“Be here now” was Fr. Dacian’s mantra. He was the director of my novitiate in the Franciscan seminary. A novitiate is a year dedicated to prayer and discernment of one’s vocation. It should be ideal for focusing on the present moment. Yet even there, we novices would joke that “being there then” was far easier.
Many of my clients are dealing with anxiety or depression. Both arise from or get worse when I can’t be here now. With depression, I tend to dwell on past negative experiences. These may be from early childhood or more recent. I may ruminate on how my mom or dad wasn’t there for me, or how I was picked on in grade school, or over lost health, relationships, jobs, or social status.
Ideally, therapy helps me to work through these hurts and losses. I’m able to see how even my negative experiences have helped me to become the person I am now. I begin to see how the most difficult times sometimes yielded tremendous fruit, in terms of growth in patience, compassion, trust, and gratitude. With the wounds healed, I gain more energy to focus on the positive and live in the present. I’m better able to be here now.
With anxiety, I live in the future. I focus on the next bad thing that could happen. Things may be going well right now. But will they last? Nothing is certain. It’s like I’m wearing fear-tinted goggles that highlight possible threats. When one anxiety is resolved, I find another to focus on, like a bird leaving one branch only to light on another. I am “there then”. I’m dealing with some possible future negative. I’m not “here now”.
Probably the most helpful exercises I teach anxious clients are deep breathing and sensory awareness. They learn a particularly type of breathing that helps them to relax their psoas muscle, where we tend to store a lot of our tension. While “psoas breathing”, they focus on how their feet feel, then their ankles, calves, thighs, and so on throughout their body. They are often surprised at how relaxing so simple an exercise can be.
We then talk about how anxious people often “practice” being physically tense for years. They’re gearing themselves up for the next bad thing to happen. So it’s important for them to form a new habit. They need to practice being physically relaxed as often as possible. We also discuss anxiety’s future orientation. Sensory awareness is inherently relaxing. Anybody who’s luxuriated in a steam bath or enjoyed swimming on a hot summer day knows this. But such awareness is also healthily distracting and necessarily present-focused. If I’m thinking about how my toeser-woesers are feeling, I’m not thinking about how I’m ever going to get the house ready for the out-of-town guests. I’m feeling these physical sensations now. I stop and smell the roses: I slow down enough to experience the simple gift of sensory awareness in the present.
We instinctively do this soothing and distracting with children when they’re upset. When my son was a toddler and got scared, I’d take him into my lap and speak softly, repetitively, and reassuringly to him. He’d stop focusing on the thunderstorm or bad doggy and start focusing on the sound of my voice, the smell of my deodorant, the feel of my arms around him. And he’d relax.
You don’t have to be particularly anxious or depressed, however, to struggle with being here now. We all do. I am amazed at how I can worry, worry, worry about something. Then it’s resolved. I’m relieved. But I rarely relish the resolution. I may tell a few people the good news and thank God for His grace. But shortly after, I’m off to the races again. I’m focused on the next hurdle. I start to worry about how I’ll negotiate that.
It is so puzzlingly difficult to stay fixed in the fact that the mercies of the Lord endure forever; that His faithfulness is great; that all things work to the good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. It’s also so hard to stay in a stance of gratitude. When I know I’m rushing too much, that I’m too frazzled, I (not often enough), stop to thank God for all that is. I thank Him for the things I’m delighted about, and the things I’m really frustrated by. I thank Him for those that I have trouble with, and those that are easy to see as blessings. I thank Him for the world situation, the U.S. situation, my health and my aches and pains, what needs to be done and what I’ve accomplished.
What a healing and blessed exercise! It firmly situates me in the here and now. And the here and now is the only place where I can meet the Lord – or anyone else, for that matter. It’s, of course, the only place I can be at all. Here. Now.
