firing arrows from your heart

If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; it’s purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever more wonders” Andrew Harvey

I love this quote. I think that phrase “awake to the poignant beauty of the world” is such a gentle and positive description of an element of an anxiety state, or certainly mine. Life is beautiful but hard. Being highly sensitive can feel like a burden. It can make you see danger and darkness everywhere yet conversely it can also make you alert to the light and wonder of it all. 

A short post to mark this World Mental Health Day. I’ve been mulling over writing a post about the upside of the dark side for some time. I talked about it to someone a while back and they frowned upon that idea. They thought that by talking about the positives as I see them it could make everyone’s experiences of struggling to put one foot in front of the other less valid, including my own. So I didn’t. But now I am, because this space is about me, and my family, and our experiences, and actually, there are some silver linings, if you look hard enough. Also, I am conscious that I have spent a lot of time in recent months dwelling in the shadows (or if you’re feeling uncharitable, being miserable), and at some point you lot might dump me. So let’s do it.

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been a person that feels all the feels. I’m sure I was born this way. I’m even more sure that for many people that have chronic anxiety, like me they will also have a surfeit of empathy, a heightened sense of and ability to connect to other people. What does this look like in practice? In my younger days, my sister would tell you I was always collecting “waifs and strays” as she put it, largely as I couldn’t bear to see anyone marginalised or alone and felt the need to rescue them. That rescuing habit has stayed with me for most of my life, it’s only as I’ve become older (and after some heavy duty coaching) that I can see that for the most part it is really unhelpful for whoever it is I am trying to rescue (particularly if they don’t want to be rescued!). It doesn’t make for building resilience and can build dependency. Some will say that an entrenched habit of rescuing people is not entirely altruistic but that by creating dependency in others, you feel better about yourself. Needed, having purpose. I get that. 

This week someone told me that whilst I think I’ve stopped, I am still trying to rescue people now – the charge being trying to rescue all the children in Oxfordshire by taking a stand in a meeting on the eye watering increase in A&E admissions for self harm in teenagers. It doesn’t make me popular and it was only when I sensed I was on the verge of tears that I realised I have too much skin in the game. I am far too emotionally invested in that agenda. Then I think, well somebody bloody has to be. And I am lucky enough to have a bit of a platform and a voice, so why would I not use that to try and effect some change in the corridors of power? Change often doesn’t happen without discomfort. When we were in the absolute depths of despair, I vowed that I would one day find a way to channel our experiences so that they wouldn’t be in vain. On days like those I am on fire. I feel like a warrior, and you’d better not get in my way. 

Feeling all the feels can make me fragile and afraid a lot of the time. But it also makes me a good friend and a good listener. Being super attuned to others enables me to read other people very quickly, often to know when to stop and ask,”but yes, how are you really?”. It makes me intuitive, I am as likely to notice what isn’t being said as well as what is. I have a radar for tension and unhappiness in others. I have learnt to channel my empathy so that I don’t end up howling if you are – that’s not helpful is it? Who wants to end up comforting the person who’s supposed to be comforting you? 

At work I can be incredibly assertive. I’m likely to deal with complex problems and issues head on, not afraid of naming the elephant in the room. Yet in my personal life I can’t bear things to feel awkward, and I end up with an overwhelming urge to fill an awkward silence. I just want everything to be OK. Ever the peacemaker. Contrary. 

I am the anxious, sometimes angry, sometimes jealous, sometimes flaky, sometimes incredibly low person that I am today partly due to nature, and a lot to do with a lack of nurture over the last five years. However, the flip side of all those negative things can’t be ignored. I can see the funny side in almost anything, and I have the most ridiculously childish sense of humour. I appreciate the tiniest things that might seem inconsequential to others. I am generous with my time and my belongings (but no, you can’t borrow that dress). I can cry at a rose lost in a storm, but I can also laugh like a drain. I can be insightful, and I have learned to use that insight with great care and respect. I can be the life and soul of the party. I will always help someone if it’s in my power to do so. I am impulsive and impatient but I can also be passionate, sometimes emphatically so. I can be eminently competent (my boss would substitute that for terrifyingly competent!)  and on a good day I can take absolutely no shit. I am only just getting into my stride. I have things to do and important things to say.

Someone said to me recently that when anxiety strikes, I should try firing arrows from my heart. I love that idea. For as much as anxiety can be debilitating, it has brought with it so many arrows that I can use. Compassion, love, purpose. A real clarity about what is important, and what is just noise. 

So for all the things I am not good at, and for all the frailties that the last five years have brought with it, I have survived it. I am older, wiser, perhaps more cynical and yet still hopeful. Being fragile has heightened my flaws and I am frayed around the edges. Perfectly imperfect. Unique and gloriously me. And so are all of you. 

“Anxiety is horrid. But being a person prone to the deep sensitivity anxiety entails can also mean that you develop curiosity, you feel art deeply, you disappear into books like other lives, your sexual imagination becomes wilder, foods become heightened, songs can make you cry or burst with life. Anxiety is the flip side of intensity, of feeling, and feeling can be fucking good”. Matt Haig