A certain level of anxiety is a very normal part of our human experience. We have evolved brilliant but tricksy brains which can think creatively, plan and problem solve. The flip side is that we are also good at worrying, ruminating, and catastrophising, which can lead to feelings of anxiety.
It’s important to keep in mind that practising mindfulness is a way of being, rather than a ‘fix’ for anything, but with time and gentle practice it can open up a new way of responding to anxiety. Make sure that you learn with a qualified, experienced teacher, especially if you have an anxiety disorder or another mental health condition. In my own experience, here are some ways that practising mindfulness meditation can help with anxiety: 1. You become more familiar with what anxiety feels like for you – in the mind and in the body. Recognising your own anxiety signature means that you can notice anxiety when it is building and actively take steps to look after yourself. 2. You learn how to steady yourself in the midst of turbulent thoughts, feelings and body sensations. Through mindfulness we practice finding and resting with anchors in the body and through the senses. The anchors you find most helpful will be personal to you and may change in different situations. What matters is practising regularly, so that in time, finding steadiness in your anchors becomes second nature. 3. You begin to step back from thinking and see it for what it is. My lightbulb moment as a newcomer to mindfulness was the revelation that thoughts are simply mental events which arise quite automatically without our choosing. They are not necessarily facts, or personal truths. In the words of Eckhart Tolle, rather than being my thoughts I can be the awareness behind them. This was a game-changing insight but it’s not easy to keep this sense of perspective, especially with thought patterns that go deep, so it requires ongoing practice. Learning to step back from thoughts in this way, including those that drive anxiety, gives us the possibility of gently unhooking ourselves from unhelpful thought patterns when we notice them. These next two have been just as life-changing but more of a slow unfolding – it’s taken practice, trust, and some special people helping me along the way. They are about the attitudes that we cultivate when we practice mindfulness, because mindfulness is not just about paying attention, it’s about *how* we pay attention – with kindness, openness and sensitivity. 4. You learn a new way of being with difficulty. When we go into battle with unwanted thoughts and feelings we can often make them worse. Practising mindfulness offers a new way of relating to our experiences, including anxiety: by opening to and allowing what’s here. It’s important to know that this allowing is not the same as passively resigning ourselves to our situation. It does not mean that we have to like it, or that we are not going to do something about it. But, allowing what’s already here to be here, rather than bracing against anxiety, is a key part of responding to it wisely. With practice, I have felt the possibility of loosening the knot rather than tightening it further. 5. You grow kindness and compassion. These are infinite capacities that we all have within us, but they can get veiled by our busy lives and conditioning. The wonderful thing is that mindfulness and compassion practices can help us bring them to the fore, time and time again. It is one thing to know conceptually that we should “be kind” to ourselves and to others. But it is transformational to actively orient ourselves in this way through meditation practice every day, so that the ‘knowing’ becomes deeper and embodied. What could this mean for anxiety? Worrying is not a mistake, it’s a natural part of being human and an attempt to keep ourselves safe. Rather than berating ourselves for feeling hard feelings or for becoming tangled up in our thinking (“What’s wrong with me? I should be able to deal with this. I have to stop feeling this way…”), what a breath of fresh air it can be to meet all of our experiences with kindness, openness, compassion: “Ouch, this hurts. Other people feel this way, I am not alone. Can I allow myself to feel these feelings rather than fight them? How can I best take care of myself in the midst of this?” To know that ‘Anxiety is here. And that’s ok’ Strengthening these innate capacities of mindfulness and compassion will mean we feel more resilient, more resourced. And when we feel more resourced we are more able to connect and actively engage with the world in ways that matter to us. By looking after ourselves we are then more able to look after others.
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