Current Practice: Get Rid of Fear

Note: This is not a happy post ~ it talks in detail about the anxiety and depression I experience in my life. Read at your own prerogative. If you want to read something cheerful this is not the post for you; if you want to find the meditations go all the way to the bottom of the post. 🙂

One of my challenges in this life time is debilitating depression and anxiety.

It may surprise some of you who know me from a distance. There have been times where I have called certain friends in my carefully cultivated support network because it is getting harder and harder to get out of bed or because I am frozen in fear.

My go-to behaviour, which many old friends can confirm, is to hide away when I am being hit by either of these experiences. I go into my own little world and disappear not only from the world at large but also from my friends.

I ignore messages, emails, phone calls, and visits from people I love.

I usually won’t talk to anyone for days or weeks at a time unless I have to and I avoid people like a plague.

This is a large part of the reason why I have a spiritual practice.

Years ago when I was going through a very challenging and traumatic time and the ego of denial was being crumbled in my mind daily meditation (and Reiki) was the only thing I found that could give me an anchor in my own mind, nevermind the rest of life.

This is part of the reason why I am committed to my practice, too.

My practice has shifted the way I perceive the entire world – my pain, my friends, my wants, my desires, my entire life. It has slowly allowed me to unpeel everything I hid from myself and shift the way I work. It has taken a long time but I am slowly but surely rewiring my brain through meditation.

It has been documented that people who experience trauma have brains wired differently from the average person. One of the best books I’ve read on the topic is Naomi Wolf’s book “Vagina” which focuses just on women. (I’d love to read a similar book on men. Comment if you know of any!) There are numerous studies listed in that book speaking of the effects trauma has on the brain and the way a person is wired. Here is a great article speaking on child abuse and its effects. And here is an article speaking about the way PTSD affects your brain.

Over the past few years the way I experience depression and anxiety have changed. It used to be a chronic thing where most of the time I was anxious and it wouldn’t take much to set off a depression. Last year was the first time in my life I felt whole again and since that point I’ve noticed when the depression gets triggered (twice last year) I go deep and dark fast.

To the point where most days its hell to get out of bed.

Where it feels like I am slowly clawing myself awake when I’d much rather be sleeping and talking to people feels absurd. Moving feels painful, leaving the house is an event filled with huge amounts of fear/anxiety, and being seen is the worst thing that can happen. I feel like no one can understand where I am falling to inside of myself with my fingers extended trying to climb back out.

My anxiety goes off the radar and I can’t tell you what is freaking me out more: everything in the future or everything right now or the ghosts I see. It doesn’t make sense, and I can tell you that, however I can’t stop the gnawing feeling inside of me like everything is going wrong and everything is wrong and most of all: I am not safe. There is something wrong and it might be me and it might be you and it might be anything and everything and I just don’t know.

I’ve learned to manage these feelings over time and in various programs though I’ve learned there is limited support of the kind I would like for free: an excellent talk therapist + body worker. These management techniques don’t stop me from falling into depression or having panic attacks but they do help me get out of it.

I have an envelope that I always know its place. Inside that envelope are love letters from people in my past and present. There are comics to make me laugh. A list of things to do to help me get out of this place that I am – including a list of people to call who will understand. 

I believe these experiences are primarily mental patterns based on previous life events tied to huge emotions that haunt me subconsciously. And at the root of them is fear. Every time I think I’ve “solved” them and the past won’t effect my present it does. As my body tenses up for no logical reason and I walk around slightly hunched protecting my heart I wonder if the fear will ever go away?

More than once I’ve felt like fear controls my life more often than I’d like (almost always?) and I’ve recently decided I want to get rid of the fear at the root of my anxieties, self-sabotage, and depression that takes me over so often. The fear that keeps me from openly connecting with people because I don’t feel safe. The fear that says I can’t trust myself because I’ve been hurt too many times. The fear that says no to trust, connection and love.

I feel deep inside of myself that I have a broken trust in something. I don’t know what it is exactly I do not trust but there is something that many others seem to automatically trust that I can’t. I feel it in my heart. I notice it in the way they speak. I see it in the way they are. The ways I I can’t be no matter how hard I try.

Its like most people have a trust they will be taken care of, an internal sureness that life supports them. I’m not sure I have that same trust. I don’t think I do. And maybe that’s the trust that has been broken: the fundamental trust that life will support me.

Therefore I have decided to do two meditations to get rid of fear for my daily practice. Join me if you will! They are linked to below!

I don’t know how long I am going to do them, but I will know when to stop, and so will you. Right now I’ll aim for a relaxed 40 days. 😉

Catalyst Yogi – Get Rid of Fear

Chattr Chakkr
^ For the music for this chant I use either Snatam Kaur (15 minutes) or Nirinjin Kaurs version (6 minutes played twice) on YouTube.

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