Freedom from anxiety
17th January 2022
What is anxiety? To me it feels like something that doesn’t want me to rest. As if someone is nudging and bumping me constantly and I can’t rest. I must be alert at all times. There’s danger near, I must have all my wits about me. But most of the time, this is just a feeling created by my thoughts as in reality there’s no danger anywhere near.
Somehow, humans, as the level of danger and threats around us has gone down; anxiety levels seem to be going up. As if the human mechanism inside of us that used to keep us safe from tigers and famine, is still active even when those are not even remotely threats to us.
Instead, this inner mechanism gets triggered by the smallest things like what that person said or what may happen tomorrow…you get my point. Anxiety nowadays is a totally different thing that what it was when it was actually a useful part of our brains. More like a ever present hum to our lives, rather than a short, sharp feeling that needed action to protect us.
So, how do we learn to switch it off at will? How can we look at a situation objectively instead of being engulfed into this disarmingly powerful barrage of emotions that can really leave us paralysed and unable to move past?
In my own life, the way I get passed my anxiety is by realising that I’m not my brain or my thoughts. By separating the process that the brain goes through and who i really am. By going one level below thought, I’m able to realise that I am the witness of thought and not the thought itself. And in the case of anxoius thoughts i’m able to see that it’s just something my brain is doing but that i can detach from it. Sit back almost and just watch it go past, like a cloud would in the sky. Taking that step back may seem like an simplistic approach to this widespread problem, but by doing this I’m much more able to see these paralysing thoughts for what that they are. Just thoughts, nothing more, nothing less.