The intentions of this article are:

1. To support people who experience anxiety during crisis in avoiding suffering and even findin peace.

2. To support people who have loved ones that are chronic sufferers of anxiety in understanding what a heightened crisis experience might be like for those people — and how to support them.

3. Suggest ways that we can all use this crisis to evaluate and implement decisions based in love, compassion, excitement and passion (that we might have put on the back burner for our entire lives).

At the time of writing this, March 14, 2020, Coronavirus is wreaking havoc across the globe. The markets are down, schools are closing, grocery stores are crazy and the awareness of uncertainty is staggering, adding to a strange energy where no one really knows what to do.

Understandably, fear is moving through the zeitgeist just as, if not more, powerfully than the virus. So how are we supposed to manage our emotions — even to find peace? What might this be like for people who who experience anxiety to the point of it being a disorder?

What Is Anxiety Disorder?

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 19.1% of Americans have an anxiety disorder. {Sidebar: reported. Anxiety is often shame-based or minimized by the sufferer so there would be no reporting in the first place.} An anxiety disorder, according to NAMI’s website is:

“persistent, excessive fear or worry in situations that are not threatening. People typically experience one or more of the following symptoms:

Emotional symptoms:

• Feelings of apprehension or dread
• Feeling tense or jumpy
• Restlessness or irritability
• Anticipating the worst and being watchful for signs of danger

Physical symptoms:

• Pounding or racing heart and shortness of breath
• Sweating, tremors and twitches
• Headaches, fatigue and insomnia
• Upset stomach, frequent urination or diarrhea”

Though the disorder is defined as occuring in situations that are “not threatening” per the above quote, I the disorder itself can be incredibly threatening. A panic attack on a freeway is a life-threatening situation. Being overcome by anxiety interferes with daily tasks such as work, building a business, being an emotionally capable parent and being a loving partner. Not to mention the fact that your day-to-day life is highly unpleasant, full of unknown triggers. I would add to the above list, from personal experience:

• Loss of sight while driving
• Certainty of impending death
• Passing out in crowded restaurants
• Loss of sensation through entire body for hours at a time
• Self-soothing and medicating (aka drinking A LOT)
• Inability to attend social functions, social isolation
• Shame, embarrassment and hopelessness that life will always be this way (compounding the anxiety cycle)

Anxiety, Coronavirus, Disconnection & The Next Crisis

We are in an era where things are shifting. The chaos and fear surrounding politics, climate, and the general future of the human race is nothing new. Fear disempowers its captives, making them willing to consume and buy. Fear is masterfully perpetuated through the zeitgeist, disconnecting us from the dreams, imagination and wonderment that we’ve forgotten is our birth right.

It also disconnects us from each other, swiftly categorizing people in one way or another to dismiss their experiences as valid and worthy of compassion or not. Are they us, or are they the other?

I was sharing a story with a loved one, who identifies as a liberal and vehemently anti-Trump, about a woman that I see in the coffee shop here in town where I live. She wears a MAGA hat and sits by herself. She often perches the MAGA hat in a precariously visible position on some kind of prop; an obvious declaration.

One day, when there were probably two other customers in the coffee shop and plenty of empty chairs at empty tables, the woman I refer to as MAGA came up to me wearing her hat and making sure she was in my line of sight asked if she could take a chair from my table. I get the sense that she targeted me as a potential adversary with my boho-beaded computer bag and general Cali leftist woo-woo vibe. I smiled and said, very cheerily, of course.

I later saw her at City Council meetings where she read the definition of totalitarianism to the council members on one evening and appealed for the meetings to being opened with prayer on another.

As I got to the part of the story where she read the definition of totalitarianism to the council, my audience snorted and said “she better go look in the mirror.”

We know nothing of MAGA’s personal life, of her pain an hurts, her wounds, her flaws, her successes and contributions.

She might be the worst person in the world.

But after she requested that the council meetings be opened by prayer, a chaplain was enlisted to pray before the meeting. I’m not a religious person, but the prayer was really beautiful and called for unity, healing, patience and compassion while this community navigates complex issues and tries to serve the citizens. I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated.

Because of the division being perpetuated through the media, it’s so easy to dismiss a fellow human being based on a hat (or whatever). My intention of telling the story was not to paint a picture of a demon lady, but to illustrate a character in a rich narrative tapestry of a small town in which I currently reside and am having fun learning about.

My sense of MAGA is that she’s incredibly lonely and has limited tools in which to gain significance and create connection. She operates out of divisiveness. My sense was she wanted me to be mad at her hat that day in the coffee shop, but I just became really fascinated with her need to make sure I saw her hat.

Children have some basic needs: to know they are safe, seen, their experience is valid and that they are worthy of unconditional love.

What I see in MAGA is someone who did not get those needs met and is unconsciously getting them in other ways. She might be the worst person in the world. I don’t know. Maybe her hat equates her with totalitarianism. I have no idea.

What I do know is that the fear running through our societial veins is causing disconnection that I think is just as dangerous as COVID-19. This has been happening before this outbreak and flippant dismissal of our fellow humans based on differences opens the gap between chaos and unity wider and wider with every fear-based reaction of the “the other.” Maybe not externally noticeable, but an inner cancer that shows up in other toxic ways and is highly contagious.

Okay, so what does this have to do with anxiety?

What no doctor was able to tell me before handing me the Xanax prescription and getting me out of the office was that anxiety is likely to manifest when there is a disconnect between values and behavior. Our values often suggest a desire for a life of love, creativity, curiosity, passion, compassion, purpose and connection.

However, when not guarded and tended to as mindfully as the most loved garden, our actions often stem from a fear-based emotion.

The fear is often connected to a story about the future in which we are not safe, seen, loved, healthy or happy. That story is informed by something in the past, which has not yet been released, resolved, healed and/or shifted.

What’s missing in the current crisis, and all the ones before it and all the ones after it, is an inability to use creativity and imagination to anticipate the future that our loved-based selves are desiring. This is what happens if you experience anxiety regularly or just righ now in the midst of this current moment in time.

We are so ready as a world to create something new, to break free from systems that have disconnected us from who we really are. It’s clear from the chaos that was prevalent before the outbreak of the virus. But we are unable to dream from a space of love, knowing, imagination, creativity — and most importantly in this time, compassion.

We’re dancing in a grand story of separation, spinning and spinning through echo chambers, all the while blame-stiffened fingers pointed outward at an “other.” We are witnessing the misalignment of values and behavior, whether consciously or not, on a massive scale.

When the Coronavirus is contained and the hysteria has ended, unless we learn how to dream, act and believe from empowerment, there will be another crisis. And another. And another as we collectively examine the existential implications of our decisions both individually and collectively.

So what is our individual responsibility as human citizens to shift the cycle from fear and separation to creativity, connection and imagination?

Your Responsibility If You Suffer From Anxiety

If you suffer from anxiety, you do not get to put your head in the sand and wave the anxiety flag. I have so much compassion for your experience, but I’m here to tell you that if you have any desire to be a part of the shift that is so available to us right now, you have some work to do.

Let me reword that. The shift is happening. You can use it to grow, or you can get lost in the chaos. The choice is yours.

Here it is.

1. Declare you’re available for healing and start the journey. Deciding that you can and will heal is a huge message to yourself and to others that things will change. The toxic cycle of anxiety tells a story that “this is the way it is.” It’s not. You can change it. You can create a life in which fear shows up responsibly. There are many resources and you might have to try different things to find what works for you, but you have to find the tool. Then you have to implement it as a life practice. I use meditation, checking in with values and actions, coaching and therapy, yoga and healthy nutrition as regular practices. When I need a system reboot, I use Timeline Therapy®️, hypnotherapy and/or find a retreat or event such as Unleash The Power Within. (I have my eye on an equine therapy retreat this spring.)

2. Identify your triggers. During your healing journey, notice the activities, conversations, obligations, people, places and content that spark panic or fear in you. Pay special attention to social media, blogs and news outlets that you use to “stay informed.” In regards to all of these factors, do you feel empowered, loving, compassionate, balanced and energized after interacting with them? If not, then they do not get a place in your life.

“But, Erin,” you might be saying, “I can’t just cut family and friends out of my life.”

Okay. There are those cases. So….

3. Create your boundaries. If there are people who are attached to your fear response, define what must happen so that can shift into a harmonious, win-win-win relationship. Make it really clear and actionable what that person can do, must do, in order to be on the healing journey that you are committing to. If they are unwilling or unable to accomodate your requests, consider interacting with that person with less frequency until somethig shifts. Boundaries are how we can tell people how to love us. If they make their own wounds more important than loving you and you accomodate them into your life anyway, you are participating in co-dependency. Which is a common bedfellow of anxiety.

4. Seek out sources of information and ways of being a part of society that work for you. When I first started my recovery journey, I detached from almost all media. Just like how an alcoholic would probably avoid going to a cocktail party until they were in a space where ordering a tonic water with lime made sense for them. My triggers were my personal Facebook feed, traditional news sites and t.v. programming. Where I felt safe was Instagram and non-politically driven podcasts with intelligent long-form conversations with guests that have expertise in specific subject matter. Sometimes those topics are political, and it’s welcome perspective when it’s not click-incentive generated. I found these conversations refreshing, thoughtful, able to bring different perspectives to the table. If this sounds like a good option for you, I would recommend Joe Rogan’s podcast episodes (with subect matter experts, he sometimes has his comedy bros on and that’s a whole different vibe) and Tim Ferris .

I am a little more active on my personal Facebook feed these days, but not much. This week, I relapsed in my anxiety recovery and spent time on cnn.com and a few other fear factories and totally lost sight of my mission, creativity and imagination. I went back to the sources that work for me, and they helped me to make a decision to practice social distancing from an empowered, aligned space (as opposed to fear and hysteria).

5. Let people know you are in recovery and what that means to you. I’ve received a lot of emails this week from well-meaning people who want to keep everyone informed, but it transformed my inbox into a danger zone. So it’s on me to ask people to please trust that I’m doing what’s appropriate for me to stay informed and to please refrain from sending links or information.

One of the things that I’ve heard since being in recovery from people is “well, as long as you’re a little bit informed…” It’s difficult these days to not have an earthly clue of what’s going on. As I mentioned, through a really intense journey, I’ve found what works for me, and it was hard-earned. Sometimes when people utter this phrase to me, I feel hurt and dismissed. But I let it go and this is why: it’s not about me, it’s about them. The need to keep others informed is a strategy to get a need met — just like any other behavior.

Which leads me to….

6. Have compassion for different experiences. No one is wrong because they are handling an emotionally-heightened situation differently than you are/would. Everyone has a model of the world that is unique to them, and the more we shame, blame or rage at that which is different, the more we play into the grand story of separation.

Your responsibility if you have someone in your life who is recovering or suffers from anxiety (and you want to be helpful).

I first want to acknowledge that if your loved one doesn’t do the work of actually letting you know that they’re on that journey, it’s much more difficult to support their healing. What’s trickier about anxiety is that it exists in an echo-chamber of shame for the person experiencing it, so they might not tell ANYONE what’s going on. It’s a scary place to be and I’m infinitely grateful to the celebrities and public figures who are sharing their experience, hopefully making it a little bit easier for others to talk about their own.

However, if you know that someone in your life is actively recovering or is still deep in the spiral, here is what you can do to help.

1. If they have shared their triggers, BELIEVE THEM. Believe them like they’re an alcoholic who tells you that being around one glass of wine makes them want to drink all of the wine. Anxiety is so nebulous to people who haven’t experienced it, but know that for your loved one, IT IS REAL.

2. If they have shared their boundaries, respect them. If someone is vulnerable enough to share boundaries with you, it means they want you in their lives and they just need to communicate how your presence can add joy, security and comort. It’s not a reflection on your quality of character, so know it’s an act of love, not of condemnation.

3. If they haven’t shared anything with you, but you know they have anxiety issues, ask them what they need. One of my dearest friends and fellow coaches will call with something she needs to process or shift, but before she starts sharing she will ask if I’m available to go on that journey with her. I’m eternally grateful for this practice. In this instance, if you are in the practice of gathering information and sharing it with your networks and loved ones, simply ask the person if it would be helpful to receive emails or links — or not. They will be eternally grateful as well. I’m also eternally grateful to the same friend for her warmth and grace on the occasions when I am not available to facilitate her processing. Feel free to follow suit.

4. If they’re acting irresponsibly, call them out lovingly. With Coronavirus, it’s difficult to be truly ignorant of the circumstances. But if you have someone who has effectively enough put their head so deep in the sand that they are just skipping around, lovingly let them know that they need to consder taking certain actions. Avoid alarmist or shaming behavior. This is all about rooting in love.

5. Have compassion for different experiences. If you love staying informed, that’s fantastic. If you’re scared, angry and need someone to blame, it’s totally understandable. But it’s no one’s job to go on that journey with you if it does not serve them. It might look like and be willful ignorance on someone’s part to not “be informed,” but what works for you is not going to work for everyone.

In Chaos, There Is Opportunity For Creation

I invite you to evaluate your current actions and decisions into the future and ask:

Is this rooted in love or in fear?

I have decided at this time to keep my family at home and cancel plans. What’s imortant about this decision is that it is rooted in an intention of love.

Love for my family. Love for myself. Love for the healthcare workers. Love for the community. I’ve decided that this time is going to be a time of beautifying my home, pulling weeds in the yard and reconnecting with my values.

Where can you act in love?

Where can you reconnect with your values?

And where are the opportunities to take new actions in relation to those values?

Now is the time for the dreamers to create, to use their imagination to create a new world where we are in harmony with our true essence. Loving and respecting ourselves, and thereby others. There is door opening in front of us. What intention will we carry over the threshhold?

All the love,

Erin

If you’re ready to break free from the long-fetishized story of being a broke artist and live a life where you make money from doing exactly what you love, then you must start thinking like a business person. You and your talent are a product and a service — not a gift to the world that will just automatically be recognized and celebrated for the simple sake of its being — that are the key to living life on your own terms, being your own boss and living a life of creative fulfillment.

When I attended an arts high school, there was zero focus on business. We were all treated like beautiful snowflakes that the world would be so lucky to have amongst its constituents. This bred an attitude of entitlement and built egos that gave us the courage to wear zebra print pants on a Tuesday and smoke our Camel Lights from cigarette holders when we were fourteen years old. My mother jokingly, but accurately, observed that the school’s motto should be “LOOK AT ME”. No one told us that some day we were going to have to work for our validation or that beyond talent strategy, manners, ethics and morals were going to shape how far we would be able to go.

Let’s say that you are already aware of the fact that we, as humans, are capable of creating any kind of reality in this world, but you are not intimately knowledgeable of that yet. But you know you’re ready to create a life doing that thing which you must, give into that beautiful heart purpose of yours. One of the best things you can do is start studying the behaviors of people who have already created a limitless reality for themselves. There are plenty of resources for doing that, but one of my favorite new ones right now is the new Showtime show Billions. The writers spent years researching and spending time with billionaires and other people with amounts of power that most of us cannot not conceive of or probably don’t aspire to. And while the broke artist narrative might lead us to demonize these people, it’s best to put aside our morality glasses and start looking at other populations with a mood of curiosity because there is always something to learn.

So. Billions: well-written, compelling and in it lies some lessons that we can apply to our non-billionaire lives.

Here are two of those things that jumped out at me while watching Episode Four.

1. Always be on time. It doesn’t matter what level you’re playing at, if you want people to respect you, assess you as someone who is worthy of trust and someone who is capable of making and keeping plans, always be on time. When Freddy doesn’t show up on time to hop on the private jet taking Axe and his buddies up to Quebec for a Metallica concert where all-access VIP treatment is waiting for them, Axe gives him a break, but it’s noticed by the rest of the group. Freddy’s sloppiness shows up in other ways when he makes a move that Axe has to bail him out of and at the end of the conversation Axe mentions that the plane leaves at 9:30 the next morning. Freddy wakes up to an empty house. It’s 9:40. Don’t be sloppy. Don’t disrespect peoples’ time. It’s often an accurate indicator that you’re willing to be disrespectful in other ways as well. Otherwise no one is going to be inviting you on to that plane, or the opening, or the meeting, or whatever might be the door/conversation/encounter that opens up new possibilities for you. On the flip side, Axe respects himself enough that he will forgive the transgression just once. Respect yourself and do not tolerate people who think their time is more important than yours.
2. Temptations Are Everywhere. Be In Integrity With Your Commitments. The human condition is a cruel one. Many of us pursue marital intimacy, that special world that we share with just one person then our biology acts at odds with the life we’ve so meticulously nurtured and crafted. When Axe arrives at soundcheck, his friends go to frolick with some groupies which leave Axe right in the line of fire of a beautiful songstress who clearly has eyes for him. And why wouldn’t she? He’s handsome. He’s a billionaire. He’s there. Why wouldn’t she go after him? The thing is, Axelrod is no dummy and he married well. His wife is beautiful, smart and comes from working class roots. She knows how to get her hands dirty, but dazzles at a black tie benefit. She can tell people to stand down when necessary and is the warm epicenter that holds their family together. He has committed himself to her. So when the songstress lays her cards down on the table, doing all but saying she’ll do him right there and then, he politely explains to her why it’s not going to happen. Life is full of temptations. Success is grounded by not being seduced by the sparkly new thing, but in keeping your integrity and remembering who truly has your back. When your ego is being stroked in the form of a shiny new thing being dangled in front of you, it’s best to remember that your ego is a scorpion riding on your back and will sting you as soon as your willingness to transport it becomes boring.

Do you watch Billions? Did you notice anything else that should be on this list? Let us know! Comment in the comments section, hit us up on Facebook, Twitter or email yours truly.

Originally published at www.thestarstheyshine.com on February 12, 2016.

My first mentor used to tell me that the conversations that we hang out in shape our future. At the time, I didn’t understand. I had gravitated toward this position as a senior copywriter at a small boutique branding agency after doing time as a junior copywriter at a large Fortune 500 corporation where casual Friday was the only thing getting us through the week. The men would often show up in matching Banana Republic argyle sweaters and “living the dream” was a phrase that was uttered on a daily basis in a ironic way that I started to resent really quickly.

I left that corporate job despite all the shoulds:

• I SHOULD be grateful to have this job
• I SHOULD see what I could learn by fitting into the corporate norm
• I SHOULD ignore how sick the gray cubicles made me feel
• I SHOULD give in to the senior accounts person’s disdain and blatant abuse because there must be some kind of good reason, right? (Dropping rush jobs on my desk at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon saying that it had to be done before she left. When I would go to drop off the mediocre at best copy, she would have left for the weekend)

Though it was not the environment for me, something very important was happening: the little voice that had lived inside of me my entire life — the rebel, the shit starter, the visionary, the dreamer’s voice — it was learning how to survive despite the fact that all the SHOULDS were blatantly telling it that it was out of line. Even though I felt like I SHOULD stay at this company and build a 401K, climb the corporate ranks and just shut my mouth and be grateful for a job (this was in 2008 and I forgot to mention that this company builds homes — I was immersed in a culture of fear and scarcity where there were mass layoffs every Friday), keep my head down and tread lightly, I decided to answer an ad for a boutique agency. It was downtown and run and owned by the person that I would come to regard as my first mentor.

So I was coming from conversations of conformity, mediocrity, obedience and irony. It was the stuff that Office Space was made of. Then I was dropped into conversations about common and uncommon sense (hint: uncommon sense = RUN). About wealth. About superior practices. About surviving, being free and living a good life. These conversations were a daily occurrence that I noticed my colleagues rolling their eyes at, but I couldn’t get enough. Here was a door being open to structure and a light being shone on the fact my “dreams” should be transformed into ambitions.

I always knew that I wasn’t cut out for corporate. But I also housed a deep belief that writers were meant to live a life of poverty and with my penchant for Dolce and Gabbana dresses and a wanderlust passion for amazing experiences and an appreciation for nice things, my passions weren’t adding up. Because I had been in the wrong conversations. Conversations that had told me that poverty was the only way to live fully with my passion for writing. Conversations that had told me wealth is evil or a bad thing to aspire to. Conversations that made wealth and a good life seem completely impossible.

My first mentor dashed the beliefs that were seeded in those conversations. And thanks to his trajectory, I have made it a priority to pay really close attention to the conversations that I’m in. Some of the things that I listen for when spending my time, energy and possible lost opportunities when speaking to someone are:

• The presence of possibility vs. unlikelihood: if the person I’m speaking to talks more about why things cannot be done, dreamt of, accomplished more than they talk about how things can be done and the possibility in all things, then I’m probably going to limit my interaction with that person.
• The presence of gratitude vs. entitlement: I started a new practice this year and that is free writing (long-hand) for the first three minutes of every day about something I am grateful about. I stole this idea from Tim Ferriss (whose podcast you should check out right now) and even though I was never raised in a way that promoted entitlement, it’s really helped me see some of the ways in which I might act entitled just because of the power of society. For example, where once I could have thought that my husband SHOULD lease me the car that I want because he’s away so much due to his career and I deserve it for putting up with the absence, I can shift that to feeling so grateful that I have someone who cares enough about my ability to get around safely and without worry while he’s gone that he would be gracious enough to lease me my beloved little CrossTrek (I recommend this car). This creates a completely different orientation and experience around the exact same circumstance and transaction. I can look at my husband as a caring person and feel grateful every time my little Subie takes me to yoga or on a road trip. If someone is focusing on all the things they aren’t receiving, or they utter my most-hated phrase “it’s not fair”, they are in entitlement, not gratitude. I will send them love and light, then send myself on to the next conversation.
• The presence of curiosity vs. certainty. If you are certain of anything, it shuts down the possibility of illuminating conversations. A dogmatic mindset is a turn-off to me where as the idea of “I don’t know, wouldn’t it be amazing to find out, let’s go find out,” opens up a whole new world of discovery. Yes, there are facts. And no, if you come around me saying that you’re certain about pi equalling 3.14bla bla bla bla bla, I’m not going to hold that against you. But if you come running around saying that a verse in the bible has made you certain that gays deserve to go to hell, we probably won’t be hanging out together.

Our conversations — with other people, with ourselves, the content that we choose to consume — all shift our perceptions in one way or another. The next time you’re hanging out with your colleagues, peers, friends and family, simply be aware of their narratives and know that they are affecting you on a sub-conscious level.

In terms of content consumption, be mindful. We all need to zone out with our guilty pleasures every once in a while (Rich Kids Of Beverly Hills for me, but even then I’m watching the practices of the wealthy), but from day to day, make sure that you’re listening, watching, reading things that nurture you. Read books that will empower you. Listen to podcasts that allow you to eavesdrop on conversations between people who have made it to that intersection of wealth and creativity. Watch television shows that are inspired and well-crafted because despite the common sentiment that television is for the lazy consumer, I say absolutely not. Sopranos is brilliant. Mad Men brought tears to my eyes with its combination of hope and darkness on more than one occasion. Billions is a meticulous study into a part of the population that understands power and influence in an intimate way. There is not a lazy word, camera shot, facial expression or wardrobe choice anywhere in any of those shows. ANYWHERE. And guess what? The people who create those shows? Masters of finding ways to work hard and blend creativity with wealth.

If you want to start a conversation with me, email me. Let’s talk about how we feel when we look at the stars, or the latest moment in time that moved us, or what goal we most recently accomplished, or what goals we’re committed to accomplishing today, this week, this month, this lifetime.

Or let’s talk about how the world is full of possibilities and how we, together, can cause an intersection between wealth and creativity.

And if you want to start a conversation on social media, we’re on Facebook and Twitter.

Originally published at www.thestarstheyshine.com on February 11, 2016.

This last weekend, my husband flew me out there for a long weekend and we decided to get off the main strip and get to know the Fremont District a little bit better. We stayed at the El Cortez, which was filled with old people who were working their own styles — two-tone wing tip shoes, Kenny Loggins manes and beards, cat sweaters and basically you name it — along with hipsters. I found this to be a refreshing departure from the rampant herds of bros and hoes that emerge in greater density the later it gets on the main strip. But what was really fresh was discovering little dive bars, a lively arts scene, really great restaurants and some amazing wall art. Another great thing was that my husband and I might be breaking the tradition long-established by his colleagues of the either/or of Henderson/Summerlin. I’ve never been a suburbs gal, and the idea of track housing and homeogenous shopping centers was a great contributor to my aforementioned temper tantrum. It will be tricky if we do the downtown thing, but we saw a glimpse of what might be feasible in terms of comfort of living and not being murdered (Las Vegas is not a safe city).

Speaking of not safe, here is a gallery of the amazing wall art that I encountered in downtown Las Vegas. I was dragging my husband down some alleys that had him high-tailing pretty far ahead of me, leaving me, my iPhone and my love of amazing art to fend for ourselves (and he grew up in the South Side of Chicago). You can follow me on Instagram for more of my iPhone and I’s antics.

Have recommendations for a creative entrepreneur about to move to Sin City? Email me and let’s chat.

Originally published at www.thestarstheyshine.com on February 10, 2016.

Let me tell you a little bit about my relationship with anxiety. Actually first, let’s talk about the word anxiety. As it’s becoming a more prevalent part of our lives, the term is kicked around like a hackey sack at a String Cheese Incident concert: without too much thought or consequence; a natural part of the surrounding environment. There are people who say things like “Oh my god, I’m literally going to have a panic attack” in relation to events like an app not functioning or poor cell phone service. I believe people should be allowed to their own devices such as saying completely stupid idiotic things like the above example and I also believe that hackey sacks are pretty harmless. (My computer is telling me that “hackey” is spelt wrong. If you smell like patchouli, please feel free to leave the correct spelling in the comments.)

But when I’m talking about anxiety, I’m talking about an almost twenty year battle that has caused me to lose my sight (like, oh my god, literally), lose my ability to drive on the highway, lose my ability to interact in certain environments where there is too much stimuli and also just put me in a state of constant alert (anxiety about the anxiety — it’s a fun spiral). When people like myself say “panic attacks” it is not some fun colloquialism to emphatically express first world problem distress. It’s something that affects our lives in a very real way.

Here’s the really awesome good news. I figured out how to create a good relationship with my anxiety without using meds.

NOTE ON MEDS AND DISCLAIMER: I have been on meds and they have been really useful during some of the darker days for which I am extremely grateful (it was to treat anxiety and depression — more on the latter in a future post). I am not a medical professional and am not qualified to administer medical advice. Always consult with your physician before starting or getting off of medication.

Last year was a doozy and my symptoms were Tyra-10 fierce. The nature of this year (married to a military guy = tons of “me” time) pushed me to the dreaded state of introspection. I started thinking about my relationship with the pharmaceuticals and started thinking about my relationship with anxiety. To me, I realized that the pharmaceuticals were addressing the symptoms from an external approach. As in: the source of the anxiety or the thing itself is something that is outside of me. But then I started thinking about the sensations from the symptoms: they were all very much inside of me.

So what if the source, the culprit, was … me? Not my husband, not my job, not the city that I lived in, not the benzos or the SSRIs. This was a really annoying thought because if I were going to go down this road, that meant that I was going to have to do some work on me and not just pop a Xanax while watching House Hunters International and pointing the finger at whatever was most convenient at the time.

Okay, so what happened? This isn’t a story about a silver bullet. These are stories about adopted practices that have compounded in positivity over the last year. It is not linear, nor is it completely sensical. What I know is: I can now drive on the highway, I am no longer on medication and am able to recognize triggers and interact with those triggers in a way that prevents full on panic attacks.

I’d dabbled in therapy and realized that the therapist is incredibly important. I went on a quest for the perfect one here in Colorado Springs (email me if you live here and want to know more about her) and got started with that. We talked about my anxiety and identified some of the sources.

Let me say that again: we identified the sources.

This was magical because through the sheer power of strategic and organized conversation, she brought to my attention that one of the things that really triggers me are my finances. I used to have a really messy relationship with finances and every day there was a barrage of phone calls from 800 numbers. My voicemail was full. I had run out of ways to say: I don’t have any money for you.

But I had done one thing right. Denver was a buyer’s market in 2010 and one day I basically woke up and said I’m going to buy a house (this was five years ago) and then I did and then Colorado took a hint from Amsterdam and then the state blew UP. I bought low, on the edge of an impending gentrification and my therapist was like: hey, you have this thing. You can sell it and leverage it to get rid of these phone calls.

By identifying one of the main sources, we were able to create a strategy. I sold the house two weeks ago and my phone is oh-so-quiet. Which feels like a warm blanket to me. Which is the opposite of anxiety.

But Erin, you might be saying, isn’t that an external source of anxiety? The phone calls are coming from somewhere else… Yes. People outside of me are calling me and saying we would like the money that you are contractually obligated to pay us with. But looking deeper, what was it that got me into that situation in the first place?

It was me and a very confused, disrespectful relationship regarding money. I didn’t respect it. I didn’t respect the promises around it. I didn’t respect it as the force of energy that it actually is.

So this is where I needed to go deeper. I decided I wanted to sell my house, but I sat on it for a while. And in the meantime, I met a coach who does Soul Purpose Astrology. I was about to write something deprecating about how woo woo that is, but you know what? She’s awesome and she’s been incredibly instrumental in my life so no deprecation needed. We did an energy clearing around my money issues. And what I found out was that I had a lot of shame around money. When I dug deep on that journey, I was able to look at money in a different way and change my practices around it. A month after I did that work, home values went up even more and that’s when I knew I was ready to receive.

Bottom line there: Identifying the sources and then doing the fucking work.

Another source of the anxiety: acting out of fear. I took a position that I knew wasn’t right for me because I was afraid that I wasn’t good enough to be a writer, that I wasn’t good enough to take my husband’s word at face value to receive his help, that I was never going to figure it out, and on and on.

I knew all of these things deep down. That I wasn’t meant to work a normal job, that I have a purpose in this world and doing anything other than that could cause me to implode. So I had to examine: what would that look like? What would it look like to have an open schedule to write, to hike, to connect? I knew that would look like taking a huge jump and leaving a few “safety nets” behind.

So the source was not being true to my purpose here on this earth. Then what does the work look like? It looked like building internal strength and looking at what I was really scared of (some might say it’s failure, but I would contend that the real fear is success if you’ve never experienced it on your terms before). It looked like doing the work to become confident enough to speak my voice and my truth. I did that through my therapist, couples counseling, energy clearings and a lot of meditation.

As I started digging really deep into the internal work, I noticed some things:

• Being highly aware of when I was getting myself into a situation that was out of integrity with my core values and mission. When that awareness is easily available, it gives you the mobility to recognize danger signs and say “no” when it’s most needed.
• That my relationship with anxiety shifted. I was able to look at it as a helpful signal, not some imposition. Our brains are wired for these reactions for a reason and when something doesn’t feel right, it isn’t. I didn’t say it probably isn’t. It just isn’t.
• That I’m much more particular about my time: who I spend it with, what I do with it and where I am while it passes.
• And taking responsibility for myself and my situations is incredibly empowering.

What have been your experiences with anxiety? Share in the comments below. Also, don’t miss out on any updates — follow us on Facebook!

Also, if you want to have a conversation about creativity, and ideas on how wealth and creativity can intersect — oh and how we can all shatter this bullshit myth that artists need to be broke, I think it would be super awesome if you shot me an email.

Originally published at www.thestarstheyshine.com on January 29, 2016.