Clinical Thinking from Everyday Practice
Is There a Tiger Outside?
Sometimes the body is preparing for a future that has not yet arrived.
Anxiety may carry the body into a future that has not yet happened.
Healing may begin when attention returns to the place where safety can actually be experienced: this moment.
A 28-year-old man came to see me because of anxiety.
He placed his hand on his chest as he spoke.
“It always feels tight here.”
“I’ve lost five kilograms in a month.”
“I can’t sleep.”
As we talked, he began telling me about his family.
His mother had struggled with anxiety for many years before she died of breast cancer.
His older sister was even more anxious than he was.
Then he became quiet.
The fear of passing something on
“I have a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter.”
“I don’t want to pass this on to her.”
“I don’t want her to inherit this.”
His words were full of love.
But they were also full of fear.
He was already carrying tomorrow
before tomorrow had arrived.
A simple question
I looked out through the clinic window.
The afternoon sun filled the garden.
I asked him a simple question.
“Is there a fire outside?”
He looked at me.
“No.”
“Is there a tiger?”
He smiled for the first time.
“No.”
“Is there any danger right now?”
Again, he answered,
“No.”
The future contained many imagined dangers.
But in that room, in that moment, none of them were happening.
Teaching attention where to rest
I said gently,
“Then perhaps your body does not need to protect you in this moment.”
“We cannot always choose our thoughts.”
“But we can slowly teach our attention where to rest.”
Not yesterday.
Not tomorrow.
Here.
Where life is actually happening.
The body often responds not only to what is happening, but to where attention has learned to remain.
Yesterday
Memory brings earlier pain, family history and unresolved fear into the body’s present state.
Tomorrow
Imagination prepares for events that may never happen, while the body responds as though they are already near.
Here
The present gives the nervous system a chance to notice what is actually happening now.
When the body noticed the room
Treatment continued quietly.
As his breathing slowed,
his face softened,
his shoulders settled,
and his breathing became deeper.
After a while, he placed his hand on his chest again.
“It feels open.”
He took a long breath.
“I hope I’ll finally sleep tonight.”
Then he added,
“You’re right.”
“I need to free myself.”
“I don’t want to pass this to my daughter.”
“I want my sister to come too.”
The world outside had not changed.
But the body’s relationship
with that moment had.
There was still no tiger
I watched him leave.
The world outside had not changed.
The sun was still shining.
There was still no tiger.
Only a body that had spent a long time preparing for one.
Anxiety is not always the presence of danger.
Sometimes it is the body’s sincere attempt to protect us from a future that has not yet happened.
Where safety can be experienced
The mind can travel backward.
It can travel forward.
It can rehearse loss, imagine catastrophe and prepare for every possible danger.
But the body can only experience safety in the moment it is living.
Not in the future we are trying to control.
Not in the past we are trying to repair.
Here.
Is there danger right now?
Healing may begin when attention
gently returns to the only place
where safety can actually be experienced.
The future deserves our preparation.
But the present deserves our presence.
Because the body can only discover safety where life is actually unfolding.
Here.
From Protection to Living
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