Yesterday day I wrote about using healthy imagination to better understand how my mother's enduring anxiety got passed down to her children. Understanding this has been an epiphany for me.
Feeling like 'there's something wrong with me' because of my latent anxiety has been a pain in the ass doubled. There's the anxiety. And there's the nagging feeling that having persistent anxiety somehow is a 'bad' thing--that there's something 'wrong' with me. Coming to understand the source of the anxiety (my mother's great trauma) begins to permeate both those feelings.
But it's a process.
I love epiphanies, seeing 'the light.' Light can seem like an angel come with healing in his wings. And maybe that's so, in a way. But even though epiphanies come all at once, healing is a process.
I've had some really helpful, foundational therapy in my life, which I am so very grateful for. But even with the best therapists, 'therapy' mostly happened once a week. When we practice mindfulness every day, 'therapy' can happen every day. Through patiently doing the work and developing our practice, we ourselves become an engaged and caring listener. If we get good teaching, we become wise, engaged and caring listeners or witnesses.
Because mindfulness has such potential for healing both mind and heart, I've heard it referred to as a miracle (I think The Miracle of Mindfulness may be a Thich Nhat Hahn title!).
But one of the really wonderful things about Mindfulness Practice is that it's donkey work: what it requires more than anything is a capacity to show up and faithfully perform a very simple task--over and over and over and over. To sit. To follow the breath. To bring kind attention to whatever thoughts and feelings arise.
So, I've seen the light regarding my family's persistent anxiety. Now the work is to continue to trust the process--over and over and over and over. To be a donkey with healing in his hooves, continually bearing wise and kind attention, back and forth, to and fro, up and down, there and back again.
