Zen-ish Thoughts About Anxiety

Reminder: I am not a licensed mental health professional. Everything that follows is meant conversationally and descriptively, not as diagnosis or treatment.

Common Manifestations of Anxiety

Emotions can be constant or come in waves. Examples include:

• Excessive worrying: Intensely focusing on a source of stress to the point that it interferes with everyday tasks.
• Restlessness: Difficult or impossible to concentrate, purposeless movement.
• Irritability: Feeling easily annoyed or frustrated, often over minor things, due to underlying stress.
• Intense fear: Having an intense feeling of uneasiness or worry that something bad will happen.
• Catastrophizing: Imagining worst-case scenarios and anticipating disastrous outcomes.

Anxiety can trigger the body's fight-or-flight response:

• Palpitations, Increased heart rate: Uncomfortable awareness of one's heartbeat, which may or may not be racing.
• Shortness of breath or hyperventilation: You may feel like you are struggling to breathe or have rapid, shallow breaths that can cause dizziness or lightheadedness.
• Sweating: Excessive sweating, particularly in the palms or underarms, is a common concomitant of anxiety.
• Shaking or trembling: This can occur due to the release of stress response hormones.
• Muscle tension: Anxiety can cause muscles, especially those in the neck, shoulders, and back to be tight and stiff.
• Fatigue: Persistent anxiety, like any form of chronic stress, can be physically exhausting.
• Headaches: Tension, tenderness, headache, and migraine are all possible responses.
• Nausea or an upset stomach: Nausea, upset stomach, or gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhea or constipation may be triggered.

Anxiety can significantly impact a person's mindset and reasoning. Possible impacts include:

• Racing thoughts: Rapid, uncontrollable thoughts that quickly jump within and across subjects in a short period of time.
• Difficulty concentrating: Difficulty focusing on and completing tasks or even conversations. "Brain fog".
• Overthinking: Excessive rumination without progress, over-analysis of events, thoughts, and feelings.
• Memory problems: Anxiety can impair short-term memory and make it difficult to retain new information or recall details, even from long-term memory.
• Hypervigilance: Over-reactivity to stimuli, suspiciousness, fear, being on-edge.

Close

• A Zen-ish approach in general, and meditation in particular, will both help reduce the mental spiral of anxiety by grounding you in the "here and now", rather than worrying about the future or ruminating about the past.
• Not this discomforting paradox:
  • Change (impermanence) is the one thing that goes on forever.
  • Unpredictability is the one thing we can predict with certainty.
  We are always operating the the midst of a set of interactions we can't even fully identify. There are always factors in play that we cannot predict well, or even know about. Recognizing this, require yourself to move toward more and more often having a state of mind that is flexible, not perfectionistic, fearful, and fragile. You are going to be okay, because you are going to keep on being you, no matter what happens. These things that freak you out are not actually existential. You will still be you. By being flexible, and in a learning state of mind, you are just going to get better at being you.
• Anxiety is a natural emotion. Accept that rather than fighting it, and note that it rises and recedes, like every emotion. It will recede more quickly after you acknowledge it rather than fight it. Breathe, remember that it will pass, and that will make it pass more quickly.
• To accept it, you have to first recognize it. Anxiety that resembles panic is easy to recognize. But anxiety can take many other forms too. It might look like anger and defensiveness. It might look like perfectionism. It might look like becoming controlling. You might get louder, or quieter, physically larger, or smaller. See some common manifestations of anxiety here. What are some of the ways anxiety shows up in you?
• Even 30 seconds of slow, unforced, calming breathing can make a huge difference. More will do even more.
• What is so includes these points:
  • You are anxious, and it will peak and pass.
  • You have anxiety triggers. You didn't always have them. You acquired them from certain experiences. That is, you learned them.
  • You can learn new patterns to diminish or replace your anxiety triggers. You have a new chance to do that every time you are triggered, and in between times as well. You can either strengthen your triggers by obeying them again, or weaken your triggers by responding with anything other than full obedience. Disobeying your triggers – even just a little – is a good start. The more you disobey each time, the more you will be able to disobey each next time.
    • Limit anxiety with your breathing.
    • Remember that your triggered anxiety will recede, and look for signs of its receding instead of locking your laser focus on signs of its presence.
    • Notice something in the immediate environment you can see that isn't scary, just present.
    • Notice something you can hear, right now, as just a sound, without attributing any meaning to it.
    • Notice something you can feel in or with your body that isn't anxiety, like the floor beneath your feet.
    • Recall the calm you want to feel, and notice it growing.
    • Breathe a slow, unforced, calming breath.
    • Repeat any technique you have learned that helps you focus on what is so, just now, in this moment – not what you wish were so, not what you fear – what is true and calming just now – let it in, name it, and then watch it go. Everything rises and recedes, even your triggered anxiety.
• Think how odd it is to feel something so intensely when it does not serve you well. Respond to that with curiosity about your triggers.
• Split your mind so you can be the comforting, protective adult you need, even at the same time you are being a scared, overwhelmed child.
• After the anxiety has peaked and begun to lessen, spend at least 30 seconds (preferably some minutes) in a meditative frame of mind, gratefully acknowledging that you survived, and recovered, and are not currently in the grip of that trigger. You have survived 100% of what has already happened to you. You will be okay, because you already are okay. Something just temporarily interrupted your day with a burst of discomfort. You are okay now, already, now, in this moment. You were okay then too, but you just lost sight of that, and let it kidnap you. Resist kidnapping. See it for what it is, name it, and decline its forceful invitation by being calm in spite of it. Since you are your own kidnapper, you are exactly as powerful as the kidnapper, so you can refuse to go.

If you have anxiety in specific situations, you should explore those particular situations, in addition to dealing with anxiety symptoms in the generic way suggested above. You can get help with this from coaching, therapy, or both. If it is very intense or disruptive, consider therapy first.