Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
the anxiety surges from the latest round of school shutdowns seem to be easing here onboard my little ship of fools. just another day in coronaville. today's school holiday was scheduled from the start of this academic year, so it is not quite so nervousy as friday's unscheduled shutdown, beyond the newly normal anticipation anxiety of wondering if school will resume tomorrow. those last minute closures and never-ending mandates have become part of the new normal. thursday's notifications were uncomfortable, but nowhere near the shock of the first round in march, 2020.
today's read from "hope for today" is a timely reminder for me. i don't get to control the new normal **out there**, but i do get to choose how i respond to the masked madness. just when i think the world can't get any crazier. . . it is what it is, whether i understand it or knot.
begin quote
i meditate frequently on the meaning of letting go. now and then i think i comprehend it until yet another situation challenges me to broaden my understanding. again, i ask myself, "what does it mean to let go?"
recently i reflected o a beautiful bouquet of flowers. while inhaling the exquisit fragrance of the open blossoms, i found myself wishing the closed buds might open, too. then i recalled occasionally seeing flowers whose buds never opened or unfolded.
sometimes i have trouble opening up and unfolding --letting go-- into my true magnificence. i often restrain myself for fear that others will misunderstand and criticize me. applying this idea in the context of flowers, holding back might mean i'm trying to hide my yellow, thick, round bloom behind the facade of one that appears red, slender and elongated. when i look at it this way, holding back seems a sad misuse of energy.
in any spray of flowers, all appeal to me --each one as an individual bloom and all ot them together as a beautiful sympthony of color and fragrance. they remind me to relinquish false reserve and to allow my own particular bloom to develop to its brightest and most fragrant so that i can joyfully claim my rightful place in the bouquet of people around me.
thought for today
am i hiding or holding back some part of myself? what beauty can i release or embrace today?
"by learning how to loving "let go" i have been given a wonderful gift: a life of my own." ~homeward bound, p.4
end quote
i know, for certain, my current paranoia over the cultural instability has me terrified of showing my true colors, especially when confronted with covid masks and mandates, but? ? ? all this safety is killing me. think i'll try just letting myself bloom. from a safe social distance, of course.
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
I think for me, when I’m choosing to not let go, it’s really my way trying to have power in a powerless situation. But it’s a false sense of power over that which scares me, confuses me or quite honestly what often enrages me. The tighter I hold on, the more depleted and out of control it starts to feel even though I’m trying to rationalize that this is what I need to do to stay in control.
There a sense of release, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and even physically when I can let my proverbial grip go. But it’s more than a feeling of release. It’s really a kind of freedom.
i tend to think of "letting go" in terms of my reactions to other people. privately, i sometimes change the "c" in my OCD to "obsessive control disorder." for sure, i have no doubt that my OCD is strongly linked to my control freakitis.
reframing "letting go" as allowing myself to be fully, completely myself is a radical shift for me. should i add that i have several court judges on record, insisting that being too fully myself is a clear and present danger to public safety? i am a natural born fighter, after all. . . channeling. . .
Maybe it’s still being fully ourselves with some wisdom and experience sprinkled on top.
Flowers… man I love flowers. They just are amazing to me.
to manage as well with acceptance.
in finding peace with my warrior nature, i often remind myself that a knife can be used to create a gourmet meal or an inhumane atrocity. the knife is only a tool. how the tool is used is up to the wielder. mindfully channeling my warrior nature has gotten me much further than all the lady training in barbie studios.