"When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just chopping the leaves." ~ Anthony J. D & # 39; Angelo
This is a report on my experience with marijuana as a remedy for my fear, why I am glad I had it and why I no longer need it.
This story is not an endorsement for or against smoking pots. It's a story to give an insight into how and why it helped certain diseases and my path to lasting change without them.
How the censer helped my fear
I suffered from anxiety for most of my life.
This is mainly because I didn't have a label for how I felt until I was 30.
My fear brought insomnia, tension headaches, stomach problems and social anxiety in addition to the bee vertebrae that lived in my chest.
One symptom that drove me crazy was incessant nausea. In my twenties, I dated a guy who smoked a pot, so I was trying to see if it would help my stomach. And it helped. A lot of.
Then I noticed that it helped me fall asleep.
It helped me with my ADD by allowing me to focus on my work while programming (nerd alarm!) Or doing something creative.
It helped my social anxiety by easing my worries and fears about other people's judgments.
When I felt anxious, angry, sad or angry, the negative emotions were subdued and the sharpness removed, which was sometimes enough to give me the space to get perspective.
It relieved my tension headaches.
It gave me something to do on boring days.
It made housework less of a chore.
I came to rely on it. If we were to run out, I would get scared. If I went out I would be afraid. I felt like I needed it to get through the day.
I went from smoking occasionally to smoking in the morning, at noon and in the evening (and in the middle of the night when I could no longer sleep).
I told myself that this was perfectly acceptable. It was my medicine. I needed it. It was a way of life. That it wasn't like I was smoking cigarettes, so it was perfectly fine.
Pot helped.
But only for the moment.
Why Räuchertopf didn't really help my fear
What Pot didn't do for me was resolve my fear. It didn't make it go away; it only loosened it up temporarily. It didn't help me get to the bottom of my problem, so I had to keep coming back to it.
It helped the symptoms of the fear, not the cause.
Anxiety caused stomach problems and tension headaches. Pot helped.
Fear made my mind jump all over the place when I tried to sleep or to concentrate. Pot helped slow the erratic flow of thoughts.
Fear made me nervous towards other people. Pot took the edge off.
I didn't like the way negative emotions felt in my body, so I jumped up to numb the feeling in the fastest, easiest way I knew how. Incense Pot.
It became such a habit that the idea of not having this crutch immediately available started to stress me out.
Day after day, year after year, the fear was still there. So I needed my crutch.
That is, until I decided to go alone. I came to the realization that I wanted to solve this problem and not tackle it.
That meant that I had to get to the bottom of it.
Why was I afraid at all?
Little did I know that I was scared for most of my life. It was exactly how I felt. I assumed that some people were either lucky, that they were happy and carefree, or that they were faking it.
It just didn't seem to be on my cards. I felt like I was born this way.
I grew up in a family where it was all about talking about our feelings. I've never really seen my parents teach me a healthy way to share feelings, so I had nothing to model from.
What I saw were people who were made fun of because they were emotionally vulnerable. I found it weak to show people that you were hurt.
But through a lot of inner work I was able to begin to destroy my fear.
My social anxiety and fear of being discovered as a fraud at work (also known as imposter syndrome) was based on a long-held belief that I was not good enough.
As I reflected on my past, the environment in which I grew up made me laugh at a lot as the youngest child. I internalized this and turned it into a belief that I held onto for decades.
This limiting belief came out as fear. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Afraid of not being liked. Fear of making a wrong decision.
This was responsible for many of my fears.
The stress reaction – also known as the fight or flight reaction – has two sides. Flight = fear. Fight = anger. So I was very angry too. I got angry and judgmental so easily. And I held onto for a long time whether it was cut off in traffic or when my mother left when she was fourteen.
Anger is a defense mechanism. It is triggered when you feel threatened in any way. And I always felt threatened.
Years of fear will plague the body. Constantly triggering a stress response leads to damage to the immune system, digestive system, heart, mind and the whole body.
So that explained all of my symptoms.
Incense pot helped with the symptoms. It hasn't helped me overcome my long-held belief that I'm not good enough.
How I overcame fear once and for all
What I really needed was to change my relationship with my thoughts. To do that, I had to first learn the important lesson that you are not your thoughts.
This is a core concept in meditation that is one of the greatest tools that has helped me relate to my thoughts differently.
When I first came across this concept, I did not understand it. "If I am not my thoughts, what am I?" I've learned that thoughts are just ideas, just sentences that float through the brain like clouds in the sky. They are coming. You go. They change their shape.
I, I, myself – that is the one who can decide which thoughts to hold onto, which to believe in. There is an I beyond thought.
When this idea came true, change began. When I was afraid of what others would think of me, I had to deal with the why.
Instead of letting those fearful thoughts run through my head on the autopilot and believing the things they said were true, I could stop, step back, and challenge them.
Instead of catastrophicizing every situation, I could take the time to ask questions like "What's the worst that could happen?" To ask and to answer honestly. And to that I could say, "How will I deal with this worst-case scenario if it actually happened?"
I learned that I was able to deal with adversity much better than I ever thought I would.
Stopping was not easy
Marijuana may not be chemically addicting like many drugs. But it can be very psychologically and habitually addicting.
Years of fear meant that I had developed many unconscious triggers for feelings of fear. That meant that sometimes I got symptoms of anxiety without knowing exactly why.
Whenever I felt a little queasy or even too full. See smoke or even hear the word. Coming home from work. Feel loads of stress or distressing emotions. Boredom. Go to a social event. To celebrate.
Whenever I was physically triggered – like when I felt my heart race or my chest tighten – I freaked out and jumped to relieve the discomfort as quickly as possible.
Part of my work on overcoming fear was paradoxically to allow myself to feel it without fighting it.
Just like the Buddhist story of the two arrows. Getting hit with an arrow naturally hurts. But things happen in life and sometimes hurt.
Lamentation, saying how this should never have happened, wallowing in how much I hate that this has happened and how much I want it to end – it's like being hit by a second arrow.
The struggle against reality causes unnecessary suffering. Like trying to pull your fingers out of a Chinese finger trap – you get stuck even more. I found it was far more effective to peacefully recognize the discomfort, say hello and let it through than take a punch from my bowl.
And over time these feelings of fear from unknown sources became less and less and it became easier and easier to get through them.
I'm glad I had a pot as a device to relieve my anxiety for the time I had it. It gave me relief. It gave me moments of peace. For me it was a stepping stone on a journey I didn't know I was on.
But when I realized that my fear was not improving, that I had to work a bit to take my life to the next level, I knew it was time to take the leap into the unknown without my crutch.
I stumbled for a hot minute and then got up on my own two feet. I now look back on my life in phases – the "old" me and the "new" me.
The "old" me would have been a nervous wreck to admit any of this story to the world. She would have written it while she was up. She would have freaked out if she ran out of supplies.
The "New" I am writing this with confidence that I know that my message will land with some people while others may not like it or even want to read that far, but I no longer worry about what people think. I have tackled my "not good enough" inner bully. She's still looking here or there, but I now know how to listen without judgment and then start my day.
I still try occasionally for full transparency and honesty. But not because I need it and not because I'm afraid and run away from my feelings, but because I enjoy a nice glass of wine.
About Sandy Woznicki
Sandy is a stress and anxiety trainer and mindfulness meditation teacher who helps women who are deep inside not feeling well enough and who are overwhelmed by stress or fear. Her coaching and free resources like the Stress Detox Course help women live more fully and freely. She is happily married to her goofy husband and loves connecting with nature in beautiful Maine.
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