When anxiety keeps us looking at the drop
What if we only ever look in the direction of fear? Right now, as the news and social media and life and conversations offer their own unique horrors, it can feel like that’s the only place we can direct our attention. Towards all that could go desperately wrong. And sometimes closer to home too: the thing we might fail at, the work we’re frightened to share, the future we’re struggling to imagine.
I found myself thinking about this while talking to writer, editor, mother and surfer Dionne McCulloch on A Thought I Kept. The thought she brought came from a surf coach:
“Don’t look down at the drop, look along the wave.”
It was practical advice for getting onto her feet. But it became something she could take into the rest of her life.
When a wave lifts you, Dionne explained, your instinct is to look down at the place you’re afraid of falling. Looking along the wave helps position your body towards where you want to go. But how often do we find ourselves doing the everyday equivalent: looking so closely at what we fear that it becomes difficult to see anything else?
What else might be there?
Dionne began surfing in earnest around her late forties, as her three children were moving into adulthood. Motherhood had been such an encompassing part of her identity. Now there were questions about who she was, what her purpose might be and how she wanted to be in the world.
Surfing became somewhere to explore those questions, although she hadn’t expected it to. Dionne took trips on her own and discovered that she liked her own company. She could do difficult things. And she could enjoy herself while doing them.
What I loved is that Dionne enjoyed surfing before she could really do it. In our conversation, Dionne shares how at The Wave in Bristol where she had her first lessons, photographers would capture people riding waves, but not falling off them. All Dionne wanted was that photograph and she returned several times without getting one. And still she wanted to go back. The thing she might have understood as failure never cancelled out the pleasure of being there. Dionne was cold and falling into the water, and she was having fun. What might we discover if we allowed an experience to offer us something that has nothing to do with being good at it?
Wanting can feel vulnerable too
That tension between fear and joy wasn’t just limited to surfing, it also applied to writing. Despite having a debut novel coming out, Dionne described feeling afraid of opening a blank document to begin the next one. She knows experienced, published writers who still find themselves wondering how to start.
I first met Dionne at a writing workshop in Bath, somewhere I loved being but also felt vulnerable. So I recognised this tension: wanting to make something, while feeling exposed by the very act of trying.
Dionne spoke about how carefully we sometimes conceal what we want. To publish a book, start a business, get a degree. Admitting the desire means admitting that something matters, and that we might not get it. Keeping it tucked away can feel easier.
Alongside What if it doesn’t work?, there’s also What am I hoping for? The answer to that might be something we’ve barely allowed ourselves to name. Looking along the wave might begin with giving that hope a little attention too.
Finding somewhere to belong
When I asked Dionne where she finds hope, she talked about people coming together. Campaigning to save Bath’s library, or protect a piece of land, had introduced her to neighbours and helped her feel that she belonged. She could help shape the place she lived.
She also told me about volunteering with Wave Wahines, joining refugee girls learning to surf in North Devon. Some had never worn a wetsuit. Some couldn’t swim. Yet Dionne described the shrieking, joyful time they had together, and how full her heart felt afterwards.
Hope can appear through involvement. There are people to meet, things to care about, even a place in the water beside someone else. Ways to participate in a world that can feel frightening and good.
Dionne’s thought serves as an invitation to notice where we’re looking. The drop may be there, and we may feel anxious about it. But there is also the direction we’d like to travel, the company we might find and the possibility of enjoying something we cannot yet do.
You can listen to my conversation with Dionne on A Thought I Kept here. And let me know, what might looking along the wave mean in your own life?
If you’d like some support exploring your own relationship with anxiety, I offer one-to-one emotions coaching. We’ll make some space for what feels hard right now, explore what matters to you and find ways forward together.