This Is Not My Anxiety
Tightness arises in the chest.
Fullness arises in the throat.
Vibration arises in the belly.
A label arises.
“Anxiety.”
Thoughts arise:
“What’s wrong?”
“Something’s off.”
“Oh crap.”
Are these chosen?
Are these owned?
They just appear like birds landing on a telephone wire.
And yet… immediately, without investigation, there is an assumption:
“This anxiety is mine.”
But when I look… where is the “mine”?
When I examine the experience itself…
not the story about the experience,
but the direct raw data of experience:
There are sensations.
There are thoughts.
There are labels.
There are judgments and predictions
But I cannot find ownership.
There is no evidence that this is my anxiety
apart from the belief that it is mine.
There is a belief in ownership (but not ownership of that belief!).
That belief is just another happening…
another passing ripple in awareness.
The Seagulls of Ownership
This reminds me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo that constantly yell:
“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!”
They do this about:
fish
boats
trash
anything at all
The absurdity of it is the point.
We do the same thing.
Sensations arise → “Mine.”
Thought arises → “Mine.”
Emotion arises → “Mine.”
But when we look, can we find evidence of ownership?
No sensation says “I belong to Dave.”
No thought has a little name tag on it.
The experience does not claim to be owned.
Ownership is a concept.
Ownership does not seems to be a feature of reality.
What has been labeled “anxiety” (or fear, anger, joy, sadness…) is no more mine than:
the sound of a train whistle in the distance
the cold of a winter gust
the hills I can see outside the window
Those are simply happening within experience.
We don’t claim them.
We don’t grab them.
We don’t sew a label onto them so no one else will think that these are theirs.
The same is true of sensations called “anxiety.”
They happen here,
in this field of awareness,
just like clouds drifting through the open sky.
Seeing the emptiness of belief in ownership:
Sensations become allowed.
Thoughts become allowed.
Life becomes allowed.
Without ownership, there’s nothing to defend.
Without defense, there’s nothing to resist.
Without resistance, there’s nothing to struggle against.
The body might shake.
The heart might pound.
The breath might tighten.
But there is no me caught in a problem.
There is just what’s happening.
There is just the honest raw experience of the moment…
without the overlay of “mine,”
without the extra fiction of ownership.
Experience is happening.
Ownership is imagined.
When we see this clearly,
even for a moment,
what we call “anxiety” becomes just another sensation.
It is no more personal than a gust of wind.
The relief isn’t in changing anything.
The relief is in seeing the truth of it.
Awareness is spacious enough
for whatever shows up.
And nothing is possessed.
Not even anxiety.
I am Dave. I help people live a drama-free life (with no self-improvement required).
If you are curious, you can schedule a conversation using the link below.
If it resonates, we can talk about working together. There is no obligation at all - just two human beings coming together to look at the miracle of existence and see what we find.
Here’s the link to schedule a call: https://calendly.com/unstruggling/discovery
Loving these posts Dave .
For me you are hitting more home runs than Babe Ruth 🙏