There is this space where you can hold yourself and experience transformation. You and everyone else have anxieties which drive your behavior, especially compulsive behavior. Your compulsive working, eating, talking and fidgeting are all moves to stop the feeling of anxiety or neutralize it. We believe that feeling anxiety is “bad.” If you feel any anxiety at all, it should be comforted or go away. What if you tried to avoid doing any compulsive behavior at all? Don’t look at your phone, don’t fill the silence with words, don’t think about “what you should be doing right now.” That is uncomfortable space to occupy, but there is freedom there. That space is where transformation can take place because you are not just fighting to get rid of anxiety. You are allowing it to change you.

Anxiety lets you know you need something. You are hungry – you seek something to eat. You are insecure – you seek out security. What if you denied yourself? Staying in the anxiety or holding yourself back from any compulsive behavior used to neutralize anxiety is a form of self-denial. It is also a way to become vulnerable. If you are not constantly seeking to neutralize anxiety and become comfortable, you will more fully experience whatever deficit creates the anxiety – the hunger, the loneliness, the feelings of insufficiency.

Instead of neutralizing the anxiety, you might try to explore it. If you truly know and understand the deficit, you will better be able to find what you really want or need. Maybe you don’t need to eat or drink. Maybe you just need to find rest. Maybe you don’t need to work or do anything. Maybe you need to be comfortable in who you are when you don’t do anything. And maybe you need to “grow your container” for the anxious feelings. If you are constantly trying to neutralize these feelings, you will be very overweight and you will drink too much, and you will also probably be addicted to comfort. If you avoid compulsive behaviors, you will be able to become aware of what you really need and find that instead. What you need is probably much bigger than you think – more than just something to eat or something to drink or to get work done.