Looking at Anxiety

My good friend Laura has asked me to do a post on anxiety, so I will now explain how meditation or mindfulness can help to cope with this.

Firstly I want to say that I have suffered with bouts of anxiety from my mid teens, and it is one of the only major problems that I have suffered with, that has caused me to fall apart in a way that seems unimaginable. I am someone who enjoys putting my heart and soul into all that I do, including my work, so as you can imagine when something like anxiety causes me to fall apart, it feels like its ruining my life. However looking at it when the waters have calmed, I think it’s only right that I am compassionate to myself and taking a break from life, when it all gets too much is 100% justified.

I suffered with a very severe bout of anxiety many years ago and I saw my friend Laura (a long time anxiety sufferer). She tricked me, by distracting me, talking about something she knew I would enjoy talking about. After a while of talking with her and her friends she asked me how I felt.  I had completely forgot about what I was anxious about and it was then that It dawned on me, that I had some level of control over my anxiety.

Only a few months later I started doing a meditation class and I absolutely loved it, as sense of calm and somewhere to go to be quite was just what I needed. It taught me that I can control my mind through various meditation techniques. My battle with my anxiety is far from over, however it has helped me cope and control it to a very manageable degree.

By doing meditation or mindfulness training, you are teaching your mind to see and act more logically, and anxiety is far from logical in my eyes. Anxiety is the feeling we have when things are out of our control, when we desperately want it to be. Our mind tells us the worst possible case scenario, to the point where it can cause panic attacks and physical symptoms like inner heat or sweating. It often causes you to think so much about it, that you are not able to focus on anything else properly. It is strange as most of the time, there is nothing you can do about it. So we can clearly see it’s destructiveness.

Through meditation or mindfulness training, you will be able to let go of them crazy exaggerated thoughts, not suppressing them. It’s really hard to stop thinking about it when your mind has run through it lots, so being aware of your thoughts is the first step. While doing mediation you become more and more aware of your thoughts, both good and bad. After a while you will find the trigger thought that causes you to get upset or anxious and then you will be able to just let go if it (after some training). The reason you will be able to let go of it, is that you will understand that, that thought is pointless, as you cannot control what will happen. Your mind is well programmed to get you into an anxious state, so don’t expect it to see instant results, as your mind has taken a long time to program, so as you can imagine, it may take a while to re-program your mind. I do feel that the more you put into your meditations or mindfulness training, the more you will get out, so it is very hard to give a time scale about when you will see results.  This said, I do feel that you will find some benefit to your well being from ether mediation or mindfulness training from the start.

I hope this post isn’t too long, if you have any questions again drop me a line and I’ll be happy to help.

My apologies if this sound similar to my anger post, it's just the two are very closely linked.