Ancient Solutions for Anxiety

In the Buddhist tradition, the first step on the path to enlightenment is recognizing that suffering is an unavoidable part of life. This is a lesson that I have had a hard time learning. We want to believe that we are one right step away from a life free from pain and insecurity. I do, at least. I remember reading about Buddhism as a student in undergrad. It sounded depressing. And maybe it is a depressing idea that life will always  have suffering. But maybe its also true. 

Learning about Buddhism for a second time, it hit me how very true it is that life is always drawing me back into the suffering, into what the Buddhists call the samsara.  

Buddhist teacher Sakyong Mipham describes samsara as the wheel that is endlessly spinning. It is a circle of illusion in which we are always being brought back to the same struggles and pains. We believe that life progresses in a line towards improvement but samsara is always bringing us back to the beginning again.

Mipham asks you to imagine that your mind is a bowl of water. Our thoughts are the steam rising off the top. To take the metaphor a step further, as the water heats, and the molecules speed up, more steam begins rise.

This is just how anxiety feels. A boiling mind that won’t slow down. You don’t want to be thinking about anything, but slowing the tide of worries and dissatisfactions seems like an impossibility. It always feels as if you are one change away from things being right, but you never seem to reach the imagined place of satisfaction and security. 

To free ourselves from anxiety, we must learn to slow down and stop the churning mind. You cannot will boiling water to stop producing steam. You must take it away from the heat. You must let it cool, settle, and release energy.

Similarly we cannot simply stop a mind in its tracks. We must take it off the heat. We must allow it to settle, to cool, to release energy. To do this, we must take our minds away from the activity and bustle of our everyday lives. While we will always get sucked back into the day to day suffering of samsara, we can allow ourselves a gap. A space where we needn’t pay attention to our thoughts because there is no urgent necessity pulling for action. This is the purpose of meditation. To create a gap. To take the pot off the stove and let heat vent. To remember that we can be still - even if its just for a moment.

Getting Older, Getting Happier

People like to complain about getting old. I’m 25 and all my friends have been doing it for ages. It started to really stick out at 20, when all my friends complained that they were leaving teenage-hood behind but where still woefully unable to buy alcohol. At 22 crises began to emerge that there were “no good birthdays left” and suddenly people stopped talking so much about age. It wasn’t really in good taste to keep counting.
People like to blame all kinds of things on age; bad memory; achey limbs; wandering into a room only to find you have no no idea why you went in there. If there is one thing that stands out as a universal truth of pop culture, it’s that nobody wants to get older.

Still -- psychologists report that people actually get happier with age. For me, this has been incredibly true.

The older I get, the better my life seems to get. I find myself with new skills and talents, I never thought I would possess. Practice suddenly makes sense as I can finally see the rewards of so many repeated iterations of the same task. I have gained information. I have gained wisdom. I have gained friends and networks.

The older I get, the more knowledgeable I become. This is true in my areas of research, but also in other areas of life, where I have finally lived long enough to meaningfully comment. I am better at making friends. I am better at taking care of myself. I am better at negotiating relationships.

In undergrad, I spent some time playing Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D, and similar role-playing games, characters level. As they act, fight, cast spells, and complete tasks they gain new abilities and increase in power. Games like this have been designed to reflect our ability to grow and improve - simply by striving for our goals. I use the leveling metaphor everywhere in life. When things get challenging and you have to push hard to keep going, remember that you are leveling. When the encounter has ended, and you are catching your breath, remember to check your experience points. They have probably gone up. While aging can be challenging, we shouldn’t ignore the perks, and getting happier, more skilled and more powerful is definitely a perk.

Pursuing Happiness - Part 2 - I discover the dark secret hiding in my brain

It wasn’t until my junior year of undergrad that things got really scary. I had always been “high strung” and got sick easily but now I was stressed to the max and practically bed-ridden. I was getting sick all the time and in many different ways. I was always nauseous. No matter what I would eat, the stomach pains were always in the background. At the best there was mild discomfort and at the worst I was doubled over in pain, crying my eyes out. The doctors ran tests and nothing came up so they sent me back home with a box of prilosec. Then the chest pains started. My breathing was always labored. My chest heavy. One night I woke up with stabbing pains in my chest, radiating down my left arm. “Something is wrong with my heart” I thought “How can this be? I’m 20.” I checked the internet. It said that I was loosing precious seconds and should get to a hospital immediately to avoid permanent brain damage. My boyfriend at the time called 911. The line was busy. He hung up and called the campus EMT’s. They responded and we were rushed to the ER. Tests were inconclusive and I was sent back home.
 

Still, what really scared me were the mental symptoms. I remember walking through a grocery store one day and being suddenly overcome by the strangest sensation. My head began to throb and my vision blurred. Lights became overwhelming. Everything sounded like static. The whole world was suddenly crushing in. I was disoriented and confused. My teeth were numb. The task of picking out groceries was suddenly an impossibility. I made my way out of the store slowly and then sat in the car until my mental balance equalized. I spent the rest of the day nursing a migraine in bed. 

And that was my reality for a while. Every attempt I made to live my life was met with sudden unexplainable sickness. Every muscle in my body was painfully knotted and sore. Back-rubs were little help, giving momentary relief before my shoulders snapped back up to my ears. I was constantly missing class. I stopped spending time with friends. I was basically living in bed and occasionally making it out for food or class. I knew something had to change, but I didn’t know how to change it. The doctors hadn’t come up with anything, so  I started googling symptoms. Brain tumor? Heart problems? A strange parasite living in my stomach? I had no idea what might be causing my uncontrollable symptoms but the options alone filled me with dread. No matter the outcome, something was definitely wrong. I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to fix it, but the answers eluded me.

I don’t remember how many days I spent searching before I finally stumbled upon a description of GAD - Generalized Anxiety Disorder. As I scrolled down the list of symptoms, I felt realization creeping across my awareness. On a list of twenty or so unrelated symptoms, I had about seventeen. I knew this was it. This was what I had been going through. This was what I had been going through my whole life. I read as much as I could that night. It was like reading my fortune. And my fortune said “This is a chronic illness. You will feel like this forever.”
 

The medical webpages coldly informed me that the chemicals in brain were off-balance. I was broken. I had likely been born that way. In fact, it was deep in genetic history to be overly anxious. I later confirmed this when I discovered relatives on both sides of my family with anxiety disorders. I had gotten a double dose.

Most people discover their anxiety disorders in their early 20’s. It’s not clear whether it’s a biological timer or if it simply coincides with the first stresses of adulthood. Either way, I was right on time. I was studying for grad school and desperately trying to keep a high GPA. The stress factor was high.

Still, I felt unfairly judged by these descriptions. I wasn’t obsessing over everything that went wrong. I was quite satisfied with my life (minus the sickness) I was just busy. I just stressed. My brain was always going, always circling, but it wasn’t circling around any issues in particular, it was just running on overdrive.

I read further to understand what I was experiencing. The impersonal pages explained that most people have a flight or fight reaction in response to situations of high stress. If a lion jumps out of the bushes at you, a flood of chemicals will pour into your brain, giving you the magic ingredients you need to quickly begin your escape (although in the lion case you may be out of luck). If life throws enough at you that you are experiencing extreme stress for an extended period (say.. a loved one dies and you are mourning) then you will likely experience the symptoms of extreme anxiety - difficulty breathing, headaches, nausea, insomnia, muscle tension, exhaustion, edginess - to name a few.

For those of us with GAD that flight or fight reaction is switched on all the time. Anxiety producing chemicals - which might give us the edge in limited quantity - are pouring into our system constantly. It always feels like we are in a desperate situation. It doesn’t always seem like this mentally, but it does physically, and this is the extremely confusing part.

I didn’t know how to feel about my self-diagnosis (which was later reaffirmed by my doctor). I spent a lot of time staring at the screen and sobbing uncontrollably. On one hand, I was extremely relieved. GAD was not terminal, although it could create secondary problems that were. I no longer worried that my heart was on the verge of stopping, or that a secretive tumor had burrowed itself into my spinal cord. I had an answer. I had something to work on. There were treatments I could try. 

Still, the word “chronic” rattled around my brain imposingly. This was something I would have to deal with forever. It wasn’t going away. It was a part of my biology.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I stayed up and researched my options. There were a few things I could try on my own - exercise, giving up caffeine, taking up meditation - but the real hope was in medication. The problem wasn’t my lifestyle, it was the chemical imbalance in my brain. I printed out my list of symptoms and the next day I made an appointment to see the doctor. I was going to fix my brain.

Pursuing Happiness - Part 1 - My Anxious Origins- Emily as a Toddler

I’m pretty sure I was born anxious, but I don’t remember back that far. 

My mother gushes with enthusiasm when she describes me as a small child. I was her baby. I was quiet and tiny and always clinging to her. I was polite and knew how to introduce myself and shake hands. I was great at setting the table. The stories about me are told from a distinctly adult point of view. The details are on how my action made the adults feel, but I am wondering what it was that I felt. 

Hmmm... am I flipping off the camera in this picture?

I have bits and pieces of memory from the time. I remember being on an airplane and trying to distract myself from the pain in my ears by playing with My-Little-Ponies. I remember pushing a little girl off my small trampoline into a play kitchen set and then looking up at my mother wide-eyed and innocent as I explained that the other girl didn’t understand trampoline safety procedures. I remember feeling older than everybody my age (and many above my age). It felt like I knew what I was doing. I was aware... and that made me nervous about all the things that could go wrong. Being nervous made me shy, which made me quiet, which made me sneaky. The sneakiness made me a lier and the lying turned me into a performer. I have bits and pieces but getting into the head of myself as a child is not as easy as it seems. The threads of time and continuity are stretched thin. I can piece together memories and pull out character traits, but it’s more difficult to say what I was thinking or how I was feeling. 

What was going on in the mind of the spritely four year old child I see on the family video? 

She looks up at the camera suspiciously, seeming uninclined to perform. My mothers voice comes in loudly “Emily... say hello to your grandparents”. The little girl squints at the camera and raises her eyebrows. She is not impressed. She attempts to ignore the situation, wandering over to the couch and fiddling with some paper. 

“Emily... sing a song for us.” Emily sighs heavily before giving in, making clear her distaste for the request, but as she sings a glint comes into her eye. If she is going to perform, she will do it well. She seems pleased with her performance and more likely to cooperate. 

My mothers voice begins questioning again. “What do you think of George Bush?” The tiny girl rolls her eyes. The words come out in a frustrated burst. “I don’t think anything about George Bush!” She seems aggravated by the question. She does not seem to know why the question bothers her but she is certain it is a trick. 

My mother tries a different tactic. “Do you look like your mommy?” she asks. The response is quick, practiced and indignant “I don’t look like my mommy, she just looks like me!” There is laughing off camera. The little girl scrunches up her face with irritation. She does not like being bothered. She does like being tricked. And she is certain that all of this a set up. Yet again, the adults in her life are trying to farm cuteness out of her. She seems torn between performing and being spiteful. In the end she picks both. 

My ferocious grimace 

When my mother questions the young me about her friends, the child slyly informs her that she has none. Everybody yells at her. While the little girl eventually concedes that her long time best friend Kate is a friend, she says that she is the only one. Everybody else yells at her. I am intrigued watching this. I remember being “yelled” at. I was a sensitive child and referred to any chiding in that way. People were telling me what to do and I didn’t like it. What is clear to me as I watch the video is that this young version of me is trying to mess up the video. She knows at the least that her mother is trying to extract something adorable from her, and she is set on delivering something else. 

When my mother asks if the girl’s father is her friend, she complains that he too yells at her. Then, a look of mischief appears on her tiny face. She tilts her head and looks up at the camera as she concocts a story in which her dad (not the family dog) was actually the one who recently peed on the carpet. When my mother laughs and says “Noooo... that was the dog.” She smiles and shrugs. The mischief does not leave her face. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the tape was never sent out. 

...not happy

When I think back, I remember being a child who was always in her head. I was shy. I was nervous. I was afraid to talk and even more afraid to talk about myself. Still, even at that point, I had developed a mask for performance. I had learned that sometimes you needed to pretend in order to get by. Sometimes the adults wouldn’t stop pestering you until you had given them a show. When I think back to my childhood, I remember worrying about a lot of things. But to be honest, I didn’t have much to worry about. I had parents who loved and cared for me. I had food, shelter, friends and family. But, even then, I was anxious. What I would learn so many years later is the truth about why. 

Happy Guilt - Rethinking The Ethics Of Our Own Happiness

I think it’s hard not to feel guilty about being happy, or even trying to get happier. The deep roots of our colonial predecessors still infuse our culture with an attitude of self-sacrifice for the greater good. There is something icky about spending large amounts of your time and energy working on... you. 

At the same time we are bombarded with messages of individuality. We are told that happiness is our right. We are constantly tempted by advertisers to dig in and indulge our whims. Be yourself. Find your bliss. We are all encouraged to take plenty of “me time”. 

Of course this only enflames the subtle but ever-present guilt lurking behind the flashing lights of contemporary america. When it comes to the moment of indulgence, don’t be surprised to find the disapproving ghosts of “what everyone will think” glaring at you from a corner. “We aren’t really supposed to indulge” we find ourselves thinking. We want happiness but it wouldn’t really be fair if we had it when so many go without. That’s not to say that we stop seeking it. We are humans, and seeking happiness may be hardwired in but when we do, so many of us feel guilt. 

For me, this became most difficult when I began to build community, particularly the small community of two with my fiance which will soon become a marriage. Suddenly I was not just me. I was working on a team. And when you work on a team, you understand that everything you do or fail to do has an impact on the team as a whole. Now my decision to spend the day writing angsty folk music in the backyard has a cost. I will not be spending that time cooking dinner, cleaning the house, creating shared income, or interacting to strengthen our bond. Now, instead of working on us, I’m just working on me. It feels selfish and that’s hard to ignore. 

Lucky for consciences everywhere, a bizarre but interesting trend is going on in happiness research right now. Instead of looking at what brings happiness, researchers are focusing on what happiness can bring. As it turns out being happy can help you to improve in many aspects of life including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. These directional studies indicate that happiness is not just a reaction to success, it is actually a condition which creates success. Being happy is thus not just useful to you, it is useful to everyone around you. 

With this news we are suddenly struck with the reality that being happy isn’t all about us. Being happy means that we are better at our jobs. We are better friends, better lovers, and better community members. We are contributing to something far greater than just ourselves, we are contributing to happiness of everyone. If there is one thing I’ve learned from all my dabblings in happiness studies it that happiness spreads happiness. Radiate the happiness you’ve gained to everyone around you. Watch that radiate out to everyone else. 

When you light a candle, you don’t stare at the flame and wonder at it’s selfishness for hoarding all that light and energy in one concentrated spot. Rather, you focus on what the light brings, seeing that many more things are now possible. 

Happiness is quite similar. Don’t feel guilty when you have it, just use it for something good. It’s not a new message, but it’s one we need to remember if we are going to survive this stressed out modern world. 

Aristotle and Flow: Learning from the Sages

Imagine spending your time at an activity that so perfectly fits your skill set, that you feel both challenged and in control the entire time. The action is so engaging that all of your awareness shifts to the task at hand and you are completely absorbed in the activity. Self-consciousness drops away and your mind is completely clear of everything but the object of your focus. You feel confident of your skill and every action brings the feedback that you are doing well. Time falls away and no longer seems relevant. You are filled with exhilaration and confidence.

This is “flow”, the state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the “optimal experience”. Perhaps you can remember a moment where you felt like this, perhaps you are one of the lucky people who has discovered an activity which allows you to feel like this often. Even better, you may be one of the rare people who can naturally turn any activity into a chance for flow. For most, these moments are rare but they leave us with a deep sense of enjoyment and a “memory for what life should be like.” Csikszentmihalyi points out that:
“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times - although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

The best moments in life are the ones that we create through our own effort. When we strive for something worthwhile and make use of skills, we create the perfect environment for enjoyment. We transcend the worries of everyday life and push all our energy and consciousness into one unifying activity.

It’s been two decades since Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience was published and it still rings true. This groundbreaking work from the infancy of positive psychology continues to provide valuable insight even as the body of research on happiness continues to grow.

One thing that struck me as I read this book was how it felt almost shockingly accurate in describing my happiest moments. At the same time, the theory itself is not one that slips intuitively into the mind like “happiness is pleasure” or “happiness is an emotion”. I wasn’t sure how to react, except to accept that it captures something essential about happiness. It may not catch everything, but it gives the reader a clear idea of what kind of moments they might want to look for.

Interestingly, this classic work based on psychological data has a theoretical ancestor. Aristotle (or as the medieval scholars and my first instructor of ancient philosophy called him “The Philosopher”) had a surprisingly similar description of happiness. For Aristotle, happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with rationality and virtue. It is an activity or energizing in a way that is particular to the individual, his gifts, and his circumstances. Aristotle specifies that happiness does not consist of abundant physical pleasures, political power and honor, or even wealth. Happiness, like flow, is an activity. 

Csikszentmihalyi warns that a joyful life cannot be copied from a book like a recipe, but rather, it is an individual creation which must be crafted from each person’s life, based on their values, their skills, and their situation. Aristotle points out that the activity of happiness is one that is particular to the individual, his skills and his circumstances. Neither offers step by step directions to happiness. What they both offer is a direct guide to the general principles of happiness.

So what wisdom can we glean for these sages, ancient and contemporary? For me, the lesson was simple... look for opportunities for flow. I started to scrutinize my life. How was I spending my time? How much of it was in flow? What were the activities where flow occurred? I started to watch for it. As a philosopher, I looked first at my philosophical activities. How often did I feel completely immersed and competent at my task. I realized that some of my peak moments of flow have been during paper-writing sessions, as I poured all my creative energy into making a particular case. Philosophy definitely had some merits. I found that when I was “in the zone” it was one of the most satisfying feelings around. Still, I found that the occurrence of getting into flow through philosophy was rare. In most cases, I was unable to reach that level of focus and concentration. So, I started to look at my other activities for an easier shot at flow.

Exercise was a simple answer. Get on a bike and go ride for an hour. As you put your body through the simple steps of this physical labor, your mind is free to wander. It is easy to slip into a flow state. You can easily succeed at the repetitive task, but the challenge to your body will create the conditions for flow. When I am at my best, I ride my bike everyday and my mood improves by leaps and bounds. Exercise that you enjoy is an easy way to flow.

I also found other ways to lean towards flow activities. I found that I easily slipped into high quality flow states when mediating political or interpersonal conflicts. I have always been a problem solver and a communicator, and when I have the opportunity to make use of those skills the flow state is instant and intense. I started to get more involved in the politics of my graduate department. I took time to council my friends and help mediate disagreements within my community.
Artistic endeavors can also put me in a flow state when I allow myself to completely focus on them for stretches of time. I began to reconsider my time and my work. I spent more time making things. I started to dabble in selling my creations. Now, I spend part of my time working on jewelry and selling it at festivals. Instead of simply kicking back at night and watching TV with my friends, I also pull out my supplies and sit for hours trancing as I create. It is the perfect balance of my skills and dispositions. It is my most direct way into flow.

To find your own way into flow, don’t do what I do. Figure out what you do. What takes up your focus but also leaves you feeling satisfied and competent? That is the magic task that will take you into flow. You have likely been there many times, the key is learning to get back there often. It is not an easy thing to habituate yourself to, but when it comes to gaining happiness, creating productive habits is key. You just might find yourself looking for flow everywhere. I know I do and it has definitely changed my life for the better.


More links if you like thinking about this:

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html

http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/happiness-quotes/

Looking Down

Information is no longer power. It lost its value like the dollar bill, as more and more of it ballooned into the economy. It fills the air like pollen, just out of sight but a constant irritant. There is simply too much. It cannot be sorted. It cannot be verified. It fills our screens and minds and pages and memory banks. It flashes in our eyes. It buzzes in our ears. It covers the streets, the cars, the radio waves. It is there if we will it or not, and more is coming. Faster than we can process, the content is generated, and there is no way to turn off the churning machine. There are no fact checkers. We have long lost the trails of validity. Every point is just as likely. They all hang tenuously, without foundation, without grounds. Each story is just another story. Each belief is just another belief. For every argument, there is a counter. For every counter-argument there is a repost. And the back and forth wanders lazily along forever. If it ever ends at all it is in a stunning silence. There is simply nothing left to say. Both parties must admit their ignorance and move on. The conversation hangs abruptly over the abyss. There is discomfort but acceptance as we stare disheartened into the dark. The empty. The unknowable.

But this unnerving state is not held for long. Soon, we slip back into discourse, forgetting our sudden brush with that which is not. It brings us no joy or practical benefit to stare unendlessly into the dark and so we forget.. We shake off our minds and dislodge the fragments of doubt as we continue in our search for something solid. But as each trail leads back to the abyss we grow tired of endlessly chasing. We seek tangible bits of life to bite into. We begin to test - to taste hesitantly at first- and then to sink in. We delight in the fruits of belief - so delicious- so readily accessible - so easy. We treasure these happy safe-holds and carefully avoid following the paths that lead away to the abyss. We send away those who try to take us there or point frantically down to warn us of our ignorance. We have seen what is there. We have taken so many paths down.

And so we gather ourselves and many repetitions of ourselves. We weave our nests with carefully chosen branches. As one belief folds in to the next, it surrounds us in an intricate web. The whole coheres and we forget the path downwards. We cover the view with our tapestry. We weave one belief into the next and the next and the next until we have come back to the beginning again. And there is comfort in our nest, although it hangs over nothing, as if by magic. It is solid in itself, but has no place to perch... The key is learning to not look down.

First Post

I wanted to create a blog where I could share some of the thoughts and projects (academic or artistic) that I am working on.

As a philosopher, I have begun to desire an audience beyond my peers. I want to take the information and skills of philosophy and translate them into something that brings insight to a broader audience. I'm currently working on two book projects in this spirit. The subjects, respectively, are happiness and love. I hope that this blog can serve to help work out some of the ideas I have for those projects.

I am also an artist and may sprinkle in short stories, photographs, and poems that relate to the mission of bringing philosophy, love or happiness to the public.

Thanks for reading :)

Much much love,
Emily