Anxiety and peace.

I have this theory that it is possible, if difficult, for a person who is sick or physically suffering to find mental peace in the midst of it. That it helps anyone to know that suffering isn't total and can't last forever; that it helps a humanist to know that, since everyone suffers, in his suffering he shares in a common humanity that links him to everyone who has lived; that it helps the Christian to believe that suffering has redemptive value and to ask for grace.

I have a little experience with this, but not lots. Mostly when I have been physically ill -- and I have never dealt with misery that was both terrible and indefinite -- I have retreated to bed, resolutely consuming fluids and determinedly resting, planning to be done with it as quickly and responsibly as possible. I have five childbirths to look back on, of course, and in only one of them (number two) do I remember the physical sensations coming at me faster than I felt I could cope; and that one was over before too long. I know that mild discomfort, the kind that is too mild to justify retreating to bed, makes me irritated and whiny, so that I can't help but let everyone around me know that I have an ache; I limp, I wince.

Still I have this theory that one could achieve mental peace in physical suffering of illnesses, the sorts of things that happen to some unlucky people. Gratitude, perspective, transcendence, fellow-feeling, petition, and redemption are all accessible -- in theory -- to people who are physically suffering, alone or in combination. A few sufferers, the lucky from among the unlucky, even report gratitude for the suffering itself, for the lessons it has taught and the graces it has conferred. We can believe those tales without casting aspersions on sufferers who don't manage to find gratitude and peace, I think, since everyone is entitled to tell his own story. So it is possible, and maybe it even is possible to everyone, if we knew how to access it.

Mind you, though, nobody thinks that the inner peace, when it comes, makes the suffering go away.

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So what about mental suffering? Can you find inner peace when you suffer from crippling anxiety? Can you rejoice in clinical depression?

It seems that anxiety, compulsions, depressions, addictions, are illnesses like any other; if they are more mysterious, still they seem to be thorns in the flesh. So just like any other kind of illness, the suffering they create is real in the body. Therefore they ought to be subject to the same "rules" of redemption. They are a way to share in the world's great penance, in the suffering of Christ. They also don't last forever, and connect us to the great mass of humankind stretching back through and beyond history. We can ask for grace to help us bear them.

But it seems a bit of a contradiction in terms to imagine that one can find or be graced with peace in the midst of, say, anxiety. I can imagine being at inner peace in the midst of suffering pain from a pulled muscle or an intestinal illness. I can imagine being at inner peace despite physical limitations from damaged limbs or a weakened immune system. But what can it mean to have found peace at the same time as experiencing the suffering that comes from anxiety? How can peace and anxiety co-exist, be co-experienced in the same consciousness?

I do not have a clinically diagnosed anxiety disorder or compulsion disorder, but I have a compulsive-type personality and I experience subclinical anxiety in certain situations. It is often heightened at the holidays. I was sitting meditatively the other day and contemplating the roil of tension that swirled in my brain, knowing that worry and perfectionism is not the reason for the season, and unsure what the most transcendent and redemptive response to this particular misery might be.

Obviously one asks politely for the grace to cope with one's duties despite the suffering, and one can also ask that it be taken away if that is convenient, please. And I am able to acknowledge that the anxiousness won't last forever, that I will have good days as well as rough ones over the next few weeks, that I will be past the roughest patch eventually, and I won't have to live with it for longer than the rest of my life.

But is the redemptive peace in this sort of suffering found by detaching oneself from it, denying it, forcing oneself up and out of it as much as one can? Or is it found by entering fully into the suffering somehow?

With respect to ordinary, physical pain, it seems that common spiritual advice is never to squelch and deny your sensations, but to embrace the cross so as better to bear up under it. But is embracing a cross of anxiety and depression a way to find peace, or a rejection of it? Does this kind of cross work in the reverse of the physical one? Or is there a way to experience and embrace the cross of anxiety in your body and mind, while experiencing calm and peace in some third area of your consciousness -- your full human person -- at the same time? And what does that feel like, and how would you know when it is happening?

Or do you just have to trust -- based on what you know of what you have done, said, thought in response to your pain -- that it is there, insensible, radiating outward from some center you cannot touch or see?

I don't have answers to this question.

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Comments

[Rebekka]

I have previously suffered from panic attacks and still tend to have anxiety, especially if I'm low on sleep and/or really busy. I have to say that I haven't really thought of it from an offer-it-up perspective. However, I've been living with it long enough that I can recognize a panic attack for what it is, and sort of sit it out, even though it is unpleasant I can sort of rise above the impending death feeling of it.

I think self awareness of what's going on is part of it. Being able to say "this is anxiety". It doesn't make the sensation of it go away, but it directs my response to it. (Is it a panic attack or a heart attack? If it's a panic attack, I will just wait it out. I haven't tried having a heart attack...)

I don't think it is wrong to ease pain. It's not immoral to take Tylenol, or to have a nap if you have a headache, or accept palliative care if you are dying. Likewise I think it is ok to minimize situations that provoke mental anguish, or to accept comfort from others (letting them tend to the ill is good for their souls). I guess it comes down to finding a balance between the person who refuses all helpful action and becomes completely debilitated, and the person who searches in vain to have every last discomfort eased, instead of accepting the suffering that can't be helped, both ruin their lives.

[Kate Cousino]

Yes, what Rebekka has said. I have an anxiety disorder, and I find it helps a LOT to be able to recognize what it is and name it in the moment; choose not to act on the feelings and wait it out.

Of course, anxiety disorders really aren't primarily mental. It's a kind of whole-body response, like your body is stuck on the "high alert" setting, and sometimes the triggers are serious things and sometimes the triggers are silly and sometimes there's no identifiable trigger at all. If you don't recognize and name it for what it is, your brain does its human brain thing and comes up with reasons why you SHOULD be panicking, and that's where the irrational thinking comes in. Recognizing the response for what it is makes it possible to reject the irrational thoughts. At least for me, this is how it works. While I rarely think to offer up a panic attack in union with Christ's suffering, I do often offer up slightly less-intense periods of heightened anxiety while waiting for my anxiety meds and self-care to kick in and the ebb and flow of the anxiety to lessen.