Dearest Reader,
The short-faced bear, now extinct, was a massive creature that stood as tall as 12 feet on its hind legs and could run over 40 miles an hour. The largest is estimated to have weighed more than a ton.1
What this has to do with lifelong anxiety, below. First, a question (or two):
How do you do with change?
How about anxiety?
I ask because I’m in the thick of both. Massive change is underway and more is just ahead (March 1st, to be exact).
I chose it and, also, it’s a lot.
More generally—whether through seismic shifts or smooth sailing—my Inheritance is one that includes a very specific genre of anxiety, fear, dread, and fixation come nighttime.
Dinner done and winding down for the evening, it wells up and washes over. Every night. My whole life. No exceptions.
There are reasons for this. These reasons have a lot to do with how I spent nighttimes in childhood, coming into consciousness in a home beset by what poet Robert Hayden so perfectly names “chronic angers”.2
But, at this point in my life, “reasons” aren’t so interesting. “Reasons” do little but perpetuate an unhelpful story.
I hold no blame except, perhaps, towards myself. I’m frustrated that after so much time and so much exploration and so much practice, I still have this. I may always have this.
The focus of my fixation and ensuing anxiety come bedtime changes from day to day, hour to hour, and moment to moment. The focus is besides the point.
If there’s nothing to worry about, my subconscious will find something to worry about.
If there’s still nothing to worry about, my subconscious will make something up.
It’s like The Nothing hunting Atreyu in the Swamp of Sadness.3
This is the number 1 reason that I used to drink wine with dinner (which is the only time I used to drink and which was no more than most folks consider “normal,” by the way).
Upon giving up alcohol nearly three years back, one of the most immediate places of awareness was how much fear I feel every evening.
The alcohol hushed and numbed it until, oh, around 3am, when it’d dependably resurge at double the force with a wicked vengeance.
There’s science behind this, of course, and drinking is one of the absolute worst things you can do if you suffer from anxiety or depression. For a full and very accessible explanation, I recommend Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind.4
Anyway, after getting sober and navigating the first few months of dread with dinner, giving up alcohol turned out to be the most powerful move I’ve ever made to reduce anxiety.
Everything I’m saying today is couched within that context: Alcohol made all this infinitely worse.
Getting sober and facing how I really felt all along also compelled me to lean hard into practices that actually worked to soften and weaken the fear (for real, not for fake).
Below, a line-up of what works best (plus more on that short-faced bear).
If you too are struggling, I hope you’ll find something useful. At the very least, know you’re not alone.