Jack-B
Well-known member
All,
As a simple guide, this post is for people who wish to overcome their anxiety & social phobia and many other problems associated with it. It can be used as a tool for investigation, contemplation and practice. In my view this is the first step in overcoming anxiety and social phobia. In time, i will post the remaining parts to this guide. Hopefully, a firm foundation can be built in gaining confidence in our ability to overcome one of our biggest problems.
No-one gets better by reading the instructions on the side of a medicine bottle, only by taking the medicine itself do we become cured and convinced that it is certain that we benefit by feeling well.
Identifying The Mind Of Anxiety:
This first part is dedicated to identifying and recognising the mind of anxiety. This first step is essential in building our understanding and acts as a foundation from where we can begin by dismantling our social phobia and anxiety and creating for ourself a better world. By understanding the benefits of clearly recognising the mind of anxiety we will appreciate how valuable it is to us.
The Benefits:
We will see clearly what really is causing us so many problems.
We will eventually know what to do to overcome our anxiety.
We will learn to recognize reduce and finally abandon our anxiety altogether.
We will cease to be deceived by our fear and will learn to respond to our self, our world and others in a more positive way.
What is Anxiety?
A state of mind (type of mind/appearance to our mind) characterised by feelings of mental pain, fear and unease which functions to make our mind unpeaceful and uncontrolled. It arises in dependence on certain causes and conditions which result in our mind generating mistaken conceptions and views of ourself, others and our world.
According to this definition, anxiety is a state of mind, it is completely internal, so we can, if we wish have complete power over it. It is internal, so we need not look anywhere else than our mind if we wish to tackle this problem. It functions to make our mind unpeaceful and uncontrolled, therefore it is a negative state of mind which really only functions to bring us harm, pain and more problems. When anxiety arises in our mind we become out of control, anxiety becomes our controller, under its destructive and completely deceptive influence.
Anxiety is not our self and is not an intrinsic part of who we are, so there is no need to identify ourself with it whatsoever. Our mind is like a clear blue sky, anxiety is like the dark clouds that appear in the sky but are not the sky itself. It arises in our mind in dependece on certain causes and conditions. External conditions, such as other people, situations and so on act as a contributing cause of anxiety arising but are not the substantial cause of our anxiety. Just like heat and light are conditions that cause a plant to grow but are not the substantial cause of the existence of the plant. If there were no seed, the source of the plant, it could not grow, no matter how much heat or light are given.
The source or seed of our anxiety exists within our own mind. Because we have generated anxiety in the past previously, there exists within our mind seed-like potentials, like memories, which are the source or substantial cause of our anxiety. Whenever we encounter anyone or anything, both real or imagined, who acts as a necessary condition for generating this anxious mind, our seed potential will ripen as the appearance of pain and fear in our mind. This causes our mind to become unpeaceful and uncontrolled and we are deceived or fooled into being frightened of our world, thinking we are afraid of certain things or people.
The more we become anxious, the more we programme our mind to become anxious in the future. We need to break this nasty habit now if we wish to be happier in the future.
Another cause of anxiety is anyone or anything we observe when we develop anxiety, directly perceived or even remembered. When our mind comes into contact with this (object of our mind), it thinks about it, we get anxious. For example, we are afraid to speak to our work colleague. Our colleague is, in our mind, the object whom we observe. Whenever we directly perceive this person or rememeber this person, we feel a degree of anxiety. Although this person causes us anxiety, they do not directly from their own side give us anxiety. It's only how our mind observes this person (the object of our mind) that causes anxiety. So although people and things do not directly cause anxiety, they are still classed as causes of anxiety because they contribute to the generation of anxiety in our mind. People are not scary or indeed frightening. Our mind however creates scariness and is frightening.
Familiarity is alos another cause of anxiety because we habituate or we become routinely anxious. It's like deeply ingrained within us. It's like when we get out of bed and then make a cup of tea and start to feel awake. In a routine way we go into situations and develop anxiety almost spontaneously without any effort or thinking on our part.
Innapropriate attention also causes our mind to generate anxiety, its what actually causes our mind to focus mistakenly. For example, before and after any social situation for most, if not all social phobics, their attention will be focused innapropriately. A tendency of over-analysis of one's performance or past performances in social situations leads to generating anxiety. This is negative self-evaluation focusing on faults of our self and is completely unecessary and will be looked at in later steps of this guide.
This mind of anxiety is our real enemy, many people say anxiety is the result of negative thinking and that it is not the cause of further anxiety because it's a result of certain ways of thinking. This however is not entirely accurate because anxiety is a state of mind it can arise in differing degrees or strenghts. Some times our anxiety appears strongly and is unbearable and at other times our anxiety is very mild like low level unease. We can think thoughts one day and feel anxious about them and yet we can think the same thoughts another day and yet no or little anxiety appears at all. Why is this? Because it depends on causes and conditions as to what state of mind we are in. If we our mind is really peaceful, we can think about giving a speech to hundreds of people without feeling anxious, yet if our mind is already unpeaceful. say we are rushoing around or are angry about something or upset and depressed then the slightest thing or thought can make us extremely anxious. This proves that thoughts alon are not the only cause of anxiety. Sometimes we can go out and feel great, other times we can feel really anxious. This is why social phobia is very misleading, some times we seem ok and other times we seem really out of it and afraid over what appears to be nothing at all.
The mind of anxiety is deceptive, like being spiked unknowingly with a drug and acting when not being in control.
You are not afraid of anyone, you are not afraid of talking to others or speaking your mind, you are not afraid of being looked at by others. You are not fear itself.
Anxiety is a state of mind, it is not your self. You are not afraid of anyone or speaking to anyone because you are not anxiety itself. Anxiety is not who you are. What makes us scared of others or scared of speaking to others is quite simply, the mind of anxiety. You have never really been scared of anyone. This deception is so clear when you learn to identify the mind of anxiety. The next time you have to give a speech or speak to groups of people or have to go to 'that office party' ask your self what is there to be afraid of? Fear does not exist outside of your mind. No-one can see this state of mind, it does manifest externally as physical symptoms but only when at extreme levels. There is only one real observer of fear and that is your self. Because you observe fear, you are not fear itself. We identify so closely with it, we think, "this is me, i am anxious, i am afraid of others" but really the hallucenagenic poisonous anxiety is presnt within our mind, it's what makes us feel afraid, not others. It distorts our reality in such a way like when someone has a fever they hallucinate and things appear differently to them. When anxiety is present in our mind, whenever we think about our self, others or situations, it's poison spreads. It literally infects and contaminates our whole way of life. Our image of our self and others becomes distorted and unrealistic, this enemy of our mind is the source of all our pain and fear. Yet, we treat it like a best friend, we allow it to dwell within us, give it a home. It destroys everything in our life, our relationships, our happiness, our confidence, it has become a resident knightmare which only functions to cause harm and damage to our self and others. Allowing it to stay one more day is surely foolish. Yet it seems to control us like a puppet on a string, we are its slave. We are only slave to this mind because we continue to believe its illusion, it projects a world of fear, making it seem like we are afraid of our world and other people. We aren't, not at all. If our mind of anxiety didn't arise, we would not be feel afraid of anyone or anything. We can have power over this state of mind, we can change this, why? Because anxiety is not permanent in our mind, it does reduce, it does dissappear, so we can stop it from ever appearing to our mind again, if we learn how. And the first step in learning how is to learn to identify the mind of anxiety.
We all know what anxiety feels like, we have all experienced this destructive state of mind. We usually only really notice when we are anxious when it is too late or because we have a mental image of what anxiety is we avoid people places situations. This indicates that we are incorrectly identifying anxiety. It's like we are saying, its out there so if i avoid that place or that person i will be alright. This is true in one respect but if we wish to overcome our enemy, the mind of anxiety, we must realise it can go where ever we can go, it can arise within at anytime. Running away from anxiety is like running away from your feet. It serves purpose occassionally when we are just not up to dealing with this state of mind but it is not the long term solution, it actually feeds its power. If we are to overcome our anxiety we must face it and avert it. It is internal but will only arise if we dont know how to stop it and to stop it we must correctly identify it.
If an athletic runner is drugged unknowingly before a race in which causes him to not function at his best slowing him down, he would blame himself for losing the race. Whereas an athletic runner who identified he was drugged before the race wouldnt blame himself, he would blame the drug or the source from where that drug came from. We are like the runner who doesn't realise he's been drugged. We feel this hallucenagenic drug like anxiety but blame ourself because we do not correctly identify it. This is silly and causes us major problems, especially lack of confidence.
In social situations many people fucntion with a lower anxiety state than say someone who is used to being anxious, so they can be themselves a little more and is usually why we dont feel liek our self. This leads to us thinking, no one really knows the real me and why cant i be my self and all sorts of other conceptions which can be nagative. We identify with our anxiety and so become more drugged, more out of control.
What do we usually do when we notice our anxiety?
Mistakenly identify it as ourself instead of a state of mind which we are experiencing which is completely deceptive and functions to make us uncontrolled. We see ourself and others as the source of the problem and want to avoid them and end up hating/loathing our self. We immediately feel insecure and wish to protect our self by closing off from the rest of the world, yet the world and others actually help us in defeating our enemy, the mind of anxiety because they teach us all about our enemy. We feel like an open wound around others sensitive and delicate. We try to hide it from others ( this conception arises due to the mind of anxiety making us believe that what others think is a real cause of our happiness, this will be looked at in the next step of the guide ) we feel ashamed and weak and believe others are strong. We try to act (not being comfortable with ourself) our way out of it. Acting only works if we can be flexible in mind the acting spoken about here is to hide/mask the fact we are suffering mental pain and fear and do not want others knowing.
First step - How do we identify our anxiety?
The mind of anxiety can appear in different degrees, we must be able to identify it at its early stages. It's like a fire starting. If seen early enough it is relatively easy to put out. If left to burn it runs wildly out of control consuming everything leaving us scolded. Some things make this fire burn more quickly. For us it is people and what they think of us, for others it's spiders or heights, these things are like petrol bombs that explode everywhere making the fire burn faster.
We can identify the mind of anxiety or gain a clear mentla image of it long before we ever become anxious. In fact this is extremely helpful in preparing us for any situations we know we will inevitably be anxious. We dont usually notice it and when we do we dont correctly identidy it because when we see it it's already in a raging state burning through our mind. If you owned a jewellry shop and the policeinformed you of a local robberand gave youa photo and clear description of him. You could identify him if he entered your shop and kick him out before he did any damage. The same is true of the mind of anxiety, if beforehand you gain a clear mental image of what it looks like, instead of it being the thief who steals the jewel of our happiness and confidence we will be able to kick it out as soon as it enters the door of our mind. We may say, i have experienced anxiety a million times, i know what it is, i know what it feels like. If we could clearly identify it in the first instance we would be putting it out before it gets out of hand.
We need to learn to watch what is going on in our mind a bit like a spy, watching but not getting too invloved, asking from time to time, is the mind of anxiety present? Is there anxiety appearing to my mind?
Many therapists recommend to us to know what triggers our anxeity or replce certain thoughts with more positive ones - this is great and does work really well but our mind of anxiety depends on other things not just our thoughts. The best thing then we can learn is to identify it the moment it arises. If anxiety is in our mind our thoughts can potentially be contaminated by its influence so we its difficult to know what thoughts to trust. We can change our ways of thinking only for new anxieties to be cultivated over and over.The mind of anxiety is relentless and mutates and evolves as we evolve in trying to overcome it. This is why it's important in recognising it early on in our mind. We try loads of different things but it still finds a way to overthrow us - this is because we havent learnt to see it creeping in through the front door. Whenever we feel unpeaceful, any mental discomfort, uncontrolled or uneasy - anxiety can easily arise or be arising or may have just arisen. Whenever we feel slightly afraid, panicked, nervous or agitated, nxiety has most certainly arisen and is building. Whenever we feel like hiding or avoiding anxiety is definitely present and is causing us damage. Whenever we are shaking, sweating, tightening,blushing, getting really hot, get that flooding feeling liek our insides are spilling out of us these are a sure sign that we are engulfed by the venomous mind of anxiety. The physical signs are usually an indication of anxiety in its more later stages. As previously mentioned there are differing stages or degrees of this mind and the better you can get at identifying the level of anxiety and what stages you are at, the better you will get at realising what state of mind you are in. Then you will be building/creating the foundation to actually use methods to control it, disbelieve it, overcome it.
If you correctly identify the anxiety as a state of mind you are experiencing but is not your self or anyone else, you can start to let it go. It's grip will lessen and you can just observe it without getting too involved in it. You will start to see its deceptive nature and how it creates so many problems.
It's a bit like when you go to the cinema and watch a scary movie, every time you identify this anxiety, you realise that it's "the scary movie in my mind" you merely observe it whilst sat chilling eating your popcorn. It's only really harmful if you get sucked in to it's deception and start blaming your self and wanting to avoid everyone.
You know it's not real, it's irrational, illogical, there are no real monsters there. You don't torture your self for days after going to the cinema saying " i got so scared, i freaked out, i was so anxious, im useless"
I work with this woman who has been diagnosed with social phobia and anxiety. She loves scary movies but she cant stand the anxiety in her mind when she is around others. She disbelieves the anxiety when watching a film because she doesnt understand her minds role in creating that anxiety, to her, it has nothing to do with her, so she doesnt take it on as much. Its like she feels alright or can accept that anxiety from her mind because its like its got nothing to do with her at all. Whereas she when her anxiety arises when around others, its totally personal. The monsters are real it's like she's stepped inside the "the scary movie" in her mind . Yet no-one around her is an actual monster. Our lives are a bit like a scary movie in which we are the director. Some people appear to see the same as us and say, "thats not scary at all", but to us our movie is frightening.
When we look through our life, in so many situations we will see this mind of anxiety deceiving us drugging us into thinking " i am scared of others i am useless in social situations" It has tricked us. The mental pain and fear is not who we are but it is something we identify as being "me". teh very feeling of anxiety should remind us of the fact that we are not scared of anyone. Were we scared of anyone before the moment we got anxious? We are not scared of anyone. No one or no thing has power from its own side to scare us at all, it comes from our side.
I used to have a phobia of tables, i used to get extremely anxious when ever i had to sit round a table. The anxiety didnt come from the table, it came from my mind. Phobias exist because we are accustomed to believing fear exists outside of our mind, that things do something to us, they make us feel a particular way. The relationship between how our mind perceives things and what is actually there is very fascinating indeed.
So in identifying the mind of anxiety we just need to be aware of its deception -making us believe we are afraid of the world, see it for what it is - a state of mind which makes us drugged and uncontrolled and inneffective. Helpful statements to remember:
"Anxiety is arising in my mind. It is not me. It's a state of mind which is completley deceptive. There is no thing to be afraid of because it is a mentally generated appearance of fear projected cinematically onto the world."
"if there were no mind of anxiety, there would be no fear"
"i am not anxiety, i will not trust what this anxious mind is telling me, it is deceptive and functions to harm"
Once we build this step firmly in our mind, it will function to free us of much torment and will help in allowing us to actualize the methods that we can use to reduce this mind in step 2.
This concludes the first step. I will post step 2 some time in the future.
If anyone has any questions in the mean time about the content or wishes to talk about specific problems dealing with anxiety you can post here or to my email:
[email protected]
Jack
As a simple guide, this post is for people who wish to overcome their anxiety & social phobia and many other problems associated with it. It can be used as a tool for investigation, contemplation and practice. In my view this is the first step in overcoming anxiety and social phobia. In time, i will post the remaining parts to this guide. Hopefully, a firm foundation can be built in gaining confidence in our ability to overcome one of our biggest problems.
No-one gets better by reading the instructions on the side of a medicine bottle, only by taking the medicine itself do we become cured and convinced that it is certain that we benefit by feeling well.
Identifying The Mind Of Anxiety:
This first part is dedicated to identifying and recognising the mind of anxiety. This first step is essential in building our understanding and acts as a foundation from where we can begin by dismantling our social phobia and anxiety and creating for ourself a better world. By understanding the benefits of clearly recognising the mind of anxiety we will appreciate how valuable it is to us.
The Benefits:
We will see clearly what really is causing us so many problems.
We will eventually know what to do to overcome our anxiety.
We will learn to recognize reduce and finally abandon our anxiety altogether.
We will cease to be deceived by our fear and will learn to respond to our self, our world and others in a more positive way.
What is Anxiety?
A state of mind (type of mind/appearance to our mind) characterised by feelings of mental pain, fear and unease which functions to make our mind unpeaceful and uncontrolled. It arises in dependence on certain causes and conditions which result in our mind generating mistaken conceptions and views of ourself, others and our world.
According to this definition, anxiety is a state of mind, it is completely internal, so we can, if we wish have complete power over it. It is internal, so we need not look anywhere else than our mind if we wish to tackle this problem. It functions to make our mind unpeaceful and uncontrolled, therefore it is a negative state of mind which really only functions to bring us harm, pain and more problems. When anxiety arises in our mind we become out of control, anxiety becomes our controller, under its destructive and completely deceptive influence.
Anxiety is not our self and is not an intrinsic part of who we are, so there is no need to identify ourself with it whatsoever. Our mind is like a clear blue sky, anxiety is like the dark clouds that appear in the sky but are not the sky itself. It arises in our mind in dependece on certain causes and conditions. External conditions, such as other people, situations and so on act as a contributing cause of anxiety arising but are not the substantial cause of our anxiety. Just like heat and light are conditions that cause a plant to grow but are not the substantial cause of the existence of the plant. If there were no seed, the source of the plant, it could not grow, no matter how much heat or light are given.
The source or seed of our anxiety exists within our own mind. Because we have generated anxiety in the past previously, there exists within our mind seed-like potentials, like memories, which are the source or substantial cause of our anxiety. Whenever we encounter anyone or anything, both real or imagined, who acts as a necessary condition for generating this anxious mind, our seed potential will ripen as the appearance of pain and fear in our mind. This causes our mind to become unpeaceful and uncontrolled and we are deceived or fooled into being frightened of our world, thinking we are afraid of certain things or people.
The more we become anxious, the more we programme our mind to become anxious in the future. We need to break this nasty habit now if we wish to be happier in the future.
Another cause of anxiety is anyone or anything we observe when we develop anxiety, directly perceived or even remembered. When our mind comes into contact with this (object of our mind), it thinks about it, we get anxious. For example, we are afraid to speak to our work colleague. Our colleague is, in our mind, the object whom we observe. Whenever we directly perceive this person or rememeber this person, we feel a degree of anxiety. Although this person causes us anxiety, they do not directly from their own side give us anxiety. It's only how our mind observes this person (the object of our mind) that causes anxiety. So although people and things do not directly cause anxiety, they are still classed as causes of anxiety because they contribute to the generation of anxiety in our mind. People are not scary or indeed frightening. Our mind however creates scariness and is frightening.
Familiarity is alos another cause of anxiety because we habituate or we become routinely anxious. It's like deeply ingrained within us. It's like when we get out of bed and then make a cup of tea and start to feel awake. In a routine way we go into situations and develop anxiety almost spontaneously without any effort or thinking on our part.
Innapropriate attention also causes our mind to generate anxiety, its what actually causes our mind to focus mistakenly. For example, before and after any social situation for most, if not all social phobics, their attention will be focused innapropriately. A tendency of over-analysis of one's performance or past performances in social situations leads to generating anxiety. This is negative self-evaluation focusing on faults of our self and is completely unecessary and will be looked at in later steps of this guide.
This mind of anxiety is our real enemy, many people say anxiety is the result of negative thinking and that it is not the cause of further anxiety because it's a result of certain ways of thinking. This however is not entirely accurate because anxiety is a state of mind it can arise in differing degrees or strenghts. Some times our anxiety appears strongly and is unbearable and at other times our anxiety is very mild like low level unease. We can think thoughts one day and feel anxious about them and yet we can think the same thoughts another day and yet no or little anxiety appears at all. Why is this? Because it depends on causes and conditions as to what state of mind we are in. If we our mind is really peaceful, we can think about giving a speech to hundreds of people without feeling anxious, yet if our mind is already unpeaceful. say we are rushoing around or are angry about something or upset and depressed then the slightest thing or thought can make us extremely anxious. This proves that thoughts alon are not the only cause of anxiety. Sometimes we can go out and feel great, other times we can feel really anxious. This is why social phobia is very misleading, some times we seem ok and other times we seem really out of it and afraid over what appears to be nothing at all.
The mind of anxiety is deceptive, like being spiked unknowingly with a drug and acting when not being in control.
You are not afraid of anyone, you are not afraid of talking to others or speaking your mind, you are not afraid of being looked at by others. You are not fear itself.
Anxiety is a state of mind, it is not your self. You are not afraid of anyone or speaking to anyone because you are not anxiety itself. Anxiety is not who you are. What makes us scared of others or scared of speaking to others is quite simply, the mind of anxiety. You have never really been scared of anyone. This deception is so clear when you learn to identify the mind of anxiety. The next time you have to give a speech or speak to groups of people or have to go to 'that office party' ask your self what is there to be afraid of? Fear does not exist outside of your mind. No-one can see this state of mind, it does manifest externally as physical symptoms but only when at extreme levels. There is only one real observer of fear and that is your self. Because you observe fear, you are not fear itself. We identify so closely with it, we think, "this is me, i am anxious, i am afraid of others" but really the hallucenagenic poisonous anxiety is presnt within our mind, it's what makes us feel afraid, not others. It distorts our reality in such a way like when someone has a fever they hallucinate and things appear differently to them. When anxiety is present in our mind, whenever we think about our self, others or situations, it's poison spreads. It literally infects and contaminates our whole way of life. Our image of our self and others becomes distorted and unrealistic, this enemy of our mind is the source of all our pain and fear. Yet, we treat it like a best friend, we allow it to dwell within us, give it a home. It destroys everything in our life, our relationships, our happiness, our confidence, it has become a resident knightmare which only functions to cause harm and damage to our self and others. Allowing it to stay one more day is surely foolish. Yet it seems to control us like a puppet on a string, we are its slave. We are only slave to this mind because we continue to believe its illusion, it projects a world of fear, making it seem like we are afraid of our world and other people. We aren't, not at all. If our mind of anxiety didn't arise, we would not be feel afraid of anyone or anything. We can have power over this state of mind, we can change this, why? Because anxiety is not permanent in our mind, it does reduce, it does dissappear, so we can stop it from ever appearing to our mind again, if we learn how. And the first step in learning how is to learn to identify the mind of anxiety.
We all know what anxiety feels like, we have all experienced this destructive state of mind. We usually only really notice when we are anxious when it is too late or because we have a mental image of what anxiety is we avoid people places situations. This indicates that we are incorrectly identifying anxiety. It's like we are saying, its out there so if i avoid that place or that person i will be alright. This is true in one respect but if we wish to overcome our enemy, the mind of anxiety, we must realise it can go where ever we can go, it can arise within at anytime. Running away from anxiety is like running away from your feet. It serves purpose occassionally when we are just not up to dealing with this state of mind but it is not the long term solution, it actually feeds its power. If we are to overcome our anxiety we must face it and avert it. It is internal but will only arise if we dont know how to stop it and to stop it we must correctly identify it.
If an athletic runner is drugged unknowingly before a race in which causes him to not function at his best slowing him down, he would blame himself for losing the race. Whereas an athletic runner who identified he was drugged before the race wouldnt blame himself, he would blame the drug or the source from where that drug came from. We are like the runner who doesn't realise he's been drugged. We feel this hallucenagenic drug like anxiety but blame ourself because we do not correctly identify it. This is silly and causes us major problems, especially lack of confidence.
In social situations many people fucntion with a lower anxiety state than say someone who is used to being anxious, so they can be themselves a little more and is usually why we dont feel liek our self. This leads to us thinking, no one really knows the real me and why cant i be my self and all sorts of other conceptions which can be nagative. We identify with our anxiety and so become more drugged, more out of control.
What do we usually do when we notice our anxiety?
Mistakenly identify it as ourself instead of a state of mind which we are experiencing which is completely deceptive and functions to make us uncontrolled. We see ourself and others as the source of the problem and want to avoid them and end up hating/loathing our self. We immediately feel insecure and wish to protect our self by closing off from the rest of the world, yet the world and others actually help us in defeating our enemy, the mind of anxiety because they teach us all about our enemy. We feel like an open wound around others sensitive and delicate. We try to hide it from others ( this conception arises due to the mind of anxiety making us believe that what others think is a real cause of our happiness, this will be looked at in the next step of the guide ) we feel ashamed and weak and believe others are strong. We try to act (not being comfortable with ourself) our way out of it. Acting only works if we can be flexible in mind the acting spoken about here is to hide/mask the fact we are suffering mental pain and fear and do not want others knowing.
First step - How do we identify our anxiety?
The mind of anxiety can appear in different degrees, we must be able to identify it at its early stages. It's like a fire starting. If seen early enough it is relatively easy to put out. If left to burn it runs wildly out of control consuming everything leaving us scolded. Some things make this fire burn more quickly. For us it is people and what they think of us, for others it's spiders or heights, these things are like petrol bombs that explode everywhere making the fire burn faster.
We can identify the mind of anxiety or gain a clear mentla image of it long before we ever become anxious. In fact this is extremely helpful in preparing us for any situations we know we will inevitably be anxious. We dont usually notice it and when we do we dont correctly identidy it because when we see it it's already in a raging state burning through our mind. If you owned a jewellry shop and the policeinformed you of a local robberand gave youa photo and clear description of him. You could identify him if he entered your shop and kick him out before he did any damage. The same is true of the mind of anxiety, if beforehand you gain a clear mental image of what it looks like, instead of it being the thief who steals the jewel of our happiness and confidence we will be able to kick it out as soon as it enters the door of our mind. We may say, i have experienced anxiety a million times, i know what it is, i know what it feels like. If we could clearly identify it in the first instance we would be putting it out before it gets out of hand.
We need to learn to watch what is going on in our mind a bit like a spy, watching but not getting too invloved, asking from time to time, is the mind of anxiety present? Is there anxiety appearing to my mind?
Many therapists recommend to us to know what triggers our anxeity or replce certain thoughts with more positive ones - this is great and does work really well but our mind of anxiety depends on other things not just our thoughts. The best thing then we can learn is to identify it the moment it arises. If anxiety is in our mind our thoughts can potentially be contaminated by its influence so we its difficult to know what thoughts to trust. We can change our ways of thinking only for new anxieties to be cultivated over and over.The mind of anxiety is relentless and mutates and evolves as we evolve in trying to overcome it. This is why it's important in recognising it early on in our mind. We try loads of different things but it still finds a way to overthrow us - this is because we havent learnt to see it creeping in through the front door. Whenever we feel unpeaceful, any mental discomfort, uncontrolled or uneasy - anxiety can easily arise or be arising or may have just arisen. Whenever we feel slightly afraid, panicked, nervous or agitated, nxiety has most certainly arisen and is building. Whenever we feel like hiding or avoiding anxiety is definitely present and is causing us damage. Whenever we are shaking, sweating, tightening,blushing, getting really hot, get that flooding feeling liek our insides are spilling out of us these are a sure sign that we are engulfed by the venomous mind of anxiety. The physical signs are usually an indication of anxiety in its more later stages. As previously mentioned there are differing stages or degrees of this mind and the better you can get at identifying the level of anxiety and what stages you are at, the better you will get at realising what state of mind you are in. Then you will be building/creating the foundation to actually use methods to control it, disbelieve it, overcome it.
If you correctly identify the anxiety as a state of mind you are experiencing but is not your self or anyone else, you can start to let it go. It's grip will lessen and you can just observe it without getting too involved in it. You will start to see its deceptive nature and how it creates so many problems.
It's a bit like when you go to the cinema and watch a scary movie, every time you identify this anxiety, you realise that it's "the scary movie in my mind" you merely observe it whilst sat chilling eating your popcorn. It's only really harmful if you get sucked in to it's deception and start blaming your self and wanting to avoid everyone.
You know it's not real, it's irrational, illogical, there are no real monsters there. You don't torture your self for days after going to the cinema saying " i got so scared, i freaked out, i was so anxious, im useless"
I work with this woman who has been diagnosed with social phobia and anxiety. She loves scary movies but she cant stand the anxiety in her mind when she is around others. She disbelieves the anxiety when watching a film because she doesnt understand her minds role in creating that anxiety, to her, it has nothing to do with her, so she doesnt take it on as much. Its like she feels alright or can accept that anxiety from her mind because its like its got nothing to do with her at all. Whereas she when her anxiety arises when around others, its totally personal. The monsters are real it's like she's stepped inside the "the scary movie" in her mind . Yet no-one around her is an actual monster. Our lives are a bit like a scary movie in which we are the director. Some people appear to see the same as us and say, "thats not scary at all", but to us our movie is frightening.
When we look through our life, in so many situations we will see this mind of anxiety deceiving us drugging us into thinking " i am scared of others i am useless in social situations" It has tricked us. The mental pain and fear is not who we are but it is something we identify as being "me". teh very feeling of anxiety should remind us of the fact that we are not scared of anyone. Were we scared of anyone before the moment we got anxious? We are not scared of anyone. No one or no thing has power from its own side to scare us at all, it comes from our side.
I used to have a phobia of tables, i used to get extremely anxious when ever i had to sit round a table. The anxiety didnt come from the table, it came from my mind. Phobias exist because we are accustomed to believing fear exists outside of our mind, that things do something to us, they make us feel a particular way. The relationship between how our mind perceives things and what is actually there is very fascinating indeed.
So in identifying the mind of anxiety we just need to be aware of its deception -making us believe we are afraid of the world, see it for what it is - a state of mind which makes us drugged and uncontrolled and inneffective. Helpful statements to remember:
"Anxiety is arising in my mind. It is not me. It's a state of mind which is completley deceptive. There is no thing to be afraid of because it is a mentally generated appearance of fear projected cinematically onto the world."
"if there were no mind of anxiety, there would be no fear"
"i am not anxiety, i will not trust what this anxious mind is telling me, it is deceptive and functions to harm"
Once we build this step firmly in our mind, it will function to free us of much torment and will help in allowing us to actualize the methods that we can use to reduce this mind in step 2.
This concludes the first step. I will post step 2 some time in the future.
If anyone has any questions in the mean time about the content or wishes to talk about specific problems dealing with anxiety you can post here or to my email:
[email protected]
Jack