Embracing cycles to reduce anxiety
A large part of overcoming anxiety, for me, has been they way that I’ve grown to not only respect, but anticipate and welcome the inevitable seasons and cycles of life.
It is easy for us to forget that matters of nature are cyclical. The seasons, our circadian rhythm or sleep cycle, women’s menstruation, the moon.. Even our economy is cyclical. We neglect to remember that we are no less a part of nature than the moon and the weather.. I think that we even expect that our life should be more of this, less of that. When in reality life is always coming, always going. The highs don’t last forever, and neither do the lows. And nothing in between does either.
We often forget about this naturally occurring dance and we are becoming far more removed from the nature of life itself. Women are no longer present and involved in the birth of their sisters and friends on a regular basis. Families often aren’t living close to each other and/or do not have the means to care for their elderly family members. Women, myself included, were never taught about our cycles for more than a brief run down in school. We were never taught how this affects our moods (and anxiety*), our physical strength, our energy or even our attraction to our partners — and if we aren’t even aware of these things, surely most men aren’t either. Even our relationships are cyclical.
This lack of awareness can hinder our growth and keep us feeling unfulfilled, stuck.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to these cycles as Life/Death/Life cycles. She notes that our knowledge of these cycles is diminished by our fear of “death” (both literally and figuratively) itself, in turn making our ability to move WITH these cycles “quite frail”.
We are in one of the largest states of fear that we have been in for a while in society. I’m not immune to this, nobody is. It is worth remembering that society moves through seasons too. We have seasons where we thrive, where things run smoothly. We also have seasons, like the one we are in now, where uncertainty is at the forefront. Instead of spreading this fear, we can turn inward and ask ourselves how we can move through this season in a way that doesn’t make it worse for ourselves and everyone else?
Often our fears, whatever they are, turn to anxiety. We resist, we blame, we seek control. Instead of embracing the ebbs and flows and following the tide back to shore, we work against them — depleting our energy while trying to go against the flow of life in an attempt to control whatever it is that our anxiety is trying to prevent. Instead of welcoming anxiety, asking ourselves what is this anxious thought really about, we distract ourselves. We avoid.
It is understandable that we resist change, death even. Whether death of a dynamic within a relationship like the “honeymoon” phase, the passing of time or “youth”, the possible decline of a thriving economy (recession), etc. There are many deaths in life. Sure we can, and should, do what we can to prepare for certain events in life. This is not to say that we should be so “go with the flow” that we forget to be mindful. We can only do what we can before we have to allow life to take over. We will ironically suffocate our own life force by gripping onto things so tightly, forgetting that death incubates the creation of new life. An end often means the start of a new beginning.
I am not one for toxic positivity or forcing yourself to always look on the bright side. What I am in favor of is letting life flow. Reminding ourselves that everything in life is impermanent, cyclical.
“Day follows night, season follows season.”
It has always been that way, and will continue to be.
So why are we resisting the changes, the fears?
