POV: You are at Turmbühne with your friends, great evening, great music. But something feels off. You can sense a fear creeping up, but don't know why. Maybe you caught a weird look or overheard a verbal argument which triggered something negative inside you. But one thing is clear: You are not having it! Fusion is only once a year, you MUST have fun! There is no room for negativity like that, so you start to fight it - but it gets worse. Now you worry about worrying too much, worrying that you are destroying the nice moment right now and worrying whether it will stop soon or that you won't be able to enjoy the set of the DJ you wanted to see live on stage for so long. Sometimes these thoughts can spiral into a full-blown panic attack and tadaa - your evening is ruined. How great.... Worst part about that? No one around you can relate. Everyone has fun except of you. Now you feel disconnected, alone and maybe even blame yourself to feel that way. Maybe you feel like a burden to your friends and just want to creep into your tent, hoping to fall asleep soon so you can escape this agony. Sounds familiar?
Thoughts like these are quite common and can even lead to chronic anxiety and depression. It is estimated that over 1/4 of adults suffer from this at least once in their live, the tendency is rising. So bringing awareness to this is super important and to give people an idea on how to live with such a disease or how they can help a friend going through it. But first, let us understand the underlying functionality of fear.
Fear is one of the oldest and most important functionalities of our brain and extremely useful. It helps us detect dangers and to protect ourselves from them, even helps us to think ahead of time to prevent even getting into trouble. It triggers a flight/fight-response and urges us to do something about a threat. The part of our brain which is responsible for this is the Amygdala. It is part of the limbic system (the 'old' brain), where all our emotions are being regulated, and is extremely well interconnected with the rest of the brain to enable fast responses to sudden changes in our environment. For example, there is a "fast lane" from our eyes to the Amygdala, where the visual information is being interpreted and decided whether there is a threat or not. This process is waaay faster compared to the time the information takes to reach our visual cortex ('new' brain) where we can consciously process what we see. That's why we can get spooked by our flat mate who comes around the corner before we can decide that they are not a threat and that we can relax.
So why do I tell you this? Well, it is important to have the right attitude towards fear. While it is a rather uncomfortable sensation, we have to acknowledge its usefulness and be aware that it is simply our brain protecting us. Building a healthy distance between you and your emotions/thoughts gives you enormous power over them. Remember the example from earlier: People often act as THEY are responsible for their emotions and easily start to blame themselves for this. And if they are responsible for having those emotions, then they should be able to turn them off again, right? That's the start of the problem. You are actually NOT in control of your emotions and thoughts, but you have control over the way you think about them. As an observer, you have the possibility to react to your thoughts and emotions in a way that you can take out a lot of steam and behave in a compassionate way towards yourself. However, it is a skill you will have to train and which will take time, but it is not hard nor something "magical" you can only achieve when you meditate for an eternity on a mountain. The key to this is simple: consistency.
Our thoughts and thinking patterns are manifested in neurological connections which form over time. The more you make use of certain connections, the stronger they become. If you are a pessimistic person, that's mostly due to the fact that your brain is wired in a specific way. Having this in mind, it is impossible for you to wake up one day and feel different. However, studies have shown that you are able to rewire those connections. So if you notice that you start to think negatively about yourself again, notice this and actively challenge those thoughts without condemning having them. Sound familiar? That's what you do in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) - rewiring your brain again over time! It is a process which takes time and effort, but one that is very promising and which gave me hope when I was battling with depression. The world wasn't dull and gray, it was just the way my brain was wired! It was certain habits in thinking, and just as you change other habits (like when you quit smoking), you have to stay on track and patiently change your mental habits.
OK OK, enough theory! What can you do to work on this?
1) Meditation: The obvious. The goal here is not to think about "nothing", but rather to bring your concentration back to something you choose. It can be your breath, the way your muscles work when walking, or something else. The point here is not to hold this concentration as long as possible, but rather notice when your mind wanders off to another thought and then to gently bring it back. It is more of a biceps-curl rather than holding a plank. Studies have shown that meditating for 30 mins a day for a month can already alter the color (fewer nucleoids -> less gray -> less active) of the Amygdala on brain scans. How crazy is that?! Furthermore, meditating can help you to let go of intrusive thoughts and get to the healthy distance I was talking about earlier. Just start with one minute a day and slowly increase the amount. If you think that meditation is nothing for you - it is a habit you can grow into. So no excuses!
2) Mindfulness: Very similar to mediation. Here, you try to be in the here and now by concentrating on sensory information. You can sit in a park and observe the world around you without judgment. You can pick up a leaf and just look at it, notice the way the leaf is structured, how it dried up on some spots and how the sunshine is being reflected by it. Exercises like that are the ultimate antidote against anxiety, since it brings us back in the here and now, where we usually have nothing to be scared of. No lion attacking us far and wide. You are just at the Turmbühne where everything is ok!
3) Compassion: Compassion has a key role in Zen-Buddhism, and rightfully so. In a nutshell, it is recognizing that you are the product of your genes and environment, that you are not to blame for the way you are or the way the world is and which helps you to accept yourself and others just the way you/they are. Just going with the "flow of things". Acceptance plays a major role in the way you react to your thoughts and situations which are uncomfortable. Having fear? That's normal, that's just the way I am! Someone did not show up at a gathering point? Well, this person surely has their problem or simply forgot about it. Obviously, this concept is far more complex, and I am surely not doing the best job describing it right now. I am highly advertising to look up the book I am referring to. I meditated and practiced mindfulness for a long time with mediocre results, compassion was the last piece for me to get a better grip on anxiety and I think that it is just as important as the other two.
So what can you do next time you feel anxiety? This is the main problem - You can't and should do anything! The core problem in wanting to do something AGAINST fear is that you then haven't ACCEPTED it fully! If you meditate or practice mindfulness to get rid of the fear, it may go away, but then you will ask yourself "Is it gone? When will it come back again?" and poof, it is there again! Instead of pushing the fear away, you have to give it room and treat it as something good! Sounds impossible, but believe me, together with constant training this will be manageable for you. Just keep on doing what you do right now and try to relax. You will be fine, you suffered through worse anxiety than that!
And if you want to support a friend with anxiety, don't feel sorry for them. Acknowledge their anxiety, offer to take a walk or to go wash the face with cold water. Try to help them remember that they are ok and that it will pass, and that it is just their brain trying to protect them!
I hope I could give a little bit of insight into this topic and maybe this will help someone out there pulling through it. I am posting this here because I remember some posts where such symptoms were discussed, and that people usually are not well-informed about this topic and can easily act in a way that makes people who suffer through this uncomfortable. A festival of the caliber of the fusion is the perfect environment for anxiety to flourish: Lack of sleep, constant noise and social interactions, little private space and drugs - an insane stress and hormonal disbalance for our brains!
So keeps safe out there and remember: Our brain is just doing its best. We should treat it with more compassion.
