That's amazing. "Observe" and "embrace" are much like Claire Weekes's "face" and "accept," but the "demand more" is interesting. I see my pain as a kind of physical manifestation of anxiety, so I think I will try this when I get a chance.
I'd be curious about whether you have had a chance to try this.
I am going to keep trying though. I have learned to cope with the panic so much better over the years and avoid the full blown panic attacks but it would be great to dive into and face the fear and develop some control over it.
I'd love to hear your experience, too, Anne.
Mindfulness practice helped me get rid of my anxiety by applying these three elements: noticing the anxiety without judging or reacting to it, accepting it as just an anxiety, and letting it go. You can use the same approach for symptoms, emotions, thoughts or everyday life aspects such as walking and eating. When you repeat this exercise you are controlling your unconscious mind and diminishing it's power over you. At the end the divided mind becomes one mind once the battle is over.
I think that's great advice. Stock Trader is a good person to pay attention to, as he has been making great progress recently. Thanks for sticking around and sharing what worked, ST.
Being the highly driven sort of TMSer, I know that when I try to take a mindful approach, I often get stuck on the first step of noticing. I ask myself, did I notice
enough? I think that that pretty much misses the piont, though. You just want a very basic sympathetic understanding and awareness of what is going on in your body and mind. Then you can accept and let go, as ST described.
I guess I'm curious to hear about Anne and Gail's experiences because it seems so counterintuitive to ask for more of the thing that you are so afraid of. My hunch is that if you can get the courage to say, "okay, give me more," it sends a powerful signal to your unconscious that the anxiety is fundamentally harmless, which is true. To some degree, the panic attack is already giving you its worst, so if you ask for more, it can't deliver. And because the symptoms are harmless (
very scary, but still harmless), you can lose your fear of them.
Overall, I think that it is very important to think about the messages that we send to our unconscious minds. Do our actions and our thoughts tell our unconscious minds that we are healthy and strong or that we are weak and fragile? I think that the same thing can happen in journaling: when we journal about our past, are we telling ourselves that we are weak victims or that we have the self-efficacy to overcome everything that faces us? As Dr. Zafirides says, "Never doubt how truly powerful you are." I am truly amazed at what people have been able to overcome, and the first step often seems to be learning to believe in ourselves.
Does that make sense? Do you think that that is how the approach in the video is supposed to work? I'd love to hear Nattycakes' take on all of this.
