This week started more anxiety driven for me than most. I found I woke up with a lot of existential dread without really being able to pin point why.
This week ended up being about finding ways to express the emotions outwardly, without necessarily trying to analyse them. Spending too much time trying to think about ‘why’ usually ends up worse rather than better.
We can get stuck in the endless frame of asking ‘why’.
I’m upset – why do I feel this way?
What do I need to change to make things better?
Is there maybe something I’m missing?
These questions can be genuinely valuable. But it’s also helpful to recognise that not everything needs a deep analysis.
I never thought of myself as a particularly anxious person. Mainly because the idea of anxiety was something very visible and pronounced. It turns out that I just have become very good at managing my anxiety, rather than it not existing.
But in recent weeks I’ve been noticing how much unattended anxiety I’ve actually had. I don’t think this is something I’ve always had, but it’s certainly built up in the last few months. These haven’t been particularly noticeable (both to other people and myself) because my way of demonstrating anxiety is far less visible. Rather than having a visible panic attack, I tend to retreat inwards and disassociate from my body.
One of the benefits of actually listening to the anxiety rather than trying to manage it is that I’ve become a lot more cognisant of my intuition around social interactions.
I’ve spent more time lounging around in bed this week than I have done in months. And honestly, it’s been pretty great.
This experience has been in stark contrast to my recent months. My summer was meant to be a period of downtime. Yet I found it really challenging to really relax. It was as if there was an angst to go out and spend time with the world. Which then meant I was getting tired again.
I think I lost sight of the benefits of having comfort and safety. Our so-called ‘comfort zones’ are often used in the sense of things that we have to break out of to grow. But I forgot that there is a reason why having a comfort zone is good too. It’s nice to feel calm and safe somewhere.
2023 is the European Year of Skills. This is an initiative from the European Commission to address skill shortages within the EU.
Considering that it’s October and you probably never heard of this, I’m going to suggest that this initiative hasn’t been a roaring success.
This week, I attended the EU Industry Days – all things industrial policy. One of the topics that came up frequently was around skills, including a set-piece panel on it.
I must admit this conversation was the one that left me the most disillusioned.
If you’ve been following my writing for a while, you might not be surprised to learn that I’m currently on the Eurostar. I shift across from London and Brussels regularly, in fact this is the second time I’m in the UK this month.
I’m attending another three-day intensive around personal development. Each time I attend, I find new ways in which I can deepen my understanding about myself and the world. This time, I want to go with nothing to prove, nothing to take and no one to impress. Instead, I want to really live into being fully present and receiving the learning opportunities.
The fact I’m doing this is illustrative of how much I enjoy different things. And why not? After all, there are many rich experiences to enjoy in life.
Nonetheless, what has become apparent has been the way in which this makes it hard to keep track of my priorities, with the risk of spreading myself thin.
Five minutes before writing this article, I dropped my toiletries off the side of my sink. The result was a dramatic explosion of products and powders on the floor.
Not only was the stuff kind of expensive, it was also a rather sizeable mess which was not fun to clean up.
I was pissed off. In fact I still am.
Some people think that this space of personal development is about not letting things upset us, but I think that although that can be part of it, we can fall into denying our feelings if we are not careful. It’s okay for me to get frustrated – I am only human after all. But the way I deal with that frustration can either be constructive or destructive.
Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash How often do you spend your evenings thinking about work? Perhaps you have issues sleeping because you can’t ‘let go’ of the thoughts that persist in your head. Even when you’re on holiday, you will find yourself checking your emails ‘just in case’. These are all symptoms of overthink. […]
Heart openings can bring up a lot of emotion. I’ve been feeling it the last week or so.
What I hadn’t realised was how much emotion I had kept stored in the body. My methods of dealing with feelings I did not like was to push them away. This meant they were left unexpressed. Over time, a lot of residue has stored up within me.
Expression of these stored emotions allows me to be lighter. This in turn allows me to feel more deeply without feeling like I need to withdraw. The more I lean into these discomforts, the deeper I go into my transformational journey. This allows me to enjoy the gifts of life in a much more enriching way.
Life can feel too busy to stop – even in the month of August. It can make it feel like we are on a constant treadmill of doing, with moments of respite few and far between.
But what if rather than needing to wait for moments of rest, it was something we actively created?
I haven’t really allowed myself to return to a steady rhythm of life. The implicit ‘need’ to make the most of summer pushed me into a state of freneticism.
Having no plans allows us to do things far more spontaneously. This is very different to the pressure of *needing* to do something.