31 days with our anxiety
identifying my peace cycle
In the Fall of 2010 I experienced a series of events that helped me better understand what it looked like to move out of my pain cycle, and into my peace cycle — which is essentially speaking truth into my violations of love and trust.
If I struggle with feeling like a failure, not good enough, not measuring up, inadequate and, therefore, become anxious — and manage that anxiety by performing, achieving, perfectionistic, numb out, withdraw — then what does speaking truth into that look like?
That Fall I had just finished my first marriage intensive as a co-leader, where I was really learning the Restoration Therapy model. On that morning after the intensive my wife picked me up at the airport and we headed to breakfast. And during that breakfast some conflict arose and I decided in that moment to try what I had learned at the marriage intensive that weekend. So I said to my wife Heather, something to the effect of, “Right now I don’t feel good enough, and I feel like a failure, and what I want to do is get up from breakfast and walk out of the restaurant and away from this conversation. But the truth is, I know that I am good enough, and I know that you love me, therefore, I am going to sit here and listen.”
That was my first rudimentary working out of my pain cycle, and into my peace cycle. And something significantly shifted in my brain, and how I thought about doing something different in conflict.
What helped was that later that week I was in a therapy session with a very gifted therapist of mine. During a very experiential session he was doing some imagery/inner child work — where he had me imagine going back into my 5th grade classroom after my mom had passed away from cancer (and the birthplace of my anxiety and panic). During that moment he asked me (the present day Rhett — I was 35 at the time) what I would say to that 5th grader version of me. He asked me, “What does that Rhett need to hear?”
I remember saying, “It’s going to be okay”, and then I burst into tears.
I left that session, called my wife, and expressed that life was never going to be the same. Something shifted in me again. So much so, that by the weekend I spoke four times as the speaker at a young adult retreat and I didn’t even stutter. In fact, before each talk I found myself walking through my four steps (which I will get to in a later post) over and over to help me emotionally regulate, and move from my pain cycle into my peace cycle.
This shift from pain into peace is a very difficult one. We are so familiar with our pain, that it can be challenging and uncomfortable to move into our truth. And though mine is often a work in progress, here are the basic outlines of it.
This is the WORK, or working through our anxiety. Constantly being aware of that pain cycle at work in our lives, and then having the ability to move into our peace cycle, and do something different with our anxiety.
Sometimes I can catch it in an instant and do something different in a matter of seconds. Other times it may take me hours, days, weeks, months…and yes…even years.
But it’s WORK that we need continue to return to time and time again, and the more you work at it, the more mastery you will experience over your anxiety.