Anxiety Is Your Friend (Talk & Q&A)

This talk provides a way of dealing with anxiety in two steps: step one is to recognise that our True Self is always at peace and unaffected by thoughts and emotions, and - knowing this - step two is to then face and embrace all of our fears and anxieties. The talk is followed by a Q&A session.

Transcript

Hi everybody and welcome to this insight timer live session on Anxiety is your friend.

You've probably heard things like this before that there is a message behind every feeling,

That it's all for a reason,

That it is all unfolding perfectly,

That we just need to learn the lessons that are there and that's true,

Absolutely,

100%.

But it's not easy to understand and it's not easy to apply,

Especially when life is so busy and there's so many things to do and sometimes things probably go a bit out of hand.

So that's what this talk is about to help you understand what it actually means.

The first step to make anxiety your friend is to create distance actually between you and the anxiety.

So to recognize that it is just a temporary feeling that is appearing,

But it is not you.

Being that is just a feeling,

Sometimes it has many thoughts that come with the feeling,

But if we step back and notice who is it that is aware of all of these feelings and all of these thoughts,

Then we can recognize that there is a part of us that is actually not affected by this anxiety.

So there is a part of us that is already free from it.

And actually I recorded a meditation that is on Inside Timer called Letting Go Of and Coming Back to the Elements of Our Experience.

And what the meditation does is that it slowly helps us surrender,

So to speak,

Concepts like time,

Like space,

And slowly also letting go of our thoughts,

Of our feelings,

And just becoming this observer of everything that unfolds.

And then we know ourself as that observer,

As that constant presence that simply allows everything to be as it is.

No need to change it,

To alter our experience in any way.

And once we know this true self,

This higher self,

Then we can go back to our thoughts and our feelings knowing that they don't really affect us.

And this knowing actually allows us to embrace them more fully,

To really explore them,

To really understand why they appear from this higher perspective.

And yes,

This is step two.

It's once you know that you are safe,

Whole,

And complete at all times,

Then you can face these feelings.

Not only face them,

But also understand them and know that the feeling comes often with thoughts.

With thoughts as a desire to change another person,

To change ourself,

To change our circumstances,

Our lives.

And the thing to do then is to stay with this,

Stay with these thoughts.

Let them come,

Let them appear,

Let them happen,

If possible,

Without taking action.

And simply notice that this higher self that you know yourself to be will emerge,

And it is always there veiled by these thoughts and these feelings.

So it's actually a constant message that they bring up.

And the message is that you are always safe,

Whole,

And complete.

That no thought and no feeling can change that.

And by staying with your thoughts and your feelings and allowing them to come and go,

Which they inevitably do,

You understand deeper and deeper that there is a changeless reality,

That there is a self,

An observer,

A witness that is always constant,

Always safe,

Always all-embracing,

All-loving.

And it doesn't need to change anything.

So it's a bit paradoxical because it seems like these anxieties come up because we need to change something.

And sometimes we do,

But often they just come up to point us back to the present moment,

To point us back to who we really are.

So that's my message to you,

And it's also a spiral,

It's an ongoing and deepening spiral of understanding,

Of knowing our true self,

Our true nature more and more deeply,

And also allowing more and more of the anxieties and beliefs that we are somehow incomplete and we don't deserve happiness,

And all of these things to come up,

To rest with them and embrace them until they shift.

And the second message that I want to pass on today is to try,

All of us,

We should try to do our best to act from this love and this wholeness.

I know it's difficult at times because the feelings and the thoughts are so overwhelming that there's really no way to change them,

Or to not act on them,

But even when we do that,

We should aim to come back to who we really are,

To act from love beyond these thoughts and these feelings.

That usually happens when we reach a place of clarity and stillness within us,

And then we know what is true in what the thoughts and the anxieties tell us.

Often we see that not a lot,

If anything,

Of what they say is true.

It's just worry coming up,

It's just anxiety coming up,

But that does not mean it's true.

And we can learn that every day and we can deepen our understanding of that every day.

Thomas asks,

So anxiety is a message from our higher self?

Yes,

Absolutely,

It's a message from our higher self to get to know it,

The higher self,

Better.

To go back in touch with what's beyond the anxiety,

To understand it and see what it's pointing us to,

That safety,

That wholeness that I talked about earlier.

And when we take this perspective of the higher self,

Then the anxiety can no longer be seen as anxiety.

We also understand that the label anxiety is just a label that the mind uses to point to a sensation in the body.

But it's not,

It's tension,

It's body tension,

But it doesn't need to be labeled anxiety and to be linked to things.

That's the mind's game.

It likes to do that,

To try and continue this feeling of anxiety.

But from the perspective of the higher self,

We can just rest with that and in a way wait for the mind to get tired.

Just to observe it,

Allow it and rest with it.

Ruth says,

Fear seems related to anxiety for me.

And yeah,

That's absolutely true.

I think that if we were to label things,

I would say that fear is the underlying cause of anxiety.

So there is always some kind of fear,

Some kind of feeling of not being worthy of something or feeling like life is incomplete.

And all of these fears,

To go a bit deeper,

Are actually our beliefs in separation.

So we believe that we are separate from each other,

We are separate from the world,

And we are separate from this higher being or God.

But in truth,

We are not separate.

So when we come back to being the weakness,

We also notice that this belief in separation,

That these fears are just temporary and illusory,

Even though at times they can be very,

Very strong.

It's very interesting to watch this process as it unfolds because on the one hand we experience anxiety.

Then boom,

Our higher self points us back to itself.

So then we rest as this higher self and we know that the anxiety is temporary and we allow it to flow through and come and go without resisting it.

And also the more we rest as the higher self,

The more we can get lost in anxieties and fully allow all that need to go through our particular body-minds and embrace it all.

And again,

Forget this higher self.

But of course,

The more we come back to who we really are,

The more difficult it is to forget,

And second,

The more there is a sense of stillness and peace that surrounds our experience,

No matter how strong,

How tense,

How difficult it is.

Rishabh says,

I heard a teacher here say that one way of dealing with the anxiety is to grab the bull by the horn.

I understand the meaning and it definitely helped me and still does,

But I'm curious whether the methods are there.

So first,

Yeah,

Grab the bull by the horn is a great way because in a way that already means that you know there is a deeper reality,

A deeper stillness that is behind the anxiety.

And so this is the step two is,

Yes,

Face it,

Embrace it,

Accept it,

Allow it fully.

And what other methods are there?

I would say that what works for me is to come back to the body,

Especially the spine,

And realign the positioning of the body because so often when there's a lot of tension and a lot of anxiety,

First the body kind of tenses up,

And second,

It's like there is a desire to avoid it.

So I don't know if you've seen photos that are slightly,

You know,

The person taking them has moved.

And so it seems like there's a part,

There's an energy that's not in the body.

So I feel like that's what's happening some of the time when we have strong anxiety is we kind of want to escape the body and not feel it kind of go away.

So re-centering on the body allows us to accept it more fully and to trust that the body has the capacity to deal with it,

To allow it to flow through.

Anything that works really does.

You can do breathing,

You know,

Breathing deeply and consciously.

You can focus on what's around you,

Notice what is happening in this moment without trying to avoid bringing the mind back here.

Yes,

Grounding,

Grounding as well,

Praying,

Yeah,

Exactly.

I think especially praying in moments where it's very difficult and very tense is great because it's like in prayer,

I don't know if you have specific guides or you believe in God,

But in trusting something higher than yourself,

You're able to surrender it more and to get in touch with this higher self,

Get in touch with something much larger than the worrying mind-body.

And yeah,

I think re-centering using breathing can be called a practice.

You can do it for five,

Ten minutes or another way to do it is to have sticky notes to remind you or have a timer every hour to just take a few,

A couple or more deep breaths in.

And once again,

Focusing on the body and all the different parts and the structure of the spine.

Carlos says,

I remember our Creator says,

Fear not for I am with you.

Yeah,

Definitely,

And that's this opening.

A Course in Miracles says,

If you knew who was walking with you,

You would never be afraid.

This goes back to fear being the underlying cause of anxiety.

It's about getting back in touch with something larger than ourselves and letting this higher spiritual force or forces help us through difficult times.

Fiore says,

It's so complicated when anxiety is constant in your life,

Especially when you have beautiful things to enjoy and share.

Yes,

I totally understand.

And I had a period of two to three years where I was feeling so much stress and anxiety almost constantly.

And I can assure you that even though it's constant,

It is temporary.

Meaning that even though it has been constant for many years,

It will go inevitably because there is a higher truth.

And the more you get in touch with this higher truth that is more still,

That is peaceful,

That is always there,

Then you will see,

At one point it will start fluctuating,

It will start appearing then disappearing,

Then appearing then disappearing.

And eventually you will understand that the very fact that it appears and disappears means that it is untrue.

That there is this higher truth that I'm speaking about.

And I know it can take many years,

But I'm with you and I'm sure everyone here is with you and knows where you're coming from.

But it will pass.

And this as well,

Changing fears in positivity,

It's definitely very important.

Make the best out of everything and keep.

.

.

I think it's important to never give up,

To keep finding new approaches,

To keep deepening our understanding,

Exploring different ways and what they do to the anxiety,

Seeing it shift even if it's for a second or a minute.

Even those little glimpses of a shift mean a lot.

Because they mean that it's not so constant as the mind thinks it is.

Yes,

Please reach out to me here on the platform,

You,

Fiori or anyone else that this talk speaks to and that they feel something.

Maybe it's the moment for things to shift for you.

How does one know what's triggering the anxiety?

I remember that when I felt a lot of anxiety,

I kept doing my best to embrace it,

To allow it.

And thoughts would kind of unwind.

So there's one thought about maybe it's caused by this food or maybe it's this person or maybe this job.

And as I stayed with the thoughts,

There's layers and layers being revealed until there's some kind of point where it's like,

Oh yes,

That's it.

And the next day though,

It would be there again.

So what causes the anxiety is it's deep fears really.

But every time it shifts,

Every time you recognize something that's causing some kind of anxiety,

It lessens and it lessens and it lessens.

So all of these thoughts that you stay with,

That you be with and allow,

They shift it.

Because it is a combination,

In my case at least,

It was a combination of many different things and I had to keep being present,

To keep witnessing it,

To keep allowing it to try different approaches until it was gone.

And I think that each anxiety is different in that sense because all of us have different lessons to learn.

So maybe it's actually just one thing that you need to kind of understand and then it will go.

Maybe it's a few things,

Maybe it's many things.

So it's your path to sit with it,

To learn to embrace it as fully as you can and then you will know what is causing the anxiety.

But as I said in the talk before,

The message is always the same actually and it is that you,

Your higher self,

Is always safe,

Always whole and always complete.

That's it.

Keep coming back to this message and it will go,

It will shift.

Yes,

Thomas says,

In theory the anxiety could be part of your intuition telling you to listen and that is it.

The intuition,

It's almost like it's more intelligent than the mind because it's more,

It has evolved over longer periods of time and also it's the whole body is the intuition,

Not just the brain.

So learning to tune into these messages helps us understand our own lives better and also follow this path of reaching health.

Yeah,

News and world events,

Definitely.

I think we all need breaks from those at the moment and the kind of collective anxiety isn't helping.

But as you say,

We can also choose to tune away from it and find peace in nature or in exercise or in reading a book,

Whatever,

Something that doesn't connect us with so much collective fear.

Yes,

I do know that fear that something bad is going to happen but it's also important to see that often it's not the case,

Nothing bad is actually happening and also that this may be advice that's difficult to follow but when we are in a difficult situation,

In a stressful situation or just feel anxiety,

The best thing to do is to breathe in more deeply and tell ourselves relax,

Relax,

Everything is fine,

Everything is fine rather than creating more worry and worry about worrying.

So that again happens naturally when we become more present,

When we actually focus on the sensation in the body rather than the mind and rest with it.

Okay,

I will answer this last question by Thomas.

If we didn't feel any anxiety at any time,

How would life be?

The thing is that anxiety is not necessary to face challenges or do hard things.

So what this means is that even without anxiety,

There's difficult situations and difficult things that happen in life that need our reaction,

That need us to do something.

And that's what I suggested in the talk earlier that we should always do our best to react or act from love,

From this place of peace and stillness.

Even if we disagree with something,

Even if we see that something is not quite right,

We can aim to make a change from a place of peace.

And that's what life without anxiety looks like.

It's just seeing what comes and acting and reacting from love.

It doesn't mean that there's no challenges.

It's important to stop because part of the message is to allow this anxiety to flow,

To be without acting on it.

So it's to be still,

Be present,

See it,

Appear,

Let it be.

And once it's gone,

Then to act because there's a message behind the anxiety that it veils.

And often that message is what to do in a particular situation.

And without the anxiety,

Once it's gone,

Our actions become clearer and clearer.

We know what is right because we don't come from fear,

We don't come from wanting to change the situation at all cost.

We just come from love.

So I think I will end this talk here.

Once again,

Feel free to reach out and check out my other talks and meditations on the platform.

Join my group or actually my aim at the moment is to gain as many followers as I can really because more followers will help me provide mentoring on the platform and also workshops.

So please,

If you like this talk,

Do follow me on the platform and spread the word with your friends.

Thank you so much for all of your questions,

For being here with me and for being on this journey because even though it's difficult,

It's also very exciting.

It's also full of so many realizations and so much hope,

So much love,

So much new acquaintances.

It's an adventure,

It's an adventure and we should embrace it as fully as we can and know that it's leading us somewhere beautiful.

Thank you very much.

Thank you everyone.

Have a beautiful day or evening and see you soon.

Reviews

Wonderful! 🙏

Perfectly what I needed to hear. Thank you for holding a safe, grounded and wise space for the experience of anxiety.

Wonderful! Looking forward to listening to some of your other talks. Thank you!