I realise that when my anxiety peaks, I dive into an internal lockdown. There’s a closing off, a withdrawal, that I struggle to prevent and find even harder to counter…

My internal world begins to resemble a tide pool…the surface glossy, deceivingly still as the tide ebbs, leaving life stranded in a shallow depression on the rocks at the shore…The still water glistens black, too unmoved to belie what hides beneath…

But drop a pebble or venture gentle fingers to probe the shallow watersa nd a world in miniature teems to reveal itself…

At first the water eddies sand to obscure the view more closely…As it resettles, there are glimpses of tiny fish, barely see translucent shrimp, and (my personal favourites) the tiniest crabs scurrying for cover…

The fish are elusive, like joy and wonder, the more you grasp for them, the more they dart out of reach…only to reappear precisely where you thought you reached out for them…anxiety mimicking refraction…what you seek never quite where you perceive it to be…you have to account for the refraction and re-calibrate your movement to account for hope…Because if you can anchor to hope, you hold the skill of the free diver and once again, the glistening is yours to discover…

Then, there are the crabs…hard-shelled, outwardly armoured and defensive in their claws-raised, legs braced, no-flight-here-but-fight demeanour…except when you reach with tentative fingertips to lightly grasp the carapace and sense the spiky edges with your touch, the creature scuttles once more…retreating, lightening fast, beneath the wavering seaweed and snuggly settling into the creases of the overhanging rocks…its forelimbs and watchful eyes tantalisingly visible but the rock unyielding so you cannot prise the crustacean from its seclusion…

And so it is when I am deep in my anxiety…thoughts and emotions obscured by swirling water and clouded by the disturbance of the debris below…Even as my anxiety begins to settle, the thoughts and emotions repel any attempt to lift them clear of the confusion…defying definition, secreting themselves beyond scrutiny so that they go unseen and rarely named…

Perhaps that is why I relish my time in tide pools…a practise for exploring my inner world and because with patience and care I can slowly sweep aside the seaweed, displace the sheltering stones, without spiralling the silt back into the water, and finally…to coax the most reluctant crab to sit in the palm of my hand, tickling my skin, thrilling my curiosity as it allows my inquisitiveness full reign…

Time and tides…they are all we can rely on to navigate through our days after all…