Yesterday, my partner left Mexico and went back to our home in LA. It triggered a big wave of grief.

I couldn’t get around it; I was just sad. 

All I wanted was someone to be there while I cried and just listen, without expectations. I’m a literal professional at doing this for other people. But…for myself? A much harder ask.

To be there at the most basic level. With gentle, loving presence, for as long as it took. To hold myself, to tell myself it was okay, to let myself cry, then know when it was time to pick myself up and get a glass of water.

I wanted mothering.

A lot of us don’t have great models of this. So how do we give it to ourselves, let alone even know we need it?

We don’t always know when we’re sad, or mad, or hungry, or need a break. We go into our brains and try to think our way into meeting a physical need. 

We may know we’re feeling off, out of sync, rushing, busying ourselves, resisting things we know are good for us, or judging others. These are all good signs that we’re missing something. We just don’t necessarily know what.

But Mom does. And she swoops in and takes over. “You’re hungry.” “It’s time for a bath.” “Let’s go for a walk.”

The first thing I needed yesterday was just a place that it was okay to cry, or not cry, or do whatever. 

A big part of mothering ourselves is BEING that safe, open environment. 

Maybe we learned that we weren’t supposed to have certain feelings. They weren’t appropriate or necessary; they didn’t belong or were too much. Maybe we were punished or rejected or distracted when we cried.

Whatever it is, we tend to repeat this with ourselves. We can only love ourselves the best we know how. But there’s a workaround hidden in our imagination. We can ask ourselves, “what would the most loving person do?” (the agnostic’s What Would Jesus Do)

Would the most loving person criticize me for being sad or critique the way I’m showing it? Would they rush me or roll their eyes? No. They’d be patient. They’d be understanding. They’d be protective.

Each time I was able to find that energy and apply it toward myself, I would soften, let out a few more tears, and breathe a little easier. 

After each wave, I’d say, “okay, what do we need now?” and then wait, or make gentle suggestions and listen for the tiniest signal of what might feel good. 

Learning to mother ourselves isn’t easy. It’s extremely humbling. And we’re not going to be perfect at it. But the tender little being inside that needs our love really appreciates when we try.

I started writing about some anxiety I was feeling - I call it “Ambient Anxiety.” Sometimes, it feels like it’s about something specific on the horizon, in my case, a call I have in an hour or so, then I have to get to the airport for a flight later. But there’s also an accumulation of smaller things, lingering from the past. I lost a crystal someone gave me last night. I tried to go to a different cafe for breakfast, but found out they don’t serve food on Mondays, blah blah blah. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s hanging out there. (Update, as I’m editing this a couple days later, none of these things still carry an emotional charge.)

And yet, that little amount of “aliveness” never really goes away. I can usually find it when I look for it. And if I look for reasons, they’re there, too. Sometimes identifying reasons brings it on stronger. Thinking about that call sends a teeny spurt of “oh god!” energy through my stomach and chest.

I can try to think my way out of the feelings. I can try to convince myself there’s no real reason to be anxious. “It’s going to go how it’s going to go. I’m prepared. I’ve done these before. I trust myself to be in the moment and know what to say.” And yet, the feeling sits there in spite of my reasoning.

I can also remind myself that there’s an energy that comes with just caring about something. I want this call to go well. I am invested in what I’m doing. I care about the person on the other end. I can more easily accept this feeling as a natural byproduct of my attachment to what I’m doing. And I can have compassion for the version of myself that has these attachments, even though there may be a more advanced, more Buddhist version of myself that wouldn’t. But I’m just not there yet.

Here’s what else I know:

1) The Ambient Anxiety does seem to come and go. It’s unclear to me if it’s always there, waiting to surface when something triggers it, or if it’s triggered anew each time by an event.

2) I can close my eyes, focus on it and breathe. This helps me feel more “in control,” so to speak. It feels better in my body when I slow down, let myself sense it and accept it.

3) I am the one deciding that it is a “bad” thing (because it’s uncomfortable) and deciding what it means - that it’s about the call or the airport. That usually feels true to me in the moment, but looking back, those individual events no longer trigger it.

4) It helps to set aside whatever stories and associations I have, and be with the sensation itself.

“Okay, I’m noticing a tightness in my chest. It feels like my breathing is constricted. There is a warm pulsing around my heart. There is a concentrated tension in my forehead. When I bring my focus to it, the pulsing in my chest seems to intensify. My head feels heavy. Numerous thoughts compete for my attention. My stomach feels full, there is a churning energy that rises and sinks. My shoulders feel heavy. There is a wide, achy expanse across the middle of my back.”

5) When I take the time to patiently and non-judgmentally inventory the sensations I’m experiencing, one by one, as they come to my attention, they seem more manageable. I can be aware of them without fearing their impact.

6) There are things I can do to shift how I’m feeling (like writing about it, talking to someone about it, or channeling it into a physical activity).

Here’s what helps me most with Ambient Anxiety: naming it, observing the sensations it produces, and reminding myself it’s a sign that I care and am alive, even when I can identify other stories and explanations.

It can be helpful to list the stories, but it’s more helpful to set them aside and focus on the feeling itself. The stories always change. One day, I link my Ambient Anxiety to a phone call, the next, it’s needing to do the dishes. In a year, you’ll have 365 different stories, most of which will be behind you and won’t trigger the feeling anymore.

Working with your relationship to the feeling is where the magic is. I’m personally not expecting to wake up tomorrow without any attachment to life or feelings or events or people, so it’s unrealistic to think I won’t experience it.  Any time I can be that honest with myself and that connected to reality as it is, I feel more grounded, more self-trusting and just, better. I hope anyone reading this also feels better about their Ambient Anxiety. Bye for now…