What if our anxiety had a message for us?
I’ve been toying with the idea of a blog post on the purpose of anxiety for a while. Much resistance is present. Plenty of triggers to explore. But sure I’m writing it nonetheless. Walking the walk and all that jazz… even if just one person finds something useful in this, it will be worth it. And I really do feel strongly that teachers need to speak openly about the fullness of their experience, and not shy away from expressing the more uncomfortable parts of their process. I cannot be the critic without stepping into the arena.
True teachers are never gurus with followers. Unfortunately, yet again, the yoga world does not demonstrate the best examples of alternative teaching models. But isn’t there always some fear of losing credibility and authority when you really share from a truly vulnerable space? Isn’t it the most human thing in the world? What we deeply resist is what will bring us the greatest sense of connection. And what stepping into your vulnerability does I think is allow us to be even more relatable as human beings. It’s that relatability which facilitates meaningful connection and leads to lasting credibility.
A good bit of the resistance is present in me also because I’m not sure I have the right to write about something I have only sat with recently. Prior to this last year, I had relatively little experience of anxiety. Depression yes, but never anxiety. It was my own personal experience navigating depression that made me feel very comfortable as the person who helps people navigate how to feel into their emotions. Holding the yin space allowed me to offer that container and hold it for people.
But while I was willing and able to be the person who guided people through their own internal awareness enhancement practice, it was a totally different story when anxiety rose its unwelcome head within my own experience. I was not all that willing to hold it at first. I wanted to fade it, hide it and fix it. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. And all the befriending I talk about? Yeah, I dunno about you, but practising what I teach this past year has been Very. Full. On! Curiosity, inquiry and investigation are hands down my best teaching tools - and yet they couldn’t have been hidden any further down the bottom of my own toolbox. I simply did not want to know what I know. That ‘single malt essence of my own reluctance’ has been expressed in fighting what I know to be true over an extended period of time, and it is the straightest and most guaranteed route to anxiety I reckon you’ll ever find.
“You cannot teach what you aren’t able to hold within yourself.”
You can only truly teach what you have sat with and integrated. You can only truly teach what you have personally experienced, and of course, when I finally, eventually, reluctantly got curious about what the purpose of this anxiety might be, I learned that while I can’t unfeel what I have felt, I can try really bloody hard not to feel it in the first place. And for this introverted intuitive, that honestly takes some amount of denial. One thing we can all excel at is choosing where we place our attention, as Jungian analyst Robert L. Moore put it;
“Human beings have an enormous desire not to know. It is very painful to know. If we did a popularity contest among all the defense mechanisms, the defense mechanism of denial would win hands down.”
I have experienced this denial on so many occasions when engaging in shadow work with students. When we are first confronted with aspects of ourselves that we are deeply uncomfortable with, denial is the most obvious recourse. This is sometimes painful journeying as it involves willingly diving into memories that we may have conveniently filed away in the ‘do not disturb’ cabinet.
I know only too well how much more appealing it is to stay safe in the yoga teaching world. It will always be easy to instruct about what is surface and popular. Shadow work and embodied integration are a much harder sell as they absolutely depend on each individual’s courage to ‘do the work’.
“The hard-to-swallow truth is that many would prefer for their messy, painful healing to be delivered in a pill form, as they assure you with great conviction that their shadow integration happens on their ayahuasca retreats.”
What is true is that when you find it in yourself to stop fueling the denial and enter observation mode, there is actually some important magic in this anxiety. It has a message for you, and it’s generally written in gold dust. When the resistance gives way to feeling, and the question “What are you here for?” is gently asked, we learn that the function of our anxiety is generally to indicate where we are not fully aligned with our soul path. If you truly feel into the discomfort and see it as a partner in a dance of discovery rather than something dreadfully inconvenient that needs to be abolished, it is almost like it starts to speak to our deepest knowing and slowly drops the first bit of insight that we desperately need to fully wake up.
“One’s anxiety always points out our task. If you escape it you have lost a piece of yourself, and a most problematic piece at that, with which the Creator of things was going to experiment in His unforeseeable ways.”
The same sentiment that Jung expresses resounds in Hala Khouri’s hypothesis that sometimes our anxiety is the energy of fear resisting this pull to transform. And in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas we have an almost chilling interpretation in the sense that it touches both our deepest fear and our deepest potential all at once:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
I promise you that integration is possible, and it is there for those who want to explore it.
The question is; are you willing to tap into your avoidance en route?