You and Me Against the World

It just occurred to me today that in an individualistic society such as the one in which we live, it is no wonder why anxiety and depression are so rampant. The majority of us are not meant to be so “independent.” Based on all I have read about attachment theory, it is clear to me that humans of all ages thrive better when they have a primary object of attachment. They are more happy, content, and less anxious.

From my own experience, I certainly had a more difficult time getting my attachment needs met when not in a committed relationship. I managed just fine on my own. I am as independent as they come in this society. And I have a good support network of family and friends that I can count on in times of trouble. But still it felt like something was missing. There was no one looking out for me on a daily basis for all the little things. Someone personally interested in and invested in my welfare. Someone to be a sounding board for my ideas and mundane concerns. Someone to feel really connected with and safe with.

I suspect it is possible to have a feeling of connection and safety like that if you are devoted to spiritual practice. I know that I have felt this way during times of intense meditation practice and times when I have been immersed in nature and away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. But I can’t be on meditation retreat all the time. I can’t leave my children to join the monastic community or become a hermit in the forest. I must be part of the world. And it is rough out there. Two heads are better than one in dealing with the demands of daily life in the world. A loving and committed relationship is like a safe haven.

For three years after the break-up of my marriage, I tried to find safe haven in myself. I took to heart all the advice that stresses the importance of “being happy on your own,” and that you don’t need a relationship to be happy. But I can honestly say now that it is not for me. I reached a certain level of independence and happiness as a single person, but there was always a nagging feeling underneath that I could not fight. The feeling that something was missing. The feeling that I belonged in a relationship. This is my nature. This is my karma.

We Are All Solitary

When I was a child, my inner world was magical. I had a blissful, private world full of delights. I was full of feeling and imagination. My parents loved me and cared for me well. There was nothing missing. I was whole and happy.

When I became a teenager, as I separated more from my parents, I discovered loneliness. It was sort of bittersweet, but it also seemed like a problem to be solved. The world told me that if I were to find a boy to love me, that problem would be solved.

So here I am, at a ripe age of 37, finally completely understanding through experience, that not only is a boy not the solution to the problem of loneliness, but that loneliness is not even really a problem. That loneliness comes and goes on its own and the more connected I am to myself as a solitary being, the less lonely I feel. It took awhile to get here because for most of my life, there have been so many boys available to me and eager to try to help me solve the loneliness problem. In my late 30’s, with a full time job and kids to take care of, opportunities with boys just aren’t as plentiful as they used to be.

At first that fact was frustrating to me. Apparently 1 in 5 couples these days have met online, so I tried online dating for awhile. I’ve met several very good men that way. But for whatever reasons, nothing has worked out. Maybe it is because people my age just aren’t as open and carefree as we used to be. We have some baggage and may be overly cautious. Or maybe we are too picky. We have a better idea of what we want in a mate and since there are so many people online, we may be too quick to pass someone over and move on to the next person. Or when we do find someone we like, maybe we move way too fast and it becomes uncomfortable for one or both people. Just add water and there is your instant relationship!

So now it is time to take a break from all that. It was fun for awhile, but now it is time to re-group with myself. Time to spend some quality time with my best friend - the magical, blissful, delightful, full of feeling, imaginative, loved, whole and happy solitary being that is me.

When I write that down, it looks like incredibly cheesy self-help pop-psychology or a Stuart Smalley-ism, but really it is true. The reason that I haven’t been feeling lonely lately is that I have been feeling in touch with my inner girl. I’ve been feeling connected with the part of me that existed prior to knowing loneliness, prior to knowing the mating urge, emptiness or incompleteness, danger or sorrow.

We are all solitary. There is no getting around our physical separateness from one another. Or our mental and emotional separateness. No one will ever know us as well as we know ourselves. No matter how many friends and loved ones we have, no matter how well connected we are socially, each of us is still on our own. When that fact is not scary to us, we have incredible power in our lives.

Mindfulness of the Body (One of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness)

I don’t know why it is such a surprise to me, but I feel happy and content lately. Aside from the restlessness that pops up again and again with the storyline that I am missing something because I don’t have a mate, my life is working quite well. Maybe that restlessness really isn’t about that. Maybe it is just restlessness.

I used to feel panicky often. I used to wake up in the morning and freak out. I would lie there and analyze, “Why am I feeling this way? There must be a reason! And if I can figure out the reason, maybe I can do something about it.” After many years of that, I realized that the anxiety was just anxiety. The stories were constantly changing but there was always anxiety, no matter what the story about it was. I realized then that it was more just a physical sensation in my body. It had no reasonable explanation whatsoever. It was out of my control.

So I changed my strategy for dealing with it. I stopped looking for an explanation, a story about the anxiety. I stopped trying to do something about it. Instead I would just lie there and say to myself, “Wow, just notice how the body is feeling now. The body is tense and worried.” I let the feeling be and when stories started to try to explain the anxiety, I would remind myself of what I knew to be true, from experience, that there was no real story to explain this. I focused on the sensations in my body – the heart pounding, the sweating, the nausea, the mind racing to pin down what the danger was – and I just let it happen. When it was really bad and my mind got out of control, I would breathe in and say to myself, “Body.” I would breathe out and say to myself, “Calm.” Saying “Body-Calm” gave my mind something to do other than search for an explanation.

Recently I’ve realized that a lot of the time I am catching the panic before it even starts! I suppose I probably practiced this way for a good year before that happened. It did take time and practice. Now I wake up in the morning and I feel that hint of panic start up, but it is immediately crushed by the knowledge that it is just the same ol’. It is nothing new, nothing special, nothing important. It does not have any power over me any more. The mind has been trained not to go there. The mind has less of a compulsion to try to explain it. It has already been explained. Over and over and over. There is nothing new to panic about (well, unless my life was truly in danger for some reason).

Now that I have had some success with working with anxiety, I think it is time to apply this theory to restlessness. Restlessness is not as worried or afraid as anxiety. It is just a nagging sensation of something not being quite right. It is an urge to fill space. It is the feeling that maybe I should be doing something else. It has an element of doubt. It is discontent. It is not being entirely satisfied with the way things are, even when things are going pretty well. Restlessness also has distinct physical sensations, though much more subtle than panic and anxiety. There may be twitchiness, nail biting, the compulsion to move, the compulsion to do, a feeling of heaviness in the body, tightness in the chest, or tightness in the shoulders.

This stuff is subtle. But the key is to focus on the body instead of the story in the mind. The story I hear to explain the restlessness is, “I don’t have a mate.” My goal is to label that as a thought rather than believing the broken record that wants to play over and over. Perhaps another story might try to take its place. That too is just a thought and should be labeled as such.

The mind/ego wants to be real. It can really beat us up in an effort for us to believe it all and believe it is who we are. But the brain is just doing its job. The mind thinks. It isn’t always right and it isn’t me. The mind creates thoughts. The brain is just an organ that sends electrical impulses around. When we look at all the stuff that passes through our minds on a daily basis, we can see how messy it is! Sometimes we might wonder who it is that is thinking all that. Some of it can be really shocking. If I believe it is me thinking such horrible thoughts, I might have a great sense of shame or self-judgment. But the answer is that it is not me thinking all that. It is just my creative brain coming up with this stuff based on what is coming in from the senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And our minds also react to what the mind creates, resulting in circles of thoughts.

We can’t always stop what is coming in through our senses. But we can recognize that our brains are just reacting to whatever it is that is coming in. It is not personal.

It is all pretty complicated. We have information coming in from our senses that trigger body, mind and emotional responses. Our bodies react to our minds and our minds to our bodies. But the biggest way we get tripped up is in believing everything that happens in the mind. When I focus on the sensations in my body and just feel the physical sensations of what has arisen instead of getting my mind all wrapped up in it, the crisis passes much more quickly.