Day #2: Noticing

I am a statistic. And before you count yourself out, know that you may be one, too.

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans is living with a mental illness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, the three most common diagnoses are anxiety disorders, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Check, check and check.

But this post isn’t about those numbers, particularly. Like many, I struggle with worry, always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the bottom to drop out. I have this tendency to live in the past, to focus on the mistakes I’ve made or am afraid I’ve made; or in the future, where I’m waiting for some catastrophe to strike or the worst case scenario. Knock on wood, so far in my life I have been pretty fortunate. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying about what could happen.

This is to say that I have a hard time staying in the present, appreciating the beauty of this moment. I am more often stuck in my head, most always on guard, scanning for the big scary thing around the corner. (Not literally, but tell that to my “lizard brain” – the limbic cortex, the most primitive part of the brain responsible for fight or flight. Its job is to react to threat, real or imagined. It thinks it is keeping me safe, and it doesn’t understand reason.)

This is neither a relaxing nor enjoyable way to live, let me tell you.

There’s a tool I’ve learned called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. It uses your senses to call you back to the present moment and away from whatever it is that is causing anxiety and even panic. In a nutshell, you notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. This is the best explanation of the method I’ve come across.

I love this tool, because it really helps me to get out of my thoughts and into the here and now. It reassures the lizard brain that there is no impending doom coming down the pike to eat me.

Since my front garden started blooming, I’ve done what I think of as a variation of the 5-4-3-2-1 technique to help myself pay attention, stay present, and be in the moment. I step outside each morning and focus on one of the hollyhocks I grew from seeds that I harvested. Every day a new frilly, deep-pink blossom opens.

Today it was a fourth flower. The stalk is loaded with many more to come, which gives me something lovely, even miraculous, to look forward to.

What do these daily bursts of hollyhock blooms have to do with anxiety, depression and PTSD? They are my reminders to look around and notice where there is joy and beauty. While these small moments of wonder don’t take away the great suffering I see in the world, they help remind me when I lose perspective, which is too often, that there is more than pain in the human experience.

When there is so much wrong, I need these reminders to also notice the moments that are so right.