"What if..."

It is often a matter of simple inquiry. Dr. T would say to me: "What if..." and then I knew a shift in perspective would eventually come. 

"What if you just let it be there?"

"What if you could allow more space for it?"

"What if you stopped fighting so hard?"

The "it" of course, was the fear. It shows up as anxiety in the mind, fearful thoughts, and very real physical symptoms of panic that run the gamut between just a little uneasy to full a on dissociative sense of unreality, like Alice in Wonderland where the floor grows and shrinks underneath her.

What if... I just allowed it to be there, made more space for it to exist, rather than fighting it or wishing it would just go away? That simple shift created breathing room and a sense of self-compassion (instead of the "why am I this way" or "I need to fix this" thoughts and feelings that don't do anybody any good). 

I distinctly remember the moment when I realized that fear and anxiety was never going away. That nothing I did or pill I would take could make it disappear forever.

It was sometime in the middle of 2015, after working together on and off for half a decade, and I was sitting in Dr. T's office that was dimly lit at the end of the work day. I was scanning the book titles on his shelves over and over again, delaying a response to some question when it suddenly became very clear. 

The work we were doing was not to eradicate fear, it was to release its stranglehold on my life. 

I would need to learn to dance with fear, to understand how it would become a part of me that I would honor, but not lead from. The shift was simple, yet profound, and illuminated each next step on the journey to releasing the hold.

As with all things, there are ebbs and flows, and the intensity of anxiety returned in different situations and over time, especially these last two years in the midst of a global pandemic, but I continue to dance with the fear, learning new ways to maneuver and move. 

Mr. New Guy (see recent post about him, here) has added to my toolbox. Not only do I gently offer myself the question of "what if..." but now during moments when I feel so out of control, I can remind myself that none of the panic sensations I'm feeling are actually dangerous.

This is how exposure therapy works. The more I understand that my racing heart or the intense urgency to escape that sometimes occurs while sitting at a stoplight won't harm me, the less power it holds. And the more I allow the space to exist between the fear, my perceptions, and ultimately my actions, is what makes it possible to keep going... every day.