Quick Cure for Anxiety
Stats by the Mental Health Foundation say that over 8 million people in the UK experience anxiety each year. I secretly suffered with anxiety for years, until I investigated how to relate to intense emotions better. Read this article to learn about the mindset required for a healthier relationship with emotions, along with a quick start cure for anxiety that can really help.
Here is a summary of the Uncomfortably Emotions chapter from my Body Calm book, along with a quick start cure to play with to heal your relationship with emotions like anxiety:
It’s natural to feel a full spectrum of emotional energies during daily life.
All emotions are temporary, but the power and presence of your real Self is not.
Your real Self is the awareness that is aware of anxiety and that which is aware of anxiety is not anxious.
The awareness that is aware of anxiety is calm, well and free from anxiety - always.
Recognizing you have temporary emotions but you are not your emotions helps you to more calmly coexist with them all.
Peace is not the absence of emotions. Peace is a state of being you access (and experience) when you are consciously aware and at peace with how you feel.
Suppressing emotions lowers energy and your ability to enjoy the best life.
What you resist will persist and will cause suffering.
The more emotions the better as you need energy to heal, create and transform.
Aim to feel your feelings without getting lost in them by remaining self-aware.
To be self-aware is to be aware of the aspect of your Self that is Aware.
Emotional freedom comes from being comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
Quick Start Cure: 'HELLO EMOTION'
Lost in your anxious emotions? Resisting how you are feeling? In moments like these, when you are losing self-awareness and falling into your feelings, do the following:
Ask: What emotion am I aware of right now?
Ask: Where do I feel the emotion in my body?
Once you’ve named and located the emotion, turn your attention towards it and say the following statement in your mind or out loud: "Hello energy, thank you for passing through. You are welcome to hang out as long as you want."
Breathe nice and deep and easy, allowing the energy to move around your body.
Exercise Explained: The first 2 steps help you to be the observer of the emotion rather than so caught up in it. The simple statement in step 3 holds within it the intention to allow rather than resist, which reduces any stress or suffering as a result of the fleeting feeling. For this game to give you peace with the emotion you need to genuinely be willing for the emotion to 'hang out as long as it wants'. Be careful not to say it, but secretly be saying it so the emotion goes away. If you do that, then you are still resisting it and what you resist will persist. Let the energy be present for as long as it wants. Lastly, breathing allows the energy to move and helps you to feel empowered by its intensity.
TOP TIP: Let the energy be present for as long as it wants. The easiest way to do this is to give more of your attention to the present moment happening all around you - using GAAWO - instead of constantly leaving the moment to check in if the anxiety has gone yet. If you leave it alone then you will notice at some point that the anxiety has moved on.
