Tag: anxiety

The Sound of Silence

Most of us have a very ambivalent view of silence and for many, it is something to be avoided at all costs. It is indicative of boredom and loneliness. Some of us are so uncomfortable with silence that we surround ourselves day and night with the distractions of radio, television and social media alerts.

Silence, perhaps, recalls wet Sunday afternoons when we were told to play quietly, or when we were reminded that children were to be seen and not heard.

Yet, silence is also bliss, yearned for by those of us caught in the whirl-wind of modern existence. Like the Chinese symbol for Yin and Yang, it is both beneficial and detrimental, active and passive, good and evil. Like solitude and loneliness, how we perceive silence and how we work with it will help determine which of these two opposites holds true.

When silence is harmful

There are few things more damaging to an individual than to have their voice unheard or dismissed. To the speaker, it can feel like they have been gagged and they are likely to either act out or become more silent as a result. Silencing others is easily done and often unintentional, but it can be just as easily remedied. If we can listen with sensitivity and play back what we have been told, we can relieve their stress and strengthen our relationship. We don’t have to agree with what they are saying either – simply acknowledge it. So if your child, partner or friend is being especially quiet, it might be the time to check that they are feeling heard.

Be quiet! Image: Scott Umstaddt on Unsplash

The silent treatment

One of the most powerful punishments is to give the silent treatment. By blocking all communication, you remove the chance for the person to apologise (if that would be appropriate) or even find out what is wrong. It is the most pernicious of punishments and the rise of ‘ghosting’ on social media is a worrying one. Painful though this is, it is a result of immaturity on the part of the ‘ghoster’. Should we encounter this treatment in the real or virtual world, we are best to get on with our lives and without them. Nothing feeds their power more than your insistence on interacting.

Alone with your thoughts

Finally, silence can be a frightening place, as it leaves us alone with our thoughts. With no distractions, it is easy to spiral into the old grooves of negative thinking. Our brains do not like the quiet and without training will simply fill the void with random images – most likely anxious or upsetting ones. I’m sure this is why we so often fill our lives with sound – as a barrier to thinking. However, the sound we introduce only drowns out thoughts; it does not resolve them. A better way, is to gradually acclimatise yourself to silence – making quiet times for reflection and growth not worry and regret.

When it is right to make a noise

Oppressive regimes are the first to silence their populace. No tyrant wants your feedback on his governance. Fortunately, if you are reading this, you are in a place where free speech is valued and protected. It is a privilege that far too little of the world enjoys. But with that privilege comes the responsibility to speak up when the times require it.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Attr. Edmund Burke

We all moan about the world and its injustices, but we seldom act on our complaints. If we want to see positive change, we need to speak out against injustice wherever it may be. However, a word of caution. For our voices to express the right message, we first need silence. In the Quaker tradition, this waiting in silence for the right course of action is known as discernment. Hasty shouting and the clamour of outrage seldom result in the best outcomes. Quiet contemplation, listening to all sides and giving time for reflection before we speak is much more likely to have a positive and long-term impact.

A bullhorn or a quiet word? Image: Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Perfect silence

Much as we avoid it, we all need silence. Spend a few hours listening to noisy neighbours, building work or a barking dog and you soon realise its value. Depriving ourselves of it is ultimately like depriving ourselves of oxygen or sleep. We are failing to give our bodies and minds a time to recharge, reflect and simply reboot.

Getting comfortable in silence

I have always worked in silence, but learning to live in it for the majority of the day was hard. Ones thoughts are not always good companions and I had to calm the increasingly panicked cacophony in my head. I had to learn to make friends with silence and pacify the background chatter.

If I were to suggest this was easy, I would be lying. It has taken literally years of practice to reach my present stage and I have much further to go. But what I have discovered is that now I actively seek moments of quiet and relax into them as into a warm bath.

You can achieve this comfortable silence in any number of ways: prayer, meditation, walking or yoga style exercise. You do not need to sit cross-legged chanting ‘Om’. The good news is that they all work equally well. Whatever works for you is the one to pursue.

I have used all the above, though my favourite, long walks, is now denied to me. But I’m not one to give up. Part of the joy of a ramble is interacting with nature and we can do that whatever our situation. We only need to get outside.

A wonderful exercise, when you’ve found a quiet and comfortable place, is to try a listening meditation. The paradox is that we still the mind by focusing on noise and the more quiet we are, the more sound we will hear. More advanced practitioners will not be perturbed by someone using a weed whacker in the garden next door, but I am certainly not at that stage and I would advise you try without disturbance.

Just the other day, I was doing this. Sitting by myself on the bench, I started identifying all the sounds I could hear. Some were obvious such as the hum of conversation from the neighbours’. Then I stretched to hear other noises. There was the insect buzz of a lawn mower in use hundreds of yards away; the ebb and flow of traffic; the ceaseless chatter of the birds, with individual voices becoming distinct; the gentle breeze brushing over my cheek; my breath and finally the barely perceptible backtrack of my tinnitus.

Within the time it took to hear all this, my body was moving into an ever-more restful state. There were no distressing thoughts or worries, purely a sense of calm. The sound of silence is strangely not silent after all – it is the glorious, ever-changing melody of life.

Let nature provide the sound-track Image: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

What’s the use of worrying?

This is a question I often ask myself (whilst worrying away) and thought I would go ahead and explore it here. Living with precarious health brings constant anxiety. The Corona virus and world craziness is adding more still. I suspect that most of us are worried at the moment – and now seemed a good time to see if it had any real purpose.

Everyday worry is often harmless enough, but we all need to guard against it becoming a major facet of our lives. Unchecked, it results in debilitating mental and physical health. Worry is so normal that we think we know it, yet, I would argue that it is more complex than we imagine.

Magical thinking

Worry, at its heart, is fear about unfortunate outcomes in the future. It is about losing control, since no-one knows the future.

Mark Twain famously remarked:

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

Mark Twain

The irony is, as Twain jokes, most of those dreaded outcomes never actually come into being and our worry brings us nothing but sleepless nights.

However, this phenomenon can feed into a kind of magical thinking. We can, if we are not careful, come to associate the not happening as a result of our worry. Sounds crazy, but it has a sort of insane logic. If, the brain faultily reasons, I worried about something and it didn’t happen then my worrying prevented it. Should I stop worrying and something bad happens, this confirms my belief. Parents are perhaps the worst offenders in this (mea culpa). We come to believe that our very worrying is what keeps our child safe, so we keep on worrying to the detriment of our health and perhaps theirs.

I hold you in my thoughts and keep you safe. Image: Steven Van Loy on Unsplash

Virtue signalling

Perhaps the most pernicious sort of worrying is the one used to suggest that you care. How often do we hear people say they are ‘so worried’ about x,y, or z and yet we see nothing in their behaviour to suggest that their worry would translate into any action. How often do we see celebrities who ‘worry’ about the environment and then travel by private jet to a climate change conference?

The unfortunate irony is that they probably do worry and thus use valuable mental and physical energy on the matter. But worry without action is detrimental to everyone. We may gain a little kudos from our peers for our seeming concern, but the issue is not resolved and at some level we feel ashamed of our own inability to act. Our worry brings no positive outcomes at all.

However, if we worry about something and act upon it, our worry lessons. The issue may well be far beyond our capabilities to solve, but any steps we take to ameliorate it inevitably brings us back a sense of control and self-worth. No individual can save the planet; however, if we make a conscious decision to tread as lightly as we can, we will feel empowered by that. Similarly, if a friend is unwell/unhappy and we visit, our worry is dissipated by the joy of reunion. We may not be able to make our friend better in the physical sense, but we will certainly have made them feel better emotionally.

We can make each other feel better! Image: Photo by NONRESIDENT on Unsplash

The price of worry

Worry is the socially acceptable form of anxiety, but we can tip from one to the other with surprising ease. The mind is like a cooking pot filled with everyday concerns, but it only has so much capacity. As we burden it with more and more, it is like both filling the pot and turning up the heat. Eventually, it will boil over.

For some, like returning soldiers from a war zone, the source of their stress will be obvious. But severe anxiety affects even those with the most comfortable lives. By catastrophizing over minor and fairly insignificant events, a similar level of anxiety can be achieved.

Whatever the cause, the effects of anxiety are extreme. In some cases, it will trigger long term health conditions like my own; in others, it will lead to levels of distress that makes life mentally unbearable. Hopefully, neither of these apply to you, but we are wise to work towards ensuring that they never do.

Keeping worry under control

Worry is about helplessness in the face of the future. Though we can’t do much about the future, we can do much to improve our present. We can embark on practices that work towards restoring calm: whether that be meditation, prayer, yoga or any other centring activity. Ideally, we need to do this daily, since worry takes so little time to take hold.

We might like to take stock of what triggers our anxiety. Anything that feeds on our fears and insecurities is not good for us and should, as far as possible, be eliminated. Currently, the media seems determined to whip their audience into a frenzy of outrage. And though this brings a certain frisson of excitement, it also destabilizes us. Acts of extreme injustice, inflammatory language and exaggeration may make good television, but not happy watchers. I’m going on a news fast for the foreseeable future. Anything truly vital will filter through via my husband or friends – the rest I can do without.

Overwhelmed by the news. Image: Photo by Bruno Bučar on Unsplash

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can also be a source of worry with people posting inflammatory comments and others thoughtlessly replying. If we submerge ourselves too much in these, we are likely to have a very poor and very frightening view of the world.

And it is not just in the virtual world that we are susceptible. Our friends and family members can also feed our worry. Though I would not advocate cutting these people out of our lives, a little judicious use of social distancing might be in order. We can come armed with interesting topics of conversation to avoid being derailed into their current concerns or simply change the subject when the conversation starts spiralling down a rabbit hole. If this does not work, try to only see them when you feel you can face that level of anxiety. You are not obliged to act as a sponge to their fears – it is unlikely to help them and you even less.

Choosing the right response

Though we have precious little control over the lives of others, and little enough over our own, we do have control over how we respond. Nurturing resilience – or inner strength – will enable us to react calmly even in chaos. By practising disciplines which slow our responses and allow space for measured and thoughtful action will benefit us and our community.

Accepting our limitations is another way to reduce worry. We need to make ourselves comfortable resting within uncertainty (life). We need to let go of the illusion that we are in control. In doing so, paradoxically, we gain control – not of events (though it may influence these) but of our emotions.

And finally, we would be wise to consider what we can do and if possible do it. For this we need time to research and reflect. Often the problems we see are rooted somewhere else entirely. Let us seek out the root and make repairs there. There is so much we can do quietly and purposefully.

Whilst concern will spur us on, worry often leaves us rowing in circles. It is time to charter a new course. After all, to answer the question, What’s the use of worrying? I’d have to reply, no use at all.