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TRANSFORMING ANXIETY
Here is the most important thing for you to know:
YOU DON'T HAVE ANXIETY. ANXIETY HAS YOU.
You are the sky.
Everything else is the weather.
Pema Chodron
So... what is ANXIETY?
The definition of anxiety is:
the body’s response to a perceived threat.
Anxiety believes something is wrong
and wants to warn us about it.
The problem is, anxiety is always concerned
about a future threat. And it pulls its
data to assess the threat from the past.
Anxiety doesn’t know how to exist in the present moment.
But we do.
And being present in the present moment is
where our true protection lies. Not in lurching between
future threats and past, wounded experiences.
What does your anxiety want to tell you?
As we allow ourselves to reset through breathing
exercises and meditation, we are able to
define, consciously, what the nature of our experience
with anxiety actually is. We are able to stop identifying,
unconsciously, with our anxiety and as we do so,
our relationship with it radically shifts.
With greater inner freedom,
we can regard anxiety with curiosity and compassion.
QUESTIONS FOR INQUIRY
In a calm moment, invite your anxiety to speak to you.
You can do this by sitting in private meditation, asking out loud:
“What are you worried about?”
“What is it you want me to know?”
Then listen for the answer within.
Or you can also do the same exercise with a pen and paper.
Ask the question by writing it down and then wait for the
answer to write itself in response.
If a sky identifies with the storm clouds, there is no
space where one ends and the other begins.
If the sky knows itself as the container holding
a vast range of experiences and circumstances,
it can be a thing of peace and steadfastness.
Untarnished by whatever is passing through.
The aim, is not to eradicate anxiety, but to transform
the way you’re relating to it.
If you can shift the way you’re relating to your anxiety
(hostage/terrorist dynamic) you can begin to experience yourself
as empowered rather than at the mercy of it.
Before we transform something, we must stabilize it.
When our physiological environment is calm,
we are able to shift out of emergency mode, drop down, get curious
and actually hear what our bodies are trying to tell us.
For most of us, by the time the anxiety subsides, we don’t want to investigate it.
We just want to put an anxiety attack in the rear view and do everything in
our power to make sure it doesn’t come up again.
However, what we avoid in our lives grows stronger.
Whatever we’re not listening to starts to yell louder.
MANTRAS FOR RELIEF
I am safe in this present moment.
A protective, nurturing life force breathes through me at all times.
It is my birthright to live in peace.
Rooting for you!
As you begin transforming your relationship with anxiety,
identifying with it less, stabilizing the physiological
experience of anxiety through breath work and meditation,
you will become more available to receive the message
your anxiety wants to relay. You can also work with
mantras to support your healing process.
A mantra is like a phone number you memorize in case
you ever get into trouble and need to make a call.
Here are a few you can memorize
or use as inspiration to write your own.
Any time you feel the onset of an anxious thought
or anxious response in your body, repeat your mantras internally.
They give your brain something much more healing to hold onto: