When I wrote about acceptance a few blogs back, I thought of it as a place that I had arrived. It had been a long and difficult journey, but I had found my way and had finally arrived at acceptance.
Acceptance felt like this place where I could just relax and find healing. It was like a spa of peace where I had finally managed to earn a membership.
Except that when I woke up a few days later in a panic attack, I knew I wasn’t there anymore.
I was back to pushing and trying, to resisting and denying. Acceptance felt like a mirage I had once believed was an oasis. I was once again in the grips of anxiety and I didn’t even have time to grieve for acceptance because I was too busy fighting to breathe, to survive.
The second morning when I woke up with my head spinning, my chest tight, my stomach in knots, with my heart pounding and my breath shallow. I started to battle another panic attack. I started my Wim Hof breathing, hoping that if I could just get ahead of this landslide of anxiety, maybe I could fight it off.
Then a voice somewhere inside me asked, “what if you didn’t fight?”
I actually choked out a laugh (that was maybe more of a sob), how could I not fight? How could I just sit there feeling like my insides were trying to move out?
But part of me knew it was right. I knew that as long as I was fighting the panic, I was really fighting against myself. An impossible battle with no winner.
So, I put on an acceptance and surrender meditation and I sat in my feelings.
It was terrible.
It was sitting in terror, looking it in the eye and not even trying to escape. The more unbearable it felt, the more I tried to just let it be.
It felt like crossing the ocean, but I did, thankfully, wash up on the other side.
The panic attack passed. I didn’t fight it, or beat it, I allowed it to be and it passed.
The next morning, I didn’t wake up in a panic attack.
The anxiety was still there, I could feel its sharp, tight edges, but it didn’t have a hold on me.
I surrendered to it again. I accepted that it was there and allowed it to be.
It still sucked, but only like a mild aftershock compared to the day before.
I had found my way back to acceptance again.
Maybe this time, with a little more understanding (don’t get me wrong, I’ve still lost it and found it what feels like a dozen times everyday).
Acceptance isn’t a place where I can arrive. It isn’t a relaxation resort or a peace spa.
Acceptance is a state of balance that I can find within myself when I truly stop trying to resist the present moment.
Even when the present moment is terrifying and painful, it still is what’s happening. Resisting what is is a recipe for more terror and pain.
I’ve learned this lesson many times, but maybe with each repetition the balancing act becomes a little less precarious, a little more stable.
Maybe I can never live in acceptance, but maybe, with enough practice, acceptance can be a state that lives within me.
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