What helps your anxiety shift closer to calm? I’m not referring to alcohol or substances or other addictions. (They will certainly act as though they are easing strong feelings but, like a firefighter axing down your front door and hosing everything in sight, an extraordinary mess is left behind).
One way to look at anxiety is that it can be a good thing because it prepares us for stuff, however, too much of it becomes stress. Stress releases hormones that can negatively affect the smooth working of your body as well as your mind. It can give you symptoms…and no-one wants symptoms any more than they can help it right now.
It has surprised me to realise that cake is one of the things that lowers my anxiety a tad. Not baking the cake, or even eating the cake – although these can be nice too. It’s having cake on offer – on the table, so to speak – that allows the stress to ease, the calm to increase.
Maybe it has something to do with the meaning of cake. I suppose it can mean celebration, plenty, flavour, richness, sufficiency, everything’s okay. The meanings can be legion but for me, something about having cake available screams, ‘No worries!’ She’ll be right!’
I recently read Fiona Wright’s essays on hunger, ‘Small Acts of Disappearance’. After time spent living in Germany, she wrote, among other insightful observations, that Germans, “Consider cake part of their cultural heritage”. I found this such a liberating thought. I’ve never lived in, or even visited Germany but my parents’ parents’ parents came from there. This heritage is a fact I rarely mention due to some elements in history but this statement had the power to bring a different feeling then the hesitation of association. I felt connection. A kind of legalisation for this curious role cake plays in my thoughts.
I love it when cultural DNA is seen to be doing its job. Especially from the distance of generations. I wonder if you are aware yet of what brings your stress down a tad. It may even be linked to your deeper cultural connections. Inviting stress reduction, even by a smidge, will benefit your body and mind.