Most of society lives in an anxiety filled environment.
There are all kinds of ways to deal with it from yoga to prescription medications.
But if you don’t have time to do all the things that are available you can deal with anxiety in other ways on your own. One of the ways I stumbled onto was using Mindfulness techniques.
I have dealt with anxiety all my life. From the time I was a small child I remember, for whatever reason I felt stressed about mostly everything. This happened usually at night while in bed. I remember being so stressed out at times I felt like I was levitating off my mattress.
I shook , so much my life it became second nature to me. In my awake moments I would perseverate. Thinking of bad things that could happen on an endless loop in my mind. That was pretty much a regular thing with me into adulthood , where I then managed to add obsessive/ compulsive behavior into the mix. This is the stage that I began checking and rechecking things two, three, maybe four times before I was satisfied with whatever result I was looking for. Lack of sleep became an issue with me, and since I was by myself with two young children at this point, and had to work one full time teaching job and 2 other part-time jobs, it didn’t bode well at all not to be alert.
I needed help, and the quickest fix was anti anxiety medication. I was put on Zoloft, and had bad reaction to that, then on lexopro and I gained 40 lbs. which I knew wasn’t good, then Xanax, also wasn’t good but took the edge off.
I’m convinced that being anxiety ridden for most of my life I burned out my thyroid leading to an ablation , and now I just take meds for that. For me, lack of thyroid and finding a more holistic way to deal with anxiety was something that needed to be investigated into further.
Now, let me be clear, I believe there’s a time and place for any of these helpers we sometimes need to get through life, but for me, I have always been an advocate of being proactive about these situations. It’s just that at certain times it’s easier to take the way out that gets you the result you’re looking for faster.
So, when I retired and I didn’t have children to get off to school, or people to impress, or obligations to manage, I started looking and reading about other forms of slowing your mind down and not always looking too far ahead. Because, let’s face it, when your mind spins out of control, so does your anxiety.
I came across a course in mindfulness which sounded ridiculous at first to me, but the more I read about it the more I could see how it could have some
advantages.
Mindfulness is just how it sounds. It’s all about living in the moment and not projecting too far out.
This is a useful tool, that when used, can slow down your mind and help one concentrate on what is surrounding you at the time. Of course, it takes practice and willingness to cut some time out if your day and purposely put yourself first in order for this to work.
In my readings I found that closing yourself off for a few minutes a day from the outside obligations of everyday life, closing your eyes, being present in a place in your mind where you just zero in on the smells around you, the way your body is feeling at the moment, and trying to block out the excess noise , is very calming. Don’t project any thoughts just appreciate what is at hand in the here and now.
If you do an exercise like this everyday, maybe around the same time, you begin to feel more grounded. Eventually, you can release excess baggage you may be carrying around in your mental filing cabinet and get rid of emotions and thoughts that aren’t serving you well.
You become engaged with yourself and begin on your journey to a life where you will feel more confident and less afraid of judgement and begin to get to know who you really are and want to become.
What a lovely moment it is when you feel the weight of the world now lifted from your shoulders and the veil between you and others is no longer needed.
The real YOU has now arrived!