This week, I felt a surge of generalized anxiety, as one does…
I’ve had anxiety my whole life, although when I was a teenager I figured I was just your standard issue claustrophobic type-A firstborn daughter. Don’t we all sob in the dead of winter because it feels like the sky is closing in? Don’t all of us walk 23 flights of stairs in their dad’s office building because the elevators might get stuck? Don’t we all want to punch a wall when someone yell-sneezes? Don’t all of us understand intellectually that we are perseverating but still can’t stop?
Since then, I’ve had enough bedtime spirals with a sweaty brow and racing heart to know that the cause is physical, not just mental. My beloved anti-anxiety medication has taken the edge off, but now and again I feel the monkey on my back.
Lots of people go through similar phases, of course. One of my smartest, most capable friends called me the other day because she was convinced her house was vibrating. I walked over and lay in her bed next to her. “I don’t feel anything,” I said, finally. And she smiled sadly and told me, “Well, I guess that’s good. Because it means it’s just my mind.”
All to say, minds can give you a real run for your money!
So, this week, when I felt my heart speed up, I remembered something Freddie told me last fall. One weekday evening, when I was feeling overwhelmed, he asked me over the phone how he could help, and I paused, unable to think clearly enough to give him an answer. “It’s okay,” he reassured me. “I just want you to know: Everything you do is good.”
Everything you do is good.
Those five words felt instantly disarming, and the darkness started to lift. Anyone with generalized anxiety — or maybe anyone with a pulse? — worries about their life decisions, large and small. Of course, you will make mistakes and need to change course, or you will mess something up and come back to fix it, but hearing that everything you’re doing is at least good, done with thought and care — whether it’s “right” or “wrong,” and maybe there isn’t even a “right or “wrong” — was a tonic for my worrier heart. The phrase felt like when your mom parachutes the blanket when you’re a kid lying in bed, and it floats down over you and feels so peaceful.
So, for anyone who is clutching their chest with love and worry, or taking care of an ailing friend or relative, or crossing all fingers and toes for a baby, or stressing over finances or politics, or fighting an invisible battle that no one else can see, I want to tell you, and I want you to take a deep breath and hear this:
Everything you do is good.
Sending love, my loves. And tell me how you are this week, if you’d like. Xoxo
P.S. Fourteen things I learned by age 40, and the Grand Canyon trick.
(Photo by Meaghan Curry/Stocksy.)
