Calming Your Anxious Mind Read online

  “Dr. Brantley’s book is clear and warm. It takes the mystery out of meditation and explains how things that at first sight appear ‘ordinary’ are in fact very important. His extensive clinical experience and his empathy constantly shine through the book.”

  —Jonathan Davidson, MD, director of the Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Program at Duke University

  “I think the book is fantastic and believe it will fill an important niche in the treatment of anxiety disorders. The information on the physiology of anxiety and the stress response helps to demystify the symptoms for readers, making their problem seem more manageable. Beautifully guided meditations anticipate and address the questions that anxious new meditators will have. The instruction to stay present with the anxiety is powerful and healing. I know I will be recommending it to my patients and colleagues.”

  —Holly B. Rogers, MD, staff psychiatrist with Duke University Counseling and Psychological Services

  “As a psychotherapist and teacher of stress reduction, I find this book helpful to clients and clinicians, as well as to meditators wishing to deepen their own practice. Brantley gives practical and compassionate guidance to anyone seeking skillful ways to work with anxiety and panic.”

  —Allie Rudolph, LCSW, founder and codirector of the University of Virginia Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program

  Publisher’s Note

  This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

  Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

  Copyright © 2007 by Jeffrey Brantley

  New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

  5674 Shattuck Avenue

  Oakland, CA 94609

  www.newharbinger.com

  Cover design by Amy Shoup; Cover Image by Brand X Pictures/Jupiter Images;

  Text design by Michele Waters-Kermes; Acquired by Melissa Kirk; Edited by Gail Saari

  Poem from the book She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. Copyright ©1983, 1997. Appears by permission of the publisher, Thunder Mouth Press, A Division of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.

  William Stafford, “Being a Person” from Even in Quiet Places . Copyright ©1996 by William Stafford. Reprinting with the permission of Confluence Press.

  David Budbill, “Don’t Speak in the Abstract” from While We’ve Still Got Feet . Copyright © 2005 by David Budbill. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-60882-124-2

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brantley, Jeffrey.

  Calming your anxious mind : how mindfulness and compassion can free you from anxiety, fear, and panic / Jeffrey Brantley. -- 2nd ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-57224-487-0

  1. Anxiety. 2. Fear. 3. Attention. 4. Meditation. I. Title.

  BF575.A6B737 2007

  152.4'6--dc22

  2007008085

  This book is dedicated to all whose lives are driven or constricted by fear, anxiety, or panic. May you find peace, and may that peace penetrate the entire world.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction to the Revised Edition

  Part 1: Getting Oriented

  1. A Mindful Approach to Fear & Anxiety

  2. Paying Attention on Purpose

  3. The Body & Its Fear System

  4. Anxiety & the Power of the Mind

  5. Mindfulness & Meditation

  6. Your Attitude Is Important

  7. Building Your Practice Foundation

  Part 2: Practicing Mindfulness

  8. Mindfulness in Everyday Life

  9. Establishing Mindfulness, Breath by breath

  10. Mindfulness of the Body

  11. Bringing Full Attention to Life

  12. Befriending Your Anxious Mind

  13. Making Room for the Upset

  Part 3: Mindfulness to Fear, Anxiety & Panic

  14. Common Concerns about These Meditation Practices

  15. Feeling Safe, Resting in Silence

  16. Applying Mindfulness to Fear & Anxiety

  17. Taking a Larger View

  resources

  references

  Foreword

  It gives me great pleasure to introduce this book to you. Jeff Brantley is a devoted practitioner of mindfulness meditation and a longtime teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Dr. Brantley has a great deal of clinical experience in working with people suffering from chronic stress, pain, and illness, and in particular, with chronic anxiety. This book is a welcome introduction to mindfulness practice for all those who experience anxiety in their lives. That turns out to be just about all of us at one time or another. For anxiety is rampant in our age, a kind of cosmic background radiation impinging continually on our individual and collective psyches and amassing a deep cumulative tension in the body. Currents of anxiety can be behind the smallest things we choose to do or refrain from trying—at work, at home, and in our interior lives. Knowingly and unknowingly, anxiety can shape the very fabric and direction of our lives, whether we have a diagnosed anxiety disorder or not.

  For regardless of how well-off or healthy we may seem to be to others or even to ourselves, being human, we are hardly immune, at least on occasion, to the mental state we know as fear and to the short- and long-term consequences it can have on the body and on how we carry ourselves and respond to stresses and challenges. For the most part, we tend to run from fear rather than to examine it. It remains unexamined precisely because it is so terrifying a prospect actually to take a peek at it, and to acknowledge to ourselves how fear-based our lives and our decisions can be, and how inexperienced we are at facing and freeing ourselves from the inner workings of such pervasive and potentially destructive mental states.

  But taking a peek and letting yourself actually feel the fear in your body is worth doing, strange as that may at first seem. Anxiety, it turns out, can be a great teacher. And the lessons to be learned if we can be mindful, calm, and clear-sighted in the face of fear, anxiety, and perpetual worrying are profound. The mind’s anxious preoccupations, proliferations, vexations, and frustrations sometimes seem endless. But, as Dr. Brantley points out, they do not have to be ultimately confining or imprisoning. And over time, their “volume” in our lives can turn itself down considerably.

  This book and the methods it presents can serve as a remarkable pathway to freedom from the imprisonment of chronic anxiety and panic, at whatever level they may manifest in your life. Mindfulness practice can serve as a doorway giving ready access to deep and profoundly healthy dimensions of your being that you may have been ignoring for too long, to what you might call your “best self.” It turns out you do not have to fix anything, or make anything go away to get in touch with yourself in this way. As you will learn in this book, all that is asked of you is that you start paying attention to aspects of your life and your immediate experience that you may have previously pretty much taken for granted. Several medical studies that we conducted on people with anxiety and panic disorder referred to our clinic for training in MBSR showed that the participants benefited enormously from this systematic cultivation of attention, as described in this book with great thoroughness and clarity by Dr. Brantley.

  From the point of view of MBSR, no matter what has transpired in your life up to this point,
no matter what you are facing, no matter what feels “wrong,” you are fundamentally okay, worthy, and secure in this very moment, even if you don’t know it or feel it. This is so even when the outer world appears overwhelmingly disorienting and threatening, and even when the interior world of your own mind feels tumultuous and shaky. But of course, you have to test out for yourself whether this is indeed true. The great adventure of mindfulness is to discover or recover that intrinsic, spacious, secure, aware, innermost quality of your being, way deeper than your thoughts and feelings, and allow it to inform and guide the moment-to-moment conduct of your life, even, if not especially, when faced by great inner or outer turmoil.

  This approach involves intentionally cultivating greater intimacy with the interior landscape of your life—that is with your mind and your body and the breath that serves as a convenient link between them in the only moment you ever have, namely this one. That is what mindfulness offers you. It is not a matter of eradicating anxiety but rather becoming intimate with it through awareness because it is already here. In making room for it, you discover that the anxiety you are experiencing in any moment is not you, but merely a constellation of strongly habitual thoughts, feelings, and body sensations that you may be investing with a power they would not otherwise have over your life, and which might therefore severely restrict your options for responding effectively in situations you find stressful and which trigger these habitual patterns of reactivity. You discover “you” are mysteriously larger than these conditioned patterns hijacking the mind and body, and that your awareness of anxiety, fear, and worry is not anxious at all. It is already okay. Learning to “inhabit” your own awareness and deepen its scope and stability is a way to give you back to yourself and add significant degrees of freedom to your life.

  The great painter Georgia O’Keefe once said: “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I want to do.” If we are willing to patiently and lovingly watch our own minds, our own mental turmoil, our own fears and hesitations and despairing thoughts, and our own body reactions to those very thoughts, we will come to see how much bigger we are than they are. We will discover something of our own truest nature.

  It may come as a surprise to experience for yourself how large and beautiful and transparent you already are. This book is an invitation to practice mindfulness, whether on any given day you feel like it or not, as if your life depended on it . . . and be surprised.

  —Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. Professor of Medicine emeritus University of Massachusetts Medical School Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society

  Acknowledgments

  In writing this book, I am once again in awe of the amazing interconnectedness of life. I would like to thank and to acknowledge the following people. Without them, this book would not have been possible.

  My parents, Garland and Irene Brantley, for giving me this life, and their love and support.

  My mother-in-law, Mary Principe, whose love and generosity have made so many things possible.

  My sister Carolyn, and all my kin, by blood and by marriage, who have been there for me over the years.

  All the friends and colleagues whose support and examples have inspired and strengthened me.

  My patients and their families, whose burdens and courage have taught and enriched me.

  My spiritual guides and meditation teachers, among them especially the following.

  Roger Walsh, MD, who showed me how mindfulness could exist in academic medicine and as part of medical education.

  Joan Halifax, Ph.D., who has been a dear friend and guide over the years, always pointing to the next horizon.

  The monks and nuns of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, especially Ajahn Sucitto and Ajahn Sundara, for their example and inspired teachings.

  The teachers and staff of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, for providing a place—visible and invisible—that supports awakening.

  To all the wonderful people working in integrative medicine at Duke and elsewhere who value mindfulness and its place in the healing process.

  To Marty Sullivan, MD, whose vision, courage, and efforts made Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at Duke possible.

  To my fellow instructors in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program and our staff: thanks for all you do. Because of you, our program, and my own practice, is immeasurably enriched.

  To everyone at New Harbinger Publications, and especially, the editors of the first edition Jueli Gastwirth and Jess Beebe: thanks for all your wisdom and skill in making this book happen. To the editors of the second edition, Melissa Kirk and Gail Saari, and to Michele Waters: thanks for bringing this book to life.

  A special acknowledgment to Jon Kabat-Zinn: thank you for the leadership in bringing mindfulness forward all these years, and especially for the friendship and support you have given me.

  And finally, a very special acknowledgment to my wife, Mary Mathews-Brantley. Without your love, wisdom, and support, this book would definitely not have happened. Many thanks!

  To Tracy Gaudet, Sam Moon, Sylver Quevedo, Ruth Wolever, and Linda Smith, for boundless support, friendship, and inspirations.

  To John Tarrant, for being there with poetry, joy, wisdom, and friendship.

  To ALL who read and used the first edition of this book. Thanks for your questions, your courage, and for being my teachers.

  Introduction to the Revised Edition

  Who are we apart from the agitation of anxiety, fear, and panic?

  Can we learn to re-member ourselves, to re-collect our greater wholeness and meet the intensities of anxiety, fear, and panic—especially in a world that seems too often to be going mad?

  Can reconnecting with our own wholeness provide a safe enough context for wise relationship to the enormous challenges of fear, anxiety, and panic? Could this self-remembering lead us to a path of healing and transformation not only for ourselves but possibly for those around us facing the same challenges? And, could our own healing and transformation somehow contain benefits beyond ourselves, to our world, which is so often driven and shaped by fear and anxiety?

  It is not often that one is offered the opportunity to go back and add to a work already completed. But, when I was asked if I had anything else to say about mindfulness and anxiety, and would I be interested in doing a revised version of Calming Your Anxious Mind , I was given just that opportunity!

  In the several years now since the book was first published, I have been amazed and honored by the positive reception it has received. I have heard from readers around the world, and from health care professionals and clients, all wishing to thank me, and telling me how much the book has helped them.

  So what could be added to the revised edition?

  Since the first book, I have had the opportunity not only to speak to readers, but also to teach classes based on the approach of applying mindfulness and compassion to manage fear, anxiety, and panic. In those conversations and classes, I have heard requests for more information about research and meditation, and also more specific instruction for meeting the difficult energies of fear, anxiety, and panic with spaciousness and openheartedness.

  Of course, people have also had new and very thoughtful and challenging questions.

  Finally, many have noted how practicing mindfulness seemed to put them in touch with a dimension within that changed their relationships with their lives in a positive way. Practicing mindfulness with kindness and compassion, they really did begin, it seems, to reconnect with a sense of wholeness that had never left them, but that they themselves had somehow forgotten existed.

  So, the emphasis in this revised edition is on these emergent areas: more clarity and data about meditation and its benefits, especially related to anxiety; some new and expanded instructions for actually practicing mindfulness and resting in spaciousness and stillness; new questions and responses; and some additional emphasis pointing
at wholeness through poems and narrative, in brief and selected language in many of the chapters.

  Supporting these additions are two entirely new chapters. And existing chapters have new sections on research, more questions, and additional discussion. There are also new references and resources at the end of the book.

  As with the original edition, it is my deepest hope that this revised version may help all those who struggle with fear, anxiety, and panic, and that to the extent they can find peace and ease, may their ease help our world become more peaceful .

  So, many thanks to all who read about and practice mindfulness, and now, back to the original introduction . . .

  When Worlds Meet & Merge

  We live in truly interesting times. In the pages of this book, you will find ideas and information from two apparently very different worlds.

  From the world of evidence-based Western medicine, you will hear about the connection between mind and body, and about the vital role of thoughts and emotions in health and illness. In addition, you will learn more about the body’s fear system and how it functions and malfunctions to produce anxiety and panic.

  From the world of meditation and inquiry into meaning and purpose, you will learn about the practice of mindfulness and the potential for presence and stillness in every human being. You will discover that you have the same potential for awareness and peace as everyone else, and that you have an untrained mind with its own hindrances, just like everyone else.

  In a curious sense, this book represents a major trend in modern society: we now see the crossover between traditions and areas of knowledge and information previously regarded as quite separate and distinct. In this book, you will find references to current medical views alongside citations from meditation teachers of international renown.

  This convergence of worlds opens many questions. At present there are not so many answers. But the fact is that treatments offered by Western medical science do not work for everyone. This is especially true of treatments for anxiety and panic.