Day Two: Affirmations

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I started writing affirmations months ago at the start of Lockdown. Having read Hal Elrods’s Miracle Morning, in which affirmations serve as one of his recommended daily practices, I made a list of lots of positive things I wanted to affirm.

‘I am strong. I am creative. I exercise every day.’ and so on.

I took heed of Hal’s advice that they be positive, present tense and possible, and I wrote out several lists of goals and dreams as if I were already living them.

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Day One: understanding where anxiety comes from

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I woke up at six am, proper excited about day one of my new course! And sat there in the dark for nearly an hour wondering where exactly I was going to start. It’s like I had promised a curriculum of 21 lessons and my single student (me) arrived at class and we’re both delighted with the clean blackboard and new notebooks but we haven’t actually got a lesson plan.

So the first hour was spent brainstorming all my ideas, so that I now have a neatly alphabetised direction to follow for the next three weeks – packed with a diverse range of subjects including Gratitude, Cold Showers and Radical Forgiveness – but before delving in, today will start with the question of what is actually going on in my brain and why it keeps doing what it so masterfully does to keep me in fear.

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Twenty one studies in emotional strength

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It has come to the point where it’s time for me to try another 21 day project to strengthen my troubled little brain. I have done this sort of thing before but not told anyone, and as a result, didn’t manage to keep the commitment. So I’m letting you know about this one in the hope that having an audience will oblige me to stick to it.

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Tether that voice back up for a bit

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Last night we had our follow up session with Cara to see how we are all getting on, six weeks after finishing the course to Untether Our Voices. I had planned to arrive at this October session with a proud announcement of my first draft of my story I’ve been working on for years, but instead I watched my face in the zoom screen grinning from ear to ear as I explained that writing it was triggering such a bizarre and fascinating world of anxiety that I would be pausing the big writing project and taking some time to look after myself. They all smiled and nodded in approval at this necessary part of the story telling process which added to my huge relief to be able to just let go. How lovely.

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He bought me a weighted blanket!

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What an absolute gesture of love. He must have ordered it last weekend, when I was really unwell, and other than hugs and hot drinks he didn’t know what to do to help. He’s a very capable confident man, but when his girlfriend is a shaky mess of anxious nightmares he feels a bit helpless. I didn’t know such a thing existed but a weighted blanket is good for anxiety and other issues as it serves as a full body calming device. It arrived a couple of days ago, and as I delightedly opened up the weighty package, he said, ‘you know, for when I’m not here and I can’t hug you.’

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On not having Children

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I’ve been thinking that I’d address this issue one day in the future, but after a chat with my mum just now in which she asked me if I really am OK without children, I think that day is now.

Four years ago, after a string of unsuccessful relationships, and nowhere near my prescribed ideal of having a family, I decided that by the end of the year (my 38th) I would find the father of my two yet to be born children. I needed two, of course, as that was natural and pragmatic, and I needed to start soon because I was nearly forty. My friends gave me advice and support, excited for my imminent motherhood. In April, a lovely man who I met at a community theatre fundraiser – I did the flowers, he was one of the actors – asked me out. By June I was in love. We had the talk about a possible future together which was when we realised I wanted kids and he didn’t. We broke up, I cried for really many more weeks than I expected, and I tried to find the next possible father of my children.

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Will you sell your soul?

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So yesterday, talking to my sister, we made the connection between my writing and my panic attacks. Yes there are all sorts of other anxieties but we can’t ignore the fact that on Saturday I printed off and read through the first 100 pages of my early memories, and on Sunday I was a wretching shivering mess of panic.

I have been writing about snippets of my childhood on and off for years, a loosely connected set of stories of my life growing up in the Moonies. I started this year with a plan to compile it into a concise piece of writing, and after an excellent course by Cara Jones on Untethering My Voice, I’m at the stage where I’ve nearly got a first draft.

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Do not subscribe to those thoughts

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So in an effort to still my scrambling mind, I turned to YouTube, my old friend and advisor, who knows me so well. Even the adverts he shows me are about wellness and meditation. And tonight YouTube tells me to watch this interview with Mooji. Yes I think I need to get a bit transcendental today.

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In and out of darkness

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It has got to the point where I can write again. The stomach wrenching anxiety has settled into an exhausted sort of headachy weariness, from which I can face the words that describe what has been happening. So much anxiety. My sister asked me yesterday how do I measure my levels. I suppose there’s a scale of 1 to 10. I’m mostly at around 5 or 6, which is when I am aware there is something beautiful, but I can’t see it. Yesterday morning, I could see that there was a beautiful sunrise, I knew that the delicate gold light rippling through the emerald green of the trees was beautiful, but I couldn’t see it. Anxiety sort of clouds over every thought with a dull grey blanket of engulfing dread. You don’t breathe properly, can’t really talk, can’t cope with complex emails or loud noises… It is just crippling. I have had a few days on and off recently, with small breaks in the darkness where I can eat, smile and breathe properly, till it returns. And while I’m in the grey space, I understand why some people just can’t cope with life. If you were in a constant haze of anxiety or depression how could you even be polite to people, let alone proactively thoughtful and kind? It’s just not possible. When I’m anxious I have zero ability to care about others. I feel bad for wasting peoples time or making errors while I’m in a bad way, but I don’t have love or compassion, just a different flavour of fear and dread.

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Droplets

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At the end of my meditation, I like to imagine a lovely bright light from the universe filling my body. It’s a nice visual process of mentally cleaning out and strengthening myself for the day.

Today when I imagined this, it sort of surrounded me with an aura of white light, and formed the shape of a droplet around me, sitting crosslegged on the sofa. And it reminded me of what Chidi says in The Good Place, about being drops of water in a wave. We exist for a short time as our own unique droplet, and then we merge back into the sea. And I saw myself as a tiny drop of rain falling out of the sky. Next to millions of others in this particular rainstorm. And it is as if we have this few minutes after we’re formed in the cloud, to fall out of the sky, experience the magic and beauty of life, hurtling through the air along with the others, before we meet the ground, sea, tree, car park where all the other drops have gathered and we merge and flow into our next manifestation.

And how ridiculous is it that we spend our fleeting flight bickering, comparing, being jealous of, scared of, feeling judged by or misunderstood by the other drops. Who cares?! Just enjoy this short time, make the most of it, fly with drops who make you happy and stop trying to change those who don’t.

Because none of it really matters anyway, we’ll just all merge back in a puddle, in a water system, in the sea.