Warning: I’m evangelical about meditation and how fucking great it is for anxiety. I can’t help it, I’m a convert!

(I practice mindfulness and open awareness &amp; especially love the Waking Up app).

Boiled down…

Anxiety is normal, I wasn’t told that in therapy. In therapy it was something that needed explanation and a diagnosis and a fix.

I was first told that anxiety is natural in my meditation groups. 

Hokey I know but hear me out. We have 80,000-100,000 thoughts and feelings a day, they all come and go, to and from the same place. Anxiety is uncomfortable but it’s no different than excitement or happiness or a random thought. We don’t have any control over what we feel or think—to prove it I often ask a friend to imagine…a dog bootyhole! Gross —I know but I’m just saying, we don’t have any much control. 

What we do have control of though, with practice, is how we react to our thoughts and feelings. Anxiety, and everything else we think and feel, comes and goes as it pleases. 

Through mindfulness meditation I learned to really welcome my anxiety instead of pick it apart and analyze it and diagnose the “whys” (why I’m getting anxious). I’ve learned that every wave of anxiety is an opportunity to practice awareness. I go “ok I’m anxious. I’m aware I’m anxious…that’s cool. Welcome anxiety” essentially I’m not judging my anxiety, which usually is what made it so bad in the past—so much fear of my anxiety turning into more anxiety and possibly then a crippling panic attack. Now I notice it but then I drop it and don’t focus on it, it’ll dissolve, it’s perfectly natural. I don’t give it any more weight than it deserves, it’s just like any other thought or feeling that my brain and body promotes to the surface of my consciousness. 

It really helps to normalize anxiety in yourself so that it’s more of a friend rather than an enemy. 

I still have anxiety—that hasn’t changed. What has changed completely is my relationship to it.