Let Go of Anxiety and Practice Contentment

Have you ever seen the guards at Buckingham Palace in London? They are the ones who stand ramrod straight, eyes focused ahead, for hours and hours. Of course, there are tourists who attempt to distract them from their duty, but these soldiers remain rigidly vigil. Similarly, anxiety remains rigidly vigil and rarely issues the order “At ease.”

In order to truly relax, you need to recognize that you are in control of your life. You don’t need to get up and report to anxiety for duty. You have the power within yourself to stand down from anxiety and relax.

Anxious people are often skeptical of this power. When asked about the ability to relax, the anxious person will often say, “I can’t relax.” They will back up that statement with a long list of reasons why relaxation is impossible. These reasons are most often credited to outside circumstances or other people. The idea of having the power to relax, regardless of circumstances or the actions of others, is a foreign concept to anxious people. The thought that when they say “I cannot,” they really mean “I will not” is difficult to accept.

Anxieties demand that relaxation is only possible when the person is “safe.” Like a dangled carrot, safety seems always just out of reach. Safety is always out of reach because, for the anxious, safety does not come from what is happening around the person but from what is happening inside the person. An anxious person rarely feels safe, no matter the outside circumstances.

This is the false promise and the paradox of anxiety: anxiety says you are safe when you feel safe, but because you never feel safe, you never are safe. Never safe, you never truly relax. Again, feeling safe and being safe are two different things. Being safe is an objective conclusion. Feeling safe is a subjective opinion.

Hannah felt she couldn’t relax until her house was completely clean to her standards. Untidy, to Hannah, meant unsafe. Was Hannah unsafe in a house with dishes left in the sink? Objectively no, but subjectively yes. Hannah prioritized her feelings of unsafety over spending family time with her children and husband. A messy house didn’t put Hannah in any danger, but rejecting her family did because her rejection jeopardized those vital relationships.

If you’re holding out until the conditions are just right to relax, you may find you never relax. Unable to relax, you may find you are never satisfied with your state of being. If you can’t be satisfied, you cannot be content. I think relaxation and contentment are a matched pair. When a person is very content, then the door is opened wide for true relaxation.