Stress And Anxiety: Feel It To Heal It

How do we handle stress and anxiety?

Living in an anxious world, there are certain ways we’ve become accustomed to handling ourselves:

Escalation: we pump ourselves up and pretend to appear stronger, bigger, or more confident than we actually are. This can often be interpreted as showing off, boasting, blaming, bullying, and acting superior.

Devaluation: we collapse and suppress our hidden feelings in order to protect ourselves in some way.

Inflexibility: we become uptight and rule-bound, and build emotional walls or boundaries that work to keep our feelings at bay. Practicing rigidity can create inner tension, anxiety, criticism, judgement, and perfectionism.

As you can guess, escalation, devaluation, and inflexibility are not the most helpful of practices.

Anxiety and stress have been here before, even before the time of the pandemic. This isn’t new. Our new normal is simply shining a brighter light on all the ways we react to the world, and the way we cope with intense fear and stress. Our new normal is helping us see that our old coping mechanisms don’t really work.

I deal with stress and anxiety everyday, too, and I want to share with you some of the ways I manage those emotions.

How to Face Anxiety and Stress

Staying in high vibration during this time to keep you above the virus, and helps you maintain your energy levels in connecting with your divine higher self and light.

The first step is to connect to your body. We’re so connected to our minds – we use our mind, we revere it, we believe emotions reside in the mind. If we talk about it, then we can release it. But emotions reside in our bodies. Our bodies are the vessels that hold our memories and emotions, the good and the bad. Let your body express and speak back to you. We can speak with our bodies through meditation, breath, grounding, energy, and chakra work, in addition to yoga. Travel into your body – where does your stress live?

When you find your stress, consider: when did it first start living there? In the face of such an intense time of fear, in this time of quarantine, many of our lives have shifted to become quieter, with less running around. It’s possible that you might be seeing old wounds coming to the surface, old triggers, or maybe you’re feeling out of control, or having a difficult time coping.

What is your first memory of stress? I visit this daily if my body allows. I feel it. I see the pictures, memories, and allow myself to feel those feelings of stress.

I encourage you to see your stress, feel it, and invite it in.

I invite you to be honest and real with yourselves, and stop sugar coating how you feel. Stop stuffing down our feelings. Stop the yelling and raging, and instead, simply feel it. Really allow yourself to feel everything you’re feeling. If there were a picture of a feeling, or a word, what would it be? Give yourself the permission to feel, cry, and yell. Say your pain aloud – all the hurt, anxiety, stress, and fear from long ago and now.

Healing Ourselves

Feeling what we feel invites the space for healing. With this invitation, I encourage you to bring your guides, your angels, your higher self, divine messages, clear cords, and even your loved ones who have passed on. What messages do these guests tell you? What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Don’t second guess yourself. Your soul is trying to send you a message – what does your body need? What does your essence need? How can you live from this place of feeling more often?

You can be present for the person inside of you who has experienced loss, who has felt out of control watching a loved one pass, who has rushed to that person’s side, who has been present for all the times we’ve worried about our own health, or the health of loved ones. In this moment, we can take hold of our collective fears, and feel our fear. We can talk to our fears: what is the divine message and lesson of our stress and worry? What would the you after this crisis say to the you that is here right now? You are already whole and healed. Open up and forgive yourself. Clear out all the anger and fear, and in its place, find your light, your love, and feel love surround you.