A couple of days ago, a series of events left me feeling
stressed and anxious. By the time I arrived at the airport after a tricky
afternoon and a delayed, turbulent flight, I had already noticed that the pad
of my third finger on my left hand was numb. As I was waiting for my luggage, my
right arm was experiencing deadness in sporadic pangs from my shoulder down to
my wrist. As I drove along, appreciating the golden-lit wheat fields, the sole
of my right foot suddenly twisted in extreme cramp. I panicked. I was driving
on a pretty busy road and there was nowhere to pull over. I could feel the
adrenaline pumping round my body as thoughts raced through my head. I told
myself to carry on- to ignore the unusual sensation and recognise that my foot
was still working on the accelerator, so if I could disregard the physical feeling
and dampen the whirring adrenaline, my ability to drive wasn’t actually impeded.
I don’t know if this was a flare of multiple sclerosis or
something else. But I have noticed a definite link with these physical twinges
and feelings of stress and anxiety. Mindfulness helps with anxiety- as the
plane rattled with turbulence, I found myself breathing deep into my stomach;
and as my arm panged with numbness I breathed into the pain. Breathing
exercises can help to reduce pain, and still anxiety so that calmness returns
more quickly.
I love mindfulness, but I’ve let myself start thinking of it
as something to ease the symptoms, not the cause, of stress and anxiety. When I
talk to other people about their use of meditation, yoga and exercise as their preferred
method of managing stress, I don’t think I’m alone in this. To truly be happy
and balanced, I think you need to address the cause of anxiety. This means
going one step further with mindfulness. When I lie in bed trying to sleep,
mindful techniques allow me to notice that my jaw is locked tightly together. The
awareness helps to relax the muscle, so I don’t wake up with a headache and
ground-down teeth. But I am starting to think that the critical step is to recognise
why it’s happening in the first place. What subconscious thought is going
through my mind which makes me clench my jaw? Once I can identify the cause of
the anxiety, hopefully I can do something about it! In that sense, I suppose I
should be grateful for the physical symptoms I’m getting – because they are
like a very visible warning bell to me – “you’re feeling stressed and it’s
creating an unhelpful mix of emotions in your body which is disrupting your
physical health”. Without the physical symptoms, perhaps I might be less likely
to pay attention to the underlying cause. Either way, whether you experience the
physical “warning bell” symptoms or not, feelings of stress and anxiety affect
all of us. And I think it’s worth investing time diagnosing the cause and not
just the symptoms, in order to reduce anxiety in the longer term. What do you think?
Here's a pic of a 'happy place' we found in the French mountains recently- certainly nothing to cause stress on that afternoon!
