Today is an anxietying day…

There are always things to point to in a given day or days that worsen anxiety. I tend to focus on the external causes. 41 years ago I was married. My wedding was at a famous and glamorous hotel in Bel Air and was very beautiful, my husband was great, my family came from all over the country to attend. But I was in a terrible place (somewhere between hate and love) with my father who I had recently discovered was having an affair. I feared my family was breaking up. So as I married to start my own life which involved moving away, I thought I was leaving a shattered family behind and felt like a rat deserting a sinking ship. In particular I was heart broken to be leaving a much loved mother to face my father’s tacky behavior. I was and remain very bitter that my father’s shenanigans affected my peace of mind at my wedding. I tend to become phobic when faced with trauma, so for 41 years I have felt phobic around my wedding anniversary. So when August 7 comes around I always feel very uncomfortable. Given the reality that I became phobic about the day and there is no way around it, my sole focus is to lessen the emotional pain. First, anxiety gets worse when I panic and think I am going to be miserable all day. So today I am consciously going to take a short time period and only focus on that time. “I can handle feeling this uncomfortable for 10 minutes.” This process frees up my mind from trying to come up with the some big solution to take away the awful anxiety brought on by the phobia. Over time the day will pass and figuring it all out becomes irrelevant as the day takes on its own character. However, I am also going to do both a self compassion meditation around how hard it was to be 25 years old and thinking this was going to be the happiest day of my life just to have my Dad steal my peace of mind. I am also going to do a forgiveness meditation towards my Dad. Maybe after 41 years I can begin to forgive him.