Trust is the Antidote

I think I’ve worked it out:

The opposite of anxiety is Trust.

Anxiety would pull you in all directions,

Incessantly seeking evidence that you should be worrying,

Striving to control every outcome,

Even as the outcomes slip through its fingers.

Trust is grounded.

Trust knows you’re safe.

Trust is sensitive to the moments we should surrender,

and to the situations that need our action.

So what is this thing, Trust?

How do you get it if you don’t have it?

For those of us who have been programmed with doubt,

How could we fathom finding faith in the unknowable, the unseeable, the unthinkable?

Well, we’ve tried holding onto the guard dog of anxiety,

Patrolling the parameters of our life with obsessive vigilance,

Hoping if we just worry enough that things will be solved;

If we just run through the same information enough that things will become clear.

It hasn’t worked out, this strategy.

In fact, we charge ourselves up into panic,

And then we exhaust ourselves into despair.

In truth, I’ve only really found the courage to leap across the chasm of everything I fear

When there’s nothing left.

When all my my fights have proven futile,

My fantasies proven to be figments of my imagination,

Finally I find the humility to shift my entire paradigm.

There is nothing left but to start trusting the strange pull of my heart’s desire.

In this perplexing void of logic,

All I have is the quiet whisper of intuition,

Nudging me towards only the next step,

Then the next.

I don’t get to know the outcomes;

I haven’t seen the destination.

But the only way left is to follow Trust.

So I’m sorry if you wanted the easy 3-step approach to fixing anxiety for good!

It’s clearly not so simple —

It’s definitely not pain-free —

But there is a formula.

The antidote to the affliction of anxiety is Trust.

How do we get this magical medicine?

I do not wish a broken heart upon you,

But being broken apart brutally enough

Seems to do the job.

Whatever you believe in,

Life has an interesting way of getting your attention.

If you continue to suffer,

If you continue to feel stuck,

If you continue to spiral into the same patterns,

I urge you this:

What is Life telling you?

What is the feedback

Fed constantly back to you,

If only you’d soften your resistance enough to sense it?

Sometimes our ego has to be so devastatingly humbled

Before we learn to trust that there is an intelligence higher than our own.

I hope you learn to listen.

By Eleanor Forder

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