Focusing with Anxiety about Too Much to Do
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A reader writes: "Suppose a person is saying to herself/himself (from a place of anxiety), ‘I have to do this and this and this and this and this and I don’t know how I will get all of these things done! They all are high priority!!’ Could Focusing help him/her in some way?"
Dear Reader,
Yes, Focusing can help! But the trickiest part will be at the very beginning, moving into Presence with the anxious part that is feeling such urgency.
This is very related to the Tip from last week about emotions that are hard to move into Presence with, and why that is. This feeling of anxiety is another one (like anger) that’s hard to be in Presence with, at first. It’s so anxious that it doesn’t want you to do Focusing, doesn’t want you to do anything but get going on that list of things to do. Right? So the pausing that is needed for Focusing to happen will–at first–make this part even more anxious.
And it sounds like the other thing that is getting this part so anxious is some kind of difficulty in choosing between all these urgent tasks: "They are all high priority!" So we have two layers of anxiety: one about stopping to Focus at all, and the next about choosing or prioritizing.
Let’s pause right here and acknowledge: No wonder this is so hard!
And once we pause, something wonderful can happen: The possibility of a deeper breath, feeling body contact on the chair, feet on the floor… and a sense of being a bit larger than the problem. Not "I’m anxious" but "something in me is anxious."
Maybe then we feel it more intensely, but localized– not all of me anxious, but something in me, here in the chest perhaps. Maybe putting a gentle hand on the anxious place, like saying, "Yes I know you’re there."
When we started, this place was saying, "I have to do this and this and this and this and this and I don’t know how I will get all of these things done! They all are high priority!!" Now, there is a chance to sense something deeper, below the words, an urgency like a push, and under that perhaps something afraid.
We could acknowledge that, and gently sense what it’s afraid of. Maybe from the answer to that (for example, "I’ll get in trouble") it becomes clear that one of the projects is most urgent, and when we identify that, the others relax.
Or it might go completely differently. Once the pause happens, once we sense into the body, we might find a longing, for support, for help, showing us that the worst of what felt so anxious was not feeling support. From that comes the idea of giving some of the tasks to another person. In the midst of the anxious, that was too hard to think about, but now the perfect person floats into mind.
So yes, dear reader, Focusing can help so much with such a situation! We don’t know what exactly will happen, but we can trust that something wise will emerge from the slowing and the sensing, and the coming into Presence with what’s there instead of being caught up in the emotion. That we can be sure of.