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Cultivating Calm

Sit with me. Close your eyes and imagine. You’ve seen this before. Flashing blue and red lights. The shattered glass, dented doors, crushed seats, deployed airbags, pale faces with hands on foreheads, shaking, and hearts pounding. We’ve all, at one point or another, driven past a scene like this, a devastating car crash.

Many people with whom I’ve spoken say that they are immediately drawn, physically, emotionally, and psychologically, to a scene like this. We wonder: Who was there? Did someone die? How could it have happened? The sensation of urgency washes over us like a hot summer heatwave.

For me, anxiety and car crashes are very similar. The pain smothers us. We fear we will never escape it, whether it’s the psychological imprint or the physical experience. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Anxiety, once you feel it, you can’t unfeel it. The urgency to explain it and escape it takes priority over everything else you were thinking, doing, or feeling.

To the women reading this, you are twice as likely to experience anxiety disorders in comparison to your male counterparts. Trauma, sexual or other, is far more prevalent in a woman’s lifespan. And, in general, female socialization is rooted in feelings of powerlessness. Between hormonal and psychosocial events such as pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause, anxiety is basically a woman’s shadow at every developmental stage. 

The experience of it is inherently an emotional and physical one. Emotionally, we may feel tension, dread, irritability, and restlessness. While physically, we find ourselves having tremors, increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, fatigue, sleep problems, headaches, and stomach aches, among other symptoms. This combination effect leads to an immediate feeling of helplessness and fear of the next episode.

I’ve been there myself. As a woman with anxiety, the moment I feel it, it’s like I can see it, smell it, taste it, and hear it. It looks like TV static and smells like rotten food in the garbage disposal (the kind you can’t get rid of it no matter how many lemons you grind). It tastes like a mouthful of saltine crackers and sounds like trains colliding. It’s a tidal wave of chaos. 

I know at that moment, that my first priority is to create space between myself and my anxiety. Instead of instinctually fearing, fighting, or fleeing, I turn around and face it. I know that just because there is a car crash, that doesn’t mean I have to be the one chasing behind the ambulance. I am allowed to be a bystander, an onlooker, a passerby. Similarly, I am allowed to be a bystander in my own “anxious scene.” In fact, it is to my benefit.

If I choose to accept the fact that anxiety is not only natural but also part of the human condition, always within my orbit of existence, then it won’t be such a surprise when it interrupts my life. 

Remember, in a state of physiological dysregulation, the kind anxiety creates, we cannot expect ourselves to reason through anxiety and find answers to who, what, where, when, or how. We must focus on the simple task of regulating before reasoning. Otherwise known as grounding. Instinctively, after a car accident, or the near escape from one, is to take a deep breath and exhale. That is grounding, and it is powerful–a form of acceptance. 

Acceptance is to allow ourselves to feel the anxiety, without fear, and the subsequent need to fix it.  It is much more effective to arm ourselves proactively for what will inevitably come. This is where breath work, mindfulness, and yoga go a long way to prepare us for the magnitude of anxiety felt in the moment, and the desperate desire to cultivate calm. 

Breath work is that ‘exhale.’ Yoga is that ‘exhale.’ Mindfulness is that ‘exhale.’ Hydration is that ‘exhale.’ Feeding ourselves is that ‘exhale.’ Aromatherapy is that ‘exhale.’ All of these exemplify what put us on a path toward self-care. And all of which are methods that contribute to not only accepting our human condition but honoring it. 

At some point or another, we all have to take ownership of the thing that plagues us. Otherwise, we are just spinning, bound to repeat the same episode in the same way, each and every time. I’d like to meet you on the other side. 

Saturday, July 11th, Elle is hosting The Calm Workshop, part of its self-care series that tackles common mental health issues by treating the physiological condition. The Calm Workshop is  led by Kristen Pesature-Olds and informed by Elle’s mental health therapists. Join us and cultivate your calm.