Awakening From Anxiety. Rev. Connie L. Habash, MA, LMFT

body to escape what you’re feeling, especially habitually or for extended periods of time, your body feels like that toddler: “There’s nobody home here! No one is here to make sure I’m safe, to take care of any threats that could show up, to deal with this project sitting on my desk, to make sure the doors are locked before bed, or to look after the kids, etc.” Your body quite simply freaks out.

      And what happens when the body is freaked out? The nervous system—specifically, the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight-or-flight response—kicks into high gear. Adrenaline courses through your veins. Your senses are on high alert. And your anxiety, from first a physiological and then a psychological response, is stimulated.

      This is not the same as doing a guided meditation for a short period of time, in a room where you’re safe, for a particular purpose. But if you desire to live in that other imaginary world, or in a spiritual state that disconnects you from your body frequently, this is how your body can feel. When you come back into your body and experience what is here, you’ll feel the anxiety as a physical nervous system response to the body’s feeling, “Where the hell were you? You left me here alone and vulnerable!” You may have left your body to escape your anxiety, but coming back to anxiety that you’ve avoided feels worse! And this creates a vicious circle of avoiding anxiety, leaving the body, returning to the body, feeling more anxiety… You get the picture.

      Being in the Body Feels Safe for the Body

      The solution to this dilemma is learning how to be present in the body. The “Presence” and “Embodiment” chapters cover these skills in detail. For now, just know that it is possible to feel safe in your body in the here and now, and that by being in your body, you can develop proficiency at shifting out of the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic—the relaxation response. That is far more effective at calming anxiety than dissociating from the body and abandoning it!

Chapter 6

Spiritual Mistake #4 You Create Your Reality

      “As soon as you allow where you are to be all right, you will be able to get where you want to be much faster.”

      —Bashar/Darryl Anka

      This one may surprise you, because the Law of Attraction—the concept that we create our own reality—is extremely popular in spiritual circles and New Thought churches. However, misunderstanding the application of “you create your reality” can be another mistake made by aspirants on the spiritual path that exacerbates fear, worry, and stress.

      Don’t worry—I’m not going to tell you to stop using the Law of Attraction to manifest what you want in your life. It’s a very powerful and effective spiritual tool, used properly. But I want you to take a closer look at it and how you apply it.

      What Is the Law of Attraction?

      For those of you who may be new to this concept, the Law of Attraction became very popular with the release of the movie The Secret and the work of a number of well-known spiritual teachers who were in the movie or associated with it, such as the Abraham/Hicks teachings. In essence, this spiritual principle states that we attract whatever we hold in our consciousness. In other words, our thoughts create our reality.

      Olivia Tiffin, author of The Happiness Textbook: The Ultimate Manual for Mastering Law of Attraction, describes it this way: “The most simple and basic description of [the] law of attraction is that like attracts like. You attract what you think about. Your thoughts have a frequency, and [the] law of attraction matches the frequency of your thoughts with manifestations of the same frequency.”

      There is a lot of truth to this practice, and you can experience the results by holding a clear intent in your mind and seeing what happens as a result. For example, if you focus on the idea that people are helpful and kind, and you really believe that thought and feel it in your heart, you’re much more likely to experience other people doing kind acts. Some of this result is from what you attract, and a lot of it is from what you choose to put your attention on.

      The Law of Anxiety

      Unfortunately for many of us, we can use the Law of Attraction to create more anxiety. This is what I call the Law of Anxiety: if you worry about what you’re thinking, you’ll worry more about what you’re thinking. If you fear what you’re thinking, you’ll become more afraid of your thoughts. If you’re stressed out about the thoughts you have, you’ll create more stressed-out thoughts.

      Sarah, a highly savvy spiritual person who has studied many modalities of healing and transformation, including yoga, somatics, and energy work, found that the Law of Attraction agitated her anxiety more and more. She described it as a constant spin: “Oh my God. I’m thinking negatively again. I’d spin and spin and spin, worrying that I’m worrying.” What she had hoped would calm her by creating the reality she desired simply kept her in the anxiety loop.