Alchemizing anxiety into trust
I have not historically considered myself to be a particularly anxious person. Have I always carried fear with me in ways I may not even have realized at the time? Absolutely.
But I’ve fought the socialization and expectation to stay small and quiet. Perhaps it’s the extrovert/external processor in me but the impetus to speak, and to speak the truth, has been strong.
In my identity as a woman of Asian descent, this can sometimes work to my benefit in that people don’t always expect it, and are sometimes disarmed by it. People don’t always understand how serious we are about creating transformational change, and sometimes that’s an advantage, sometimes an obstacle.
It’s interesting to think about the different states of anxiety we might variously be living with, depending on identity, circumstances, and relative power and advantage. I’ll admit I find it easier to bring clarity to our DEI work amidst what is often a deep confusion as folks grapple with concepts that shake the foundations of what they thought they knew.
These past few years in the pandemic, though, seem to have brought out an anxiety in me that feels superimposed and unwelcome, and I know I’m not the only one.
It’s not in the work that I’m anxious, but in everything around it. The work is challenging, don’t get me wrong, but I feel grounded in it.
But part of that grounding, I think, comes from operationalizing lived experiences and lessons into methodology for shifting culture.
That is the magic.
And what excites me is that it is a very different model of theory and practice intertwined than what I view as the oppressive and harmful structures of traditional academia.
We get to iterate and do theory and practice together at the same time constantly.
And these blog posts are often outcomes of that moment of solidification.
All that to say that I’ve been thinking about anxiety. And I’ve been thinking about trust. And I’ve been thinking about inspiration.
For me, inspiration comes when I have the space to reflect, process, and hear my own voice. It is the moments of truth telling, however hard, that bring me joy, and healing, and trust, whether it is my own truth telling and creative expression, or my participation, facilitation or witnessing thereof.
In those moments of truth telling, anxiety - fear of the future and what I can’t control - is alchemized into a knowing trust of the things I cannot know or control.
When I know and accept the things I cannot know or control, I can stand firmly in what I can control.
Anxiety becomes alchemized into trust.
Alchemize: transform the nature or properties of (something) by a seemingly magical process (Oxford Languages).
Acceptance doesn’t mean we have to like it, and it doesn’t mean we endorse it. It doesn’t mean we won’t try to change it.
Acceptance means that we are willing to confront the truth of it right now.
Anxiety is human but it is also dehumanizing because it makes us feel “less than” in the fact of things we can’t know or control.
Alchemizing anxiety into acceptance and trust means right sizing ourselves - we are not “less than” because we cannot know, predict, or control everything. We are all inherently worthy and do not need to defend or prove our worth.
Truth telling is part of this right sizing process. Seeing and saying how things are gives us the opportunity to discern what we can change, can’t change and won’t change.
It gives us a grounding in reality that we can trust.
We often say that it is when we are in scarcity or urgency that we are most at risk of causing harm to others or ourselves. I would say the same is true of anxiety.
How will you alchemize anxiety into trust, not in things that cannot be trusted, but in a grounding in reality from which transformational change can be created?
Self-coaching for DEI Advocates and Leaders
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