Anxiety And Panic Attacks - Maybe A Message From Higher Self

The You-Ni-Verse Podcast, Episode 10. This is a talk about two different types of anxiety and how to manage them. The first - your everyday underlying 'worry mind' state, and the second - intense anxiety states like panic attacks. I discuss what may be the causes for each one, and give you some ideas and strategies for managing anxiety as well as understanding that it could be a wake-up call from your higher self to you.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

This is Akasha Love.

I am a soul alchemist helping you to birth your true self in this lifetime.

Guided by my own soul and following my heart's wisdom,

I bring to you meditations,

Downloads,

Talks and music designed to support you on the journey deep into connecting with your soul and living a life which is fully grounded in and aligned with expressing your truth as authentically as possible.

So hello and welcome to this episode 10 of the universe podcast.

I hope you are doing well in these difficult times that we are living through.

This whole virus situation seems to be going on for a lot longer than probably any of us imagined.

Definitely me.

So I hope you are managing okay with these difficult circumstances.

Maybe not being able to participate in normal daily activities like you are when we're not going through this kind of a very strange period.

So today I wanted to speak about anxiety and I think that's particularly relevant now to this corona period that we're living through.

I think probably anxiety is present in many people's mind space because there's this elevated level of just complete not knowing and uncertainty about what is to come.

And that's completely understandable that that can make us anxious.

Even though as I'm sure you know everything is always uncertain anyway.

It's just that when we're not living through this kind of an emergency situation we can quite easily be under the illusion that things are certain just because we have a more stable life and a more stable routine.

But the reality is that we never actually know what's happening in the next moment.

And that can either make us anxious and stressed or we can see if we can relax into it.

And I think really that is definitely the challenge right now.

Seeing if we're able to relax into the uncertainty and the not knowingness and surrender our desire to know and to control the events of our life and see if we're able to enjoy that in some way.

I often quote this short little pithy comment that my brother wrote to me in a card before I went on an overseas trip and that was actually the last time I saw him because he died in a car in a motorbike accident not long after.

He wrote to me relish the uncertainty that travel brings.

So I often remember that whenever I am in any kind of anxiety myself and I remember that uncertainty is the reality of life.

And I see if I can be excited by that as he said instead of be afraid of it.

So I want to speak about two different kinds of anxiety.

So one is just this anxiety this normal everyday anxiety that we may feel because especially because of these circumstances that we're living through and because we may have lost our income or we may have lost a job we may not know where we're going to get the money for to pay the rent this kind of thing.

Obviously it's going to cause us anxiety and a certain level of this anxiety may be unavoidable.

You're obviously going to be stressed if this this happens to you but there are ways to manage it and one of them really is just the first one and the main one which is my go-to is really to become very very aware of what's happening in your mind.

So very aware of your thought patterns,

Very aware of especially repetitive thought patterns,

Very aware of negativity so the negative voice that's just telling you that everything's going to turn out badly things are going wrong things will never get better.

So my approach with this kind of anxiety is really just to become heightened awareness develop heightened awareness and see if you're able to detach from these thoughts,

Disidentify from the thoughts,

Step away from those thoughts and create this space between you and those thought patterns and so obviously meditation really helps here as a practice for learning how to do this.

And I have at least I think three recorded mindfulness based meditation practices on my Insight Timer account so search there for Akasha Love or online forward slash or Insight Timer dot com forward slash the global yogi.

So this is my main approach for this kind of anxiety which is based on very real and scary situations in your life that are causing you stress and also if you just are susceptible to stress and worry and this is your you've been in this kind of pattern for maybe a long time.

I really recommend mindfulness meditation practicing every morning and every evening and also journaling writing down what you're worried about helps a lot because then you can see it on paper and you more able to then use your the rational part of your mind to see if there's anything to be done and if there's not then go back to the meditation practice and separate yourself from those anxious thoughts.

But there's another kind of anxiety which I really wanted to speak to you about today which is is slightly different and I speak here always based on my own experience so don't take anything that I say as the truth for you test everything that I say and see if it's true for you maybe it is maybe it's not but all of my offerings here on this podcast are from my own experience so I always like to remind people of that the Buddha is famous for saying that to all of his students and followers don't believe anything I say test everything for yourself.

So in my experience really heightened anxiety like panic attack where you're just your mind seems to be just on overdrive just millions of thoughts at the same time like and you it's so crazy that you can't even really do anything you have to just be with yourself sit on a chair or sit in a room and just experience that almost like a storm in your mind like a windstorm because I think mental activity is really like wind and it is in the Ayurveda tradition the mind activity is associated with the vata dosha and that is the air dominant the dominant energy for the vata dosha people is the air so mental activity is really like wind so like a windstorm when you're experiencing really high anxiety states like a panic attack but in my experience this is not necessarily just stress and worry when the level of anxiety gets to this point I think it can also be really a wake-up call from your higher self let's say letting you know that something is not right in your life that something needs to change and maybe it's the only way that your higher self can actually get in touch with you because you're so perhaps busy with your routine with your just keeping on doing things so you don't have to face this underlying stress and worry so maybe this is really the only way that your higher self can actually knock on the on your door and say hey something's not right here something's something's got to give so this has been my experience when I've experienced some quite intense panic attacks some years ago and I really after the fact so a few weeks after probably a few weeks and months after this happened to me I really meditated on the meaning of of these really intense anxiety attacks and I understood that for me it was a message from my higher self really telling me that I need to do more of the things that I love that I need to be more deeply in contact with my truth with my true self and this if I if I did that then this intense anxiety and panic would slowly go away this is my this was my intuitive understanding from this experience and since then that was probably about a year and a half or two years ago and since then I really have dedicated myself more to my creative practices so that's making music and painting at the moment and really it's helped me a huge amount so I no longer have really any kind of anxiety not even low grade anxiety and definitely I haven't had anything like this kind of panic attack that I had one and a half or so years ago it hasn't repeated so it's been really interesting experience for me to really go deeper and deeper into my creative practices and feel more and more of myself through that process so I literally feel more and more in touch with my true self the more I I dedicate my energies to these creative practices and my joy then also starts really flowing because doing these practices is a really blissful joyful experience for me so two things are happening here I'm getting in touch with my truth and my true self and I'm also opening to my bliss states and this kind of a bliss joy state is really the exact opposite of the anxiety and panic and what's happening physiologically here is just a really deep relaxation process happens so your heart opens the blood is flowing more and you start to feel really deeply relaxed and not so much your energy is not centered so much in your mind space it's more in your physical body more in your heart space and things just flow from there so I understand that you may not have a lot of time to dedicate to perhaps creative practice you may be working full-time you may have children this kind of thing you may be just busy with your daily activities but I would suggest even ten minutes a day dedicated to something doing something that you love that you deeply love and appreciate can really change your energy and change your mind states over time and obviously a bit more than ten minutes would be better let's say half an hour a day or an hour a day doing whatever it is that connects you deeply with your joy so it may be creative practice may be sport maybe whatever that is for you and then also yeah if if you are experiencing intense panic attacks or anxiety attacks I would also suggest this it may be a message from your higher self it may be a way that your higher self is knocking on your door to let you know that there's something that really needs to change in your life and this is the only way that that higher part of you can actually get your attention and so if you're able to look at it like this you can really flip the switch a little bit on this anxiety panic attack thing and see it as really a loving message from your higher self just trying to shake you up saying hey look you're not being fully true to yourself there's there's a whole nother part of you that wants to come out that wants to be expressed that wants to live through you and yeah so I recommend if you can just sitting down and seeing if you're able to receive any of those messages that might be coming through see what happens so as always if this has been helpful to you or inspiring for you if you could share it with any friends family or colleagues who you think may benefit I would be massively appreciative so keep following the wisdom of your heart the whisperings of your soul because these will always lead you in the right direction

Reviews

Very interesting! Thank you!

Thank you. I appreciate your guidance and sharing your experience. Time for self reflection and a recalibration for me. More bliss required! Your ideas are helpful and realistic. Stay chill and tuned in - I'm aiming to do the same. Again, thank you.

Super calming, helpful, and illuminating. I’ve been really thinking and journaling about the questions you raised. Thank you!

I so needed to hear this ! Thank you !