anxiety and the control factor

The bright rays of the Sonoran Desert sun filtered down through the fronds of the palm tree growing in my front courtyard. I closed my eyes and let it warm my face. How I wished it could burn away the insistent anxiety that had popped up yet again. Like the ridiculous children’s arcade game, “wac-a-mole,” no matter how hard I pounded my rubber hammer, anxiety always managed to pop back up again. For me, anxiety was rarely triggered by a real crisis. No, it was the small day to day bumps that set me off. 

Small concerns grow into large concerns and before I know it, I am off worrying about what to do should the entire world including my state of Arizona get sucked into the vortex of the violence currently going on in the Middle East. The world is never at rest. And neither is life. It never has been and it never will be. And the Middle East is the least of my concerns. What if my husband loses his job? What will I do if something terrible happens? How will I handle getting older, losing friends, losing children—a spouse. My list is endless. And feeding that list is the ceaseless drivel of social media, and the constant prattle of bad news from every corner of the globe! There is no safety anywhere. 

How Do I Manage?

How then, do I manage all these things that cause anxiety but over which I have no control? Now THAT is a good question.

I’ve always said we survivors of childhood trauma are a little different than other people. I know that to be true for I have watched my husband of thirty-eight years remain as cool as a cucumber in the face of real trials and my imagined ones. You see, he has a different perspective, but more importantly, he has had a different experience of life. He was loved because he existed. I was hated for it. He didn’t have to earn anything. He didn’t have to fear anything. He comes from a base of safety. To him, the bumps in life are just that—bumps. They will pass. He will figure them out. To me they are always threatening clouds of terror.

Viewing The World Through The Lens of Anxiety

I was hated for being needy, for being a child. My childishness was used against me as a convenient target and toxic dumping ground. I learned that the world was dangerous and unsafe. That love meant giving other people the right to abuse you. In essence, I learned to view the world through the lens of anxiety. Anxiety became a coping mechanism and constant companion, but what a companion. It stole everything that was worth anything; joy, peace, purpose, life beyond surviving. In some ways, I lived two lives. On the surface I seemed accomplished and successful but inside, I was a quivering mass of fear and despair. Long-term constant abuse that begins at birth and continues forever casts an inescapable shadow and that is what anxiety feels like to me. Inescapable.

I turned from my palm tree and began to pour fertilizer around the butterfly bush growing next to the sliding glass doors. Growing tall, it bends over in an elegant dance, attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to its beautiful purple flowers. But it needs that fertilizer to live, and I am faithful to tend it. 

Though I have escaped the abusive home of my past, I realized this week that just like pouring fertilizer around that butterfly bush, I have been faithfully perpetuating anxiety using the fertilizers of  habit, conditioning, abuse and threat.

Here’s what I mean. The conditioning of childhood and your family of origin create deeply ingrained patterns that become habits. These habits become  your way of existing in the world. Trying to break the anxiety habit is not like trying to stop smoking or over eating because it isn’t just a habit. It is a pattern. A pattern expressed in all sorts of behaviors; addiction, dissociation, mistrust, grief, workaholism, fear and many others. Anxiety becomes your perspective of the world. Everything is seen as a threat. So, for me, life itself fertilizes anxiety.

This type of anxiety makes no logical sense. It over reacts and constantly fears. Why? Think back to your past. If an abuser can set the stage for anxiety, then they have total and complete power over you. They convince you that only by believing them and obeying them will you be safe. To stand up to the abuser by refusing to live by their rules is to challenge all the things you thought would keep you safe. Anxiety is like a gigantic anchor keeping you tethered to abuse. This anxiety is conditioned in you over and over and over again. It is a hard pattern to break because the survival instinct comes into play and so you perceive threat, even when there is none. Anxiety is so powerful in the life of a trauma survivor because it is an instinctual response, impossible to stand against. 

But to live in anxiety is to continue to live under abuse—even when you have left it, and so I circle back around to my original question. How do I manage all these things that cause anxiety but over which I have no control?

Two Ways To Manage Anxiety

1. Stop fertilizing anxiety. You don’t have control over outside circumstances but you do have control over yourself. You can choose to stop fertilizing anxiety. How?

Make a break with the world and by that, I mean breaking with the negative system that keeps anxiety going in your life. Get off the addiction of social media. Stay away from the negative news. A news source I use is 1440 daily digest. It is neither politically right nor left (at least that is my impression) but simply gives a short synopsis of the headlines.

Making a break with the negative world system is not enough. You must replace it with something else. Choose things that build you up and feed your soul. Spend time with safe people and be intentional about developing deep friendships. Crafting, reading, writing, meditation and swimming are just a few such activities that help me break the pattern of anxiety. 

Peace will accompany such behavior. And if you are searching for an experience of the divine, that also comes through a life lived outside of terror, threat, anger, rumor and all things related to the negative world system. For trauma survivors, forming new habits that replace the anxiety habit is a necessity in order to live. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent, think about such things.”

2. Align your hope with what is real instead of what is false. Hope cannot be connected to control. When it is, you are fertilizing anxiety. Don’t try to control life’s circumstances or other people in order to feel safe. That is what abusers do. You cannot live like them and expect to be free from anxiety. Think of your abuser. At the very center of their being, weren’t they driven by fear and anxiety? Mine certainly were. In order to find true peace, you must lay down the attempt to feel safe by controlling things over which in reality, you have no control. You are not God. It’s a relief to recognize that fact. One of the most damaging things my father did related to abuse was to try and lower his own anxiety by playing God. It destroyed our family.

Concern is not the same thing as anxiety. Anxiety causes you to fear difficulties. Concern allows you to make good decisions in order to manage life’s difficulties. I’d like to close with the much quoted Serenity Prayer from Alcoholics Anonymous. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Defy trauma embrace joy.