Finding Mercy From the Grip of Anxiety

Remember that childhood game where you'd lock hands and try to force the other person's wrists to bend backward until they cried out, "Mercy!"?  It was brutal, looking back. How was that a thing?  How was that what passed as “fun”?

Fast forward to adulthood, and I've found myself playing a similar game, but it’s all about my brain now. The game?  Rumination.  Do I ruminate because I’m anxious, or am I anxious because I ruminate?  I know my brain is trying to help me when it ruminates.  Getting a little meta here, it thinks that if it thinks about something hard enough, it’ll find solutions to unsolvable problems.  My brain will ask, “Well, what about X?  And then how about Y?  What if Z becomes an issue?”  Our brains are designed to answer questions: “Should I turn right here?  Yes, because that’s the way home.  Cool, onward.”  But when our brains are stuck in looping questions that have no answers, we can find ourselves ruminating.

I tried practicing self-compassion.  I thought to myself, “I know you’re anxious, but that’s okay.”  That didn’t calm the ruminating.  I tried reasoning with myself: “I know you think you’re getting somewhere, but you’re not.  This isn’t helpful.”  Ongoing ruminations.  It reached the point that problem-solving for other areas of my life got pretty sparse.  I went to bed exhausted but couldn’t sleep.  I started getting brain fog.  My entire body began to hurt.  All because I just couldn’t shut off my brain.

Then, a few days ago, deep in the throes of another rumination spiral, a tiny, sad voice within me cried out, "Mercy!"

It was unexpected, almost absurd. But it was also so different that it caught me off guard.  It wasn't me trying to reason or fight; it was a simple plea for release.  And in that moment, something shifted. The grip of anxiety loosened. I could finally breathe.  

Since then, when the rumination starts revving up, I can take a deep breath and (gently, this time) hear myself think, “Mercy.”  I started sleeping again.  And now, all my muscles are just a little stiff rather than sore.  Some dedicated Theragun sessions, and I’ll be right as rain.  

So, if your brain is predisposed to rumination like mine, consider the idea of mercy.  It’s an acknowledgment of the power our brain can have over us, as well as the gentle forgiveness it’s capable of.