Calming Your Anxious Mind Page 6

  About half of that group classify themselves as moderate worriers who worry between 10 and 50 percent of the day.

  The rest of the worriers report that they worry more than eight hours a day.

  Worry has been related to health problems. These include cardiac arrhythmias in patients who have had heart attacks, increased blood pressure in laboratory animals, and asthma in both adults and children.

  Uncertainty as an aspect of worry is particularly potent and toxic. When people are confronted by situations of high uncertainty, when they do not know what will happen next or how they should act, they can experience destructive feelings of helplessness and frustration. Uncertainty keeps people in a constant state of semi-arousal, unable to relax, and the price of this ongoing tension and stress is high.

  Staying in the present moment is the key. In an article in Prevention , Cathy Perlmutter (1993) quotes Jennifer Abel as saying that to deal with worry, it is important to focus on what’s going on right now. Worry is almost always future-oriented, Abel says, “so if we can focus on what we’re doing right now—the sentence we’re reading, the voice of the person speaking—rather than thinking about what someone might say next, we’re better off” (78).

  Attitudes & Beliefs

  Besides anger and worry, deeply held attitudes and views of self and the world have been demonstrated to have potent effects on health.

  The power of attitude has come under intense scrutiny by health researchers. Of particular importance to your health are thought patterns that shape your sense of personal power and control, your confidence in your ability to handle problems and stress, and your sense of hope and optimism or pessimism about situations you face.

  Attitudes & Stress

  Why is it that some people handle stress with few problems, while others facing the same stressful conditions fall ill?

  Suzanne Kobasa (1987, 1990) and her colleagues have studied stress and stress reactions in a variety of people, including business executives, attorneys in general practice, and women in an outpatient gynecology setting. The subjects in each of these groups faced roughly the same kinds of stressors, yet had different health outcomes. Kobasa and her colleagues studied the personalities and styles of coping of each group. The studies went on in some cases for as long as five years. In the end, the researchers found a powerful correlation between physical health and certain attitudes and beliefs. They found no correlation between stressful life events and physical illness . In other words, what the people believed and thought seemed to make all the difference!

  Kobasa coined the term stress hardiness to describe the qualities of the individuals who managed stress with few or no significant health problems. The three elements of stress hardiness she found to be crucial are commitment , control , and challenge .

  Commitment here means a deep and abiding interest and involvement in what is happening around you, including yourself, others, work, and a set of important values. In other words, feeling a sense of connection is important.

  Control means being confident that you have the ability to cushion the hurt or destructiveness of a particular stressful situation. It does not mean that you have to control other people or all aspects of a situation. Control is the refusal to become a victim. It is the ability to focus on what you can control and not be distracted by what you cannot.

  Challenge means having the ability to greet the stressful situation as an interesting opportunity for growth and excitement. This inevitably means also welcoming and accepting change, which is constant, rather than feeling overwhelmed by it.

  These findings reflect a common and recurring theme in stress research: The stress itself does not cause illness. How a person reacts to stress is crucial. Your way of viewing and explaining what is happening determines the impact stress will have.

  Explanatory Style

  How do you explain to yourself what it means when something bad happens to you? Do you view the glass as half empty or half full? Everyone has this tendency to explain the unpleasant or “bad” events of their life. The basis of each person’s explanation lies in his or her deeply held views or ideas. These ideas form a person’s explanatory style .

  A pioneer in the understanding of the impact of explanatory style is Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania. In his studies, Seligman observed that how people explained the “bad” things that happened to them had a powerful effect on their health and wellness. Many others have added to this work, including Yale surgeon Bernie Siegel, Charles Carver at the University of Miami, and Michael F. Scheier at Carnegie-Mellon University (Hafen et al. 1996). The results of research in this area of explanatory style indicate that, in truth, we are what we think.

  Pessimists tend to view themselves and most situations negatively. They tend to blame themselves for all “bad” events happening to them, and they tend to catastrophize , or inflate every situation into the worst thing imaginable.

  Pessimists have worse health outcomes, and the correlation is so strong that the pessimistic style actually has predictive value. In other words, researchers have been able to predict which members of a study would have negative health outcomes based solely on their style of viewing life events pessimistically.

  Optimists tend to see the good in situations, expect things to go their way, see controllable aspects to situations and focus on those, resist giving up easily, and avoid blaming themselves for what has happened.

  In contrast to pessimists, individuals with an optimistic style have repeatedly been shown in studies to have better health outcomes. It is even suggested that having an optimistic style can actually protect you from getting sick.

  Wielding the Power of Thought

  The majority of this research in attitudes and health points to an important conclusion. The attitudes and views that so powerfully impact an individual’s health are learned and can be changed .

  When you recognize and understand the attitudes, views, and emotions operating within you, you gain the power to evaluate and change your attitudes. While this change can take time and varies from person to person, the message is clear. You can be a healthier person by recognizing and managing the power of your own thoughts and emotions!

  How Mindfulness Can Help

  Mindfulness is an awareness that is not thinking. It is an awareness that is capable of recognizing thoughts and emotions as they occur and does not identify with them. Mindfulness is friendly, nonjudging, allowing, present-moment awareness.

  We know that thoughts play a crucial role in fear, anxiety, or even panic. Consider the following anxiety-based thoughts:

  What if I cause an accident because I can’t handle the machine?

  If I did have a panic attack right now, I wouldn’t be able to cope.

  I am tired all of the time. What if I have cancer and it is too late?

  It will be impossible for me to go into that meeting tomorrow. There will be too many people there who are just waiting to laugh at me.

  I am not smart enough to do the job the boss just gave me.

  Any of these thoughts (or ones like them) can provoke the fear response. The stress reaction is then underway. If the type of thinking that follows is generated from a deeper thought base of a pessimistic explanatory style, self-blame, or poor self-confidence, there is even more fuel for the body’s fear system to burn.

  Subjectively, it can go something like this. The body’s fear system is aroused. The hyperarousal is experienced as somewhat unpleasant. The body and the mind are buzzing. Thoughts get started. They can be worrisome and frightening themselves. The fear system response intensifies. The sense of self, of I-me-mine , may grow very strong. It can even feel rocklike and heavy. Sometimes I-me-mine feels so threatened that overwhelming panic seems to be all that is present. Annihilation of self, of I-me-mine , is the compelling moment-by-moment concern.

  That is when mindfulness practice is so important. When you practice mindfulness, you make the decision to stay present and examine y
our own unfolding inner experience. Attention is poured into your interior landscape. You turn toward fear and anxiety, toward thoughts and sensations as objects of your kind attention. You don’t expect to fix anything as you pay attention this way. All that is asked is that you bring compassionate attention to what you are experiencing, moment by moment.

  In this practice, it is not a mistake to feel upset, fear, or even panic. You have not done anything wrong when you feel such energies. Your practice of mindfulness has not failed! Indeed, such moments are the precise time to use your practice of mindfulness to change how you relate to and experience the intense forces of fear, anxiety, and panic.

  You establish attention on the experiences themselves, using an anchor such as the sensation of your breathing to help you stay present. As you open to and observe the body sensations, and the thoughts, and the next wave of sensations and thoughts, and so on, you recognize all of these occurrences simply as impermanent, passing events. A sense of spaciousness and ease arises and can surround the disturbing experiences. You feel calmer and your attention has a sharper focus.

  Each encounter with fear, anxiety, or panic is an opportunity to practice being with that upset in a different way. It is a chance to practice being more spacious within, being at peace with yourself and the upset, and listening without believing any disturbing thoughts. Your new method is mindful, allowing attention paid directly to the disturbing elements of fear, anxiety, or panic.

  By allowing the thoughts to happen and recognizing them as simply another experience in the present moment, you can stop the cycle of identifying with and reacting to the experiences. It is now possible to connect more deeply with yourself and your inner life as it is unfolding.

  From the perspective of the mind-body interaction, now there is a break in your identification with the experience of anxiety—both the physical and cognitive aspects of it. Mindful attention breaks the cycle of thoughts fueling the fear system. It also gives the balancing activity, the relaxation response, a chance to activate. And by breaking the identification with the fearful thoughts, mindfulness supports the natural capacity of the higher cortical centers to contextualize and interpret the situation correctly. They can do their usual job of turning down the fear system by acting on the amygdala.

  Keep in Mind

  Thoughts are powerful. They can have a helpful or a harmful interaction with the body’s fear system and the experience of anxiety.

  You can learn to manage the power of your thoughts and their effects on fear and anxiety by learning to be more present and to pay attention on purpose as the experience of thoughts and feelings and body sensations unfolds.

  You may not be able to stop or control your thoughts, but you can learn not to identify with them and not to believe them automatically. You can learn to recognize and allow your thoughts to happen. When you hold your thoughts in awareness this way, you use the power of mindfulness to manage their power.

  Then, whether you can stop the thoughts is no longer so important. Even when anxious thoughts are present, they lose their ability to intrude and control you. By being present with awareness, you gain new power over the experiences of your own mind and your life itself.

  Chapter 5

  Mindfulness & Meditation

  Everything happens in the present moment. It is in the present moment, the now , that you live. All of experience, whether it occurs inside your skin or outside your skin, is happening in this moment. In order to live more fully, to meet the stressors and challenges of life (including fear, panic, and anxiety) more effectively, and to embrace the wonder and awe of life more completely, it is fundamental that each of us learns to connect with and dwell in the present moment.

  To teach yourself the art of attention and presence is both a difficult and beautiful undertaking. The habits of inattention and absence are strong, yet the experience of life, moment by moment, is precious.

  The Value of Mindfulness

  In the 1997 best seller Tuesdays with Morrie , Mitch Albom recounts a series of conversations he had with his favorite professor from college, Morrie Schwartz. Morrie was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mitch visited Morrie every Tuesday. One Tuesday, they talked about death. Mitch asked Morrie why it was so hard to think about dying. Morrie answered,

  “Most of us all walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully, because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”

  “And facing death changes all that?”

  “Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.” He sighed. “Learn how to die, and you learn how to live” (83).

  Morrie goes on to tell Mitch that a key to learning how to die is to accept that “you can die at any time.” From this truth, Morrie’s appreciation for life is strengthened. He tells Mitch, “Because I know my time is almost done, I am drawn to nature like I’m seeing it for the first time” (84).

  In his wise way, Morrie shares with us a deep appreciation of the preciousness of life’s moments.

  But what of the moments filled with fear and pain? Are they precious also? What is there to be gained from being present in these moments?

  In The Places That Scare You (2001), popular meditation teacher Pema Chödrön tells a story from her childhood about facing pain. Pema was about six years old, walking down a street and feeling “lonely, unloved, and mad, kicking anything I could find.” An old woman saw her and laughed. The old woman told Pema, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.” The lesson for Pema was clear. “Right there, I received this pith instruction: we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice” (3).

  As a human being, you already have what you need to experience the preciousness of each moment. You have the quality you need to open up to what scares you instead of hardening into resentment and fear.

  Mindfulness is that quality. Mindfulness empowers you to be truly present .

  Mindfulness Is to Be Experienced

  Mindfulness is a word in the English language. In any word, or concept which the word represents, there is limited understanding. If you read different books about mindfulness, or hear different people talk about it, you will likely hear different definitions. There are different cultural uses of the concept, as well as different words and symbols used to represent it. So from the beginning, you must recognize that simply to talk about mindfulness, to think about it, or to read about it is not adequate to understand mindfulness.

  The words we use to convey ideas about mindfulness are only symbols, only a kind of map. The actual experience of mindfulness lies beyond words and ideas. You can only get this experience through your direct practice. In the truth of your own direct practice experience is the real understanding of mindfulness.

  Having said this about direct practice experience, however, we can now discuss some ideas about mindfulness that point in the direction of what happens in direct practice.

  What Is Mindfulness?

  The word mindfulness is popping up everywhere these days. Some people seem to confuse it with the word mindlessness , which is actually the opposite! Others seem to think being mindful means having a mind that is full of something, or trying to make the mind full of something. All of this talk can make something confusing out of what is actually a simple thing. Let’s try now to move toward a more precise understanding of mindfulness, where it comes from, and what we mean by that term in this book.

  Webster’s New World College Dictionary , Fourth Edition, does not actually define mindfulness , but does define mindful as “having in mind, aware, heedful, or careful” and mindless as “not using one’s mind, showing little or no intelligence or intellect, senseless, or thoughtless.”

  Social psychologist Ellen
Langer (1989) used the word mindfulness in the context of her important work studying the relationship between mind-states and actions in diverse and common human activities. As she points out, however, her work has been conducted almost entirely from the Western scientific perspective.

  Langer does not use the word mindfulness in the context of meditation practice. She relates this more to Eastern views of mindfulness. In fact, her work on the subject began with the study of mindlessness , or the sort of automatic, unheedful behavior which can cause so much difficulty in daily life. She explains how holding fixed views and mind-sets can make us blind to things right in front of us, and how we pay a high price for this.

  These definitions and examples of mindfulness are based in the Western cultural perspective, with its emphasis on thinking, mind-sets, and cognitive perception. They are valuable and have some remarkable similarities to the concept of mindfulness presented in this book. However, there is one important difference as well.

  Mindfulness Is Based in Meditation

  The approach presented in this book is based upon an understanding of mindfulness developed through meditation . This meditation-based approach is grounded in a direct experience of attention and awareness applied to thoughts, as well as to all other facets of experience in this moment. The understanding and the benefits of mindfulness arise directly out of the experience of the person practicing the meditation. For this approach to help you, you have to actually meditate.

  Meditating is not as difficult as you may think. First, you don’t have to disappear for years into a cave or go onto a mountaintop to gain benefits. Second, you already have the capacity for attention and kind awareness within, and don’t have to get it from anyplace else. Finally, it helps to understand that meditation is basically about paying attention in a friendly, nonjudging way as life happens. You can do that in the time it takes to breathe in and out one time!