A Reliable Tool to Help Retrain Your Anxious Brain/Recover from Severe Anxiety
How can you get better at living with uncomfortable sensations, emotions, or thoughts? Sadly, one skillful way is often missed. The best strategy and hope for symptom relief is to try something novel when dreaded unwanted sensations/emotions/thoughts menace or lurk.
What is this novel approach? Don’t get stuck or tricked into the same old patterns! Instead, let lurking sensations/anxieties show up, co-exist without having to fight, change, fix, or stop any of them.
REGARDLESS OF THE DISCOMFORT, gently remind yourself that: sensations are just sensations; emotions just emotions; or thoughts just thoughts. The body and mind play tricks. You don’t have to believe everything you feel/think. You do not have to react, fight, push, or force any one of them away.
Engage in the fight, and it always ends the same way: not well! You don’t win and are exhausted/spent!
Let go of the fight, and new options arise. Your energy is conserved. Instead, you learn to ride the waves of anxiety/discomfort and accept swimming amid and around your uncomfortable sensations/thoughts.
It becomes no longer necessary to automatically or knee jerk react to the siren calls of unabated anxiety.
Instead, PAUSE, SLOW YOUR BREATH, BE CURIOUS, CREATE SOME SPACE, AND SEEK A WIDE ANGLED VIEW. .
Yes, make room for something novel and different to happen. Pay attention to what happens when you drop out of your PAINFUL STORIES/thinking mind and land in the somatic world of sensations/feelings/ experiencing/being without the burden of having to judge, fix, change, or stop things.
Notice how creating more space/slowing breath when being with uncomfortable feelings—without having to change or eliminate them—feels and differs from what you usually do when anxiety lurks?
Also useful: Pay close attention to what is different when NOT having to change, eliminate, or fight uncomfortable sensations/thoughts but instead to let them be? Ask yourself: Am I burdened less or more? Am I tired less or more? Do I suffer less or more? Is my anxiety less or more?
Additionally, notice carefully if your word choice(s) make a difference? Ask yourself: How do I feel when I say “uncomfortable sensation’ rather than “intolerable pain” or “horrific anxiety”? Is my numbing, fog, or perceived pain less or more? Chances are the words I choose directly affect my perceived pain and suffering. Benefit from this insight and choose more benign words to describe discomfort.
In summary: Learning to ride the waves of uncomfortable sensations/emotions/thoughts– observing without overreacting–can help soften or ease your relationship with anxiety.
With a calmer and more relaxed body and mind, the grip of anxiety and stress lessens.