I found myself curled up in a ball in the middle of my bed, tangled in my heavy whipping cream-colored down duvet and slate grey Egyptian cotton sheets despite the warmth of early spring after a particularly harsh winter. It was Saturday. Rays of sunshine pierced through the window panes of my east-facing New York bedroom, beckoning me to come see their handiwork, the newly-opened blossoms of trees lining the city’s sidewalks, perfuming the air with an intensity that almost seemed apologetic for the past five months of ice.
I wanted to get up and get ready for brunch, but instead I texted my sincere apologies. I was an immovable, tightly wound into a ball of nerves, trapped in the middle of a vortex of swirling thoughts and fears. By now, I had a name for these moments—Anxiety Paralysis.
I think all my highly-educated friends have these things; moments when we surrender and allow fear—of unknown and unlikely things—to crash over us like a tidal wave. In fact, living in constant anxiety has become something of a competitive badge of honor—
Sex and the City poked fun at New Yorkers for bragging about their hours of sleep, but the new humblebrag is about how anxious—like, totally OCD—you really are. And close to any milestone or deadline, there is the expected and much-discussed onslaught of episodes in ranging from full blown “panic” to chronic, background “anxiety.”
But despite anxiety’s contemporary social capital, that morning I decided that I didn’t want to spend any more of my precious time paralyzed. I felt that my fear was stifling not only my brunch plans but my creativity. It’s hard to step out on a limb when you can’t even make it out of bed.
In an attempt to distract myself, I checked my email on my iPhone and saw, in the midst of the slew of the morning’s downloads, an article entitled “How to Get Out of Your Feelings” by one of my favorite bloggers, a trained psychotherapist [hyperlink]. As a trained skeptic, I nearly dismissed her discussion of “the subconscious” as New Age propaganda.
Nearly. Since that day last spring, I have been on a journey towards a happier, less fearful life by making a concerted effort to stay conscious, which essentially means that I try to focus on the present and recognize that the past and future are merely subjective projections of my mind in which nothing can be accomplished, fixed or built.
The choice to try to be conscious has made me more effective in my profession and more loving in my relationships. I think when you boil it all down, consciousness starts with a single, initially uncomfortable truth: I am not my mind [See Part II].