فصل ششم

chapter-6

slow

In my late teens I had a handwritten note Blu-Tacked to the back of my bedroom door: ‘Climb a tree’. When anxiety struck, it would remind me to abort the downward plunge and scamper to a bush reserve fifteen minutes from the student house I lived in and get myself up a tree.

I’d sit up there, in my tree, sometimes for an hour, the after-work dog walkers passing beneath me, the eucalypt sap causing a rash on my bare legs. I think it was the sheer ludicrousness of it all that lifted me out of the spiral.

I still climb trees sometimes, for the same kind of absurd jolt. But now I mostly go for a walk.

28.

Before I learned to walk, however, I ran myself into the ground. That protracted Mid-thirties Meltdown I’ve mentioned a few times? It’s probably time I shared how it went.

I’d been editing Cosmo for almost four years. For the majority of this time I’d been operating just outside my depth. I got the gig aged twenty-nine, a few weeks after moving to Sydney from Melbourne. I decided one day and within two weeks my little car (a Toyota Corolla back then) was packed and I was on the road.

I’d never read the magazine in my life, only glancing at it in doctor’s surgeries. I’d never edited before either, nor managed staff. Plus, and, I soon learned, critically, I didn’t own makeup or a hairdryer. Nor heels, nor eyelash extensions. I have to hand it to the then-publisher who employed me – she knew how to spot an overly earnest worker who would fake it until she made it and who’d just work and work until she seemed like all the other editors who’d attended the private ladies schools and knew what Japanese hair straightening was. Because an overly earnest worker will just keep on working and working, long after she’s faked it and made it.

I loved the job. The adrenaline rush sustained me and I was learning so fast. It was a sport to me. I got a kick from playing my position as best I could. But a few years into the gig things started to catch up with me. At the time, I was also extracting myself from a highly unhealthy relationship, the kind I’d warn young women about in the Love Life pages of the magazine. I’d shelved my friends. ‘We’ve lost you,’ my close friend Ragni told me one night over a dinner that had been cancelled and rescheduled three times (by me). And I was drinking. A bottle of red wine a night. And smoking.

My fix was to go harder and to bang the proverbial square peg into the round hole with even more force. Because that’s all I knew. I fixed things by going harder. And by running. I ran and I ran. I ran 10 kilometres each way to work most days. I ran to yoga class. I did sand running races. I also competed in 24-hour mountain-bike races. By now I was sleeping three or four hours a night, going into work early and on weekends, trying to make it all … work. I was bone-crushingly tired, but I kept going.

There had been heart palpitations and I’d lost a lot of weight. My hair was falling out; I’d tug at a strand and more kept coming. The beauty editor brought in hair thickening powder for me to try.

And then …

We were doing a story in the magazine on the new ‘egg timer test’, or anti-mullerian hormone test, which had just arrived in Australia. The test claimed to enable women to see how many fertile years they had left.

Not one person on staff – and the team of fifteen were all women – was at the right point in their menstrual cycles to do the test for the ‘guinea pig’ story we were running. Except me.

The test results came back a week later. The lovely lady on the phone was sombre. ‘There’s something not right,’ she said. ‘You have no female hormones left. None. It’s like you’re going through menopause.’ My periods stopped the following month, after almost a year of irregularities. I was told I’d never have children.

The lovely lady advised me to see a doctor and endocrinologist immediately. I didn’t. I shelved the prognosis along with everything else I couldn’t face. And kept going and going, in the belief I should be able to get on top of things. The other stuff could wait. And, damn, no children? That was going to take a lifetime to digest. I wanted to leave that one on the shelf for as long as I could.

I hammered the square peg at Cosmo for another six months. Finally I quit, flimsily claiming ‘illness’ in my resignation letter, although I’d still not seen a specialist. I was simply too fatigued to go on. I didn’t share the exact details of my illness, because I didn’t know them. But I’ve since been (helpfully!) told, you only had to take one look at me back then to know I wasn’t well.

So did I see a doctor now that I’d pulled from the race? That would’ve been a self-caring and sensible thing to do. But I wasn’t done yet. Goodness no! I still thought I could work myself out of my situation. Three weeks later I hopped on a plane to New York to write a book about a porn star. I’d been approached by a publisher to co-write the book. Of course I said yes. It tends to be my default answer at the best of times. Yes! Yes! I lived with the porn star in her 42nd Street apartment and appeared in a hardcore porn movie playing a model that interrupts an R-rated scene playing out on the casting couch. I believe it was called Latin Adultery, should you want to look it up.

Splendidly, the porn star got cold feet and pulled the pin on her memoir project, leaving me in considerable debt and without something to, oh you know, work on. No matter. I reached out to a bunch of magazines, and landed a commission for a story that saw me climb Machu Picchu for a travel story. It was enough to pay for my flight home. And enough to thoroughly exhaust me to the point of not being able to remember much of the high-altitude hike that many dream of doing. My only distinct memory is reading MAD magazine – the one copy I’d bought at a newsagent in Los Angeles on the way through – with the photographer who accompanied me on the trip. Every night we’d lie in the dark in our tiny tent and laugh deliriously at the same gags. He’d fall asleep and I’d cry until dawn.

Eventually, eight months after getting the news about my fertility issues, I ran out of ways to flog the tired, sad horse that was me and went to see a doctor. I look back on all of this now and find the brazen signs I was being presented with ridicu­lously comical. I mean, you couldn’t write a more clichéd script for a girl who needed to bloody well get real and stop climbing mountains. You couldn’t inject more deus ex machina.

I went to get the results of my blood tests from the specialist. The doctor looked at his monitor then got up abruptly. He called out into the corridor and two interns followed him in. ‘Do you mind if they join us?’ he asked me. I nodded; I didn’t mind anything much at that point. I was numb with fatigue.

The doctor jabbed at his monitor. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ The interns nodded and shook their heads. All three looked at me.

‘Sarah, I’m not going to sugar-coat it. It’s a miracle you’re vertical.’ I didn’t disagree. It took every last bit of energy to get to the surgery. Every joint hurt getting off the couch. I was filled with a gut-sinky dread when I tried to walk and I trembled from the spine outwards just opening a door. I described it to others as feeling like three hangovers, a severe case of pre-menstrual antsyness and the kind of flu that sees you wince when the phone rings. All at once. When I tried to leave the house it was like in those dreams when you’re trying to run from the swamp monster but you can’t move your legs through the sludge, or where you’re in an exam and you can’t, as hard as you try, see the page. Actually, that sums it up perfectly.

‘Well, I’ve been falling over a lot,’ I told the trio in front of me, and showed them the scabs on my knees.

The doctor told me I have Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. The thyroid is a small butterfly-shaped gland in the neck responsible for producing thyroid hormones. When your body cops a constant avalanche of stress hormones, your thyroid can get damaged and stop the thyroid hormone-producing party. Now, every cell in your body is affected by thyroid hormones, so when this happens, pretty much your entire body is affected, or at least all the parts of you that make you feel human. My doctor told me I have the worst case any of them had seen.

Further tests a few weeks later revealed my white blood cell count was barely existent, that I was pre-diabetic and that I’d developed osteoporosis in my right hip and in my neck. I was told, again, there would be no children.

‘You left this far too long to get treated,’ the doctor said.

‘What would’ve happened if I’d left it longer?’

‘Heart failure … you’re one or two weeks away from it.’

(One endocrinologist told me I was ‘adrenally skeletal’. ‘You’re a Ferrari with a good duco, but you’ve been doing one-twenty in first gear. Your insides are metal rubbing on metal.) ‘You need to stop,’ my doctor added and handed me a prescription for synthetic thyroid hormone, which I’ve taken ever since, albeit now at the minimum dosage.

29.

Years ago at my cousin’s wake, I stood eating asparagus sandwiches cut in squares on the verandah with the priest, and a mood came over me. It was a little waft. Everything went quiet. The curtains billowed. It was a particular mood. I’ll tell you what it was. It was a big, vast, alive, connected, resigned, prickly, vulnerable phew. My cousin had been in mental anguish. He’d suicided at fifteen. It was all very harsh and sad, but I felt a softness come over the room as the fullness of life was felt by everyone there. Funerals, I find, often have that beautiful effect on us.

A similar mood came over me as I digested my diagnosis. I felt a soft relief. And, yes, that was it, I felt excited. What had just happened was a game changer. This is serious, Mum. This is another thing I say inside my head over and over (it’s an OCD thing). For anyone born post 1990s, This is Serious Mum (TISM) was also the name of a band back before you were around. I say it when something big and important happens – like the three times I’ve fallen in love and the times when I’ve had big mountain-bike accidents and wound up in hospital. I knew I’d been granted an opportunity here and that I had to rise to it, soft and full.

This is seriously big and awesome and overwhelming and I might not be a big enough vessel to fully process it all.

When the doctor told me the diagnosis, I knew I’d been given a wake-up call.

30.

Here’s why Hashimoto’s is the perfect disease for people like me: it causes rapid weight gain (I put on 15 kilograms in four weeks); your hair falls out in clumps; your nails peel off; you lose the outer third of your eyebrows (oddly); big angry pimples festoon your face; there’s extreme sweating, stomach bloating, water retention, constipation, sluggishness, and an inability to exercise (when you try to exercise, all of the above symptoms worsen); you develop debilitating indecisiveness (this has been linked to faulty thyroid function); this weird thing happens where foundation turns white on your face and makeup goes fluorescent pink; noises and bright lights hurt; and you just want to be left alone.

In essence it totally blows apart everything tight-fisted, adrenal A-types like me define ourselves by. It attacks our vanity, our pride, our emotional buttressing.

But Hashimoto’s also serves a very important function. It stops us when we can’t do it ourselves. It’s like our bodies step in and say to us, ‘Well, if you won’t stop, I will. And I’ll collapse right here, in the middle of everything and prevent you from going any further down this path until you get a grip on yourself.’ When I share this in my public talks, the front few rows always nod their heads vigorously. That’s another thing about autoimmune types – we’re particularly earnest (what comes first, the disease or the behaviour, I don’t know) and tend to sit at the front, asking the questions, leaning forward, desperate to understand more.

When I was first diagnosed, it all hurt. Really hurt. And my anxiety flared (of course). I’d spent my life agile and I arrogantly traded on being fit and having a relatively androgynous form. I claimed to be ‘beyond my dress size’ – a proponent of all shapes. But when I put on the fifteen kilos I fairly and squarely regarded my body as repulsive. In some ways I think I always have. As a woman, I’m not unique in that. But being slim, not having flesh and curves and bumps to get in the way and impede dressing and moving, meant I could largely keep my body out of the picture. But now I had a disease that played itself out visibly on my body. This in itself dragged me down into an even darker place that I couldn’t ignore.

Authorities tell us that 80–90 per cent of autoimmune sufferers have anxiety/depression. The inflammation that the disease causes can lead to inflammation of the brain, leading to anxiety.

What causes autoimmune disease? There’s generally a hereditary pre-disposition going on, that can be set off by a virus. Toxins, gluten, acidic foods, over-exercising, the toxic effects of electro-magnetic frequencies, fluoride and soy have also been implicated. The latest research is pointing squarely at inflammation and gut dysbiosis … and, whattayaknow, sugar as a truly toxic trigger. But for me, after years of looking into it and chatting to other sufferers, I think one of the most consistent root causes to be observed is the systematic hammering of oneself into the wrong holes. That is, running too hard at the wrong priorities, compromising ourselves, force-fitting ourselves into ways of living we know aren’t right … all of which is highly abrasive and inflammatory. Some argue the inverse – that anxiety causes the inflammation, which then causes the various metabolic illnesses. Anxiety has been found to have the same DNA pathways as abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes and various autoimmune diseases. Either way, the correlation is there.

What fixes it? What’s the only way to get back on track? The designated medications only do so much. They keep you ticking over. But to heal and thrive – both with autoimmune disease and anxiety – the only salve is slowing down, taking care of yourself, living cleanly and getting gentle and kind.

It’s not coincidence that the approach is the same for both afflictions. For me, they are the same thing, both a symptom and trigger of each other.

31.

Part of the deal with treating Hashimoto’s was that I had to stop exercising. I could walk, the doctors said, but extremely slowly. For me, frankly, this entailed going back to the beginning and learning to walk again.

When you’ve only known two speeds – on and off – the mild, mediocrity of walking pains your sense of self. I wanted to run. But even the idea that preceded the decision to burst into a jog ugghhhs at my head like a shrill laugh to the temple. Walking with the slightest hint of tension in my body or mind ugghhhs, too.

This became my barometer, this shrill but fuggy spasm of wrongness – a stinking mixture of regret, anger and disgust – that gripped me when I did anything that pushed or poked. If you’ve been really sick before, you might know this feeling. If you’re anxious, you might know it, too. It happens, of course, to get us to stop, or at least slow down, and take care of ourselves. I know, I know. How bizarre, hey, that we would have such a mechanism! If you’re someone who actually climbs into bed when they get the flu (that is, a life natural), you will, of course, find it very weird that the rest of us find this phenomenon extraordinary.

So I learned to walk and, along with meditating, it was a big part of my healing process, for both my Hashimoto’s and my anxiety. It still is.

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JUST WALK

When I’m anxious, or ‘thyroidy’ (AKA inflamed), I remember to walk. Not far. Not fast. Not fancy.

I breathe in for three steps – left, right, left – and out for four steps, like my deep belly breathing, but in motion. I count and breathe. I focus on drawing energy up from the earth, through my feet and up to the top of my head (two, three) and then I push the beige buzziness back down again through my legs, my shoes, into the earth (two, three, four). I breathe the energy in a loop, over and over. I move slowly and rhythmically like this.

After a bit it feels like I’m a conductor, fuelled by the massive generator that is this rotating planet.

To do this you have to walk reeeaaallllyy slowly. Which is the point. Because all focus is shifted to the ‘breathing-­and-staying-upright’ part of your brain; the anxiety takes a back seat.

I remember one morning (after about two months of trying this technique) I was walking around the coastal headland not far from where I was living. It was early and the warm winter sun bounced off the ocean in sparkles back up onto my face and I realised I was smiling. I was smiling from my inside, effortlessly.

I didn’t count my breathing anymore, but I still walked slowly and carefully, drawing energy up and back down into the earth. Blinded by a warm flash of sparkle I was aware I no longer felt heavy and ploddish. I wasn’t springy either. I was kind of … just right. I didn’t feel pulled down by gravity, nor did I feel like I was bursting away from it, countering it with calf-flexed bravado. I was kind of with it. In between it. And it was extraordinarily effortless. The uggghhh in my hips and in my head was gone. And I didn’t want to get super excited about the just-rightness or start planning how I was going to build on this lovely, soft sensation … because that seemed slightly uggghhhy. So I just walked.

32.

A University of Toronto study looked at how this kind of mindful breathing while walking works to quash anxiety. Similar to compassionate therapy thinking, it found that we have two distinct brain networks. Our old brain sees us experience life as bodily sensations in real time. On the other hand, our new brain, which is our default network, tends to steer us to living life with a constant narrative playing in the background. Thus, we don’t experience a warm zephyr or an awe-inspiring sunset in the now. Instead, the sunset triggers a narrative about how it’s getting late and you really need to get home and defrost that damn pork. The study found that when you activate one network you dampen or disrupt the other. So, to bring things back to the beauty of the kind of anxiety-curing walking I advocate, it would seem that when you focus on the breath and the earth and the steps as a simple bodily sensation, you dampen the noisy, wandering storyline mechanism.

Another theory tells us that walking eases anxiety because it provides the surging stress hormones with an outlet. We were programmed to offload the build-up of stress hormones after the initial stressor was activated. A snake crosses our path. We freak. The hormones go into hyper-drive, telling our body to flee, fast. We flee and the hormones subside.

Lena Dunham, who’s gone public several times about her anxiety, says: ‘To those struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression: I know it’s mad annoying when people tell you to exercise, and it took me about sixteen medicated years to listen. I’m glad I did. It ain’t about the ass, it’s about the brain.’ Studies show any movement, but particularly walking, will ease anxiety when we’re in the middle of a stress hormone surge. Indeed, the studies show that a mere 20–30 minute walk, five times a week, will make people less anxious, as effectively as antidepressants. Even better, the effect is immedi­ate – serotonin, dopamine and endorphins all increase as soon as you start moving. Please be aware that I’m not suggesting you flush your meds down the toot and take up boot camp. I’m just highlighting the efficacy of exercise.

And while I’m adding caveats, I’ll also advise against hardcore exercise if you’re anxious. Gentle and slow stuff is best.

So.

Just walk.

33.

I walk to work, to dinner with friends, to meetings. I schedule phone calls around my walking trips, to and from work. Sitting here I’ve just calculated I’ve owned a car for just five of the twenty-two years I’ve held a licence. This is partly so I can walk some more.

There, another tip for having a better anxious journey: get rid of your car.

I’ve tailored my wardrobe to walking. Almost all of my shoes are flat with cushioned souls; my sartorial statement is Tracksuit Chic featuring shorts and stretchy pants and the kind of drapey stuff people like Gwyneth wear when they do ‘at home with’ articles in magazines. I walk to black tie events in my fancy frock and rubber thongs or lightweight sneakers that can fit in my oversized clutch after I change into heels around the corner. Oversized clutches are also part of my walking neurotic sartorial statement.

Blokes, you don’t even face such impediments. So. Walk.

34.

I’m also a mad hiker. I clear my weekends to hike. I head off on a train with a map and credit card or five bucks tucked down my bra and fling myself into the bush to traverse rocks and dust and creeks for a few hours. I travel to hike. It’s my favourite Thing To Do. I set off over the Sierra Nevada, across Greek Islands, from English county to county. If it’s a multi-day affair, I set off with just a canvas shopping tote containing a change of undies, water, phone, toothbrush and perhaps a cucumber or two for snacking and rehydrating. Off I go for eight hours a day, a week at a time. Always solo.

Ingrid, my publisher, just added this comment: ‘My doctor calls it positive, neurotic behaviour: you do it compulsively because you are neurotic but the net benefit is positive. In my case it’s swimming.’ Positive neurotic behaviour! I love that there’s such a thing.

Frederick Nietzsche and Charles Darwin did the same. They both hiked every single day, until old age. Both had anxiety. Both credit walking with taming their heads enough to be able to sort problems and bring their inspired ideas to fruition. ‘Only thoughts reached by walking have value,’ wrote Nietzsche.

Why does hiking work?

Hiking gets us into nature … and multiple studies show that folk who live in green spaces have lower rates of mental health issues. It’s been suggested that getting away from city freneticness allows the prefrontal cortex to take a break. Accordingly, stress hormones, heart rate and other markers back off. Japanese scientists call the phenomenon shinrin-­yoku, or ‘forest bathing’. Their recent studies suggest the benefits come from breathing in ‘aromas from the trees’ known as phytoncides, an array of natural aerosols that trees give off for pest control.

One study found that salivary cortisol levels in people who gazed on forest scenery for twenty minutes were 13.4 per cent lower than those who did the same in urban settings.

Hiking connects us to ourselves. A University of Michigan study found that because our senses evolved in nature, by getting back to it we connect more honestly with our sensory reactions. Which connects us with our true selves, and enhances a feeling of ‘oneness’. Or perhaps we could say, a Something Else.

Neuroscientists at the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory have also found that awe-inspiring natural experi­ences release oxytocins – the hormones that makes us feel warm and fuzzy and connected with others. Ergo, that urge to interrupt a mega natural encounter – arriving at a waterfall or witnessing a spectacular sunrise – to take a photo or tweet the experience back to friends and family.

Hiking calms. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a ninety-­minute walk through a natural area led to lower levels of brooding and obsessive worry. Brain scans of the subjects found that there was decreased blood flow to the subgenual prefrontal cortex. Increased blood flow to this region of the brain is associated with bad moods. Everything from feeling sad about something, to worrying, to major depression seems to be tied to this brain region. Hiking deactivates it.

The study incorporated a control group who spent that ninety minutes walking through a city. They reported no such difference.

According to a 2010 report in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, even getting out into nature for five minutes at a stretch is enough to give your self-esteem a substantial upgrade. And know this: walking near water seemed to have the biggest effect.

Hiking creates space and clear thinking. One University of Minnesota study confirms that expansive environments – including rooms with high ceilings – inspire expansive thoughts. Another published in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology looked at why walking, specifically, gets us cerebrally fired up. Normally, multitasking results in weakened performance. But it found walking uses a separate ‘well’ of attention to busy-mind thinking, allowing our ‘thinking well’ all the space and resources it needs to do its thing. To reflect. And to calm.

Hiking gets us present. And this is key. Let me explain. When you hike over a long period in tough conditions (heat, rocks, steepness) you must enter the moment. You must focus on the here and now. This is because as soon as your mind wanders to thoughts of the finish line or of what you’re going to eat for dinner or whether you have enough water for the distance or how tired you’re feeling, you lose your mojo. Your heart sinks. Your head goes ugghhh. Instead, you must keep trudging and enjoying the trudging. The crunch of the rocks underfoot. The cicadas. The smell of the fig trees. Thing is, you must keep present, to keep going, to not feel like you’re going to throw up. As soon as I start trying to calculate how much further it is to go, I feel a stab of sickness in the gut and I’m forced back to the present. And to joy. It’s such a gift! Time passes, steered and corralled by the ugghhh-y pain of future thinking.

And one’s anxiety abates.

35.

Australian author David Malouf wrote in his exploration of The Happy Life in The Quarterly Essay that humans are happy within limits. He clarifies that he takes happiness to be something closer to contentment than happy-clappy elation (and thusly I was able to read through to the end of the essay). He argues that we’re capable of being content even in the direst circumstances … so long as things are brought in to ‘human dimensions’. Things can be super grim, but if the scope of what we must endure is narrowed, we’ll cope … and even find meaning and purpose within these confines. Soldiers will experience satisfying camaraderie and true belonging in the very narrow confines of a POW camp, for instance. On a less extreme level, a cancelled flight can see you have one of the most peaceful afternoons reading a book while waiting at the gate.

Malouf writes that a big part of contemporary unease comes from having so much of our life occurring at a speed that our bodies are not aligned with. We may be able to cross countries in mere hours, and catapult ourselves through space, but ultimately, he says, ‘we are still bone-heavy creatures tied to the gravitational pull of the Earth’.

Yes, we are bone-heavy creatures. And there is a pace that was set out for us. And a pace for discerning thinking. But, boy, do we push the pace these days. And then we wonder why we feel so at odds with life. I get asked all the time why we’re more anxious today. I think this phenomenon has a lot to do with it. I read Malouf’s essay when I first set out to write this book and I realised that this was a crucial muscle to build – the muscle that gets us back in sync with our core referencing point (our bodies) for understanding the world, with discerning thought and the beat of our hearts.

Walking and hiking does this.

Cooking does, too. The witchy, grandmotherly type of cooking where you prepare things from scratch and you treat it as a hobby, not a chore to be rushed through. Fermenting vege­tables gets me back in sync.

Yoga works. Hot and slow and controlled by breath, breaking down to our bone-heavy pace.

And then there’s sex. Sex helps anxiety. I like this passage from D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. Anxious Ursula and Birkin have had a fight. Then they have sex. Fully engorged sex. Then they go downstairs and Ursula serves the tea: She was usually nervous and uncertain at performing these public duties, such as giving tea. But today she forgot, she was at her ease, entirely forgetting to have misgivings. The tea-pot poured beautifully from a proud slender spout, her eyes were warm with smiles. She had learned at last to be still and perfect.

Handwriting is great, too. I handwrite a lot. Sometimes just to calm my anxiety. It slows things down and forces me to connect with my thoughts, the discerning ones. Typing on a keyboard, by contrast, is too fast and it jangles our nerves as our fingers rush to keep up with our minds.

It turns out that David Malouf, too, writes his work longhand before typing things up. So does James Salter, whose quiet, still prose does great things for me. Stephen King wrote Dreamcatcher longhand. ‘It makes you think about each word as you write it,’ he told CBS News. ‘You see more ahead because you can’t go as fast.’ It’s a source of much amusement for my staff that I handwrite everything first, including this book.

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HANDWRITE ON A SERVIETTE

SITTING AT A BAR

In bars around the world I’ve sat and written out my loneliness and nervousness. On whatever comes to hand – scraps of paper, the back of a menu. In fact, the grimmer and more inappropriate, the better. It lowers the expectations. The point isn’t what you produce, it’s the writing out. And connecting with what you’re thinking or feeling.

E.M. Forster said, ‘How do I know what I think until I see what I say?’ (In fact, this very section was written out with a glass of red wine on the balcony of a restaurant down the road after a fretty day of getting absolutely nothing done because my anxiety had stepped in and taken up residence.) It works like this (and BTW you don’t need the wine, or even to do it in a public place).

Write what comes to mind. For me, mostly it’s illegible and in Pitman’s shorthand (from my journalism days); I’m not going to read back over it. Gosh, no. At first, you can become agonisingly aware of your anxious impatience and how you’d really rather things moved faster. Your mind skips tracks, but try to focus on the ink scratching and bleeding on the paper and soften the grip on the pen. The focus and softening starts to take hold. And in a little while, see if the words start to look like what you’re feeling at your core. For me, the words unfurl and my niggling, yearning feelings unfurl, away from the high octane frazzle that goes on up in the front of my head, the place where words come from when I type on a computer. I allow the discerning, mindful thoughts to emerge at their own pace. These are the kind of thoughts that put things into calm perspective. They’re not yabbering, frenzied, defensive, nagging thoughts.

I find it takes about five minutes and the frazzle backs off. A quietness descends like warm treacle.