Anxiety & Trust
One year ago, I drove to my last in-office workday in my 4Runner—the very same 4Runner that drove me in on my first day in April 2007. Although I was still on call for another month, this day really felt like the end of an era. The next day, I hopped a plane to Las Vegas and started what I now understand to be the long road to healing a dysregulated nervous system. While Vegas is not anywhere near a list of my favorite places to relax, it just so happened to be the location of Phish’s 4-night run at the Sphere. Call it serendipity or divine intervention, but it was exactly what I needed to close out a 17+ year career.
(Now, while I am a huge Phish fan (first show was Tallahassee, FL on October 29, 1996), I do not have hundreds of shows under my belt—but I am in the double-digits. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see them at an incredible venue.)
It took me a while to figure out why I loved these shows. I’ll go by myself. I’ll go with people. It doesn’t really matter because it’s all about the music in the moment. A moment that will never happen again. Once the first notes begin, I’m completely immersed in sound and light unlike any other. I’m not thinking about anything else. I just ride the wave until intermission and then pick it up again after the break.
I can’t find that feeling in many other places. I feel it at the ocean. And I can feel it driving across the desert at dusk when the light just right.
I’ve tried to recreate that all-encompassing feeling at home, the peace, the calm, but it’s not the same.
Going back to what caused my employment departure. I left because I couldn’t be in my own skin anymore. I wasn’t sleeping. I was having panic attacks before heading into the office and even waking me up in the middle of the night. I cut back on caffeine and acidic foods but my gut was a mess. I met with multiple doctors who ran tests trying to figure out if this was perimenopause or ADHD or anxiety or thyroid or anything to explain all the symptoms. Every test came back ‘normal’. And every single doctor said, “I think it might be your job”.
It took me another year—and what felt like being asked to go against my values—that finally broke me.
The panic attacks stopped almost immediately. I still had moments of anxiety, but I was able to manage without it debilitating me. It took one month for me to start sleeping. I could drink lemonade and iced tea again.
I knew had to get this pain out of my body and I did it through art. Anxiety Girl, shows a woman cowering in skin that is red and sharp, protecting her spark from everything coming down on her all at once. She is perched precariously on a bed of shifting sand on an island. This is how I felt for years.
Anxiety Girl
Glass-on-glass, 13” x 14-1/2”
Artist: Kirsten Carter
At the advice of many caring people, I gave myself time and grace to relax, heal, stop, breathe, all the above. I joined an online group program designed to help me step into my true self through art. These women really became a lifeline. By the end of the 9 months, I had created a new piece of art—Integrated Girl. You can feel the difference in energy between the two pieces. She is all the pieces of me, my mind and my heart, no longer fighting against one another. It’s not that I never heard what my heart was saying, it was that I didn’t trust it.
Integrated Girl
Acrylic paint, 48” x 60”
Artist: Kirsten Carter
Then, about a month ago, I came across this quote by Barry M. Prizant.
“The opposite of anxiety isn’t calm, it’s trust.”
And that hit different.
Fast forward another couple of weeks, I’m listening to a podcast with Dr. Brooke Weinstein, a neuroscience expert and occupational therapist, and she’s talking about anxiety, and nervous system regulation, and understanding your mental health at the neurological level. And this just made my former music therapist heart say ‘yes!’
Finding ways to regulate your nervous system in this crazy, crazy world makes so much sense. It explains the feeling of:
Immersing myself in sound and light at a Phish show that in that moment changes the feeling in my skin from red and sharp and prickly to swirling energy.
The way I breathe at the ocean where someone who knows me only in corporate mode notices and says, “you’re different here”.
The complete and all-encompassing peace I had on morning walks with Addie. Nothing else mattered more in that moment.
Sitting in the garden as the sun goes down and watching the light change across the mountains.
Painting with no picture in mind, all flow
I challenge you to find those moments. Those glimmers and trust in the light. Trust in the feeling. Sink into that feeling and be all in. Notice the shift in breath, in your skin… That is how we find our way back to ourselves. Give yourself some grace…time…and above all else, be kind.
