Anxiety: Butterflies or Bees

You know that feeling of butterflies in your stomach? The one that means you’re pushing your edge? The one your therapist says means you’re growing? You know the one; it feels a little like a roller coaster dip in your stomach. Your breath catches a little. You can’t stand still. Yes, THAT one.

Now imagine that feeling you get when you’re worried about that presentation tomorrow that you barely feel prepared for. Your pulse speeds up. Your thoughts race. And then you feel it. That antsiness in your stomach. It’s not butterflies, though. It’s BEES. What’s with this?

A long, long time ago, those bees kept your ancestors alive by alerting them to danger. What’s that noise in the woods? Is it a bear?

Finely tuned senses alerted your ancestors to danger, which then flooded their bodies with adrenaline and cortisol (which feels a little like… you guessed it… BEES), which gave them the burst of energy to flee, fight off an attacker, or play dead.

Nowadays, we don’t have bears and tigers lurking around corners. We do, however, have presentations and public speaking. Rush hour traffic and technical difficulties. Packed schedules and the whole year of 2020. All of these things, our bodies perceive as threats, creating BEES.

But WAIT! What if we could take those BEES and make them BUTTERFLIES?

 

“Fear is excitement without the breath.”

~Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy

It turns out, we can! The same stress hormones that flood your body when you’re under a deadline at work flood your body when you see that special someone you have a crush on. Adrenaline rushes. Blood courses through your body. So what’s different in these scenarios? Well… YOU are! When you approach a situation with curiosity and wonder what can be gained from it, it turns out that what you get are the butterflies of anticipation rather than the bees of anxiety. Some situations warrant fear. But when the situation is one that you would rather grow from, when you feel the blood rushing through your veins, you can:

•  Take a deep breath.
•  Find the fruits of this labor. How will it grow you? Can you find a reason to be excited for the opportunity?

Voila! Butterflies!

Happy Journeys!