Meditation reduces anxiety! How to save yourself from the emotional hurricane
Hi all you good, good people. Thanks for joining me while I test if meditation reduces anxiety. What causes my anxiety you ask? A lot of the time it’s my parents! I could honestly write not just a blog post but an entire series on the colossal train wreck that is my mother and stepfather. While certainly some people will have had it a great deal worse than me, believe me, they are very hard work. Most of the time after a couple of hours in their company I leave emotionally drained. It doesn’t feel nice to admit this because I do know that they love me and they don’t mean to be a nightmare but sadly they are. I very seldom get much positive out of spending time with them these days and upon leaving my emotions span the range from frustration and irritation to bordering on a full-blown nervous breakdown.
What have you tried so far?
Over the years I’ve tried to find ways to cope. I mostly resort to comfort eating which, while it works pretty much every time, is not great for me and is only temporary. I’ve also been taking different anti-depressants for years now, the latest being 20mg daily of citalopram which is one of the more commonly used ones. At the moment though my anxiety has gone through the roof. The last major problem with them was a few weeks ago now and I haven’t recovered much from it. I am incredibly easily startled, jumping at the littlest thing. I’m also having trouble sleeping.
I need to try something to make this better and upping my tablets doesn’t seem the way to go to me. I’ve dipped in and out of meditation a few times because people say it does work but I’ve never given it a proper go. Now that I have this blog and I’m feeling anxious at the same time I’m going to give it a real chance and let you all know how I get on and see if meditation reduces anxiety. I’m going to use the Headspace app for no other reason than I already have it installed and it’s easy to use. I think 2 weeks should be enough time to see if any improvement is made and I may come back to it a few weeks later with another depending on my results. I’m going to do the basics program because it’s free and I’m very much a beginner.
Day 1
It’s a Sunday night. We’re having trouble with our cat Jupiter wandering onto the edge of a nearby motorway. My husband plans to keep him in permanently from now on but all our other cats go out so I don’t know if it will work. I also worry about making the poor little thing miserable. Anxiety level 8/10.
Completed 10 minutes of the basics program. I think I feel a little bit calmer but it may be a placebo effect!
Day 2
Oh my good God! We got a harness for Jupiter to take him outside. I took him for his first walk and we were almost home when he got startled by some children. He ran and got himself tangled around a fence and was trying to tear himself out of his harness. I got him home but he seemed to be having trouble breathing, had his mouth open and drooling and his tongue hanging out. I was so upset and convinced he’d punctured a lung or something. He was fine, it was just shock, thank goodness but I’m now a wreck! Lots of tears in the cars to the vets. Anxiety 9/10
I did the meditation before bed. It was really hard to concentrate tonight, my mind was all over the place. Hopefully, I’ll improve as I go on. No real reduction in my anxiety tonight though.
Days 3 & 4
Ok, we’ll start with a confession…I forgot to meditate on day 3! I had a really bad night’s sleep so ended up napping after work. Once I woke up I had the gym, dinner, getting stuff ready for work and it went completely out of my head. I was back on it today though and it is hard! It’s only 10 minutes but as soon as I try to focus on my breathing my mind goes a million miles an hour. The nice Headspace man says this is normal though and improves with practice. I don’t know if I’m any less anxious but I do feel a little better for taking a few minutes just to sit quietly. I slept well last night at long last which has improved my anxiety and mood. Fingers crossed it continues! Anxiety 5/10
Days 5 to 8
My anxiety levels have been up and down the last few days but I do feel the meditation has stabilised them a little. I do it before bed and it does help to wind me down which makes going to sleep a lot easier. I’m getting a bit better at just letting my thoughts pass without judgement. At the start as soon as I thought something I was off chasing it! It took a while to realise I’d done it and get back on track. Now I manage not to follow my thoughts and just sit peacefully watching them pass. It does take getting used to but it does feel quite cleansing for the mind and spirit if that doesn’t sound too hippy-dippy! Maybe meditation reduces anxiety after all! Who knew?
Day 9
The big takeaway from today was that sometimes when we apply too much force to do something it actually makes things worse, not better. It’s like if my thoughts are waves and I notice I’m getting off track I’m trying to wrestle them into submission. That’s never going to work! If on the other hand I take a step back, let the thoughts pass and go back to my breathing the results are much better. I think this may be a thing in my life. I’m a great listener but once I’ve listened I feel the need to have a plan, to jump straight into “let’s fix this mode”. Perhaps I need to bear in mind that focussing too hard on changing a problem may exacerbate it. If instead I merely sit with the problem for a while a solution may present itself with no effort. It may become apparent I don’t need to fix it, it’ll sort itself out if left alone. I absolutely need to give this way of thinking more thought. Anxiety today 5/10.
Days 10 to 12
I am starting to find I enjoy the time to clear my mind. Sometimes my mind races but it’s getting easier to stay calm and just accept it which will help I think with future anxiety. I need to keep practising though and it will take a long time to get properly proficient at it. For that reason I’ve decided I will continue with it beyond the 2 weeks. I believe based on what I’ve seen so far it will help with my mental health long term. I am still struggling with being asked how my body feels today. It makes me anxious although I still haven’t unpicked why this is!
Days 13 & 14
The end of the experiment! The last couple of days have been tough. I’m struggling to keep my mind where it should be. I don’t feel any more anxious so I don’t think it’s that. Maybe my need to control things? I haven’t had much time over the last few days to concentrate on this blog and what I need to do to grow and develop it. The “fix it” part of me wants to come up with a plan which is ok but that’s only a temporary fix. Wel will always have things on our minds, some days more than others, the point of the meditation is to let the thoughts pass without judgement.
Conclusion
As I said earlier I am going to continue with the meditation. Is it true though that meditation reduces anxiety? I think it does and it has helped me in a few other ways, some of them expected and some not. Here they are in no particular order.
Benefit 1
I’m learning to accept my thoughts without judgement. To acknowledge them and let them pass by. This is useful both for thoughts in general and thoughts about food. Intuitive Eating teaches us to note what we’re eating and why without judgement too but it can be hard. Moral judgements about food are absolutely everywhere. The meditation feels like re-training my brain. If meditation reduces anxiety about food too then even better!
Benefit 2
I’ve also taken on board that just because I have thoughts I don’t need to follow them to their conclusion or try to plan a course of action from them. In the extremely underrated movie Pacific Rim when pilots are mentally connected to vast warrior robots they see an array of images and memories, both their own and their co-pilot’s. They are warned not to “chase the rabbit”. If they descend too deeply into the memories they lose control and their bond with the machine and their co-pilot is disrupted. It’s sometimes too easy to spiral down into my thoughts, affecting my mood and sapping my concentration. Headspace taught me I need to see my thoughts as cars on a road. All I need to do is sit there and watch them pass.
Benefit 3
As an extension of the last two points, I’ve learned the importance of just sitting there with my thoughts for a while. A lot of the books I’ve read that deal with emotional eating suggest sitting with your feelings for a while and feeling them rather than reach for food. The same is true of thoughts. As I said I tend to take two actions…first I try to control my thoughts and organise them. This is honestly like herding cats and it just gets me more frustrated! Secondly, I try to plan what actions I can take. The problem is there frequently isn’t anything that can be done! Result? More thinking and more stress! Practising just sitting with my thoughts and no more will help long term.
Over to you!
I’ve now shared with you what my experience of meditation is and I’d love to hear yours! I think meditation reduces anxiety but do you? Do you love it? Hate it? Find it a bit meh? Let me know in the comments. If you have something you’d like to share privately that’s great too. You do that here. Finally if this struck a chord with you please share this to your social media and get the word out. Bye for now 🙂
