Feeling anxious, stressed or panicked? Read my love letter for your stuck or panicked soul

Dear lost, searching, trying, sensitive soul,

If change has been forced upon you. If the rug has been pulled out from under your feet.

If what you had has been lost or taken from you and you’ve been thrown into a sudden abyss of darkness and uncertainty.

If your way is lost, you’ve lost your vision, become directionless, disoriented, confused and you don’t know what to do, who or where to turn to.

Your body may be panicking. You might be fearful and anxious, desperate and scrambling to find a way out of your situation. Your nervous system will be automatically making you react into fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

But don’t rush to take the first step that comes to mind to get you out of your experience and away from where you don’t want to be unless the house is on fire or you are in some other kind of immediate danger.

Don’t scramble to retrace your steps to find out where you went wrong to end up in this place for nothing is wrong despite what you may think. This may be confusing but stay with me and you’ll understand.

And to that voice inside you that is beating you up, blaming you, telling you how useless and hopeless you are, how you’ve stuffed everything up and are or will be a failure, or die lonely and destitute, say in as fierce and commanding voice you can muster, “Shut up! Go away! Leave me alone!”

Instead, take some long, slow deep breaths and carve out a space to rest exactly where you are, even if it’s just for five minutes as you read this.

If you can, breathe with your experience and notice the sensations in your body of the anxiety, fear, stuckness, confusion, unknowing, uncertainty and visionlessness, deeper and deeper with each breath you exhale.

If it becomes too intense, you can take a break. Look at the tree outside, an object in your room or pat your pet. When you’re ready come back.

Through breath and being you can be with and befriend your experience, befriend yourself and your life right now. It needs you. You need you.

You are alive and life is supporting you exactly where you are.

You have breath. Your heart is beating. You have the earth beneath you holding your weight.

The discomfort you feel isn’t necessarily a sign that something is wrong. Nor is it something you have to escape or even figure out. There is another way. I will show you.

The happiness you may have had and lost doesn’t need to be rediscovered right this very moment. The way forward doesn’t have to be known and planned.

Slowly you will adjust to what at first felt uncomfortable and made you want to scramble to find your way again.

You will find that you can look around at where you are now with curiosity, love and compassion; as you do, the fog will lift, the mountain may dissolve,  a path may reveal itself that goes under or around.

As you soothe your body and reground in the present moment, you can listen more intently and hear more clearly what is arising from within you, from the universe, Divine, God or Creator, and from your Soul.

You can receive guidance, support and the wisdom of your own answers because your body will become safe to open, to receive, to hear.

You will discover that you are standing on sacred ground, that being stopped in your tracks or the way forward disappearing beneath your feet came to serve a sacred purpose. It may be a time for rest, renewal, reconnection or redirection.

This sacred pit stop may help you strengthen and recommit to your vision or allow a new one to arise along with a new path to walk.

Or maybe you discover that you really did take a wrong turn and you can retrace your steps to that point and continue on. But this discovery is done without harshly judging and beating yourself up.

It involves discovering and opening the gifts of your wrong turn for it will hold lessons that grow your wisdom and power, fine-tune your ability to track your way and listen deeply to your soul’s guidance.

Don’t jump ahead and miss this step.  Don’t be in a rush to carry on and arrive.

You may stay here for a minute or months depending on what your soul needs to experience and discover.

If you were really meant to be there already, you would be there. If you were meant to know what to do, you would already know.

Our modern culture overvalues arriving, knowledge and achieving. It undervalues soul learning, true wisdom and meaning-making.

The fruits are always in the journey not the destination.

Slow down and be here where you are. I’m right here with you, believing in you, your multitude of gifts, your wisdom, your power and the intelligence in the unique unfolding of your life’s journey. It will look like no others.

Hold out your hands, with your palms facing up and open so you can receive your knowing. It will arrive in its own divine timing and way.

And when it does (for it will), scoop it into your heart to treasure with gratitude.

 It is the gold your soul came here to seek.

With love and courage

PS. For some practical steps and resources to help you feel safer in the midst of your experience, you might like to read my previous blog, Why you’re stuck and unable to find your way forward and what do do about it.