Here is a piece I wrote a few years ago during my recovery journey on “facing” the anxiety. It was one of those times when I gained a deep insight into what the act of facing was all about, and how it unfolds. Hopefully it helps to illustrate what “facing” looks like from the inside.
A few nights ago I woke up experiencing some extremely intense feelings – fear, anxiety, aloneness and depression. I got a sudden reminder of how incredibly powerful these thoughts and emotions can feel and how convincing they can be that there is absolutely no hope.
Though I am not sure how, my Voices of Truth & Acceptance kicked in and they were able even as I felt those fears to remind me what I had to do. And, as convincing as the fears were, I was also reminded that they would pass. I have to admit I don’t think I believed it 100% in that moment, but I set about facing anyway. As I did this, I studied what I actually do. I’ve never actually been able to study it in the moment before – I was only ever able to think about it afterwards. I am not sure how well it translates into words, but here goes…
First, I focused my attention directly on the feeling, the emotion. Not on any thoughts as such, but just on the feeling in my gut. When I did this it became more intense, or at least I felt it more intensely. I then noticed the intensity drop as my thoughts went to how awful it was, and how hopeless things seemed. Automatically I started to think “What if this doesn’t go away”, or “What if this keeps coming back every night” and about how unbearable that would be.
I then had the realization that my mind was using these thoughts to avoid facing the feeling. So, difficult as it was, I kind of changed my focus to searching for that emotion, that feeling. As I did so, it became more intense again, and then even more intense until I felt I couldn’t take any more and I sort of pulled away again into my thoughts. But I kept on deliberately going back to it and trying as hard as I could to get more and more into the heart of the feeling, to experience it fully and feel everything about it, almost like I was trying to examine it. I am not sure how long I did this, but probably not more than a dozen times over 10 or 15 minutes I would guess. At which time I found I basically drifted out of it naturally. I am not sure if the feeling actually faded, or whether I just stopped facing it. At some point I went back to sleep.
One interesting thing I noticed is how I searched for and approached the fear (going into the storm). The best way I can describe it is rather like the game “Hot or cold” where someone hides something and then as you search for it they say either “You are getting warmer” or “You are getting colder”. I felt like I was steering my focus and whenever the feeling got more intense, that meant I was “getting warmer”, and whenever the feeling started to fade it meant I was “getting colder”. I just kept trying to get closer and closer to the heart of the fear.
Interestingly, I noticed (for the first time I think) how I used my thoughts to avoid facing. But also, early on when I was facing, I realized I was tensing against the intensity of the feeling (resisting/fighting). I could feel my struggle and remembered then that I should probably also sag, so I added that to what I was doing. I relaxed my shoulders, jaw and stomach muscles (the places I hold my tension) as I kept my focus on the fear and moved towards it. Sagging made a huge difference and made it much less difficult to move towards the fear. Previously I had only sagged in between these intense experiences when the fear was much less, but never thought before about doing it in the act of facing something so intense. It seems rather obvious now, but it was a big “aha” moment for me.
I guess it may sound like I breezed through this experience, but I have to say again how utterly real and convincing the fears and feelings were in those moments, and that it took determination and quite an effort to face and keep pushing myself back towards the fear.
This experience was so different and felt so “right” that I knew I had taken another big stride forward on my journey to recovery.
