1. Mindful response

• Moving towards situations rather than away from them

• Focusing on the world as a whole, not just on anxious symptoms

• A calm, wise approach to difficulties

• Accepting physical sensations as they are

• Seeing thoughts as just thoughts

• Being grounded in the present

• Putting effort into what really matters

• Being compassionate with your experience

Result:

• Letting go of the struggle with experience

• Focusing instead on living as you would really like to

So  maybe  there  is  a  way  to  stop  treating  anxiety,  sadness  and  other  difficulties as problems that need to be controlled or solved. Our habitual ways of trying to fix such problems often make them worse. Instead, willingness to be with painful thoughts,  feelings,  urges  or  sensations,  without  trying  to  change,  escape  from or  avoid  them,  allows  us  to  be  more  psychologically  flexible.  This can make a profound difference to our effectiveness, vitality and contentment

2. Automatic ‘fight or flight’ reaction

• Avoiding situations, hiding away

• Checking anxiously

• Being on the alert

• Endlessly seeking reassurance

• Focusing obsessively on physical sensations 

• Anxious thoughts are big and ‘true’

• Getting tangled up in thoughts, eg ‘What if…?’, ‘I can’t …’

• Worrying

• Distracted - dwelling in the future

• Beating yourself up for being anxious or ‘weak

Result:

• Impulsive behaviors

• Constant struggle

• Exhaustion

• Narrowing of life         

                               

Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to our experience in a particular way. It means:

• ‘just noticing’ thoughts, feelings and physical sensations

• experiencing them for what they are, rather than getting wrapped  up in them or trying to change them 

• letting go of judgments and evaluations about thoughts, feelings and physical sensations

• and as a result really dwelling in the present moment rather than in the past or future.

So anxious thoughts are not pleasant thoughts. And they are usually accompanied by physical sensations of anxiety, which will compound the discomfort. It’s all the more understandable, then, that we get caught up in these thoughts big time, and wrestle with them

                               

It’s very easy, when we are engaged fully in the struggle with anxiety, to lose a sense of perspective. Sometimes it seems as if we are putting all our energies into the struggle, and all we can see is the struggle. When we start to drop the struggle, though, and step back from our thoughts and feelings, we can get a much wider view. And this view is important – it’s the view of where we really want to go. After all, what do we want our lives to stand for? Do we want to be remembered for having gone into battle with anxiety? (And lost.) Instead, can we courageously take our anxiety with us in valued directions in life?