🌴 TREE 117: Follow the monster back to its cave
Last week a colleague asked me on Teams if I was okay because didn’t seem like myself. I replied that I was fine, just really busy. Afterwards, I asked myself if I was actually fine. Turns out, I wasn’t fine at all. I was having an anxiety attack. I didn’t realise what it was straightaway because I had not had one for a year or so.
The habit of not letting anxiety drive* gave me the mental space for curiosity. I asked myself why anxiety was showing up. Where did it come from? I followed this monster back to its cave and found some stuff to work on.
The same colleague took some work stuff off my to do list so I could concentrate where I was needed most. I made a little change in my diet. I extracted myself from an overcommitment. I made a switch in my thinking about a season I’m in.
The anxiety faded over the next two days.
Curiosity is a powerful tool for dealing with anxiety.
*See yesterday’s email.
I got the idea of following the monster back to its cave from Kristen Bell. (Not that Kristen Bell – Rob Bell’s wife Kristen Bell.)
I’m writing about anxiety and fear this week.
Important notice: Everyone’s mental (un)health experience is unique. Just because a thing worked for me, doesn’t mean I’m prescribing it for you. Nothing I write should be taken as medical advice.
Nevertheless, I hope some of what I share will be useful.
Grow slowly.
Jeff
Such a lovely song. Also, Cave.
The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email:
I couldn’t find the podcast episode I was looking for. Here’s a transcript of another podcast where Rob Bell talks about Kristen’s follow-the-monster-back-to-its-cave concept:
https://thisnakedmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/AE_EP_321.pdf
‘Annie Grace: How can you shift from that place of needing to escape the feelings to get into a place of curiosity about why you’re doing this thing to escape, whether it’s keeping moving or drinking or anything else, all of the things that we do to escape the feeling of ... we don’t even know what feeling we’re escaping, I would say.
‘Rob Bell: Yeah. At some level, I interviewed the feelings. I talked to them and ask them questions, and I assume, well, they’re real, so what universe are we living in? Is it ultimately an adversarial relationship where it’s you against the thing? Or is it a place of love and generativity, which means it keeps making more. What do you do with the feelings? Follow them. My wife, Kristen, and I talk about follow it back to its cave, because it appears like a monster it’s here to devour. You think about anxiety, anger, despair. They present themselves as monsters that are going to devour you. But if you follow them back to their cave, see where they live, my assumption is they’re here to tell you some truth. I just begin with whatever this is, however painful it is, it’s some truth, and apparently I’m not listening in other ways.
‘My wife, Kristen, does all this interesting work on anxiety. Anxiety, for many people, is something to be eliminated as opposed to something to be listened to. If you turn anxiety from a problem to be eradicated, to a truth that is being spoken to you, then you listen to it, because it’s here to tell you something, which is very, very intimate and personal, but it also is a reflection of what kind of universe we’re living in. All of this is both personal and cosmic.’