Anxiety isn't the enemy

We spend a great deal of time and energy searching after the “thing” that will finally make us feel whole. The newest self-help book, the best (or most expensive) therapist, hypnosis, or the latest supplement. We want the anxiety and the depression to finally leave us alone, for good. We don’t even know why it's there. We don’t want to feel the panic or the heaviness that simultaneously sets us on edge and weighs us down.

We just want to feel better.

May I propose to you that those bodily sensations that you want to get rid of, are not the enemy. Killing them off once and for all, so that you never have to feel them again, isn’t the answer. Those sensations are important. They need to be listened to. They need to be tended to with kindness and curiosity. They are the clues that your body is giving to you. The heartache, numbness, trauma, grief and anger that you experienced in your early years of life are trying to get your attention. They no longer want to sit in your body and be carried everywhere you go.

They want to be released. They want to be told. They want to be heard, comforted, validated, and healed. Thanks to experts like Judith Herman and Bessel van der Kolk, we know that trauma is stored in the body. It feels like a racing heart, a foggy brain, a silenced voice, low self esteem, and isolation. If feels like a lack of safety, disconnection, rage, and the feeling that you are never good enough.

Your body is longing to tell the stories that it is holding. Perhaps you don’t even know what they are. No one grew up in a perfect family, in a perfect world. No one. You do have stories to tell. We can discover them, together.