A meditation on anxiety
5/13/06
Gary took the boys to Connor’s game, so I have some time to myself. He did that specifically so I could have that, as a sort of Mother’s Day gift. Unfortunately I slept later than I wanted to; I’d like to have done the grocery shopping before they left; arriving home about the time where they’d just taken off. And so have the time alone in the house feeling unfettered. As it is, in “me” fashion, I am feeling “fettered”; by the things I need to do. Listen to a news program; continue my diary project, along with fold clothes and do the grocery shopping that I didn’t get to this morning. I guess this is a chance to examine how I respond (or react, whatever) to the anxiety of things that are incomplete. As I realized when I said I could be in the house unfettered, even if I didn’t have an impending shopping trip, I’d be “fettered” by the knowledge that they were coming back.
An interval here where I went and folded some clothes and came back to a message from Darlene that she’s feeling sick and can’t come tonight to babysit for a function Gary and I were going to. And I do feel more friendily-inclined. I don’t know if it’s because she’s sick and it brings out the nurturer in me, or if it’s another ledge out of feeling so unfriendly toward her in the wake of our making gestures toward each other. With each gesture being a step up because one builds on the other. One nice gesture leads to another, and sets the tone for the next. I probably should overcome my reluctance (how much is the force of habit) and see her a little more often to establish a less reluctant feeling as my baseline in regards to her.
While downstairs I did some considering about anxiety and remembered a book I’d started years ago that Dana recommended to me. I wonder if it is some sort of basic given built into our nervous systems, sort of underlying all emotions like a tone. Some people have insulation from it, by temperament, physiology, luck, coping mechanisms. For others it’s much more raw. And, part of out personality is how we manage it, or not. I guess its level is what determines how we are in this world. If we live like there’s always something to be afraid of, or feel safe in the world.
Reading Doria Russell’s book has acquainted me with a visceral understanding of the fact that there is a lot that is unsafe in the world. I’ve lived with that intellectual knowledge, and have been largely untouched by it, with the exception of how vulnerable I felt in the wake of Karen’s disaster. So I’ve been moving through life largely insulated from fear. And I get a glimpse of how paralyzing fear can be—because if the boom can be literally dropped on you at any moment, how can you move? Especially when we move at great speeds and with objects with lots of momentum, inches away from each other on a road and depend on each other’s mutual pact to stay safe.
I wonder if the wellbutrin is exaggerating this—that is raising my awareness of how fragile we are. Or if it’s a developmental step, seeing my own mortality (that’s maybe being heightened by the well butrin?)
I’m just seeing how anxiety is a powerful force in human emotion.
I think the above is sort of a microcosm of what I’m talking about—just one way anxiety manifests.
Anxiety seems like a jab, an impulse to do something. People who can govern that impulse seem to be calmer people.
I suppose one reaction to anxiety is to take a defensive, expressed as offensive, posture. Seeing something different heightens the base level and then people express that impulse as prejudices, say. Or they use that feeling as a base from which ridicule springs.
Here’s another example of anxiety. I talked to Gary a while ago and he said they would be running some errands after the game, home around 2 or 3. So, I’ve been hanging here, with the idea that I’ll leave to go grocery shopping around 1:30—thus not filling this time to myself with errands, but something I genuinely want to do. There’s a way that I feel that that’s not ethical, that it’s taking unfair advantage of Gary since he’ll come home with the boys and I won’t be here. I experience it as a raise in volume level—a call to action.
I had some other thoughts about anxiety. When it comes to choices (like going to the store now or not) there’s an increase in anxiety level and it’s partly driven by the fear of regret—of regretting what it is that I choose.
Anxiety is a foot on the gas pedal. And simultaneously on the brake—starting something and then pulling back from it.
Anxiety is—that is, other people’s anxiety is very annoying. It calls to my underlying substrate of anxiety, which if it responds, is uncomfortable. Darlene is a high anxiety person; so is my mother. Though both acknowledge that they’re “worriers”, they have little awareness of it as the force that drives many of their moment by moment actions that are difficult to deal with.
I used to say that my depression didn’t seem to have an anxiety component. But some of the things I’ve become aware of tell me that’s not true. I think I probably do manage my anxiety ok. It’s not a function inhibitor, though it kind of is a tax on my functioning. It’s just a slightly added weight to the stuff I do to be in the world.
Gary called and whatever thought I was going to put here is gone. I was on a thread of anxiety being driven by fear of regret; I think it’s also a sort of reflexive desire to do something to calm it:*RIGHT NOW* a sort of demand. I suppose it underlies a desire to protect, which goes deeper than worldly possessions; it’s about protecting some view of self. I’s about feeling that something isn’t complete—it’s about satisfying a demand.
Oh, I think what I was going to talk about is how I’m having more clarity about my own anxiety. I see it underlying some of the conflicts I have with the boys. Because there is a part of me that is demanding a circle be closed, which is why I’m frustrated when I’m interrupted. And, unfortunately, I’ve often chosen finishing the task over the child and made the child wait. This morning Scott wanted to look at the Waldo book with me, and I really wanted to be reading my own book. I stayed with him for a short while, then went in to go to the bathroom and used that as a point of exit from the story…though he wasn’t finished.
Anyway, reading the old diary, I see evidence of the same anxiety, expressing as conscientiousness, sort of hyper-conscientious (which has served me well when I’m working as a physical therapist). I see it in the religiosity, and my assuming the worst about myself. And of course I’ve already mentioned it when I remembered a compulsive shadow to some of my actions as a child, with the doors closed, the bugs squashed, that sort of thing. It has always been there, but I’m aware of it and looking at it now. I can see that it’s served me pretty well in many things, but it has worked against me too. It’s absence would result in some easing of conflicts, especially pace conflicts with my kids; it would remove the suffering I have from being interrupted because I’d no longer feel that I had to do something, like go online later and catch the phrase I missed in a news segment—and feel anxious about maybe forgetting it, as well as how to fit it in.
I guess that might be what’s driving my intense need to be alone is wanting to have a blank slate of time around me enough so I can see the shape of it, and then figure out how to fill it to fit my needs.
I was walking away and realized that it’s an integral part of my conflicts with Gary, too. Usually, when something happens, like he makes a remark that stings or treats me disrespectfully (not concealing the fact that he feels I’m in his way and is annoyed by that), it’s not so much that incident that causes the big rift; it’s what happens after. Because I do experience him treating me that way as a rift, and my impulse, partly compulsion, is to close the circle and heal it. He usually refuses to close the circle—brushes off my attempts, which I then pursue with more doggedness—because another rift has opened in his dismissing my attempts to close the first rift—and sometimes another and another and another.
So my inability to tolerate that opened circle contributes to the magnitude of our conflict. But I still can’t help but feel that allowing him to be disrespectful, even on those subtle energetic levels, is not a good alternative.
Perhaps the solution to that is to just state what he did: “You just told me to move away from the computer in a hurtful way” Perhaps if I just say it, then I could let it go and keep the conflict from widening? Would that satisfy my need to close the circle?
I want to look at this in a The Work context:
The belief I have is that Gary shouldn’t speak to me in such a way.
Is it true?
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