We are not helpless when it comes to anxiety and worry.
We can sharpen our awareness of when we’re slipping into a trance of worry. This is a skill that improves with practice. We notice we’re holding our breath, our upper back and neck are braced for danger, or we have a flood of alarming thoughts. Noticing these signals is our cue to interrupt the cycle.
Our nervous system worries to alert us to possible danger and that we may need to do something to protect ourselves. This is helpful. It has a negativity bias and easily pushes us into catastrophic thinking. Being held in a grip of worst-case scenarios that our mind believes, we are highly stressed. Not helpful!
We have so much we’re anxious and worried about, especially now. Some of our worries are practical questions about how the circumstances in the world affect our daily life. Some revolve around jobs, the rising price of food, gas and housing. This has more impact on someone without a lot of financial resources. We might have uncertainty and worry about our relationships and health, ours or someone we care for.
Sit quietly for a moment, take a few deep breaths and relax your body from head to toes.
What are you most worried about right now?
Ask your mind and observe your thoughts for a few minutes. Keep some awareness on your body and breath. If you’re lost in a train of troubling thoughts, open your eyes, take a few breaths and come back to observing the answer to this question.
List the main worries that came up and reflect for each worry:
Do I need to take immediate action? Is there anything I can do to help with a better outcome?
Are other people experiencing something similar? If so, can I learn from them, get support?
Do I have power to change something short term? If so, what actions can I take?
If this is a larger worry, like an election, the economy, the patriarchy, or renewable energy, is there something I can do to influence the outcome? It might be to encourage people to vote, volunteer time or money, or look for others working on the issue and joining them.
Building strength and resilience
Is worrying so much helping me or improving the outcome? The answer is no. The stress of worry saps our energy, interrupts our sleep, creates illness in our body, and we lose our capacity and access to compassion and joy.
We can interrupt worry through tools like witnessing thought, smooth continuous diaphragmatic breathing, relaxing our breath, and using frame/trace for persistent thought worries and locate/describe for sensations and energy in our body.
What supports can you bring in?
Swimming, hanging out with your favorite tree, cuddling your dog, tea with a good friend, reading a book, turning off screens and going outside, having a dance party for yourself or with others, preparing and enjoying a lovely meal … What do you enjoy? Do more of that, especially right now. Postpone the hard things if you can until you’re feeling stronger, more regulated and experiencing more ease.
For extra support, join me twice a day over the next few weeks leading up to and after the US mid-terms. Join on Zoom or Insight Timer.
The guided practice below was edited from our longer live practice Wednesday evening.