Anxiety: Some Comments by a Survivor on a Verse From Psalms
Here is an letter written by someone who gets it. He comments on the verse from the Psalms and then tells of his recovery journey. He gave me permission to share his letter but asked that I only use his first name, Michael. I hope someone will be inspired to give our free spiritual meditation a try. All I can say is "Thanks, Mike." Roland
Hello, my name is Michael. I love this verse from the Psalms.
He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
Psalm 112:7 (English Standard Version).
It sounds good, doesn't it? But the question is: how do you get to where you have such a firm heart and settled spirit? Heres the story.
When you are in a tight golf match and it's the 18th hole and you have to make a knee knocking three foot putt, what do you do? You suck it up, get a bucket full of guts, and even though your knees are knocking, you make the putt.
What do you do when you're in a tough basketball game in the last minute of the game and you come to the free throw line? You throw up the free throws. You don't cut and run, take a drug or a pill.
You're a doctor on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean and a passenger has a major acute emergency that has to be dealt with now. Do you become upset or angry and call a time out and make the patient go to his room because you can't cope? No, you deal with the situation, even though your heart may be pounding and your knees knocking.
John Wayne put it this way when he was asked "what do you do when you have to get on your horse and ride to face great danger? He said: "You're scared to death, but you ride anyway."
The ideal is to have great faith. And with it love. Paul said: "Perfect love casts out fear." Most heroes (the types who arrive at the scene of something bad and save some one's life) later say they don't feel like a hero. "I just saw something that had to be done and I did it." He had no thought of self.
Few of us have faith or love. We don't even know what faith or love is. But there is still hope that we might develop them. Abraham became a man of faith. When he was younger, he hedged his bets and didn't trust completely in what God told him. But he grew in faith. Perhaps you can grow in faith and in love too.
Most of us are, frankly, rather selfish. This is not a condemnation or a put down; just the reality. We're born that way. All of us. Then, unfortunately, many of us did not have wise parents and other authorities. We were not provided character building activities, or even much real work. We were made to sit in school and basically do nothing for hours a day from age 5 through 18 or beyond.
Living in a hedonistic, secular, therapeutic culture, all the signals and messages we get are that the values in life are:
having a good time;
feeling good about ourselves;
being nice;
and having our needs met.
Most people around us--including our parents, grandparents, educators, church leaders, and most other authorities--seem to have the value of always seeking to feel good and never bad. At the first sign of a headache, they take a pill. At the first sign of the slightest ache or pain, they reach for a pill or some other medication.
They seek to have a good time, using music, beer, wine, marijuana, or partying, going to casinos, spas, or contrived music, sports, or even religious events for the purpose of having a good time and feeling good.
When the partying, drinking, and drugging result in a let down, hang over or discomfort, they look for a pill to take away the symptoms or the awareness of the discomfort so they can feel good.
In other words, it's definitely not your great grandfather's lifestyle or values.
So when life brings a little rain, and the young people are not having a good time or do not feel good about themselves, they tell their parent or counselor. Instead of getting the wisdom of the ages or the kind of understanding an uncle or grandma once had, they are referred to someone who prescribes a drug.
The focus is rarely on duty or on helping others. Moreover, as we said, most young people are deprived of useful work that would make them feel needed, valuable and other directed.
The focus is always on them: that they achieve, that they perform on tests, study more, get higher grades, be more compliant, and so on. Otherwise the focus is on being popular, having a good time, and feeling good about oneself.
With all this constant attention directed at them (not to mention all the advertising, peer group pressure, and pop culture which is even making them self conscious about looks, dress, habits and attitudes that have to be like their peers), it is no wonder that such a person would become overly self conscious and overly concerned about feelings.
The man or woman of faith and perfect love may face situations without any feelings at all. He or she will be fearless in the face of danger; without resentment in the face of torment; and without excitement in the face of temptation. Instead there is faith, love, dedication, obedience, patience, joy, and peace of mind.
But like I said, this type of spirituality is something we might grow into. It could take 40 years of just being a regular person, growing up, making some mistakes, getting married, raising a family, having some ups and downs until one begins to yearn for something more.
Those who are blessed to have salvation implemented in their life will gain objectivity and then it might take another 40 years of growth in this new life to become the man or woman of faith and true love. Remember it took 80 years for Moses to be made ready to lead his people out of Egypt.
So you might as well be prepared for a few decades of just being a regular person. But you can start to get ready for the touch of God which may come someday by living with some dignity, some honor, some self control, some discipline where you are right now. And by exercising virtue, it will grow, and you will increase in composure and self control. No, you won't walk on water--but by exercising virtue, you'll begin to face things with at least a modicum of poise, and it will grow.
Therefore do not mind it if you encounter some difficulty. Do not become resentful if you have some ups and downs, some rain on your parade, a boyfriend or girlfriend who quits you, a job you don't get, a day when you don't feel particularly good or some anxiety if you have to give a speech.
And while you are at it, expect betrayal, people saying mean things about you for no reason, and so on.
And don't expect to meet every little or big adversity well. You won't. At least not at first. Remember I said that most of us have been denied character building experiences? If you are like lots of us, you'll have to start at the ground floor with little things and a little at a time.
So you'll have to start now where you are at.
Have you heard the Zen master's question? He asked "when is the best time to plant a tree? Answer: 20 years ago.
Question: "When is the second best time?" Answer: today.
So start to face some things today. And like I said, don't expect to get it just right from the start. Take it easy. Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't look for perfection. Look for progress.
Remember how I said that we have been made self conscious in many ways? Okay. So don't hate yourself if you meet a moment badly. In my life, I've messed up, made a fool of myself, cut and run, let my team down, copped out, and many other small but shameful failings. I failed and then reacted badly to what I was forced to see about myself.
But as time went by (as years went by) I learned to fail less. And I also learned to react badly less to my failings. In other words, I began to grow up, and I'm still growing up.
I'm 60ish now. When I was 10, 15, 20, 30 years old, did I have anxiety? Of course. Did I get depressed? Of course.
When my parents got divorced, it bothered me. When my dad died, it made me sad. When my parakeet died, I felt bad. What was I supposed to do, be happy about these things? I grieved and felt hurt and then I got over it. Without drugs or meds.
When I was a little kid, did I go through a spell where I had to do a ritual of counting numbers or arrange my shoes perfectly at night or else "something really bad would happen?" Of course. Then I grew out of it. Without drugs.
When I was in college, was I high and hyper when something good happened and stayed up till dawn talking to my friends? Then did I crash when a bunch of things went wrong? Naturally.
When I was in my 20's did I wonder who I was and if there was a future for me? Did I mess up, and make mistakes; and then did something try to tell me I was "worthless" and that "the world would be better off without me?" Of course.
When I was 30 and sitting in a lonely apartment in the outskirts of Chicago, with the snow coming down and nowhere to go and wishing I were back in California, did I feel depressed? Of course.
But here I am. I got through. Without drugs.
My recovery was two part. First it was just growing out of issues. It seems like each stage of our life--little kid, big kid, teenager, college age, 20's, 30's--there are some typical issues to deal with. The old expression "time heals all wounds" definitely applies. Somehow I just grew out of things.
Like when I was a kid, teen, and in my 20's I was painfully shy. But then when I was in my 30's I was teaching college classes, and now I feel comfortable around everyone and talk about anything. And it's fun. Okay, so it took a few years to get over it. But I did get over it, and without drugs.
So we grow, we mature, we leave behind the things of childhood--including issues. We move on. It's a long process and it's life.
There is a term in psychotherapy call normalizing. It means helping a person see that some anxiety (or whatever that they are going through) is what a lot of people experience. Some people think that if they are anxious, hear voices, have obsessive thoughts, or have a compulsion, they are the only person in the whole world with this issue.
It's a relief to find out that lots of people have the same issues and lots of people get better.
I'm extending my hand in friendship to talk about some of the things I have been blessed to learn along the way in my spiritual walk.
Now I can truly say (having experienced it): "this too shall pass."
Now I understand what James meant when he said:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2 and 3 (English Standard version).
Let me just say right here that the spiritual meditation to calm down that Roland offers free was a big help to me.
This brings me to part two of my recovery program. I told you about part one, where I got through the various typical issues I faced at different stages. But then came the life changing, game changing discovery. I took me four decades to get to the point where I was ready. But when I was finally ready, it happened in a heartbeat and within a few days I was a new person.
I'll tell you about it in Part Two
Michael
Roland's comments
Thanks, Mike
Your letter is inspirational. I would like to mention something about awareness, one of my favorite subjects. You found the meditation helpful because it helped you become objective, so you could look at your issues, feelings and thoughts with objectivity. You wanted to be aware. But until a person is ready, he or she will try to avoid awareness (because of the pain it brings when we see our own wrong).
You see, once we fail and deal poorly with some situation, we don't want to see that we failed. So we tend to retreat into the imagination and make excuses. By doing so, we cut ourselves off from full open eyed awareness (which is what we need to face situations with intuition and understanding).
So, at the first sighting of stress we escape from awareness, and then we fail again. That's why we tend to keep doing the same error over and over with the same people or look alike people. For example, we may have resented our overbearing mom, become rebellious and angry, and as we go through life we keep meeting people like our mom, to whom we react the same old way (resentfully, rebelliously and angrily).
When awareness comes back and we are forced to see that we failed again, we reach for distractions to escape into like work or study, music, marijuana, alcohol, or pills to take away the one thing that would help us face the next moment well: awareness.
Now here is the beautiful part. The way you respond to an issue can change the very next time you encounter it. All you need is the missing ingredient. That missing ingredient is awareness.
The very next time you face the issue (or situation) but this time with awareness, it will be all different. Awareness gives you the power to stand back, see it objectively, and respond intuitively.
One man, who had a 20 year nicotine addiction, began to meditate in order to find the objective state of awareness. One day he picked up his cigarette and took a puff with awareness, and he never smoked again. His cigarettes gave him up because he was no longer compatible with them. Before he had used the sensations and the stress of the effects of nicotine to lower awareness and help him escape from what he wasn't ready to see. Now he was ready to face reality, and it just took one smoke with awareness for him to no longer have a need for smoking.
Remember, most of us spend our lives facing everything without awareness because of our habit of escaping awareness. So the obvious question becomes: how do we find and hold onto awareness? That is where the meditation (coupled with the attitude of wanting to be aware) comes in.
Watch for Part Two where Mike shares the second half of the journey, the spiritual part.
To learn more about the meditation click here
Hello, my name is Michael. I love this verse from the Psalms.
He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord.
Psalm 112:7 (English Standard Version).
It sounds good, doesn't it? But the question is: how do you get to where you have such a firm heart and settled spirit? Heres the story.
When you are in a tight golf match and it's the 18th hole and you have to make a knee knocking three foot putt, what do you do? You suck it up, get a bucket full of guts, and even though your knees are knocking, you make the putt.
What do you do when you're in a tough basketball game in the last minute of the game and you come to the free throw line? You throw up the free throws. You don't cut and run, take a drug or a pill.
You're a doctor on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean and a passenger has a major acute emergency that has to be dealt with now. Do you become upset or angry and call a time out and make the patient go to his room because you can't cope? No, you deal with the situation, even though your heart may be pounding and your knees knocking.
John Wayne put it this way when he was asked "what do you do when you have to get on your horse and ride to face great danger? He said: "You're scared to death, but you ride anyway."
The ideal is to have great faith. And with it love. Paul said: "Perfect love casts out fear." Most heroes (the types who arrive at the scene of something bad and save some one's life) later say they don't feel like a hero. "I just saw something that had to be done and I did it." He had no thought of self.
Few of us have faith or love. We don't even know what faith or love is. But there is still hope that we might develop them. Abraham became a man of faith. When he was younger, he hedged his bets and didn't trust completely in what God told him. But he grew in faith. Perhaps you can grow in faith and in love too.
Most of us are, frankly, rather selfish. This is not a condemnation or a put down; just the reality. We're born that way. All of us. Then, unfortunately, many of us did not have wise parents and other authorities. We were not provided character building activities, or even much real work. We were made to sit in school and basically do nothing for hours a day from age 5 through 18 or beyond.
Living in a hedonistic, secular, therapeutic culture, all the signals and messages we get are that the values in life are:
having a good time;
feeling good about ourselves;
being nice;
and having our needs met.
Most people around us--including our parents, grandparents, educators, church leaders, and most other authorities--seem to have the value of always seeking to feel good and never bad. At the first sign of a headache, they take a pill. At the first sign of the slightest ache or pain, they reach for a pill or some other medication.
They seek to have a good time, using music, beer, wine, marijuana, or partying, going to casinos, spas, or contrived music, sports, or even religious events for the purpose of having a good time and feeling good.
When the partying, drinking, and drugging result in a let down, hang over or discomfort, they look for a pill to take away the symptoms or the awareness of the discomfort so they can feel good.
In other words, it's definitely not your great grandfather's lifestyle or values.
So when life brings a little rain, and the young people are not having a good time or do not feel good about themselves, they tell their parent or counselor. Instead of getting the wisdom of the ages or the kind of understanding an uncle or grandma once had, they are referred to someone who prescribes a drug.
The focus is rarely on duty or on helping others. Moreover, as we said, most young people are deprived of useful work that would make them feel needed, valuable and other directed.
The focus is always on them: that they achieve, that they perform on tests, study more, get higher grades, be more compliant, and so on. Otherwise the focus is on being popular, having a good time, and feeling good about oneself.
With all this constant attention directed at them (not to mention all the advertising, peer group pressure, and pop culture which is even making them self conscious about looks, dress, habits and attitudes that have to be like their peers), it is no wonder that such a person would become overly self conscious and overly concerned about feelings.
The man or woman of faith and perfect love may face situations without any feelings at all. He or she will be fearless in the face of danger; without resentment in the face of torment; and without excitement in the face of temptation. Instead there is faith, love, dedication, obedience, patience, joy, and peace of mind.
But like I said, this type of spirituality is something we might grow into. It could take 40 years of just being a regular person, growing up, making some mistakes, getting married, raising a family, having some ups and downs until one begins to yearn for something more.
Those who are blessed to have salvation implemented in their life will gain objectivity and then it might take another 40 years of growth in this new life to become the man or woman of faith and true love. Remember it took 80 years for Moses to be made ready to lead his people out of Egypt.
So you might as well be prepared for a few decades of just being a regular person. But you can start to get ready for the touch of God which may come someday by living with some dignity, some honor, some self control, some discipline where you are right now. And by exercising virtue, it will grow, and you will increase in composure and self control. No, you won't walk on water--but by exercising virtue, you'll begin to face things with at least a modicum of poise, and it will grow.
Therefore do not mind it if you encounter some difficulty. Do not become resentful if you have some ups and downs, some rain on your parade, a boyfriend or girlfriend who quits you, a job you don't get, a day when you don't feel particularly good or some anxiety if you have to give a speech.
And while you are at it, expect betrayal, people saying mean things about you for no reason, and so on.
And don't expect to meet every little or big adversity well. You won't. At least not at first. Remember I said that most of us have been denied character building experiences? If you are like lots of us, you'll have to start at the ground floor with little things and a little at a time.
So you'll have to start now where you are at.
Have you heard the Zen master's question? He asked "when is the best time to plant a tree? Answer: 20 years ago.
Question: "When is the second best time?" Answer: today.
So start to face some things today. And like I said, don't expect to get it just right from the start. Take it easy. Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't look for perfection. Look for progress.
Remember how I said that we have been made self conscious in many ways? Okay. So don't hate yourself if you meet a moment badly. In my life, I've messed up, made a fool of myself, cut and run, let my team down, copped out, and many other small but shameful failings. I failed and then reacted badly to what I was forced to see about myself.
But as time went by (as years went by) I learned to fail less. And I also learned to react badly less to my failings. In other words, I began to grow up, and I'm still growing up.
I'm 60ish now. When I was 10, 15, 20, 30 years old, did I have anxiety? Of course. Did I get depressed? Of course.
When my parents got divorced, it bothered me. When my dad died, it made me sad. When my parakeet died, I felt bad. What was I supposed to do, be happy about these things? I grieved and felt hurt and then I got over it. Without drugs or meds.
When I was a little kid, did I go through a spell where I had to do a ritual of counting numbers or arrange my shoes perfectly at night or else "something really bad would happen?" Of course. Then I grew out of it. Without drugs.
When I was in college, was I high and hyper when something good happened and stayed up till dawn talking to my friends? Then did I crash when a bunch of things went wrong? Naturally.
When I was in my 20's did I wonder who I was and if there was a future for me? Did I mess up, and make mistakes; and then did something try to tell me I was "worthless" and that "the world would be better off without me?" Of course.
When I was 30 and sitting in a lonely apartment in the outskirts of Chicago, with the snow coming down and nowhere to go and wishing I were back in California, did I feel depressed? Of course.
But here I am. I got through. Without drugs.
My recovery was two part. First it was just growing out of issues. It seems like each stage of our life--little kid, big kid, teenager, college age, 20's, 30's--there are some typical issues to deal with. The old expression "time heals all wounds" definitely applies. Somehow I just grew out of things.
Like when I was a kid, teen, and in my 20's I was painfully shy. But then when I was in my 30's I was teaching college classes, and now I feel comfortable around everyone and talk about anything. And it's fun. Okay, so it took a few years to get over it. But I did get over it, and without drugs.
So we grow, we mature, we leave behind the things of childhood--including issues. We move on. It's a long process and it's life.
There is a term in psychotherapy call normalizing. It means helping a person see that some anxiety (or whatever that they are going through) is what a lot of people experience. Some people think that if they are anxious, hear voices, have obsessive thoughts, or have a compulsion, they are the only person in the whole world with this issue.
It's a relief to find out that lots of people have the same issues and lots of people get better.
I'm extending my hand in friendship to talk about some of the things I have been blessed to learn along the way in my spiritual walk.
Now I can truly say (having experienced it): "this too shall pass."
Now I understand what James meant when he said:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2 and 3 (English Standard version).
Let me just say right here that the spiritual meditation to calm down that Roland offers free was a big help to me.
This brings me to part two of my recovery program. I told you about part one, where I got through the various typical issues I faced at different stages. But then came the life changing, game changing discovery. I took me four decades to get to the point where I was ready. But when I was finally ready, it happened in a heartbeat and within a few days I was a new person.
I'll tell you about it in Part Two
Michael
Roland's comments
Thanks, Mike
Your letter is inspirational. I would like to mention something about awareness, one of my favorite subjects. You found the meditation helpful because it helped you become objective, so you could look at your issues, feelings and thoughts with objectivity. You wanted to be aware. But until a person is ready, he or she will try to avoid awareness (because of the pain it brings when we see our own wrong).
You see, once we fail and deal poorly with some situation, we don't want to see that we failed. So we tend to retreat into the imagination and make excuses. By doing so, we cut ourselves off from full open eyed awareness (which is what we need to face situations with intuition and understanding).
So, at the first sighting of stress we escape from awareness, and then we fail again. That's why we tend to keep doing the same error over and over with the same people or look alike people. For example, we may have resented our overbearing mom, become rebellious and angry, and as we go through life we keep meeting people like our mom, to whom we react the same old way (resentfully, rebelliously and angrily).
When awareness comes back and we are forced to see that we failed again, we reach for distractions to escape into like work or study, music, marijuana, alcohol, or pills to take away the one thing that would help us face the next moment well: awareness.
Now here is the beautiful part. The way you respond to an issue can change the very next time you encounter it. All you need is the missing ingredient. That missing ingredient is awareness.
The very next time you face the issue (or situation) but this time with awareness, it will be all different. Awareness gives you the power to stand back, see it objectively, and respond intuitively.
One man, who had a 20 year nicotine addiction, began to meditate in order to find the objective state of awareness. One day he picked up his cigarette and took a puff with awareness, and he never smoked again. His cigarettes gave him up because he was no longer compatible with them. Before he had used the sensations and the stress of the effects of nicotine to lower awareness and help him escape from what he wasn't ready to see. Now he was ready to face reality, and it just took one smoke with awareness for him to no longer have a need for smoking.
Remember, most of us spend our lives facing everything without awareness because of our habit of escaping awareness. So the obvious question becomes: how do we find and hold onto awareness? That is where the meditation (coupled with the attitude of wanting to be aware) comes in.
Watch for Part Two where Mike shares the second half of the journey, the spiritual part.
To learn more about the meditation click here