Chicana on the Edge is 16 years old and every post is here, but the website is new as of June 2020, so I’m thinking carefully about the categories and tags I want to use. Of the ones that aren’t neutral like “PhysicalHealth,” I think there are more with negative connotations than positive.
So I’ve created a new tag called Living well and this is the first post that uses it. Once my horrific summer got the best of me, I put some pratices in place to help me manage the panic and anxiety. Here’s the first one.
One easy way to reduce anxiety is to go for a walk. In July I was getting two to four hours of sleep a night and would return to consciousness feeling ragged and full of dread. Spending a brief time walking outside, sometimes with my shoes off, helped a surprising amount. The recommendation was to walk for 10 minutes and in those days it was miserably warm and humid even at 6 a.m. I often walked away from my apartment building for exactly five minutes, turned around and walked back. Once I hit ten minutes I got myself back in the air conditioning of my apartment.
But even though the walks were short, they did help. I live two blocks from the Chicago lakefront and the park that borders it, but although I walked in that direction, it wasn’t my goal to get there. I focused on hitting the ten-minute mark, on grounding myself to the center of the planet, on the feel of the earth on my bare feet. I focused on how I felt, physically and emotionally. When I headed home the anxiety would still be there, but it would be better and I’d drag myself towards the bathroom to brush my teeth and start what I hoped wouldn’t be too awful a day.
When I felt a little better in August, the walks got longer. Sometimes I got to the park. Sometimes I walked for twelve or fifteen minutes at a time. I began to notice things outside of my body. I saw the clouds. They were nice. I also noticed trees. I could touch them for a further grounding exercise. I began to notice other people and how many wore masks, even though it was very early and hardly anyone was out. I couldn’t bear to put a mask on in those stifling days. Claustrophobia overtook me immediately and my anxiety increased the whole time I had one on. On my maskless morning walks, I made a point of staying far from everyone else.
I also went for humid, miserable walks at night. One Sunday I staggered to the lakefront at 11:00 p.m. I was exhausted and longed for bed, but a twist of tension snaked through my lower body. Desperate for relief, I wandered to the shore and was glad to see other people, even though the park had officially closed. Many, many times I felt grateful that there are always people on the lakefront. My summer nightmare made me crave the company of others and just being near a group of teenagers eased my high emotions.
That night I sat on a bench and used EFT on my anxiety. I’m sure I looked like a madwoman: eyes staring, face haggard, moving in a shuffle, fingers tapping on my head and chest. A lone, scruffily dressed, middle-aged woman is an odd character among dog-walkers, skateboarders and lovers, if only because it’s supposed to be unsafe for a woman to be out alone at that hour. But from 27 years in Chicago I’ve learned that if I look weirder than the next person, I’ll be okay. That night I was able to calm down after an hour and finally got some sleep.
In September, working with a powerful spiritual healer, my panic and anxiety decreased so much that I started to get some enjoyment out of these walks. On some mornings I noticed the glitter of the water or the way the clouds framed the sun. I stopped and watched dogs play. I noticed with gladness that the leaves were starting to turn, marking the end of my hell summer. I’ve always loved the return of cold weather and welcomed each morning I no longer needed shorts to stay cool.
When I was really struggling with anxiety, the walks got longer. My tight stomach would keep me walking up to 30 minutes, sometimes tapping and crying. Or dread-filled loneliness would overtake me and instead of returning to my apartment I’d sit down, watching early exercisers and dogs for an hour or more. But unless I was really feeling bad, my walks stayed pretty short. The point wasn’t to exercise or see the sunrise or people-watch. It was to manage that goddamn gut-crawl.
My brief morning walk is now a habit. I expect to keep it up through the winter since it’s is my favorite season: I love the cold. I’ve lived blocks from Chicago’s lakefront for almost 25 years, but hardly ever went out there. In my adult life I’ve never liked outdoors much and I usually avoid direct sunlight. It’s often seemed odd to me that I live in the east Rogers Park neighborhood when I don’t like the beach. The times I’ve taken walks on the lakefront have mostly been when it was cool or cold out.
This past summer was the first time I felt grateful to live a five-minute walk from the park/shoreline. It was the first time in decades that I got any benefit from “the out-of-doors.” I tell people I take these walks the way I brush my teeth: I don’t enjoy it, but it’s necessary, so I do it just for as long as I need to. My new habits might last the rest of my life, but I can only be certain that they’ll continue until this transition through anxiety is over.