The Potentiality of Anxiety

po·ten·ti·al·i·ty (pə-tĕn′shē-ăl′ĭ-tē)

1. the state of being potential.
2.  Inherent capacity for growth, development, or coming into existence.
3. Something possessing such capacity.

I am honored to have been asked to share some writing by wonderful Lauri Ann Lumby, a classmate, soul-sister, and inspiration. The other day, she sent a blip from Lauren Gorgo’s website describing anxiety as an energetic mimic of high vibrational energy. I wrote the piece below for her blog. Please check out her work at Your Spiritual Truth. 

I am a highly anxious person. I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder at the age of 19. My strange little behaviors—like severe rumination about having AIDS at a non-sexually active 12 years old, and confessing to teachers that I had “damaged” school property with my fingernail—while entertaining, didn’t seem so strange anymore. It is a chemical imbalance (if we’re going with that theory). It was my growing spirituality and intuition that helped me garner tools to survive, and I was graced with some pretty powerful experiences that nudged me toward my path today. I bring my story with me every time I meet with a client and feel compassion for the anxious. It would be nice if that was the end of the story. Far from.

My anxiety takes different forms and rears its ugly head at random. Last year I had a sustained full-body panic attack that left me shaking, unable to catch my breath, crying, laughing, and tired for an entire week. This coincided with a trip I was on to a spiritual place during a turning point in my life. This triangulation was not lost on me. The anxiety was spurring me to make decisions, dammit! Make them NOW! Did I do this immediately? No—but that’s another story called “Don’t Be Afraid to Jump!” I’m working on it. Through talking with others, I realize that anxiety seems to be felt by everyone at increased levels lately. Vibrational shift, we’re hearing. This shift seems to be showing up through anxiety that has no obvious cause—more “Who am I and why am I here?” than the usual “I have to speak in front of these 100 people!” So, I reflected on Gorgo’s theory while driving the other day—a major channeling time for me.

I think she’s right. What came through is that anxiety may be a misinterpretation of energy reception; our brains trying to shut out perceived negative energy that is actually telling us specific things for our positive futures. I believe it is potentiality that we are feeling. I felt nervous energy wash over me as I got the following info about this potentiality:

We are given the seeds of change through the ideas we get; the nervous ticklings, the what-ifs. We are channeling! If we want to change jobs, we need to facilitate it. If we want to get healthy, we need to facilitate it. The time is now. Nervous energy holds unhatched and potential action. Our society teaches us to medicate this, not harness it; to see it as disorder and not creative material. When we are unable to process our ideas, or stifle them, we disrupt the flow from our Creator, our Universe.  What we process as “fear” is showing us the way to love. Even those “normal” anxious feelings are opening doors. What happens if instead of shutting down we honor the energetic message?

Anais Nin’s quote came to mind: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

We experience anxiety and pain when we attempt to stifle our blossoming.

External situations cannot control our emotions when we don’t allow them to. We fear the movement into our true purpose only because we are re-aligning and breaking old patterns. I have been experiencing this through shaking, shortness of breath, headaches, breakouts, sickness, anger. How are you experiencing it?

As we move towards and through the process, we must listen. We must remember to break patterns that don’t serve us anymore. For me, it is certain types of food. For others it may be certain behaviors. We dampen our energetic potential through the tools we use to numb ourselves. It anesthetizes energy and ekes away at the health that we need to create our path. When we crave these anesthetics we are craving the comfort of old patterns. Anxiety swells up to remind us. I imagine you can think of your patterns right now—those old fallbacks that seem to comfort us but actually cycle us into non-action. Remember, though, we must also be forgiving. Breaking the patterns can be like a mourning process. We leave behind rituals that do not serve our brighter future. Perhaps they protected us then, but today we let them go. . . Coffee, this is going to be a hard one.

What if there is more to it? Different types of anxiety? Anxiety also:

Propels us to ACT: Notifying us that something is wrong physically or emotionally that needs immediate attention. People, foods, chemicals, and environments affect us. Our bodies put up alarm bells–fight or flight.

Assures us of TRUST: We must allow decisions to flow. We get anxious if we can’t have the answers, NOW! We can’t dictate what will be, we can merely play our part in the Universal plan. This is a physical response to the dualistic ideas of “wrong” and “right” at any given time and anxiety reminds us to live in the grey area of not-knowing. I heard somewhere once that anxiety is our current fear of a previous result. We fear this negative result will play out again but we cannot know what will happen next!

Encourages us to PROTECT: We can pick up negative spiritual energy/entities. We can experience active or imprinted energies that hold current or historic emotions. For example, if I have an earthbound spirit in my area that holds addiction, sadness, or anxiety, I will react to this. Additionally, I will experience the energy of other humans if I don’t protect myself and hold awareness of how others’ emotions are affecting me. Energy is catching.

I have been sitting with this information to integrate it. It feels like a truth I forgot. My anxiety is particularly bad in the mornings, but lately I’ve noticed this: I slowly wake with hands subconsciously placed on my 3rdand 4th chakras. . . As if through comforting my body’s “anxious” energy, I am also holding power to facilitate change in my life, creative potential, and the love that flows from all of us as we bring our light and service into the world.