I am thinking about anxiety.  For me, it is the state of being uncentered, ungrounded, susceptible to all of the habitual travelling that my mind can do when it does not have a goal, a home, or a centerpoint. K said yesterday that her mother could not tolerate any sort of peace and would hammer at her verbally until all peace was blown up or destroyed.  My mother is not nearly as violent but I do relate to this.  She is a very anxious person and that anxiety run her like a motor keeping her moving.  Her worrying leads her to action most of the time, but as she gets older, her body and mind let her down and she is able to do less, and therefore she worries more.  Always goal setting and projecting herself into the future.  Luckily, for my mother and for the world around her, most of the things that she sets as goals for herself are good things–due perhaps to her progressive church upbringing, her privilege and her connection the idea of doing good. Her value and goal-based anxiety could have been more aimless.  My clients (and me at times) experience an unproductive general anxiety that causes one to worry and fret, and feel powerless and even paralysed at times.  Some of this anxiety leads people, in our post-church era, to shop, redecorate, eat, watch television, or smoke pot. Since I do not have calm built into my person, I need to be constantly vigilant to be in my body.  Left to my own unconscious devices, I will start to fret and worry and cause unhappiness for those around me, for my children. Reasons for increased anxiety are my own lack of vigilance and discipline, not the presenting issues that my anxiety attached itself to–nine times out of ten.  Most often, it can be cured by  refocusing on anti-anxiety strategies.  Usually my anxiety takes over because I was brought up by an anxious mother in an increasingly anxious world, not because of current issues. I am like a garbage can. I need to empty myself and to regularly do energetic transfusions.  Stretching, moving and writing and shitting.  I need to move and remove the bad stuff—to release.  And then by reading good things, working on writing, listening to good music, having stimulating conversations, seeing freinds, cooking and eating well, I replace the bad energy with good.  It is very simple.  I need to clean house.  Things always work themselves out when I live like this.  I am not retreating to the Ashram or anywhere else for an extended stay–at least not now.  I accept that I live in a world full of torment, pain, abuse and injustice.  This is where I live.  Here.  And furthermore, I choose to sit with the stuff with other people in therapy.  I need to help people move their stuff.  And I need to move my own. B was allowed peace as a child.  His peace and internal rhythm was protected, encouraged and admired.  He has that internal rhythm built into himself.  He spends most of his time doing nourishing and edifying things—not things  that can lead to clogged pipes like me. I do not have calm built into me.  I need to be vigilant and self-protective and disciplined in creating and abiding in inner and outer calm in order to access my own internal rhythm and authority.