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There is a woman in the neighborhood who is a very anxious person. I am on the 134 bus with her from time to time and she is quite vocal about her anxiety. I really feel for her as she must suffer a lot. Today she was hysterical because her daughter had her face close to the plastic window behind the drivers seat. "If the bus stops short you can bang your face and all of your teeth will fall out!! I TOLD you not to sit here!!!" I could have told her that the odds of such a thing happening are less than me winning the New York State lottery and only slightly more than me being pregnant. Not that it CAN'T happen but certainly not enough of a probability to "bug out" about. But this woman is ANXIOUS. I would love to sit with her and hear her talk out her problems, explore where the anxiety comes from and learn how to deal with it in a healthy way. But, you know, I live in a really frum neighborhood, so this will not happen.... I see her husband in shul all the time and wonder how it affects their marriage.
Since I can't help her, maybe I can help you or someone you know?
Hold on for a short journey into the psyche....
I quote from the famous philosopher Kierkegaard in his essay "The Concept of Anxiety":
‘In one of Grimm’s fairy tales there is a story of a young man who goes in search of adventure in order to learn what it is to be in anxiety… This is an adventure that every human being must go through—to learn to be anxious in order that he may not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. The more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the man... Then anxiety enters his soul and searches out everything and anxiously torments everything finite and petty out of him, and then it leads him to where he wants to go... Thus the individual through anxiety is educated into faith.’
This is huuuuuge! How can one learn how to be in anxiety? Something I saw....
In the state of anxiety, we do not want to be who we are, where we are, how we are. In anxiety, we do not want to be at all. We try to deny or suppress our experience of anxiety, or else we run away from ourselves and from our anxiety. This can be done with the help of alcohol, drugs (legal or illegal), cigarettes, distraction, neurosis, or various illusions of security.
The alternative to this conditioned response of fight or flight is to be anxious: to remain in anxiety, to exist within it, to feel it fully without railing against it or seeking an escape route. In this way, the human being becomes acquainted with herself, perhaps for the first time. It’s like standing outside in a storm, feeling the rain soak through to the skin, listening to the thunder, watching the lightening flash without blinking.
Feel it. You are anxious. Now use that anxiety to do something practical to improve your lot. Example: If you are anxious about getting married - contact a shadchan, that'll decrease the anxiety and will help you achieve your goal. Anxiety can trigger one into ACTION. A person who is calm and complacent might never get off the couch. Everything is juuuuuust cooooool. I don't need to make a living. I don't need to learn or daven or do any mitzvos. I don't need to do anything. Things are chiiiillleeedddd. Anxiety says to me "If I don't do something then...." This anxiety is extremely beneficial.
Kierkegaard talks about how anxiety "educates one into faith". This is beautiful! One is anxious and transforms his intense anxiety to intense faith in Hashem. He is in charge:-). Take three deep breaths and remember that you are not alone and that this situation was sent by Hashem to help you achieve your purpose in life.
I conclude this gevaldik post [is that arrogant?] by quoting Emerson who sagely noted:
"The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without."
