ALLOWING and BEING WITH Anxiety

Those of us with anxious temperaments/anxious brains may have a strong visceral response to the sound of a baby crying. That may just be how we’re wired. I see it in myself and in others. Many of us are “sensitive”. We feel the world deeply and strongly. We may even tend toward being alarmed easily. Depending on how our family culture responded to our “sensitivity” and/or our “feeling” the world deeply in our bodies, we may have been conditioned to believe it is BAD or a dangerous thing to feel that internal alarm system. We literally can't bear how we feel. It is not something we have ever considered simply bearing and being with.

IN FACT, we can bear it; we just haven't. So I like to practice mindfulness during the baby crying moment: I turn my attention inward, I anchor myself by bring my attention exclusively to my breath, and I LITERALLY practice allowing: allowing all of the sensations, observing them for what they REALLY are. Just observing. No judging. What is the precise nature of this experience we so automatically judge as bad or wrong? (Cherie Huber, Suffering is Optional).

Can we allow it to be, and allow it to go, as it will? I think it’s important to remember to let feelings come and go. They are going to anyway! Just like the waves, they rise and rise, crest, then fall back; washing up the sand and back. Over and over again. I was never aware of this magical fact. Feelings come and go. They will be experienced, and then they will go away. I love telling people this. I LOVE the way they see it for the first time and are as amazed as I am.

I find that once I take that attitude, I can hear the wisdom that is there. It just sort of pops up:

“Oh, I need to simply hold the baby and let it cry.”
“Oh, I need to sit down and rest for a few breaths and that's okay if the baby is crying.”

This wisdom is very calm and nice to me. It doesn’t yell and it doesn’t say mean things about how I’m doing my job.

We can also listen to hear what the mind is saying. It’s like pausing and listening in on a phone conversation. What is the voice on the other side of the line saying?

Perhaps it's our perfectionist conditioning arising: "What am I doing wrong?" Or, our conditioned need for perceived control arising "Why can't I make him/her stop?!" I hear the accusations. I hear the “Why can’t you/I . . .?” and the “Why did you/I. . .?” It’s like splashing cold water on my face when I hear those WHY? questions. I realize, thanks to the people who have put forth ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), that asking why something happened rarely adds to skillful action. It just doesn’t. YET I “find myself” asking my kids that a thousand times a day. Now, I stop when I notice myself going there with anyone.

In the mindful re-focus to our breathing, we may see that the baby’s crying has “hooked” us. We have just gotten “hooked” as Pema Chodron teaches. A great moment to practice allowing instead of our ritual practice of resisting. I find I don’t want to talk back to the mind anymore, unless I’m really stuck with what it’s saying to me. Mostly I trust that struggling against and resisting my reactions to external stimuli (that’s truly what the crying is) used to created a lot more suffering with the knee-jerk talking back at the mind (and the body!) and the irrational thoughts. Now if I’m really tweaked I literally do a little bow with my inhale, or go to my exhale with a nice releasing “ahhhhhhhhh!” (Wayne Dyer CD: Manifesting Your Destiny, meditation for the morning), and it kind of melts away. I LET it go.