Have you ever tried to sleep somewhere that was very close to an airport?
When I was growing up we used to go stay with my aunt and uncle who live in Lawrence, Long Island. I loved going there. They were incredible, eccentric people with curious thing to explore in every corner of their home. I’m not sure how close their house actually was to JFK airport, but it felt like it was practically on one of the runways. I remember going up to bed in my cousin’s room and listening to those planes flying overhead. One after another, they flew by all night long, lessening up sometime after midnight, but never stopping completely. I didn’t mind it, actually. I felt exhilarated by the loud noise and the rumbling, it felt sometimes like the powerful sound and I were one. Every year it kept me awake the first night, but each night we were there I seemed to notice them less and less. Every once in a while a particularly large or close plane would rattle the windows and wake me up, but in general, they were there but I simply wasn’t noticing them. My aunt and uncle and cousins didn’t hear them at all – they slept like babies every night.
In a lot of ways, anxious thoughts are like those planes. Sometimes it might seem like we and our thoughts are one, but if we pay close attention we can notice that the thoughts come and go. They may be loud and shake us to our core but they are distinctly apart from who we are. Once we’re able to grasp that perspective, we can start practicing detachment. Eventually, the thoughts may still be there, but we can can fall asleep anyway. Or feel content, or take an action, or whatever it is that our anxious thought was preventing us from doing. We can learn to experience those thoughts simply as sensations, experiences that come and go, just like planes flying overhead. Occasionally a particularly loud thought may rattle us and cause us to pause, but with practice, we can see them for what they are, simply thoughts, and deal with them accordingly.
I live in the woods now and my aunt and uncle no longer live in Lawrence. I’m sure if they did and I visited them there those planes would keep me awake for a night or two, after years of relatively silent nights. I would lose some sleep, but I would get to visit them in their awesome, eccentric house, and that would be well worth it.
