How to Re-frame Anxiety and How This Saved My Marriage
One of my most embarrassing moments as a husband came at the height of my anxiety battle. This was a different type of embarrassment than my normal. Back then, embarrassment usually stemmed from a night copiously coping with booze; this to keep the anxiety silenced. This night, fully sober me was at the helm.
We had just laid down to go to bed. Laying on my pillow with mind in full racing mode, my eyes fixated on my smartphone screen. The anxious chatter of confronting a job I hated, chaotic family dynamics, and financial pressures were deafened momentarily by dopamine explosions. A brief moment of mental peace.
That moment was shattered by my wife who wanted to joyfully share good news from her day with me. And I lost it. The near childlike look of hurt and confusion swirling together in her eyes is often a reminder of why I confronted my anxiety in the first place. At that time though, I chose the empty fullness of dopamine spikes over my wife.
If you’re deep in the rabbit hole of mental disease, you know the world develops a type of emotional inflammation. A constant haze almost. Your brain, after its daily barrage by a conglomeration of stress and exhaustion, screams for a simple break. Most of the time, that break just never comes.
Ironically, mental disease shares the characteristics of water, a symbol of Zen, in that way. The direct and constant flow of water erodes the rock it passes by given time. Same with the toxic thoughts in our minds. Sadly, society often focuses on how “frail” the rock appears instead of to effectively divert the water away. Changing that narrative would go a long way in improving how people approach healing.
The Working Man’s Path to Healing Anxiety
When I first started exploring mindfulness, my goal was mental health. Less anxiety — pure and simple. And while I found massive relief through trial and error, I also stumbled onto a new problem I didn’t even know I had. My relationships were an absolute disaster. My life had been spent coping and expending all energy keeping myself afloat. Even with all that energy focused on myself, I slowly realized I truly know nothing about myself. These realizations are how I was finally able to change.
Responsibility of the Narrative
Firstly, I will lose people here. Reading up on anxiety, I continuously find advice orbiting around the idea of coddling your emotions and accepting anxiety as “who you are” — do NOT take this advice. By defining yourself in static buckets, you’re feeding yourself misrepresentations of what change is possible. At a fundamental level, acceptance of responsibility remains necessary to set a baseline and grow.
Discussions around this topic avoid individual responsibility as to not pile on additional magnitudes of guilt. This logic fails even the most basic probing. While removing surface responsibility, this thought process reinforces deep-seeded helplessness. Do you think my spouse would have accepted this helplessness long term? While she is a wonderful woman, I would not expect that of her. Nor should anyone expect the brightness of others when all they bring is darkness.
Responsibility in this context can feel Draconian. To the contrary, this responsibility bestows freedom. The responsibility over life’s narrative implies change can happen at any time. And it can.
One should meditate on their role in their own mental health ferociously as they attack their anxiety. The acceptance and willingness to change lessens the overwhelm of depression as the guise of hopelessness dissipates. Accepting responsibility to change the narrative is only half the battle though — how can we change the narrative?
Creating Effective Mental Feedback
The vast majority of the world crawls through life without ever reflecting on how thinking works. What a missed opportunity. After all, these thoughts construct our reality. In fact, most don’t even know where or how to even beginning looking. Let’s fix that.
First, conjure up a situation that makes you anxious. In a short time span, the brain will run from that starting point through a fictional narrative to who knows where. To those of us with anxiety, we lose control and are the whim of this fictional narrator. When this happens, try and pin point the narrator in your head. Where in the hell are these apocalyptic thoughts in your head coming from?
If you can examine these anxious thoughts as an observer, you are by definition NOT THOSE THOUGHTS
This is my Zen key. Many equate the voice in their heads as an extension of themselves. You are not your thoughts. In this same vein, the dark scenarios in your head are not reality. The revelation that I could simply observe my thoughts and decide their validity changed my life. Changing your narrative starts with full acceptance of this fact.
To realise that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually
Eckhart Tolle
So in reality, comments like “I’m an angry person” or “I’m an anxious person” imply relationships that are false. As it is, these emotions flood your brain in a given moment but they are not you. We suffer in these emotions because we mistake these temporary emotions as an extension of who we are. By acknowledging this and accepting the personal responsibility to change, we frame emotions for what they are and can move past them.
Putting It Together
As discussed above — the realization anxiety was destroying my marriage pushed me to start changing. To start your own journey, you must frame your mind for change. Here are my top 3 foundational ideas I had to accept before I was able to fix my relationships with myself and those I care about:
- Your mental narrative is your responsibility
- You can change that narrative — you are not a static being !
- You will slip sometimes. Many of us are undoing decades of toxic mental feedback loops. Have compassion as you re-wire these patterns.
- Mental health maintenance is on-going. Treat it like physical fitness — no one gets a six-pack on their first workout. In that same vein, you will lose those muscles if they are neglected.
By starting with these basic mental axioms, you are taking the first big step of ridding yourself of anxiety and finding peace in your life.
Originally published at https://workingmanszen.com on September 20, 2020.
