Mastering Anxiety

This is David and welcome to Mastering Anxiety.

There's a great meme that I saw that said,

Never in the history of anyone telling anyone else to calm down has anyone ever actually calmed down.

Anxiety is this energy that almost creeps up on us.

It seems subtle for a while,

Manageable,

Kind of in the background.

And then before we know it,

We're swimming in it.

We're waking up anxious,

We're going to sleep anxious.

So in today's meditation,

As we close our eyes,

We're gonna explore some tools and techniques and cultivate some awareness to help us let go of anxiety.

There are four essential steps as we take this path towards mastering anxiety.

And they're very simple.

First,

You find it,

Then you feel it,

Then you face it,

And then you heal it.

Find it,

Feel it,

Face it,

And heal it.

So let's go ahead and close our eyes and let's start to find it.

And that might be easy.

When you close your eyes,

There it is.

But as you close your eyes,

I'd like you to relax your shoulders,

Take a nice big deep breath in,

Nice breath out and start to settle into your body.

And let yourself have the attitude of actually enjoying meditating.

This isn't a chore,

It's not a job.

We're not here just to feel better.

We're here because there is a joy in being still,

In being present,

In being aware of the world.

In being still,

In being present,

In being awake.

So the first step in mastering anxiety is we have to find it.

And to find it,

We have to define it so we know what we're looking for.

And very loosely defined,

General anxiety is this irrational sense that something is always kind of wrong or is going to go wrong.

This fear that there's an impending doom around every corner and that you just don't have control over things the way you would like to.

If you are an anxious person,

You might find you like to control things,

To have things turn out right or even maybe perfect.

Or you tend to heal everything and or heal everyone around you,

Wanting every situation to be okay.

And then you absorb the energy and emotion of the world around you and then you feel it.

You feel the world around you and then you feel anxious.

So whatever your MO is,

Whatever the reason is,

Know that you can start to find the anxiety just by becoming aware of it.

And we become more aware of it by feeling it.

So as you're sitting here with me and some of that anxiety maybe bubbles up,

What does it feel like?

Is it like a fast vibration in and around your body?

Is it a tenseness on your chest,

A knot in your stomach,

A dizziness in your head or a lump in your throat?

And now I'm not asking you to change it or do anything about it,

I just want you to feel it.

We're also programmed to want to feel good and to not want to feel bad.

I've gotta change it first because it just makes me want to know everything about it,

Making me want to change it because it becomes like a self-explanatory theory.

And as we move along with it,

I end up accordingly.

Eric epstein and just earlier talked And the moment we start to feel bad,

We try to change something.

Blame someone.

Run away from it.

Medicate it.

Override it.

But let's take a moment and not do any of those things and just feel it.

You may find that you've gotten so used to anxiety that it's just kind of this simmering energy in the background all the time.

But that doesn't make it any less valid or important to reconcile.

Because ultimately for meditation in the background what we want is silence,

A deep stillness,

An awakened space.

Now after we get a clear feeling of the anxiety,

We want to face it.

And by facing it I mean you might have to not just feel it but look at it and even ask it where are you coming from?

What fear,

What energy are you arising from?

What seed was planted that you've grown into this big anxiety tree and all my problems are hanging off of it?

So you can directly ask the feeling.

Often,

We'll blame anxiety on little things like,

Oh I'm going to be late or why did that person leave the sock on the floor or there's not enough money in my bank account,

There should be more.

That's a very common one.

And things that maybe from an outside perspective seem small to us are amplified.

So as you face and discover this anxiety,

Maybe take a look at what seems to be the cause.

Maybe there's something deeper there.

Something that hasn't quite been discovered yet.

I remember I was feeling anxiety in college after I had broken up with a girlfriend but I thought it was my schoolwork,

My grades,

All my academic commitments.

But when I really sat and meditated and looked at it,

I realized I was anxious because I wasn't getting the love that I needed.

So what is it that you need?

What is it that you're not getting?

What is it that needs to be healed?

Let it arise to the surface out of the feeling.

And notice that that negative feeling isn't there to punish you,

It's here to teach you.

You don't need it anymore.

You You As we discover the root cause of some of our anxiety Behind that often there might be some emotion Some reconciling of the way we treat ourselves of the way we see ourselves The fourth step here is to start to heal it So we find it,

We feel it,

We face it and we heal it And to heal it we have to change our attitudes towards ourselves Towards ourselves So you might find there's been a tinge of self judgment for feeling anxious Almost like this judgment that we're supposed to always feel good or be doing better than we are Or perhaps there's pressure from our families,

From our jobs,

From our spouses Maybe we always have to be on point or feel like we need to be perfect Can you let that pressure go?

Can you change your attitude towards yourself?

Can you be okay with how you feel?

Who you are and where you are?

If you're anxious that means you're sensitive and if you're sensitive that means you're alive Celebrate that sensitivity And the fundamental antidote for anxiety is the true awareness that everything is going to be okay Even when it's not okay,

There's a very deep underlying sense that things are okay And to get there you have to recognize that you as you are,

Are okay And I'd like you to notice almost like a wave of energy from the very crown top of your head Passing down through your body is this wave of everything is okay Almost as if you if you've ever hit a bell and felt and heard that sound wave come off of it And just spread concentrically out This wave of energy just passes down through your space,

Through your body And it's just like a wave of energy that's just passing through your body This wave of energy just passes down through your space,

Through your body And everything,

Everything is okay Notice that energy heal your head,

Heal your heart Heal all those nerve endings that come together in your stomach If you're here listening to my meditation,

Then the world hasn't ended yet Things are okay You can let go of that irrational fear that things aren't going to work out And start to shift your energy into a place of knowing that everything has a rhyme and a reason A time and a place If you give yourself some energetic space,

Things will fall into place If you give yourself some energetic space,

Things will fall into place Be gentle with yourself,

Take your time,

Become aware of your own energy and feelings And through a subtle shift of attitude towards yourself,

Heal that anxiety And learn from it Take a nice big deep breath into your body And sigh out And slowly as you open your eyes and come out of meditation,

Notice that aura of okayness Bring that into the world,

Be free of anxiety,

Enjoy yourself And I'll see you next time