wrung out is exhausting.
Events that have taken place over the past several years have demanded a release of expectations, a relinquishing of normality, how I think life “should” be.
Cancer was the big one. I used to wake in the morning, hoping that my diagnosis had been a bad dream. That I could laugh and shake my head, thinking, “Phew! Glad THAT wasn’t real!” And then go about my day, forgetting the fear and immersing myself in blissfully boring everyday life.
But that’s not what happened. I would wake in the pre-dawn hours after sleep had left me to the darkness, coldness spreading through my belly as I remembered that I had cancer. And in the midst of the fear of dying was that wrenching feeling of having to let go of wanting things to be different. Still desperately holding on when it was too late to do so.
Attachment leads to suffering. I know this, but I cling nonetheless, stubbornly refusing to accept change.
I was given a bit of news several days ago, too disorienting for me to even define in this post. Like cancer, it caught me off guard, and I cling to wanting things to be different. To be “normal” and uninteresting. I’m compelled by my need to fix it, make it comfortable and easy to accept.
I need to get.a.grip…
Yet another thing I wish I could control. But I can only paw at it from the outside.
Now I’m engaging in emotional calisthenics, to try to find a notch on this slick surface that I can stick my finger into and get some sort of grip.
I wish this wasn’t the case. I’m disappointed that I feel the way I do. I tell myself, I should be more tolerant of what happens. But it’s the hope that things will stay the same that makes change so difficult.
I twist my thoughts into origami, trying to find a comfortable shape. It takes a lot of massaging to smooth out the edges and make this morsel easier to swallow. Every time I mull it over, it cuts me again.
At some point it is no longer the matter itself that causes pain. It’s all the emotion layered on top of it.
So I’m tired. Letting go, yes, but so slowly. You’d think that it would get easier with practice but even the process hurts.
Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.
Attributed to Mother Theresa
I have disappointed myself.
Thirty years ago, I would have assumed that by now I would be doing great things, making a big difference in the lives of many beings.
I would have been well advanced in my field and a person of consequence.
But life is full of twists and turns and things don’t always go according to plan.
There are obstacles along the way, and maneuvering around them can force you onto a side path. Sometimes that path strays too far from your original purpose and you end up so far away that you cannot make it back.
You may find yourself in a place that’s unfamiliar and unexpected. For me, it was a realization that I will not get to where I thought I was going.
So I cannot make grand decisions to benefit all. But perhaps I can do little things with a kind heart that will benefit someone. I may not change the world, but in a small way with great love I can do my part.
Frantic Shanti 