Moments with Martha
Practicing Peace on Purpose
Threshold Anxiety
This is the first in a series of articles on anxiety. Future articles will discuss the physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of anxiety management and healing.
You have a dream. An inspiration. An idea comes to you out of the blue, or on a deliberative walk. Perhaps you are in a classroom, meditation, or out in nature. A breakthrough thought bubbles up to consciousness: the idea of a book, a song, a scientific study, a new life direction, a possible conversation to address conflict with another. You are filled with promise, excitement, and potential.
Maybe you are faced with certain life choices. What career shall I pursue? What college major? Is it time to retire? Shall I stay in this relationship, or is it time for departure and new beginnings?
Perhaps life demands call you out into performance. You are assigned a challenging project at work. You enter your first college internship. A health crisis for yourself or loved one arises unexpectedly.
There are many ways that life calls us into new beginnings. Some are internal, others external. Either way, the call is an invitation into new territory. For some fortunate souls, the excitement of the venture propels them into an action that remains a smooth, joyful journey to completion. The energy of beginning carries through to the end.
For others of us, there is a revelry in the inception stages. The influx of creative ideas fills us with excitement, inspiration, and that special confidence that dreaming begets. In our minds eye, there is some clarity in our vision or decision. We feel ourselves say, “ Yes!”
As we move forward, we approach the boundary between dream and manifest action.
THE THRESHOLD
A threshold is a place of decision. Shall I cross over? Or not. As we approach the transition from idea to implementation, joy turns to jitters. Faith to fear.
We can avoid the pain of it by refusing the call. Either by conscious choice or unconscious sabotage. Distractions; “First I will pay the bills, call a friend, go to the grocery or rearrange my sock drawer.” Soon we are absorbed in the distraction while the dream quietly dies on the vine.
Or, we can “feel the fear and do it anyway.” We can tangle with the tiger that has emerged in our bodies, minds, and spirits so that we might move towards the threshold that divides our dreaming selves from our doing selves.
As a therapist, I understand these fears to be inherent in anticipatory anxiety, social anxiety, and performance anxiety.
As a poetic sort, I prefer the words that bubble up inside of me as I sit with clients describing this experience and, painfully so, as I experience it myself: threshold anxiety. I call it threshold anxiety.
For many, the terrible anxiety that arises when the dreaming is done and the doing begins, dissipates when we step over the threshold into performance. For others, it continues into performance anxiety.
Either way, the approach to the dividing line between dream and manifest reality requires and deserves our conscious care and attention. As always, consciousness is key.
John O’Donohue, Irish teacher and poet, says this:
“A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. At this threshold, a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.”
This past fall I lead a retreat on, of all things, transition. Having led and loved this retreat numerous times before, I was surprised that, on the eve of its launch, I was struck with anxiety. Though the material and the experience of teaching it was familiar, there were several aspects that were new creations. Novel ones. Near and dear to my soul.
Approaching the threshold between dream, preparation, and delivery, I panicked.
I heard Prissy from Gone with the Wind saying, “I don’t know nothing about birthing this baby.” I gave our beloved Prissy a nod of recognition.
I recalled Goethe’s wisdom, “If you can dream it, begin it. Boldness has genius and magic in it.”
I had dreamed it and begun it. As I approached the threshold of doing it, I prayed for the boldness and the magic.
The threshold.
As I pondered and prepared by self for crossing over, I remembered that I had also faced a threshold in the planning of this retreat. I have had successful experiences with it before. Women had loved and grown from it. With this one, I was stepping into a new domain. Expansion. New ideas. Announcement to a larger audience. A beautiful location I had long dreamed of using.
More was at risk.
I said to a friend, “I am at a threshold. I can either step over it, or go back to sleep.”
I recalled O’Donohue’s words:
“In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispers,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.”
I determined to move on with the new venture. And, in so doing experienced the rest of the poem:
“Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”
I became happily ensconced in the planning and preparation,. And all went well.
On the eve of its launch, when the new anxiety hit, I relied on history. Remembering this past threshold experience and the ritual that guided me through helped.
Buoyed by memory, support, preparation, and prayer, I ushered myself across that threshold to begin the retreat. After just a little time, the jitters turned back into joy. The fear to faith. And, I was sailing into the new territory that had beckoned me.
And, all went well.
As you approach your own thresholds, may you find the courage that delivers you into your new normal and the accomplishment of your dream.
