Stop Smoking
July 5, 2016
Anxiety
Anxiety – such a commonplace experience for most people. We all experience anxiety at one point or another, it’s necessary as it informs us when we are in danger or need to take a new course of action in order to respond to something effectively. However, anxiety that goes unchecked and begins to run wild like a veld fire in your mind is another matter entirely. And that is the first place to start when it comes to understanding anxiety – the mind.
As discussed in the piece on depression, the link between the aforementioned condition and anxiety are inseparable. There are, however, some vitally observable differences between them (refer to the table in the depression piece for a basic breakdown). The simplest way to put it would be that depression is heavy, it’s dark and it’s numbing. Anxiety, on the other hand, is the direct opposite, it’s lightning quick, electric hot panic that sears into every curve of your mind and body. Mental and physical symptoms of anxiety include panic, irrational worry and obsession with the future, persistent thoughts of self -doubt and tumultuous fear, panic attacks, diarrhoea, nausea, phobias… the list goes on. The main thing to remember is that depression is slow and dense, anxiety is sharp and electric. As we mentioned before, a little anxiety in life is not only normal but necessary. In case you are confused about differentiating between normal and abnormal anxiety, here is a table to help you a little:
| Everyday Anxiety | Anxiety Disorder |
| Worry about paying bills, landing a job, a romantic breakup, or other important life events | Constant and unsubstantiated worry that causes significant distress and interferes with daily life |
| Embarrassment or self-consciousness in an uncomfortable or awkward social situation | Avoiding social situations for fear of being judged, embarrassed, or humiliated |
| A case of nerves or sweating before a big test, business presentation, stage performance, or other significant events | Seemingly out-of-the-blue panic attacks and the preoccupation with the fear of having another one |
| Realistic fear of a dangerous object, place, or situation | Irrational fear or avoidance of an object, place, or situation that poses little or no threat of danger |
| Anxiety, sadness, or difficulty sleeping immediately after a traumatic event | Recurring nightmares, flashbacks, or emotional numbing related to a traumatic event that occurred several months or years before |
http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety
Let’s focus strictly on anxiety from now on. Where does it come from? Anxiety manifests and grows whenever we try to use past experiences to calculate future probabilities. Blend that unrealistic formula with a good dose of fear of the unknown and you have a cocktail for an internal explosion. To understand anxiety, you have to understand the mind. The mind cannot turn off, even meditation is not about learning how to silence your mind but rather about being able to observe the constant stream of chatter without running after every thought – it’s about creating distance between your conscious awareness and your mind, it’s about realizing that your mind is only a part of you but not you itself. Once we understand this, things become easier, until then we sit in a tornado of contorting mental torture. So how do we learn to kerb this habit of investing so much of our awareness in our mind? It begins by learning to remain at the moment, the moment is the only place you ever are. Even that past experience that has left you scarred, you were in the moment then too – if you had trained yourself to accept what was happening in that moment you would not be scared of it but grateful for it.
See, no matter how good or bad our mind perceives something to be, we need both kinds of experiences to understand each one individually. People think that good and bad are separate things to either pursue or avoid but that is precisely where the problem comes from. As soon as you chase only good, the bad parts of life and the bad parts of you scream all the louder to be acknowledged – you have to accept them both as a balance and not as a dichotomy. That said, a simple way to put it is like this: when we compare the present to the past we get depressed when we compare the present to the future we get anxious – it really is that simple. Train yourself to accept the present in whatever form it is manifesting.
Hypnosis itself is a form of meditation, an incredibly deep and penetrating form to be more specific. Hypnosis teaches you acceptance – acceptance of your past, present and future; acceptance of the pain you have experienced and caused yourself and others; acceptance of the unknown that your mind tricks you into fearing. With hypnosis, you can go deeper into the level of the unconscious and unearth the false foundations that are supporting your mental mirages.
