RISE To Heal Anxiety

Anxiety is not what it appears to be. At any given moment, we may attach our anxiety to specific and valid fears. But when we zoom out, we realize that none of these things directly causes our anxiety. It exists unmoored in our systems, attaching itself to whatever may strike fear in our hearts. Anxiety is something much deeper than we imagine it to be. It is the subconscious fear of feeling emotions that we believe will overtake us, such as grief, terror, and shame. What we call anxiety is the underlying pressure of habitually—and often subconsciously—avoiding the full experience of our most intense and acutely uncomfortable feelings. These emotions remain in our systems, unable to resolve. To heal anxiety, we need a vital skill that most of us never learned as children: how to allow our most uncomfortable emotions to move through our bodies, instead of bracing against them. You don’t have anxiety because of personal weakness. You have anxiety because you, like all of us, experience intense emotional pain—and no one taught you how to feel it. Our families and cultures teach us to avoid and numb the fear, shame, and grief that naturally arise in our bodies as we move through life. As the world becomes more uncertain and destabilized, our feelings intensify. Our habits of bracing against the waves of emotion are breaking us. Healing anxiety means learning how to allow our most uncomfortable emotions without shutting them down. Through practice, we develop the capacity and resilience to know that they will not annihilate us. Instead of meeting our feelings with control, we must learn how to meet them with softness and care. In this 6-day course, you'll encounter four practices to help you meet your anxiety with radical acceptance and love, allowing it to release and transform. Through the RISE practices, you will learn Relational, Imaginal, Somatic, and Expressive methods that profoundly shift your approach to anxiety. Like all of Catherine’s work, this course is gentle, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive, viewing our personal healing as an aspect of collective liberation. Catherine looks forward to connecting with you in the classroom as you move through the RISE practices for anxiety. Musical artist credits: Intro - Silver Maple; Lesson 1 - Amaranth Cove, Peter Sandberg, LUCHS; Lesson 2 - LUCHS, Gavin Luke, Amaranth Cove; Lessons 3, 4, and 5 - LUCHS, Hanna Lindgren; Lesson 6 - Jamiel Conlon, David Edwards. ***Disclaimer: This course contains invitations to gently intensify uncomfortable emotions and body sensations. If you have a history of anxiety, panic, PTSD, or other conditions, please have a trusted professional support available.