Recognizing the Symptom of Anxiety

This time, I would like to introduce anxiety with panic as a more extreme form of the same.

We all feel anxious from time to time. Some of us are anxious on a regular basis. Though we are uncomfortable and know something is wrong, we often do not ask ourselves what anxiety is. We often feel anxiety as a tension in our body. We may have a headache or a tight feeling in our chest.

What we are really experiencing is a tension between two opposites. We want one thing or to take a certain action or see an idea through or surrender to a strong feeling but are uncertain at a deeper level. We are torn between fear and joy or the suppression of pain and a need to forget.

Anxiety is what we feel when we do not know that our unconscious mind is in opposition to our conscious thoughts or actions.  The problem is that we often do not look deeper so we are stuck with a feeling of dread or tension.  When this occurs, it is best to go inward with the help of a professional and see what conflicts with the conscious desire or thought at the deeper level. Once we know, we can make peace with a decision or action.  We can discover our conflicting feelings and/or thoughts by interpreting our dreams, daily meditation, a long walk or swim or any physical activity that might release the true conflict.

Anxiety is a signal. It is a symptom. It is important that we find the cause and open up our consciousness to what we truly want and need and why we cannot let ourselves realize those wants and needs. Guilt or shame or anger can cover our true path. Anxiety tells us we are being untrue to ourselves. The need is to find out how.

Panic is a deeper, more severe, often terrified base for conflict. It is caused by the same pattern of denial as anxiety. It often motivates us to change because of its severity. Anxiety, because it is not so severe, is often a state we allow ourselves to stay in far too long.  Discovery of what it is that holds us back from self knowledge and what causes a state of being stuck and unable to move in one direction or another, is the key.

True Stories: Rising Up Out of Grief

Dear Friends:

I have been working a great deal with grief during this last month and want to share some positive outcomes from that work, to assure any of you who are sad, overpowered by grief and just blue for a day or so, that there is movement in sorrow. 

It is indeed like the old cliche, grief is like a river. It is a river you swim through to reach a new shore, enlightenment, enrichment and to shed old patterns and ways of living. There is no rut or sameness in grief. It hurts. We, you and I suffer and out of that suffering comes newness. 

Grief often begins with a rough current, a shock, a horror, a betrayal, cruelty and even death. All of these experiences create a wrenching, a battering that carries one along until the first shock settles into a heaviness, a stillness and a smoother ride that can still turn into a sudden rapid and a spiral down a waterfall. 

I have been working with two women, one in her forties and the other in her late fifties. Both are wise beyond their life experiences. Both are brilliant and have had much success in their lives. Grief has visited them in different ways yet each woman is willing, often against their frightened selves to stay with their sorrow and see it through. 

Courage is what buoys them up and carries them along. They face each dark day with tears, often after a night of little sleep. They get up, try to move through their day. They have both gained or lost weight. Both have experienced physical illness. Both are lonely within and tired to being sad. 

One has, after months of grieving, turned to Spirit and is writing a program she will share with other women. She wants to give back, out of her grief. She has gained insight and purpose. She is in a creative time wherein she is researching her work and putting it into interviews, on paper, to be published and aired on television. 

She has become a wise woman. She wants to enhance the lives of other women. She is energized now that the worst of her grief has passed. She can see deeper, feel more and give in ways she did not imagine possible before grief visited.

The other woman is living in a dry and desolate landscape. She has lost most of her possessions. She has lost a dear friend, a beloved. She has lost her family. Yet is in a new home that is far removed from her former well appointed place. Yet, this woman gets up and takes care of her dogs and the children of others. She does not complain to those around her yet at night she cries and rails against her fate. Out of that rage and sorrow, she is being reborn with a wonderful courage and sense of fight. She is smart and able and that depth in her in being renewed. She is on the road, literally, toward a new job, a new home, a new relationship to fit her new sense of self. She is a seer. She is wise. She is most of all, what we call a very old soul. She is a survivor. 

Grief can be a pathway to newness. When the worst of it subsides, their is a sigh of relief, yes, but with that sigh comes a sense of fun and joy is deepened. 

As one person I have worked with said as his grief subsided, “the worst has already happened. I am ready for a new day.” 

I send you all courage and hope in the dark times and celebration in the light times.

The two are twins who help us to know and cherish our lives. 

Blessings. 

Mercedes

Rebirth, Re-patterning & Renewal

I witness a significant depth and change when a person has worked through pain and fear to a great enough extent that they can envision a new way of living. He or she senses within themselves new being and describes themselves as being renewed as though a door has opened and they have walked through into a new world. At the essential levels of self is that the energy and force at the base of their being has become energized by their own determination and hope. They can envision and act as though all the fears and sorrows they have experienced can no longer hold them back. They take their first steps like a newborn and go on, step by step, from there.

I can think of two clients who have dared to do this over the last month. The first is a single woman in her forties who was severely abandoned from birth on. She is highly intelligent and capable but has had trouble with attachment and trust based on the manipulation of her mother in particular. She has lived a single life with many friends but few intimate attachments. Her work with Shamanic Healing has enabled her to trust a new friendship and to move away to a new state, far away from her old residence. She ventured along an actual highway with trust and self respect and hope that she, despite her losses from childhood onward, could and would meet the challenges of a new life with new people and a very different atmosphere. She even called it a "1,000 mile birth canal".

This is rebirth. She feels new. She feels joyful. She has courage. She is hopeful. She knows herself and trusts she can manage her life. She actually seems like a different person to others. She is ready to love and be loved and to hope that in trusting a new relationship she will not be abandoned. She is now in a new life and says she can do this because she wants to, has to and is willing to overcome whatever obstacles she must to continue.

The second has been a heroin addict. She is no longer using drugs. She is a young woman in her early thirties who has been abused and abandoned by both parents. Her life, from eleven years on, has been one of increasing addiction. 

Today, after much work and effort, a depth of understanding and courage, she is enrolled in college and is thinking of a career working with animals and/or environmental problems. She is eager and energetic.

She worked with both parents and they have been helpful in her recovery. She sees herself as a different person, both physically and mentally. Her spirit is strong and because of her high intelligence, she has great potential. Although her parental problems are not completely solved, she is able to stand alone without drugs. She takes each one day as a renewed chance to stay strong and free. She is a heroine and a good mother to her own inner child. She uses her source or force or spiritual strength to meditate and to empower her new life. She is reborn a free and very able woman.