Working with Anxiety Using my Mood Cloud Analogy

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my latest post.

As I have written this post, I have spent some time reflecting back on the years that I suffered debilitating anxious symptoms myself. I was often convinced that there was no way out and there was definitely no way forward that I could see, but yet on reflection, now I can see that there was. I remember often thinking that I was the one that could never feel better. I was convinced that I felt more anxious than anyone else and that my anxiety was so bad that I was the one who may never escape the cycle. Now I see that was exactly what my anxiety wanted me to believe and I believed it but now I realise I found that too to be a lie.

These days, I am actually more convinced of the opposite – no one needs to stay stuck and everyone, and I mean everyone is able to do something about their anxious feelings.

As I write, I am thinking how amazing it is to think that a few years ago I was confined to the rooms within my home, convinced that I would never ever again see anything other than those four walls and yet here I am with many more experiences than I ever believed possible that I can claim to be mine.

I am not a fan of labels (that is a whole other blog post), but for those of you who don’t know, I guess I fell into the description of housebound agoraphobic, agoraphobia being the sad and lonely endpoint of many years of suffering from a number of anxiety labels with different manifestations and my fruitless efforts to try and protect myself from my feelings by using my developed habitual behaviours to keep me safe. In the main avoidance.

At the time of being housebound I never thought I would even be able to venture five steps up my street again, never mind clocking up the experiences that I have had since those times, actively taking part, looking out of my eyes with wonder and interest with enjoyment or normality not FEAR and DREAD.

So here I am also reflecting on a number of the ways I worked out how to educate myself, about myself, in order to help myself.

A lot of the problem with anxiety is how we see it and how we presume it is. Once we find some knowledge somewhere that we believe in, that makes sense to us, this changes our perception and in turn means begins to strengthen our resilience against our anxiety. Consequently, this results in us not being as affected by our beliefs and feelings around what is happening to us as we now see things differently. I would describe this as a bit like if we make an initial judgement or have an initial perception on something and then once we know more about it our initial thoughts may change. We start to see things differently to our initial presumption/perception purely because we can’t argue with what we see or experience factually. This is simply as we have more knowledge and insight and come to realise that our initial thoughts were just based on our own presumptions, our way of seeing the world rather than the factual evidence which would come with more knowledge.

How we presume anxiety is, can be driven by the initial feelings that feel so alien to us and then our presumption of how dangerous these feelings must be. This is internal labelling or us labelling ourselves. We begin to believe in the anxiety and what it could take away from us or do to us and we drive this by applying protective behaviours which work to support our presumptions. Our way of seeing it as dangerous becomes bigger and stronger than any other thought and then our moods are driven by the constant focus on anxiety as a negative harm to us, it is a vicious circle.

So, as I write, I am reflecting on an understanding of human moods and how they work, back then I found it helped me to adjust my perspective and, as with all of the adjustments of perspective along the way, I find that once learned they can not be unlearned and will help to regain personal power and empowerment to work with these feelings in a way in which you will learn to calm them and manage them going forwards.

As with most helpful things I discovered along my own journey, I created my own way or analogy of understanding them, so if my methods seem a little quirky and ‘out there’ this is the reason why!

This month’s blog is simply about what I call “The mood clouds”. Let me explain;

Ok, please firstly picture an apple. Got it? Great! This is your mind’s eye and within it we can create or see memories/images.

So, I would like you to tap into your minds etc and to picture yourself laying in the grass in a beautiful field, staring at the sky. Around you are some flowers, you lie flat on your back. It is a beautiful sunny day and you are aware of a slight breeze brushing your skin which feels safe, comforting and fresh. Next I will introduce the one and only thing I will ask of you during this exercise in the field- that you continue to lie on your back and just do nothing, yes that is all, nothing.

I am going to stand at the side of the field and send a line of clouds over you, while you lie in the grass, look up at them and do nothing, just allowing them to pass. Each one will pass in turn and then move on. You will notice as the clouds pass over you that each one is labelled with a different mood state. One is labelled happy, one sad, one angry, one calm, one anxious and so on. You don’t need to do anything, just observe, but as each one passes over you, you will experience the intense emotion that it brings. Some of the mood clouds will take longer to pass over you than others and some will feel much more uncomfortable than others to bear, but all of them will pass even when you do absolutely nothing but experience them. When the clouds clear again and you sit up, you realise that nothing has happened other than you felt different moods and emotions some harder than others but that they all passed in their own time and you are ok.

Mood states, as far as I have been able to see and experience or in fact research, are really normal for each and every one of us regardless of whether we suffer anxiety or not. This is how human mood cycles work and this means that all people have interchanging moods all of the time. Yes of course these moods can be affected or driven by positive or negative influences and experiences at different stages of our lives but, what is really interesting is that even when someone is experiencing a lot of negative they will still have a positive moment or mood, same the other way round, if someone is experiencing a lot of positive they would still have times where they feel low, sad, angry or anxious. This is normal but before they defined anxiety they probably just went with the moods they had.

The problem comes when we don’t feel it is normal to experience a particular mood state and so in general we resist what is actually a normal process. The body knows how to heal so why is it so hard during negative mood states for us to let it do it’s thing? This may be something to do with how we currently see and feel about the feelings we are having and our trust in our ability to deal with it. Maybe the real issue is that somewhere in your life you have experienced a feeling at a time when you didn’t understand it and so were unable to regulate and allow it. This would mean that future negative states are met with resistance and fear rather than calm and acceptance of the process.

Varying mood states happen for everyone and if we were just to sit with it and allow it, it would pass on its own. Even if we struggle against it or apply a behaviour, it still passes on it’s own, not because you made it or the behaviour helped you.

It is easy to focus on something so much that it drives a particular mood state, of course it is. Hence more anxious mood states/clouds when your focus is on your anxiety most of the time. It is also easy to focus on negative mood states as they hold the most fear and we don’t want to experience them, that is human nature. One thing we do miss though is that there is usually teaching in negativity, a chance to develop, grow and shine in the acceptance of who we are.

It is normal to have a period of negative or positive mood states which dominate for a time, Imagine something bad such as an illness happened for example, that period of life may be filled with more negative than positive mood states for a time. But even then they pass over once the acceptance is there to allow the process to happen, a bit like pressing pause and then pressing play again.

Often in our pursuits of freedom from anxiety and panic symptoms we hold a rigid belief that feeling down or anxious is a really bad thing, something to fear or some proof that something bad is going to happen if we don’t do something to resist and stop it.

I imagine that prior to labelling yourself with anxiety and starting to believe that you have a problem, you would have just unconsciously allowed your low or anxious moods to enter your consciousness and then leave without too much thought. Now it will have become a big red warning flag that signals to us to do something to block this feeling being allowed to wash over us but this is our barrier to being free from anxiety or confirmation that we will never be happy.

This is most definitely not the case as real contentment comes with experiencing and accepting the good and the bad as a process that happens to everyone. Even a negative mood or experience shows that you have lived truly and experienced, possibly grown and developed. if you never felt any emotion then have you really felt or experienced life? If you never allow an emotion how do you imagine that you will work with it in a way in which it calms?

Mood clouds bringing you different moods are normal and a sure sign that all is well, not that something is wrong or that something bad will happen. Allow yourself to feel your current state, welcome it, explore it, observe it, feel it and then as the clouds did, wait for it to pass over.

This understanding really helped me to see, I was in fact ok and that my anxious moods were a natural state which were being driven more by my focus on removal of feelings I didn’t see as normal, rather than something that was going to harm me. I started to see things differently and instead approached my feelings curiously while allowing them to pass over in their own time. It taught me to experience life both in a way that embraces what feels good and what feels bad, notto fight mood states, they are a normal process for everyone.

I hope that my insight helps you to gain acceptance of your moods rather than fight them, the choices and decisions people tend to make when protecting themselves against anxiety often drive a low and anxious mood, remember anxiety is not dangerous, the only thing that will hurt you is your belief that it is.

Until my next blog, wishing you all my very best wishes, health and happiness,

 

Michelle x