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Anxiety Paralysis

I just updated the article that I wrote about overthinking and found myself writing about anxiety paralysis. A fear of the future that is so strong in paralyses you. Fuck it’s intense and it’s also something that I believe is affecting a lot of our young people today. The reason that I say that is because it was something that really affected me for a very long time and I couldn’t even name it. Anxiety was gripping, wrenching and chest-crushing all at the same time. Anxiety was paralysing and it was one of my big teachers in this life, though it did take a very long time to get wrestle it to the ground, as it basically left me on the brink of panic every single day. I mean what the fuck do you do when every move you make is going to lead to climate disaster for everyone and moves beyond the human paradigm? After all, we are taking all the other Earthlings with as as part of our rather indulgent behavior and that really doesn’t seem very nice. Later this specific aspect of anxiety paralysis came to be known as eco-anxiety.

Anxiety paralysis was a term that I came to know during my InnerLifeSkills life coach training. When one of my fellow students used it to describe their experience of anxiety and how it had affected their life. That they had become stuck and unable to move forward in their life in a meaningful way. They felt paralysed with anxiety. It made so much sense to me.

These days conversations about mental and emotional health are commonplace. It’s become normal to talk about both anxiety and depression. It’s become common for people to name anxiety as the thing holding them back or affecting them in any given situation. The list of anxiety-related behaviour and symptoms seems to be ever-growing. these days social anxiety seems to be topping the ranks. Anxiety is now known to be impacted by the influence of social media, the need to be perfect or at the very least suitably photographed. We still seem to be caught up in consumptive image-making that consumed us emotionally, especially when we seek to commodify the human life experience. This is especially true particularly within the wellness industry which seems to promote toxic aspirational body imagery. All I can really say is thank fuck for people like Lizzo.

As a community activist that had an overriding desire to create wellness for everyone (including the Earthlings) I too was often paralysed with anxiety. What was I supposed to do when almost every decision that I was allowed to make resulted in harm for others? Not only that it didn’t create wellness for me, given that the success of our collective futures was inextricably linked to one another’s wellness. It was a shit show to figure out and disentangle. There were some many causes, and so many people to help, even in a small town, even if I kept it local. There is no way that I could turn up for everyone and everything that was in serious need of attention. Not only this each one of these people, places, and things once engaged with always seemed to be bogged down in an unstopped chain reaction of negative consequences. Whose management led to half-arsed, disappointing outcomes that barely scratched at the problem and provided no meaningful solutions. Community activism seemed like a commitment to drudgery, that in the short term was corrosive, exhausting, and in the long term was soul destroying. It was no different to any other job even if it was self-directed. I hit a brick wall.

Speaking truth to power was a waste of time and institutional and structural violence was entirely normalised, legitimised, and expected. The unconsciousness of the humans that had any kind of handle on power was entirely upheld back the bankrolling power of the establishment. In short, everyone that worked was co-opted to uphold these practices and behaviours with little regard for how their decision-making processes impacted the most vulnerable and the unrepresented. Which includes other earthlings and the environment. It was a shit show that I couldn’t solve. In an act of self-preservation, I turned to radical rest as a refuge, and rather than acting, took to observing and witnessing instead. I named this position the art of in-action.

In the meantime, people who had a grip on our larger social issues seemed to manage their anxiety by taking massive action. It was disturbing. Let’s plant a million trees, build a million homes and fuck the consequences for anything in my way because my ego and need to succeed were so important. It just wasn’t right. The activated ego’s too wanted to coopt everything in their path onto their mission, having done no research, no community engagement, and when I get down to it very little thinking or planning. They just powered on and largely collapsed in on themselves while banging on about sustainability. The emotional and relational component quite simply was catered for within their attack of massive action. It didn’t take long to realise that these massive actions were all based on a desire to bulldoze the physical situation into submission that represented the unhealed parts of themselves. Even now I boggle at the amount of unpaid space holding that was required to be still with my silent screaming of “YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY”. The idea of emotional labour would present itself until much later in my life.

In these moments I became grateful too my anxiety, in the long term and I mean the very long term I saw it as protective. I also understood that it minimised harm to others. I didn’t and don’t have all the answers and although I had a very good brain I couldn’t solve everything and I came to a place of radical acceptance. I could only take responsibility for my wee small part. Using guidelines like ‘act local, think global’ as a mantra for those that might want to continue to live, along with other members of our species and our earthling companions. I just needed to focus on what was right in front of me. It was a major intellectual challenge to figure out how best I might exist sustainably in the world. Because as we know not everything is what it says on the tin. It feels like I’ve spent a lifetime junking products that are no longer viable. It feels like a metaphor for our species.

More than this I found that slowness was not just desired but necessary in our fossil-fueled turbo charged world and I was delighted when the book ‘In Praise of Slow’ emerged. This book gave me permission to live my life exactly as it was, entirely present with the now. In a process that I termed Real Time Existance. I had no TV, no internet, and only my phone. you’ll also be amazed at how few people call you when they can’t benefit from you socially or financially. It’s an incredibly powerful place to be, which continues to serve me to this day.

Radical rest, glocal, real time existence and the slow movement gave me the philosophical underpinnings to live my life differently to live my life as a human being free from the propaganda of capitalist production. That I had to be productive.

In the end, I view my anxiety paralysis as a gift, it gave me the space and time that I needed to figure out life. That I was right to be anxious I was being forced to live in a toxic anti-human system that was emotionally destroying me. That I was being gaslit to believe that there was something wrong with me. That I was to be forced to believe that there was something wrong with me for valuing life, not just my life but everyone’s around me. That I was not a productive part of the system and therefore I was obsolete, no more than a glitch in the matrix. I now know better, anxiety no longer fuels my day-to-day life, nor does it guide it. It turns out that standing still is a superpower.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Visa Anxiety

Honestly, there are a million and one things to be fucked up about and I really think that we need to be far more accepting of this. More than this I wish people would fuck off with their breathing exercises from time to time. Sometimes we really do have a million and one reasons why we feel stuck or brain dead and out of it or my personal favourite brain fog. If there is anything that the last few years has taught me is that my mind is in full working order. All that overthinking must demonstrate something. Except of course the mind, the brain and the body hold some very different properties. In Today one of my more recent blog posts I talked about being a COVID refugee. I literally ended up hanging out in Namibia for nine months. In case you didn’t know already nine months is three months short of a year. It’s really long time to end up somewhere that you didn’t expect, writing a master’s, watching the death toll rise and trying not to figure out what to do next; other than stay sane. It’s a funny thing all those insidious thoughts that turn into a backdrop of feeling. It’s quite a thing really the backdrop of feeling that makes up our emotional landscapes and how sometimes they seem to entrap us. When really it’s just a pushed down unspoken about thoughts that seem to be controlling our world. Needless to say, I’ve added COVID Refugee to the list of books that I need to write.

It was an intense yet homely time in the desert. That played out like a beautiful groundhog day tapestry that you really had to live through. You see life in many ways could not have been more simple, more straightforward or even better catered for, it’s just that for obvious reasons I was stressed under pressure and to my realisation now, quite freaked out. It turns out much to my surprise that certainty offers quite a remarkable toolset for wellbeing. One that I wasn’t sure that I needed until now. It will come as no surprise to many of you that I live with quite high levels of uncertainty and have done for years. At least now my work is legally allowed. You think I’m kidding when I say that. What if I told you I am not. What if you have been working covertly for years? Few people get to truly understand what it is to be an immigrant and even worse a refugee. Someone with no connections and nowhere else to be. And what do we do we put out big girl panties on and do our best to full adult. It’s nothing less than terrifying to live such precarious situations where just one thing has to go wrong and your whole way of life is under threat. More than this that your life is under threat.

We live in interesting times. A pandemic, The fall of occupied Afghanistan and now this whole thing with Russia. Borders are very important things for reasons that few people want to talk about. Borders are about control and thus adversely about certainty. You see I see the world differently. I see the world through the lens of trauma. There were no fences in Southern Africa before Jan Van Riebeek arrived. That’s what the oral history says. Yet modern humans spend their time policing and creating borders, boundary lines and systems of control. Systems of control that have nothing to do with nature. Systems that are alien. I wonder sometimes what have we learned? What is the climate emergency here to teach us? As I watched South African sand become Nambian sand through a wire border fence. Who gets to decide who it belongs to or indeed why it has to belong to anybody at all? It gets me to thinking about territories. How far we can walk? How far do we need to travel in order to survive? It feels like we should be thinking about land very differently. I’m feeling about land very differently and why we need those one hundred and ninety-five stamps in our passport. What is that separates us other than an arbitrary colonialist line drawn straight across the desert?

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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I’m Traumatised

There is nothing quite like a confessional to get everybodies ears to prick up. In fact my attachment to the idea of being traumatised was only this week pointed out to me as being trauma bonded to trauma. I can totally take that on. The things (and there are many) that we tell ourselves in order to justify, defend and deny our position. If we argue for our limitation they undoubtedly become ours and yet at the same time, your limitations  all depend on how we view trauma. Whether it is a blessing or a curse. I consider trauma to be an immense gift along with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

It has certainly given me some remarkable insights and character traits. The ability to hold deep compassion as well as deep listening.

It takes me back to a time many years ago when I used to scoff at the idea of depression. I couldn’t understand what it meant to have depression and why that might prevent you from functioning in the world. What was there to be sad about? Of course at this point in time I was in very deep denial of my own trauma. When I look at it now my very own brand of bad attitude. I was going solo. I literally had no friends. Didn’t see the point of them and was truly hooked on a consumptive experience of life. Yet the hole I was trying to fill was vapid. As I clung to co-dependent relationships and the healthiest relationship that I had was with the teddy bear I had had since I was eight.

I knew nothing about codependency, trauma bonding. Though someone I had once worked with had incessantly banged on about the book Women That Love to Much. It didn’t apply to a young women with Catholic upbringing. Love was unconditional. To love someone was to embrace the destructive force that they may or may not have in your  life as a dedication and embodiment of christian values. Romantic relationship and marriage were to be taken on as a form of spiritual battlefield where your needs never get met by an addicted and emotionally unavailable partner who’s only real interest in you was sexual.

Yes these were the subconscious beliefs that I was carrying around with me. That I was embodying in my choices. That my needs were inconsequential in the unrelenting service of love. Love was entirely sacrificial. Love endured abuse, betrayal, abandonment, shaming and silencing. This was the love I knew. Twenty years on my love programming although highly illuminated is still very much confused by the idea that my needs might be met. That I can ask for help, be heard and have someone respond appropriately. That the love I receive is not conditional on me servicing somebody else’s needs.

That I can talk about trauma. That trauma can be related to my relationship with other people and I don’t have to apologise for that. That it’s uncomfortable to talk about abuse. That abuse results in trauma. That it’s a dialogue that we should all be aware of. That we all live in an anti-human system. We are all being abused, gaslight, undermined and controlled one way or another. For the most part it is adversely impacting us and if not us directly, those who are disproportionately impacted by the disparity of the system. Yes Black Live Matter, yes systemic racism exists. You see if you don’t feel oppressed. You are probably an oppressor. So I am traumatised and yes I have transferred my trauma. Does that make it easier for you too examine?

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Post-Wedding Anxiety

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Post-Wedding Anxiety, who the fuck knew that was a thing? Apparently it is and everyone who has been married has now told me so. Since I’ve got married I’ve been doing re-runs in my head and wondering what the photographer is going to come up with.

I can honestly say I don’t think I have ever experienced anything like it. The only thing that I can imagine that it might be like is an athlete at the Olympics, all that training all that investment, one chance, one winner and then massive anti-climax. Winner or not. It’s what all the great stories tell us isn’t it? That the goal was not really the goal, the growth is in the journey and what did the surprising twist at the end tell us?

Every since I trained as a life coach I’ve consider working specifically with brides. Really? Yes really. Now I am absolutely sure that that is not as frou-frou as it might initially appear. Being a Bride is challenging to say the least of it. People you have never met, never spoken to you, that don’t even know you, take an opinion on how to do your nails, how to do your hair, who should be your dressmaker. There are even points in the process where you might be discussing how exactly it is that you want your genitalia to appear. No jokes. I’d hate to imagine the day when a beauty therapist decides how to decorate your pubic area rather than doing exactly what you want. Brides are under a lot of pressure.

To be beautiful, look perfect, to be thin, to not swear, ‘act’ dignified, the perfect host, the perfect venue, the perfect setting for the venue, perfect perfect, perfect. And there is only one day in your life to glide elegantly like a swan through it all. Not saying a word, only smiling, happy and delighted at how wonderful it is. Whether we pull off perfect or not, the come down is dramatic and intense. In the blink of an eye it is all over……the happily ever after has begun.

The quest for authenticity is epic, wild and surprising. There are so many things that we hold onto because of societal programming. Even though we know they are there and that they act somehow as false prophesy, we can’t help but believe in the fairy tale.

That is if we work hard we will end up rich, that if we love deeply love will come, if we dare greatly surprising rewards will follow. That their is a predictable cause and effect with regards to the universe. There isn’t. All we can do is deeper our understanding and adapt our approaches, which is both liberating and terrifying. Which is exactly where the magic happens in this brilliant journey called life.