By Dina Aldabbagh

Oftentimes, we believe we need to drive things forward otherwise they won’t happen. This is born out of mistrust, and such mistrust is born out of a sense of a lack of safety. Thus, we get the infamous sensation coursing through our system that we all know as anxiety. Anxiety is the result of mistrust and mistrust is the result of feeling a lack of safety within yourself. When you don’t feel calm and secure inside, you don’t trust. When you don’t trust, you get anxious. You begin worrying, rehearsing the potential worst case scenarios in your head, and trying to plan 10 steps ahead. 

So how do we combat anxiety? We start showing ourselves that we are safe. I’ve noticed this starts with the most minor things — things as simple as listening to your body and eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, going to sleep when you’re tired, using the bathroom when you need to go, and drinking water when you’re thirsty. As simple as those things are, we often overlook their importance to our nervous system. If you have to use the bathroom and you hold it, your body learns, “Hey, I have to scream at this guy to get him to go.” If you’re tired but you consistently force yourself to stay up and push past exhaustion, your body learns, “I need to scream at this guy to get him to rest” — meaning: “I need to force him to rest,” which often manifests itself as chronic conditions that are nothing more than pleas from your body to listen.

When I began running, I fell into the same power trap most new runners do where they feel invincible. I was running everyday as well as lifting 4 times a week, playing soccer 2-3 times a week, and playing volleyball 1-2 times a week. It was too much on my body. I began feeling some ankle pain, some knee pain, shin splits, some hip pain, but I pushed past it all. I thought it was the kind of pain you needed to learn to overcome and ignore, rather than the kind of pain you needed to listen to. Well, one day I walked into my co-ed soccer game without so much as a warmup and immediately I hurt myself. My ankle was in so much pain, but there was only one female sub and if I didn’t play, the two women would have had no breaks. So I kept playing, until I couldn’t anymore. The next morning, I was so very humbled as I tried to step out of bed and I fell to the floor. I couldn’t put weight on my ankle. I couldn’t walk. This was the first time in my life I ever felt that. 

That was my body screaming at me, “REST. You’re doing too much.” I wasn’t resting when my body was sending me those initial signals, so it forced me to rest. “You can’t walk now. You’re going to need to take it easy because I’m not giving you the ability to do more.” It’s funny, after numerous different scans, it was confirmed that nothing was broken, fractured, or likely even torn. And yet, I wasn’t healing. By the books, with my conditions, I should have healed up fully in 6-8 weeks, being back to my normal activities. It took me four months before I even began feeling enough stability in my ankle to regularly run more than a mile at once. It took me 8 months before I was back to running at my previous weekly mileage. For months I was out of running, soccer, and volleyball, and all I could do was strength train, walk, do yoga, and physical therapy. 

The body is an extremely smart vessel. It knows what we need in every moment — how much food, water, or rest. And yet at the most basic level, we ignore our signals. This has the very unintentional effect of making your body feel very unsafe. “She doesn’t listen to me. Maybe if I scream she will.” So then we have anxiety, then we feel constantly on edge, we feel like we have to plan every single thing because God forbid we don’t, we won’t be taken care of. 

We are taken out of the present moment through this. While our bodies and souls know the proper time and procedure for every thing, we have trained ourselves to ignore this compass. And once you lose touch with the compass inside of you, the only solution is to live in rigidity. Plan everything and make sure it all goes to plan. If it doesn’t, you won’t be safe. 

Do you ever notice how sometimes the smallest things can trigger you and make you feel anxious? This is because your body doesn’t feel safe. It worries that everything that happens that wasn’t planned, preferred, or invited is unsafe. We get into these routines where if anything goes a bit off schedule, we freak out. We have these boundaries where if something doesn’t stay on its side of the line, our bodies buzz with anxiety.

The key I’ve found is that you have to first listen to your body and respect its signals. Then, and most importantly, you have to prove to yourself that you are safe; you have to self-soothe. When something happens that wasn’t a part of the group of already preapproved things that make you feel safe, pause for a moment and check in. Look around you. Are you safe? Is there anyone hurting you in this moment just because that trigger happened? Typically the answer is no. So in those moments, pause and say to yourself, “I’m safe. Yes, even now, I’m safe.”

Someone yelled at you? Someone cut you off in traffic and you almost got into an accident? You lost an opportunity? Once it’s done, take that moment to say, “I’m safe. Yes, even now, I’m safe.” By self-soothing you realize that you’re not fragile. Things can happen that you don’t like — that even seem dangerous — and still, you’re safe. The ability to self-soothe is one that not everybody masters, but if you can, you’re golden. You’ll have a long life ahead of you full of beautiful things if you learn, in every situation, to remain calm and still. 

When we lose our composure, we act out — and that almost always results in making the issue worse. If you can keep your calm long enough to stay still while the problem sorts itself out — even if your body is humming with anxiety — the problem will sort itself out. You may be required to do something to tend to the situation, but the action required out of you is typically much less than we think necessary. We think it’s always our job to resolve things or to push them forward, but there are actually very few moments in which we genuinely need to do so — and further, benefit from doing so. 

The ability to stay calm allows you to see with clarity. You’re not acting out of panic or reacting to thing after thing, instead you are selectively choosing what to respond to and in which way as to ever so slightly guide it in the direction you wish. We do not benefit from responding to everything. Genuinely not everything is worth a reaction. You have to choose, and you can only choose when you are still enough to see the picture. Imagine a painting in front of you and someone is shaking you back and forth — you can’t see the picture accurately. Your brain is working overtime to fill in the gaps of the details you’re missing. Only when you stop shaking can you actually see clearly. 

Anxiety is the shake. It’s grabbing you by the shoulders and demanding that you act. The problem is, you’re not still enough to be able to make a proper decision because you can’t properly read what’s going on. Anxiety screams at you for constant action, like the banging of a mallet on a Whac-A-Mole game, but stillness is like chess. It’s not inaction, but rather very intentional action. And sometimes, intentional action does look like inaction. Anxiety screams at you to act quickly, calm allows you to choose the right moment. However when our bodies are shaking, we think the only thing that will get it to stop is if we do something RIGHT now. This then stops us from being victorious. We make stupid mistakes and we act without understanding things properly just because we felt like something needed to happen immediately.

It doesn’t need to happen immediately just for you to be safe. Hear that. If you can linger in the uncertainty, you will see a plan larger than you could fashion by yourself unfold. Things are happening all around you that you do not see, and the ability to stay calm and still and trust that you will be safe after whatever happens gives you so much power. It allows you to see the natural flow of things and respond with gentle touches to direct it in the way you wish, instead of trying to force something down a specific path that it doesn’t want to go down. Pushing against resistance is very tiresome, and it’s not the best use of your energy.

You have to adopt an attitude of, “Let’s see.” Play chess. Be slow to react, but decisive in action. Stop giving life to the things that are shaking you and get still instead. When you say, “Let’s see,” you’re staying still. “Let’s see what happens,” “Let’s see how this pans out,” “Let’s see if I even need to do anything here.” The key to note is that there is an opportune time to do things, and the ‘soonest time possible’ is not necessarily what’s going to set you up for the most success down the road in every situation. It’s not about more time, it’s about right time. 

You can only say, “Let’s see,” when you know you’re already safe. Here, in my opinion, it’s very helpful to believe in something larger than yourself — such as God. I think in order to feel a sense of security that transcends logic — allowing you to not have to act in every moment — the belief that there is something out there that is organizing the universe on your behalf is crucial. But even if you didn’t believe in God, you can still adopt the mindset of “Let’s see.” You can develop the trust necessary to stay still by taking every moment presently and recognizing in each moment the safety that you have. You can pause after something triggers you and register that you are actually safe. You can learn that even though the trigger wants to convince you that you need to be on guard, there is not actually anything threatening you right here right now. 

You become a very powerful person when you allow processes to take the time they take. When you can stay still even in the uncertainty, you permit what’s meant for you to come. The only way we ever lose things is if we move from our spots. God’s got you positioned somewhere right now where you’re meant to receive and the only way you ever lose what God has for you is by moving from your spot. Doubts and fears will yell at you and tell you to walk away, but if you are strong enough to just stay still, and know that you are safe, you will get everything that’s meant for you.