No Short Cuts

I am not of the opinion that anxiety is completely hereditary. Dr. Gabor Mate wrote an extremely informative book which covers (among many others) this subject, entitled "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". In this book he discusses the development of the incredibly sensitive, highly evolved human brain during its most crucial period in the womb and the following first year of infancy. Mate reckons if pregnant mothers are stressed, depressed, scared, or anxious for any number of reasons from starvation to a crumbling marriage, their bodies will produce different chemicals that essentially prepare a baby's body and brain for a stressful world. As Mate explains, unborn babies literally swim in the stresses and insecurities of their mothers.

And so must have been the stressful case for my grandmother in my great-grandmother's womb 89 years ago. My Mammaw's (as we say of our grandmothers in Alabama) losing battle with anxiety pains her shoulder, leaves visitors at the door, and causes those who love her to keep possible dangerous information away from its grip. I can remember, when I was younger, gearing up for the 9 hour drive south, and my mother specifically instructing my brother and me to keep the visit a secret from Mammaw, so as to save her the grief of worrying over our very-unlikely-yet-possible car crash on the way down.

When my mother was 9 years old or so, she was bitten by one of the neighborhood dogs; as my mother screamed and cried from the bite, my Mammaw, unknowing of the guilty dog, ran to my mother's aid, offering from her terror-filled expression sound advice, "Oh, Margaret, rabies is such a terrible death!"

And while I cannot bring myself to believe that the gene for an unhealthy dose of anxiety passed from my mother and on to me is the sole cause for my irrational anxiety, nail bitting, sore stomach, bad sleep, and headaches, I'm fairly certain I was born with a predisposition for my irrational unease of common and distressed situations alike.

My anxiety has always been the precursor to every aspect of my personality. When I was 4 years old, stretching for my first ballet class, my mother watched as all the other uncoordinated 4-year-olds laughed and chatted to one another, and I stood alone, rubbing my hands together and bitting the inside of my mouth, terrified that I'd fail in a ballet class for 4-year-olds.

In my elementary school days, I was a swimmer. I was certainly not the best young swimmer, but I was fast enough to win a few heats and take home the occasional ribbon here and there. But racing gave me such angst that I'd spend the night before the meets, tossing and turning, with my stomach burning completely unable to sleep, fearing the races, fearing losing, fearing everything.

And then one day, in my late adolescence, a doctor gave me a little pill called Paxil. It knocked me out, allowing me to sleep more heavily than I'd ever slept, and when I awoke, I felt no stress. For the first time, in my young, nail-bitting, ulcer-making life I felt no stress. Weights lifted from my shoulders; my head stopped ringing with 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts'; I could breath before I spoke; life seemed doable.

But like all synthetic, man-made things, the pills' effects were short-lived. Eventually, my brain built tolerance to the increased release of chemicals, and while my stresses never returned, a numbness blanketed over me. Numbness, for those of us accustomed to living in the extremes, is a far greater sentence than a life plagued with irrational anxiety. So off the pill I went.

The past 10 years of my life have been a slow progression toward finding natural ways to ease my anxiety, and so too will be the next 10 years, and all of the following decades of my life. And while I don't mean to completely discredit the importance of a pill that can show a never-been-calm brain how easy life can seem, I am a firm believer of there being no short-cuts to healthiness. Just as we cannot take pills to lose weight, or have our fat liposuction-ed off of us and truly be physically fit, neither can we take mood-alternating drugs and expect that this alone will help to find peace within our minds.

Secular meditation has been the single most beneficial aspect to calming my mind, though it has not been an easy accomplishment. Asking a constantly fluttering adult mind to sit still and concentrate on nothing is on par with asking grandpa to learn to ride a unicycle. Stillness is something my mind has never known, and teaching it to undo decades of learned behaviors is quite the task. When I began meditating, I could sit still for maybe 1 minute, on good day. But each day, stillness becomes more and more attainable. That said, I've been meditating daily for nearly 3 years now, and 15 minutes pushes my maximum for truly remaining still and thinking of nothing other than the constant inhaling and exhaling of my breath.

When we stop working, stop socializing, stop exercising, stop eating, turn off the TV, put down the books, turn off the music, shut down the computer, get off the phone, and turn off the lights, what's left but the constant inhaling and exhaling of breath? If peace cannot be found in this space, it'll never be found while surroundings buzz.