فصل هفدهم

chapter-17

boundary building

A makeup artist at the studio where I sometimes do morning television appearances tells me there is actually never any reason for her anxiety. ‘I’m not stressed, but I’m anxious.’ Yes, many of us just are. Today, anxiety is in our collective bones. It might not be clinical. We might not be able to point to the cause. We might be fatigued by the idea of ‘blaming’ it on something, such as a shithouse childhood or emotionally limited parents. But it’s there, everywhere. Everyone around me is talking about anxiety, as something that goes beyond their own personal struggle with it. It’s a ‘thing’. It’s not a stretch to say that it’s driving us all mental.

Shai, a very self-aware woman in her twenties who attended one of my forums, goes as far as saying her ‘everyday’ anxiety, the kind she notes as a collective thing, is more distressing than her medical neuroses, for its pervasiveness: ‘I’m okay with dealing with my PTSD stuff … but it’s the other kind of anxiety, the constant feeling of hyper-vigilance that’s not linked to anything tangible or anxiety-inducing that’s hardest.’ Yep, the world is getting more anxious. But it’s not just something that’s in the global waters. It’s specifically a ‘Modern Life’ thing, or more accurately, a Western Modern Life thing.

New findings from the most comprehensive meta-­analysis of anxiety and depression research to date, published by researchers at the University of Queensland, show that clini­cal anxiety affects significantly larger percentages of the population in the US, Western Europe and Australia/New Zealand compared to the Middle East and Asia. Interestingly, the opposite was true for depression, with people in Western countries less likely to be depressed.

What gives?

Let’s take a look at how Modern Life goes. Mostly, it’s frenetic and at a pace that’s not conducive to reflective thought.

Working on the fly from laptops.

Weaving in and out of traffic.

Eating on the run.

Walking around with takeaway coffees.

Keeping up with technology updates (the Anxiety of Being Three Updates Out of Date!).

Being expected to turn around school projects overnight (what’s your problem? You have Google!).

Ferrying toddlers to violin lessons.

Taking the whole family to Paris and London (for no reason other than everyone else seems to be doing it).

Online grocery shopping on your lunch break.

It’s all too fast for our human dimensions, as David Malouf put it. We don’t have time to adjust, to work out our priorities, and to reflect on whether what we’re doing when we’re running around madly is actually meaningful to us.

While we are meant to have more time (all those time-­saving devices were meant to deliver just this, no?), we have less space. We are ‘on’ 24/7. Every gap is filled. Even waiting at bus stops. We don’t leave work and unwind and stare into space for a bit, enjoying the sound of the birds, the soft dusk sunlight on fellow passenger’s faces. Nope, we must prune our social feeds.

I know there’s a generation of us who relish air travel because it’s a rare chunk of time when we have a ‘gap’ – we can’t be contacted, the inbox influx abates and if we do take the opportunity to get through emails, we have time to edit them before they send. Lovely languid luxury, I tell you! But airlines are now phasing in Wi-Fi on planes.

Technology freed us up … to imprison us further. It’s created the imperative to go faster, to take on more ideas, and to juggle more. There are no excuses for not coming up with an answer, and immediately. Not when there’s Google. Or Siri. Or Bots. There are no excuses for letting something slip. I mean, didn’t it automatically upload in your online diary?

But what if we need more time to know and to feel if it’s the right answer?

To stay on top of all the ideas and opportunities that Modern Life now affords us we have to keep multiple tabs open in our brains, which sees us toggle back and forth between tasks and commitments and thoughts.

And all of it competes. And it clusters. And down we go in a hyper-tabbed tangle, waking in the middle of the night so we can get through the backlog of thoughts and ideas and commitments.

All of which has made us too bloody over-excited. When we spat the dummy as kids, Mum would say we were over-­excited. ‘Come on, a little less excitement,’ she’d say. Yes, we need less excitement.

But self-mastery triumphs in this Modern Life of ours. So if we haven’t found happiness or calm or balance amidst it all – if we don’t cope – it’s because we’ve not tried hard enough. Because Modern Life dictates there’s an answer out there … you just have to try harder to find it and master it. Of course it doesn’t exist. So we are set up to fail.

I feel for young people. I think they’re hit particularly hard by this doomed imperative. Many sociologists peg increased anxiety among teens and young adults to this phenomenon.

The standard solution is to consume – food, possessions, partners, gurus. If our self-worth is suffering, we’re told to buy a new moisturiser. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, writes, ‘We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.’ Shai once again: ‘Today we’re told to do more stuff that has no purpose, which makes us anxious.’

Again, I think young people feel this acutely.

And here’s the dirty clincher: All of it drives us outwards, away from our true selves and from our yearning to know ourselves better. Plus, it drives us away from each other. Lack of community and belonging is cited by Dr Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before, as the primary driver of anxiety today. I’d include extensive quotes from Dr Twenge, but I think the book title says it all.

Then (big sigh), when we do find it all too much, Modern Life slaps us with a ‘disorder’ or disease diagnosis.

When really, it is quite fair enough – reasonable and sane, even – to find ourselves anxious when faced with Modern Life. I mean, we’re too bloody over-excited. Right Mum? And as many pragmatic mothers tend to say, ‘Now what are you going to do about it?’ 109.

There’s a lovely Ayurvedic way of looking at the whole anxious caper which in recent years I’ve found to be extremely helpful.

According to Ayurveda, anxiety is not a disease. It’s not an unhealable disorder. It’s merely a symptom of having got a bit off balance We don’t fix anxiety. It doesn’t need a fix. It just requires a bit of rebalancing.

In the Ayurvedic tradition, we all work to three doshas or ‘types’: vata, pitta and kapha. This is less woo-woo than it sounds, I promise. It’s simply a way to categorise body/personality types that exist for a multitude of evolutionary reasons. We all possess a mix of all three doshas, but tend to have one that dominates. Our dominant dosha can get out of balance, which causes us different digestion/weight, health and emotional issues.

Make sense?

So, generally …

Vata types: have light, flexible bodies and big, protruding teeth; small, recessed, dry eyes; irregular appetite and thirst; often experience digestive and malabsorption problems; are easily excited; alert and quick to act without much thinking; may give a wrong answer but with great confidence. Their dominant force is wind so they do not like sitting idle, and seek constant action. They’re FLIGHTY! Vatas hate cold. Hate, hate, hate it. They need warm, mushy foods to bring them back down to earth. And they love summer.

Pitta types: have a medium frame and weight. They seldom gain or lose much weight. Their eyes are bright but tend to be sensitive to light. Pitta people usually have strong appetite and thirst. They have excellent abilities for learning, understanding and concentrating; are highly disciplined; can be judgmental, critical and perfectionist, and tend to become ANGRY easily; have moderate strength, and a medium lifespan. Their force is fire – so summer is the time when pittas get easily aggravated. Sunburn, poison ivy, prickly heat and short tempers are common. Pittas need and love cooling foods (salads), and should avoid chillies and hot spices. I’ve noticed pitta men are often bald … too much heat coming out the tops of their heads!

Kapha types: have a strong and large body frame, big eyes, strong teeth and thick, curly hair; thick, smooth, oily and hairy skin; slow digestion and metabolism which often results in weight gain; cravings for sweet and salt; a calm, steady mind; a deep melodious voice and a monotonous pattern of speech. Kaphas are an earthy type and can get heavy – they need firing up. They respond well to coffee and spices. Kaphas tend to get aggravated as the moon gets full and during the winter and early spring, when the weather is heavy, wet and cloudy … it makes them too heavy and damp.

But here’s the thing. Excitable vata controls all the doshas. Like oxygen, it’s vital to everything else.

And here’s the other thing. When vata is out of whack – when it gets over-excited – we get anxious. No matter our dosha. Vata is the oxygen to the fire (pitta), the wind to the earth (kapha). Too much and off we burn, or whip into a whirly-whirly, out of control.

And here’s one more thing. Modern Life aggravates vata:

Abrasive city noises

Overstimulating coffee and sugar

Frenetic emailing

Cold gushes of air conditioning

Cold, crunchy dry foods (think chips, crackers, salads)

Multitasking and toggling between tabs

The worst is movement. Crazy cab rides across the city, overnight interstate trips, flying, driving long distances, they all send vata over the edge.

So add up all the things and what do you get? A whole bunch of us suffering from vata-deranged anxiety.

When this first occurred to me, I felt disappointment. I’m good at moving fast, it’s what defines me. I like the agility of being a windy type. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m arrogantly attached to many of the factors that make me anxious – the speed, the multitasking, the constant change. Which might sound ridiculous to the non-anxious. Not so much to those of us who rely on these things as coping mechanisms.

But I soon learned that Vedic philosophy doesn’t ask you to retreat to a cave or to renounce your mobile phone. It just suggests that when you’re out of whack you tame your vata a little with a bunch of techniques, to steer things back to a bit more balance.

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HOW TO TAME YOUR VATA

This is how I do it. It’s cumulative. The more you do, the more your flappy vata kite will chill. And the more balanced you’ll be. And the better you will feel. And the more your anxiety will balance out … I avoid air-con and fans. And get out of the wind. I often carry a shawl or spare jumper to wrap around my neck when I’m anxious in case I find myself imprisoned in a draught against my will. I’m aware that spring is not great for me. The wind is likely to send me off kilter. This is fine if I’m aware of it. I just do more of the stuff on this little checklist.

I back off from coffee when I’m fretty. I often get asked about coffee. Is it bad? Should you drink it? I take my cues from Ayurveda. Nothing is inherently bad; it’s about whether it’s sending you off the air. If you’re asking if it’s bad, it might mean that you feel that it quite possibly is. Me, I drink a long black most days. But I intuitively back off from it on a regular basis, in part to ensure I don’t get addicted to it, and also to rest my adrenals and let the wind out of the kite for a bit.

I try to eat lunch at 1pm. And dinner at 7pm. You pick your own timings. The routine bit is key. Vata energy needs routine to be calmed.

I eat heavier foods – sweet potato mash, root vegetable soups thickened with smooth yoghurt, and porridge. They get vata energy heavy and grounded – veritable Miss Janes of the food realm.

I eat oil. I eat coconut oil and ghee in stews and curries. And pour olive oil on my vegetables every night. A tablespoon or so. But when I’m worked up, I increase the amount. Oil nourishes and warms us. In Western nutrition, this is also acknowledged. Many of the most essential vitamins and minerals, and protein, are fat-soluble only. Which is why the Greeks and Italians always add oil to their veggies, the French and our grandmothers added butter. We need fat to be densely nourished.

I sit still for 5–20 minutes several times a day. I meditate. You might want to just sit on small bench with yourself. Or lie in a dark room.

I tell friends I have to leave by 9pm when I’m out at night. Vata is best pacified into sleep during the ‘kapha’ period before 10pm.

I turn off social media on the weekend and after 8pm at night. Sometimes, when vata (anxiety) has escalated, I commit Safari suicide, or Google Armageddon, which is to say I shut my browser down and let all the tabs go down with it. Everything is findable again. I let it go.

I wear vests and things that my mother always told me would keep my kidneys warm. I also bought a pair of Ugg boots three winters ago that extend to the knees.

I walk everywhere I can. I avoid car travel, even bike travel when worked up. In Ayurveda, the belief is that anything faster than walking can throw us off.

I do yoga. Preferably hot to really encourage getting down low and heavy.

I don’t go to The Shops. Shops are dens of vata and anxiety-­inducing pain. There’s the air-con, the noise, the bright lights, the options.

110.

Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher who was plagued with illness and anxiety and jumped between an esoteric collection of obsessions. He studied ‘the triangle’, invented mechanical calculators, and wrote extensive spiritual polemics, among many, many other unrelated pursuits. He famously wrote, clearly from experience: — cruel irony 16

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

The nervous toggler Pascal also remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And to let nothing happen. I’m not sure he ever got around to realising such a skill. He died at thirty-nine from what has been interpreted by some as anxiety-­related complications.

To this day, the idea of letting nothing happen challenges me. When I was a little girl living in the bush I would jump with excitement when the phone rang and physically ached to hear the sound of a car rumbling up our long driveway. I would climb a tree and wait and listen. For hours on end. For something to happen. Someone’s coming! Something’s about to happen! We rarely had visitors, perhaps once every two or three months. I’d cook over-salted scones and soggy cakes for them and pre-plan my outfits and conversations with the adults. I don’t think this anxious, incomplete anticipation has ever left me.

Today, when I’m jumpy, I grab my phone to see if something has happened on social media. Has someone responded to my Facebook post? Has my latest Instagram Stories share been flooded with views? I’ve witnessed my reaction sometimes to returning to my car when I haven’t put money in the parking meter. I actually like the feeling of the impending drama of a ticket! I can only conclude that it’s an ingrained addiction to ‘something about to happen’.

I met Oprah’s life coach once. Martha Beck writes a column each month in Oprah’s O Magazine which I was obsessed with at the time. She was the most heart-forward, funny writer I’d come across. She’s a thin woman with soft red hair and green eyes who reminds me of a little bird. She darts about and speaks fast, but somehow delicately. It turns out she showed me she can bend a spoon using her mind (and her tiny hands, lightly). I’m not kidding. A few things you should know: She first gets me to try bending the spoon (there was no way I can budge it, and, let me tell you, I have ‘man hands’); Martha weighs little more than a whippet with the corporeal strength to match; the act is un-premeditated, using a spoon from the café (not her own); and, finally, if you’ve seen The Matrix, yes, it’s rather like that.

Anyway. That’s not the point of this tale.

I’d asked if we could meet up during one of my Manhattan visits. It was during a bit of a transition period out of my Mid-thirties Meltdown. I was gathering strength. I’d started meditating. I was writing my ‘life bettering’ column and was in New York to interview a few Big Name Life Betterers. When we meet in the Hudson Hotel for green tea the first thing she says to me is, ‘I could tell you were one of my team.’ She reckons she knew from the way I’d phrased my email. She described me as ‘leaning so far forward it’s not right’. She got me on that one. Even before meeting me she could tell that I was hyper-vigilant and over-toggled and leaned into life with a ferocity that frightens most people and that I try to tame, but also know is a beast worthy of being called beautiful at times. It reflected on her maturity and wisdom that she acknowledged she was in the same camp. She was reaching out, as if to say, in the kindest way possible: ‘I know …’ Once again inspired by Alain de Botton.

I don’t think it’s bad to lean forward, or to enthusiastically make soggy cakes for house guests, or to want to know what everyone else is doing with their Sunday afternoon while you’re scrubbing the bathroom. We’re human. We’re curious and we reach out. It no longer serves us, however, when we do it to run from something. And if we’re too over-excited and wound up to know that we’re doing it. And if we’ve wound ourselves up so much that we’re no longer able to sit with ourselves and let nothing happen. Only we can tell if that line has been crossed. As we start to sit and stay and settle and find space and unfurl and tilt and reflect discerningly, we’re able to feel when we have. It hits us as an ugghhhh. We’ve lost ourselves again!

To be honest, even meditation can be a form of reaching outwards. British mindfulness counsellor Richard Gilpin writes in Mindfulness for Unravelling Anxiety that it’s a common mistake among those wanting to get mindful with their angst to expect to achieve states of calm through meditation. ‘This is a form of grasping – a seeking to indulge in pleasant states and to avoid the unpleasant,’ he writes. Meditation retreats around the Eastern hotspots are full of people running from something, hiding behind Magic Happens bumper stickers and quasi-spiritual hash tags (blessed lightwarrior unicornsandrainbows).

‘A wiser orientation would be to appreciate (and investigate) calm states when they do arise and to treat anxious ones with great kindness and respect. The radical encouragement of the practice is to sit with the most disagreeable of states for as long as they last. Sooner or later, they exhaust themselves of energy.’ 5.psd

READ THIS. IT’S FUN.

It’s an exercise I learned from Gilpin:

When you get to the end of this sentence, focus your eyes on the full stop after the word ‘up’, stay right there, don’t do anything else, and watch what shows up.

Now that you are reading this sentence, did you catch the moment when your eyes moved from the full stop? Was that movement intentional or did it seem to happen by itself?

Now cast your mind back to when you were focusing on the full stop. What happened? What did you experience?

Would you like to try the exercise again? Please do. It will be different this time. I don’t want to say how or why, because that’s not the point. I’d be allowing you an opportunity to grasp out to someone else if I did.

111.

Here’s what I reckon. In the olden days, there were institutional boundaries that kept us from getting overexcited. Our employers provided them, for instance. We worked a nine to five day and weekends were off limits. We didn’t take our phones home. We didn’t have home computers. We weren’t on call 24/7. We could whinge if the boundaries were crossed and someone – a boss, the HR department or the Union – would fix the issue.

The Church ordained days of rest each week and the shops were closed on Sundays. Plane trips were once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We communicated with letters, written slowly and mindfully. No one expected one-hour-or-less response times.

These boundaries created certainty anchors and reduced the number of decisions we had to make. They helped us keep on an even keel. But today there are few such boundaries. Information and obligations flood in. We keep thinking, after all these years (decades?) that there will come a lovely fine day when the influx eases. When we’ll get on top of it, as we once used to be able to. We still work to this old-school notion. But such a day no longer exists.

I think we’re also working under the misapprehension that someone else will come along soon and create the boundaries for us, like in the olden days. And police them. I have news for you: They won’t.

What we’re yet to work out is that we have to create the boundaries ourselves. This is the new barometer of success, wellness and happiness: how well can you create your own ways to shut down the distractions, reduce the toggling, stem the tide of frazzling data, carve out space in your week for reflection and stillness.

In the past, success was gauged by how well you could hunt down information, collate data, find a great reference in the World Book Encyclopedia.

Now, success must be gauged by how much information and data you can shut out … via your own boundaries. When you realise this, it’s actually quite freeing. We’re given permission! You mean I don’t have to wait for anyone else to fix this? I actually have to do it myself. You beaut!

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BUILD YOUR OWN BOUNDARIES

You have to create the spacious, loose, still, tab-less world you want to live in. You just have to. By way of inspiration, I’ll share with you that the most successful people I know have created firm boundaries for themselves. Particularly firm. Here’s a few examples that I found particularly helpful. You might, too. Pick the ones that appeal.

Check your emails twice a day only. The 4-Hour Work Week’s Tim Ferriss told me about this one. He checks his in batches at 10am and 4pm. He has an out-of-office on permanently that advises anyone who contacts him of this, so as to manage their expectations. When we chatted over the phone a few years back (after he replied to me thirty-six seconds after I sent my email, at 2.45pm San Francisco time) he told me that creating boundaries for himself meant training those around him to not expect him to be always on.

Try the 10am Rule. One self-styled life expert I came across says to not ‘react to anything until 10am’. That is, first do the stuff that matters to you, rather than knee-jerking out of the gates to the demands of others.

Live somewhere slow. Zen blogger Leo Babauta moved to Hawaii to get away from the distraction that is city life. Novelist Pico Iyer moved from Manhattan to rural Japan, ‘in part so I could more easily survive for long stretches entirely on foot, and every trip to the movies would be an event … Nothing makes me feel better – calmer, clearer and happier – than being in one place.’ I moved to the beaches north of Sydney so I could have less city frazzle around me and ready access to the healing effects of the bush and the ocean. It was a big sacrifice. It meant leaving behind friends and my local community and living temporarily again. I did this just as I embarked on researching and writing this book and I’m conscious this boundary has had a big part to play in providing just enough grounding to get me through the anxiety of writing a book on anxiety.

Have a Family Investment Bucket. My mates Nicho and Heidi initiated this in their house. Phones and iPads go in there from 6pm until the next morning.

Leave your phone at home. When I’m feeling wobbly I leave my phone at home. It’s a defiant act in this day and age. Every week or so I drop out completely and don’t answer my phone all day.

Get a room of your own. I met someone who, every few months, books in to a cheap hotel not far from her home on wotif.com. She checks in after work. Runs a bath. Reads. Paints her nails. Orders room service. Watches a movie. Sleeps soundly. And checks out the next day and goes to the office. She tells her husband she’s away for work for the night. She feels a little guilty about lying to her family. But feels that the payoff for all involved is worth it.

Try a Think Week. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has one every six months. He extracts himself from his chino-wearing Silicon Valley brethren and heads to a wee cabin on a hill, eliminating all distractions. Lifehacker blogger Michael Karnjanaprakorn describes his own attempt at such a week: ‘I created a life to-do list, did a lot of research on happiness (where I learned that it’s about the frequency, not the quality of positive experi­ences). I focused on my personal development (not career development). I went for a hike in the woods. I learned how to cook organic food. I read three books I’ve been meaning to finish forever. I did yoga and meditation every day, which cleared my mind. And I sat for hours and just stared at my beautiful surroundings during the morning sunrise.’ I’ve done this a few times. It’s challenging.

Create your own Sabbath. I joined National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner on one of his trips to what he terms Blue Zones – pockets of the planet where people live the longest. He drummed into me that one of the most important of the nine factors that lead to a long, healthy life is having a day of rest. Me, I take Thursdays off. It’s marked out in my calendar as ‘busy’. Permanently. On Thursdays I catch up on long reads I’ve saved. I’ll nut out thoughts in a notebook. I’ll do things back to front. I wrote this book on Thursdays. Thursdays are a day of space.

Create a mercenary Out-of-Office notification. When I travel or am in writing shutdown, I set an Out-of-Office reply advising that I will not be following up on emails. I invite people to resend their request after my return date if the matter is still important. Which effectively pushes the onus back on the sender to reconnect. Which is smart. I mean, how do I know if they’ve resolved the matter in my absence? And, after all, they are the ones needing a piece of me. We forget this. We forget that email is not a summons.

Don’t be Google. People can get lazy with emails, firing off a question that can easily be Googled or nutted out with a little time and care. Anxious people tend to be overly earnest in their desire to reply and to help others. Create a boundary around this. I do. I used to reply politely to these emails. Now I just press delete. A journalist friend James says he feels justified in being an email non-replier. He explained it well: ‘People think that because they’ve spent five seconds firing off an email asking something of me, they deserve a response that will take me twenty-five minutes to research and compose,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t weigh up.’ Just write less emails. Every email sent begets another three, filling up your inbox. See how it feels to pull back a little. Observe how many issues sort themselves out without your vigilance.

Own less. I’ve spoken to many digital nomads and minimalists who’ve declared light living is the way to go. They banged out (sponsored) blogs and got their exploratory trips around the world paid for. Maybe not surprisingly, most of them gave up the experiment after a year or so. That said, I personally believe wholeheartedly that living simply is the way to live. For me, it reduces a lot of decisions (I don’t own enough clothes to have ‘wardrobe crises’ when I’m getting dressed) and steers us to living to better principles. It creates space to do so. After the global financial crisis, a host of studies came out showing that we are indeed happier with fewer possessions. Most showed it’s due to ‘hedonic adaptation’ – we’re programmed to stabilise happiness levels. So the happy jolt from buying or having stuff is always short-lived. Which is why a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that experiences (a canoe trip) make us far happier than things. Further, another study published in Psychologi­cal Science found that more possessions – ‘an embarrassment of riches’ – reduces our ability to enjoy simple things, like sunsets and chocolate. The awareness of having stuff distracts us from basic pleasure.

Many experts in the realm, however, bang on about the joys of decluttering and tidying up. I will pipe up here and say that chucking stuff out and shedding our shackles is not the responsible way to go about it. Discarding good resources and getting obsessed with reordering things into boxes (which you go buy from container shops) is plain wrong. Don’t buy the crap in the first place is my antidote. Or more directly, don’t go to the shops.

112.

There’s a farmer on his deathbed. He’s gasping his last breaths, but has assembled his greedy, lazy sons to tell them where he’s hidden the family fortune. They hover impatiently, expectantly. The farmer raises his arm and points out the window to a large field. ‘It’s out there.’ And with that he passes away. The greedy, lazy sons immediately begin digging up the field, row by row, searching for the treasure. Finally, they get to the last row and are bitterly disappointed. The treasure wasn’t found.

The following harvest they have their best crop ever.

Do the journey. Do the work. Do the little right moves. The crop comes.