Sometimes you realise how much you needed a break only after having commenced it. Suddenly there is the presence in the conscious mind of the anxiety one has been blocking out. There had been a certain awareness of it, but there’s nothing like stopping as you face what is an altogether disconcerting frame of being.
So we stopped. Having been on a frenetic path for weeks beforehand, planning a trip, organising things for when we’re away, organising contingencies whilst we’re on the road, working hard to achieve the space to relax—which is an utter paradox—we finally found ourselves away from home, out of range, unplugged, on the road, in the bush.
Time to relax...
Yet...
The quietness of the bush teases a tired soul with its serenity. But a tired soul cannot put everything down just as simply as that. It is an enigma that the hypervigilance in the tired soul craves the activity that got it tired in the first place. And nothing drives hypervigilance like always having stuff to do—I mean, stuff you MUST do.
The tired soul is quite sick of people, but still so willing to be busy. And that is a clue to anxiety. In the first place, it’s the abandonment of care that lets the anxiety in, which is the very dysfunction of busyness, and in second place, anxiety is the will to control and make safe of everything. This is a madness, for so few things can be controlled in this life, but my anxious soul insists on entertaining insanity.
Out in the bush, where there is a wafting breeze, still trees, a tweeting of birds, and the occasional buzz of mosquitos and flies, even a kangaroo or four, the environment is so stark from what the tired soul is used to.
The tired and anxious soul senses a problem; one should be able to relax out here, but there are problems to be resolved first, a multiplicity of little problems that leave the soul unable to sit even for a full minute and enjoy whatever the senses take in.
But the first task to be achieved in relaxing is the quest to remain watchful for signs of anxiety. As surely as anxiety does come, notice how it rises, sometimes to the level of an instantaneous panic, though it doesn’t usually manifest in panicked feelings. Normally it manifests simply in the need to control small things that with confidence don’t warrant a concern. Sometimes anxiety is irritation, frustration, and the fight trauma response.
This is the clue that we are anxious, we don’t feel safe, or we feel vulnerable, and therefore we need to control little things. We can be miserable to live with. I do wonder at this point, for those who are given to attributions of narcissism, how many are simply anxious?
The body also has its way of telling you things are not quite right. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, and the body is simply a focus point, and any little niggle or pain becomes a cause for concern—again, these are minuscule things that don’t warrant concern. At times, this can be a body image thing, where preoccupation becomes the clearest sign of the presence of anxiety.
It’s simply good to be aware when we are battling anxiety. Without awareness we can do nothing. I always found that in noticing in my irrational irritability there was often the presence of unheralded anxiety and/or depression. Irritability I couldn’t control, therefore, was a sign that I was on my way to a full-blown depression. In times past I mean.
One thing I noticed in my anxiety was the absence of anxiety in my wife. She had planned 90% of the trip, the logistics, the routes, the accommodation, etc. Once we were out on the road her performance continued unabated. She seemed to know when to do what and how to do it, whereas I felt constantly discombobulated unless things were straightforward. At times, I felt annoyed and even a little threatened by this apparent disparity between her performance and my own. I stared at my incompetence and my confidence in those moments was shot. There were a couple of moments when my anxiety shone a shadow across the light of finally being together alone.
My discombobulation was the sign that I’d been driven hard by the wind into the island of the loss of control. Only six weeks beforehand, I was frequently heard to answer the question, “How are you going?” with, “Truly, never better.” And that was genuinely true. How could one slide from the best state I’d ever been in, to a place where anxiety battled for my peace? It shows how quickly we can relinquish our peace, just like we can rise out of the ashes like the proverbial phoenix. All because my optimisation had gone from a healthy 85% to something like 105%. I’d been “on” for weeks on end and it had to stop.
It is a good thing to have problems like this to resolve, because they shed light onto the inner workings of our souls. Some of my anxiety is due to having still more to do, some of it is down to my attachment style, but most of it is about finding a way to decompress.
It just takes time, and we need to allow ourselves this time, and it is especially good to watch how present (or not) we can be or are.
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One of the things we all need is a little agency, which is some level of control over the living of our lives. Interestingly, however, if the rest of our lives is challenging and tough, I believe it equips us for confidence and agency. Overcoming anxiety isn’t so much living a life of ease which only leads to entitlement, it’s about choosing to rest when we can and noticing how successful we are in this quest, which gets us strategising for a way through.
Full schedules do nothing to assist us in the maintaining of spiritual equilibrium, of which we all need. Full schedules only serve to prevent us from entering relaxation on a whim.
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Peace came, and I could tell it had returned because I wanted to be with people again.
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