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Mindfulness: thoughts and emotions

Betty Boop

Betty Boop

New Member
Hi I have a few questions for those who might be able to shed their light please.

1. We are not our thoughts and I know that now after a life time of believing every thought. I want to practice mindfulness and observe the thoughts but not give into them. Which book would help in grasping this technique the Dare Book or The Power Of Now? Just asking to know which book to purchase for those you have read them.

2. As we are not to buy into our thoughts while meditating and just letting them pass by as they say and being mindful, how do we feel our emotions when they come up and not ignore them during meditation?
They say we should feel our emotions in our body so they can pass through us but what if emotions come up while mediating and focusing on our breath?

I mean when I anxiety comes up during mediation we acknowledge that anxiety is present and we focus on our breath to move through this but how about all other emotions that we are not suppose to ignore?
Apologies if my message doesn't make so much sense, I am trying to explain it the best I can.
 
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The answer is that anxiety is not an emotion.

Anxiety is a fear-based brain mechanism designed to keep you alert for danger and it does not want you to meditate.

You must reject anxiety with rational fact - which is that you live in the modern world in a safe residence and you will not die if you meditate for a while.

Note that anxiety also does not want you to experience actual emotions. Our primitive survival brains believe that true emotions also prevent us from being alert to danger.

This is why your real emotions - the childhood terrors you don't want to face - are still being repressed.
 
JanAtheCPA said:
Our primitive survival brains believe that true emotions also prevent us from being alert to danger.
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Hmm....you have me pondering this one @JanAtheCPA
If we allow our emotions, we won't be available to be on high alert to wooly mammoth dangers.

I hadn't thought of it that way and yet that feeling of having to be on high alert at all times, especially during times of a believed health issue, is so prevalent.
I never noticed that experiencing emotions takes us away from our alert duty but that is so true.
That must be why some people get very anxious during or after a deep massage.
 
Betty Boop said:
Hi I have a few questions for those who might be able to shed their light please.

1. We are not our thoughts and I know that now after a life time of believing every thought. I want to practice mindfulness good for you! and observe the thoughts but not give into them. Which book would help in grasping this technique the Dare Book or The Power Of Now? Just asking to know which book to purchase for those you have read them. I read the second book and I really liked it. I never read the first one that you mentioned so I can't compare the two of them. I would recommend The Power of Now to you. I think you'll find it useful.

2. As we are not to buy into our thoughts while meditating and just letting them pass by as they say and being mindful, how do we feel our emotions when they come up and not ignore them during meditation? They (the emotions) don't come up if you ignore the thoughts in the first place. A thought transforms into an emotion if you feed it. You let the thoughts come and go. Like birds coming to sit on your head. You don't concentrate on the thoughts you don't feed them at all and they just fly away. You don't let the birds make a nest on your head, you let them go. You gently let them fly away even for 100 times continuously. That's the technique, nothing spectacular. You just practice it over and over and in time you'll master it.
They say we should feel our emotions in our body so they can pass through us but what if emotions come up while mediating and focusing on our breath? No, they do not, I explained why, see above.

I mean when I anxiety comes up during mediation we acknowledge that anxiety is present and we focus on our breath to move through this but how about all other emotions that we are not suppose to ignore? Are you anxious during meditation? You tried to meditate and had anxiety while breathing? Explain a little. In meditation you just observe and guide and train the mind. You give orders to the mind if necessary in the beginning. Like speaking to a dog:"Sit! Sit!" I'm serious here, I'm not joking. It's normal for you to find meditation maybe difficult in the beginning. We are in motion all the time, we've been like this for many incarnations and keeping the mind still is not easy in the beginning. You swim against the current, not with it. The mind goes all over the place most of the time for a regular person. Keeping the mind in check even for a few minutes during meditation might be difficult in the beginning but it's just a form of exercise. In time, you can do it.


Apologies if my message doesn't make so much sense, I am trying to explain it the best I can.
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Hello everyone, I have been on this journey for many years and it feels like the closer I get to myself, the more extreme my symptoms. Whilst I have read a thread like this one before, this is the first time I have read it and I really understand how the life long anxiety I have suffered from and other TMS symptoms are a distraction, a protection from me accessing myself. I can really feel that now. I'm finding it hard not to panic and believe predictions about my future right now but I really feel I need to protect my little inner child who really needs an adult right now to walk her through this and just keep telling her on repeat "it's going to be ok".
 
EmilyE said:
and believe predictions about my future
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We are good at catastrophizing aren't we?
It's not real.
I think it's our way of protecting ourselves in case the worst possible things happen. We try to acclimate ourselves by playing it out in our mind.
How will we feel? What will we do? What will it be like. We want a jump on that.
And so we end up living our life as if things are happening that aren't.

In the area of grief, some of us grieve "in advance." I certainly did with my parents. When my parents were diagnosed my mind and my body went into panic mode. Most people are able to wait until the bad event actually happens before they go full board into it. As strange as it sounds, when my parents died it wasn't half as bad as the worrying about and thinking about it and panicking about it.

As you say that little one inside of us needs to know it's safe, it's loved, it knows what it needs to know to live and survive.
 
@Booble ~ I know what you mean about grieving in advance. My mum was diagnosed with cancer 7 years ago. I had known she was ill for sometime before her diagnosis and went through the whole grieving process. When she actually had her operation and was then given the all clear I couldn't believe it!! She's is still alive now. What we put ourselves through hey.
 
EmilyE said:
@Booble ~ I know what you mean about grieving in advance. My mum was diagnosed with cancer 7 years ago. I had known she was ill for sometime before her diagnosis and went through the whole grieving process. When she actually had her operation and was then given the all clear I couldn't believe it!! She's is still alive now. What we put ourselves through hey.
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That's wonderful about your mum!
And yes, terrible how we feel like we MUST assume the worst.
I'm always surprised at people who assume the best. It somehow feels wrong to assume the best. Yet isn't that a wonderful for people who can do that and be able to keep on living and not withdraw to their cave of catastrophes?
 
Cactusflower said:
To jump on @JanAtheCPA 's bandwagon, if you haven't yet read a book by Claire Weekes
https://www.tmswiki.org/ppd/Overcome_Anxiety_with_Dr._Claire_Weekes (Overcome Anxiety with Dr. Claire Weekes)

I would recommend doing so before reading books on mindfulness. It will help you see how much of what Claire Weekes writes about and authors like Eckhart Tolle have in common.
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Thank you so much for suggesting Claire Weeks, I think I do need to read the book because TMS is anxiety and I've heared only good things about her and her book.
 
I appreciate so very much for answering each and everyone of my questions. Your answers have helped me to put things in order as to how to go about mediation.
Thanks for taking the time to do this, it's put my mind at ease.
 
Betty Boop said:
. Your answers have helped me to put things in order as to how to go about mediation.
Click to expand...
Hi Betty Boop,
For what it’s worth, I’m not sure you have to do anything very technical or perfect to meditate. (But maybe others here know. ) About 20 years ago I had severe anxiety come over me, with full blown panic attacks, which feel like heart attacks. Very scary. I didn’t want to leave the house. I started “meditating,” which was really just pretending I was in a quiet countryside in the evening in some hills. (It was actually a religious scene for me. I pictured being with the shepherds on Christmas night in Bethlehem). At any rate, for me it was a very soothing image filled with spiritual and mental peace. I started with about 10 minutes a day, sitting quietly in the same chair every day. Then I increased it ultimately to 2 times a day for 30 minutes each. At the end of a year, my panic was gone. I keep thinking I should do this again, since I know it worked to calm me down, but I haven’t built up to a regular schedule yet.
 
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