The Fear Conspiracy: How To Unite With Anxiety
Rethinking our relationship with worry
“I can’t take it anymore,” she stuttered with a broken voice, fighting to hold back her tears.
It’s the beginning of my Monday-night mediation class and we’re all sharing something personal. A minute ago, I shared my wish to be kinder to myself.
There’s an evil whisper in me that’s relentlessly hunting for something that I did wrong, and it only shuts up when it has something to latch on to — some shameful act of mine to confirm its worldview that there can’t be a universe in which Maarten van Doorn hasn’t done anything bad recently. Feeding this voice feels perversely good.
I used to fight that part of me. It’s a mental habit I want to break. My meditation teacher advised me to try to become friends with it instead. I quite like that prospect.
My classmate is experiencing terrible stress for a public speaking gig coming up tomorrow. She thinks her anxiety is a bad thing. She is here to meditate to make that bad feeling go away.
To my surprise, our teacher, bless her heart, expresses her hopes that the speech will be successful.
The lights go out, we breathe, we cleanse our chakra’s (yeah, it’s that kind of meditation), and 45 minutes later she still…
