Chapter 7

Journeying from Excessive Anxiety to Mindful Wellbeing

In this chapter, I describe what your journey may be like from suffering anxiety towards a more mindful way of living. I give you tips and tricks to help you on your journey, methods for supporting yourself and also how to enlist the help of others along your way.

I use the metaphor of a journey because mindfulness isn't a quick fix and takes time to integrate into your life. Mindfulness may not reduce your anxiety in the short term, but it certainly offers a way of living despite your anxiety in the long term.

Starting anything new is always tricky, but with the right support, understanding and motivation to carry on, mindfulness can help you on your journey to greater wellbeing.

Starting the Journey at the Edge of the Forest

If you're going for an adventurous walk through the forest, you can plan it in many different ways. You may prepare yourself with maps and compasses, or you may not have a planned route and just want to see where the journey takes you.

Try to see your anxiety as normal because everyone experiences anxiety on some level to a certain extent. You need to ask yourself whether you want to continue on your journey as you are (suffering with anxiety) or consider a different way of travelling – that is, meeting up with anxiety and living with it, which is mindfulness.

All sorts of different types of travelling exist, and in the same way, you can integrate mindfulness into your life in many different ways. You may want to use this book on its own, or you may want to consider other resources that work alongside it:

When deciding how to manage your anxiety, make seeing a doctor your first port of call before you decide on starting any new form of therapy yourself. Then you can consult your health professional and with guidance choose how you want to proceed.

What you choose to do ultimately comes down to your experiences in the past, how you learn best and what you feel comfortable with. If you're happy just reading through the book and having a go at some of the exercises, that's perfectly acceptable!

If you've just experienced a major life event, such as bereavement, a marriage split, a house move or major surgery, now may not be the best time to start mindfulness. You need a bit of space and time in your life, so make sure that you allow for that before taking on such a valuable and important skill.

Seeing the wood despite the trees: Difficulties along the way

When travelling through the forest, sometimes you can get stuck and just see nothing but trees obscuring the way forward. You may have become a little lost or are struggling to stick to the original plan. In these situations, you need to try to let go and just enjoy the adventure.

The same applies to your mindfulness journey. The less attached you are to things working out a certain way or to any ideas of how you think mindfulness should be, the more useful your experience is likely to be. New adventures and journeys always have some difficulties.

Often anxiety makes you want to avoid your anxious thoughts and feelings rather than experience them, but this approach is unhelpful because it doesn't assisting managing your anxiety. In fact, the efforts you make to avoid anxiety just make it more sticky and difficult to handle. Mindfulness shows you how to deal with difficult thoughts and emotions and loosen their power over you (as I describe in Chapter 4).

In all journeys, allowing for difficulties is a good idea. For example, on your adventure through the forest, taking a first-aid kit is sensible. You may need it if you have a fall or get bitten by an insect. In the same way, allowing for difficulties in your mindfulness journey is sensible. You may want to be aware of obstacles that you can face when beginning your mindfulness practice. Here are a few examples:

Being aware of possible obstacles before you begin can help you when you run into difficulty. You can accept them, manage them as best as you can and move past them.

Another difficulty is that mindfulness increases awareness, so your anxiety may feel more intense, especially at the beginning of your journey. The reason is down to you focusing on your anxiety rather than avoiding it, which is what being mindful is all about.

You may wonder why you're doing a practice that may increase your feelings of anxiety rather than lessen them! The subtlety of mindfulness for anxiety can be a hard one to get your head around.

Mindfulness is a radically different way of managing difficult thoughts and emotions. It isn't about getting rid of your anxiety; it's about making space for the feeling to ‘be’ and not identifying with it. Instead, you discover how to allow and accept the thoughts and feelings rather than fighting them. You find out how to face emotions gently and watch your thoughts for what they are — just images and words. This concept isn't easy to grasp and can be challenging.

Understanding the journey of a lifetime

Mindfulness isn't some kind of spiritual goal, a way of reaching a higher power or about achieving enlightenment. Beginning to practise doesn't mean that everything is going to work out perfectly in your life or that you'll achieve perfect peace and never encounter a stressful event again! But the fact that mindfulness doesn't have any specific goals is important because it means that you don't have to worry about achieving anything.

Ultimately, mindfulness is about discovering how to face the feeling of anxiety and continue to live your life, despite your negative thoughts and challenging emotions, in a kind and wise way. When you become mindful of your anxiety, you discover how to let it be. When you do that, you can continue to focus on what's important to you: your relationships, your work, your dreams and passions. Your life is about living in a fully present way and accepting whatever arises for you in a flexible and totally engaged manner.

Think of mindfulness as being about the journey not the destination, as you discover how to become aware of present-moment experiences in your day-to-day life. Mindfulness shows you how to experience life fully, moment by moment, thus increasing your levels of wellbeing and connection with the present moment.

Keeping a Journal to Strengthen Your Practice

Many therapists, social workers and other professionals in the health sector advocate writing a journal for greater wellbeing. In fact, some research shows that journaling can benefit your health, including

If you're stressed or anxious, sometimes the very act of writing down your thoughts and feelings can release them or help you get a clearer understanding of a difficult situation. It can help you pinpoint stress or anxiety triggers and so more effectively notice any patterns. Also, because the journal isn't a person and is nonjudgemental, you can write in an honest, open way and share as much as you like with 100 per cent confidentiality (fortunately journals don't tittle-tattle!).

Journaling can also help you stick to other activities that can help your wellbeing, such as a healthy diet, more exercise and better sleep.

Here are some suggestions for journaling:

Writing a journal to help your mindfulness practice

A great idea is to keep a journal just for your mindfulness practice. For example, you may want to write down your experiences after trying a mindfulness meditation, such as the sitting meditation (see Chapter 5). When you notice certain thoughts, discomforts or emotions, writing them down can help to prolong a mindful attitude of curiosity toward them.

Adopting an attitude of gratitude is also useful. When you write down everything you're grateful for each day, your happiness and wellbeing levels rise because you're focusing on the daily positives that you experience rather than the negatives.

Using the journal to monitor your progress

Keeping a mindfulness journal makes tracking your progress easier as you get deeper into your practice. You can use your journal to document your experiences of mindfulness in many different ways. Table 7-1 includes an example layout.

You can also use the journal to document how you feel about each mindfulness practice, as I show with the example in Table 7-2.

Documenting your experiences can help you keep on track with your mindfulness practice, especially when you're finding that it has positive benefits for you. You may also want to keep track of your moods daily and perhaps a sleep diary to see whether you're having any changes as your practice progresses.

Enjoying the Vital Support of Other People

The support of the people you live with is important to help sustain your mindfulness practice. I don't mean that they have to join in with you or even understand what you're doing, just that they offer support in various ways. This support can range from actively trying to give you quiet time alone to meditate to not dismissing or demeaning what you're doing.

Asking family members to cooperate

In a busy working family, quiet time alone can be hard to find. However, when you first begin your meditation practice, noisy distractions can be off-putting.

Ask your partner or an older responsible child whether they can keep younger children, pets and other distractions and responsibilities out of the way for your meditation period. This time can range from 10 to 30 minutes, so it may be challenging but not impossible!

Your partner or one of your children wanting to meditate with you is always welcome. It can help you stay motivated and focused when you feel that you have a support network at home.

As a beginner, distractions can be annoying, but if you really can't avoid them, try the following:

Gaining group support

Meditating in a group is beneficial and provides powerful support. You're more likely to stick to the discipline of meditating when you know that other people are doing it with you. Group support can also help if you feel your meditation practice is getting difficult or you're feeling less motivated than before.

Group meditation is different from the experience of meditating alone. Many people say that it deepens their experience when they meditate in a group.

Check notices in public places, such as doctor surgeries and libraries in your area, for mindfulness groups. Mindfulness is becoming increasingly popular, and I've seen notices for mindfulness groups in several community buildings. Also check out Chapter 10 for more on mindfulness courses of all sorts.

If you can't find a mindfulness group in your area, consider starting one! You can do so with interested friends or strangers; all you really need is just one other person.

Keep your group meetings simple and friendly. Here's an example itinerary of a simple mindfulness meditation group:

1. Arrive and welcome all newcomers.
2. Try some mindful stretching.
3. Carry out a formal mindfulness meditation, such as the sitting meditation or the body scan (see Chapter 5 for details).
4. Allow people to share their experiences if they want to.
5. Socialise and share some healthy refreshments if you want to, such as grapes and herbal tea.
6. End the group meeting.

For the formal meditation in Step 3, practise for 30 minutes or so. Perhaps play a guided audio meditation or ask someone to read out a mindfulness script. Don't forget that you can shorten or lengthen the meditation depending on your audience.

I coached mindfulness to a family with teenagers. I adapted the meditations for them because they thought that the teenagers’ concentration wouldn't stretch to 30 minutes. I broke the meditations down into 15-minute chunks. The sessions went swimmingly!