{"id":66,"date":"2018-04-09T19:25:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T19:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/?p=66"},"modified":"2018-04-10T21:18:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-10T21:18:31","slug":"meet-anxiety-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/2018\/04\/meet-anxiety-family.html","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Anxiety Family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-69\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/408\/2018\/04\/F100006469-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"F100006469\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>Anxiety has a large extended family. Anger and depression are its siblings. Loneliness, disconnection and unworthiness are cousins on one side of the family and blame, shame and guilt are on the other. Fear is the parent as all anxiety is born of fear. The black sheep who nobody likes to talk about are violence, revenge \u00a0and hate. They make the rest of the family nervous but are relatives nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The Peace of Mind family is tightly knit with love and happiness as the indulgent patriarch and matriarch.\u00a0\u00a0 There is joy, contentment and connection but it is sometimes hard to distinguish one from the other. The relatives of anxiety appear diverse and plentiful because misery has many forms. Tolstoy famously observed in his novel, <em>Anna Karenina<\/em>: \u201cAll happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tolstoy\u2019s words have endured because they resonate. Happiness and peace of mind has a homogenous feel but there is a way that all unhappiness is also more similar than it first appears. From an energetic perspective, the Peace of Mind family represents the expressions of love or the true self.\u00a0 (See Blog #3- What Einstein Knew.) \u00a0When you feel love, gratitude and joy, it is because you remember you are connected to the Peace of Mind family.\u00a0 No need to pack your bags and search for where you belong, it is and has always been your true family.\u00a0 Everything that is \u2018not love\u2019 and that list is long, is in the Unhappiness\/Anxiety Family.\u00a0 The many forms of misery are what happen when you get forget your ancestry is love.\u00a0 All unhappiness is the same \u2018not love\u2019 just as all happiness is a version of love.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All of the energy of \u2018not love\u2019 is generated by fear, much of it justified. Everyday someone is shot, assaulted or eaten by a shark. Your job could be moved to India or given to a robot.\u00a0 There is always someone younger, with 6-pack abs or more fun that your partner may prefer. Over a lifetime, someone will break your heart or betray you no matter what you do or how you protect yourself. Even if warranted, fear must be resolved or anxiety naturally follow. You could identify and tackle your fears one by one but there will always be another so you will run out of life before you run out of worries.\u00a0 \u00a0Better to take on the root of fear itself which is \u2018not love\u2019 than wrestle with its manifestations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What is the fear behind the election of a corrupt politician or a lost job? \u00a0What does it mean if you catch the flu or your kids won\u2019t talk to you? A gun in every school incites fear because of what you decide this idea means.\u00a0 An incident or thought stirs up the energy of \u2018not love\u2019.\u00a0 Because of (fill in incident or fear), I will be alone, am unworthy or unsafe.\u00a0 Somebody could harm your body or hurt someone you care about so the challenge is how to connect with your family of love in a world full of \u2018not love\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The crazy idea you have to accept to unravel the paradox of feeling safe in an unsafe world is to not identify yourself as a body. The real \u2018you\u2019 is a bundle of love energy temporarily encased in a physical body that you cannot keep safe because no bodies survive life on earth. If your body is ruined, your friends desert you and you die alone, you are exactly the same energy of love. Love remains because you cannot destroy energy. Eat Brussels sprouts, exercise and be kind to others so you can feel as good as possible while here but the reason nothing can hurt you is because you are not that biological mass with brown eyes, ten extra pounds and irritable bowel syndrome. That is just the temporary house you inhabit. You are love. All the anger, fear and loneliness you feel is a manifestation that you temporarily forgot your roots and thought you were somehow worthless, unlovable and in danger.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This may be a bit much to accept but consider how this concept can free you.\u00a0 If true, nothing can hurt you.<\/p>\n<p>Post #12<\/p>\n<p>Next time: What Would Your Life Be Without Fear?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anxiety has a large extended family. Anger and depression are its siblings. Loneliness, disconnection and unworthiness are cousins on one side of the family and blame, shame and guilt are on the other. Fear is the parent as all anxiety is born of fear. The black sheep who nobody likes to talk about are violence,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meet the Anxiety Family - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Anxiety has a large extended family including depression, loneliness, unworthiness, fear, guilt and anger. All happy families are the same.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meet the Anxiety Family - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anxiety has a large extended family including depression, loneliness, unworthiness, fear, guilt and anger. All happy families are the same.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/2018\/04\/meet-anxiety-family.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Serenity in an Age of Anxiety\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-09T19:25:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-04-10T21:18:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/ageofanxiety\/files\/2018\/04\/F100006469-300x200.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kelly Dorfman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Meet the Anxiety Family - Serenity in an Age of Anxiety","description":"Anxiety has a large extended family including depression, loneliness, unworthiness, fear, guilt and anger. 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In addition to her work as a clinical nutritionist, she leads workshops on resolving relationship conflicts and anxiety using principles of wholeheartedness. Kelly also directed an intuition training program for doctors and medical professionals for ten years and co-founded a non-profit to support families of children with developmental delays. After decades of clinical practice using targeted nutrition therapy to tackle complex medical problems, she wanted to focus on problems created by the mind beyond biochemistry. She noticed the mind seems to create endless obstacles to happiness and peace of mind no matter how committed a person is to these goals. Anger, fear, anxiety and loneliness are symptoms the mind needs help as well as opportunities to remember who we really are and why we are here. 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