Recently, I am learning to cope with anxiety in a different way.
I never realized that I struggled with anxiety, until I didn’t. When I started taking medication for depression, I realized that I was more at ease. This feeling was something different for me because I lived in a constant state of anxious thoughts and feelings.
Though medication helped with the anxiety, daily stressors and every day life are constantly trying to disturb my “chill”.
So, what happens when the alarm bells start to go off and I am feeling that tightening in my chest that lets me know, “Uh oh, anxiety is trying to pay you a visit”?
What is Mindfulness?
It is ones ability to be fully present, in the here and now. To allow yourself to feel and experience your current reality.
Often times, we tend to suppress negative thoughts and feelings. Yet, the truth is that when feelings are not given the proper attention, they tend to linger and amplify.
Mindfulness allows us to navigate through these negative thoughts and feelings.
It allows us to view observe them, experience, but not be controlled by them. Yes, this means that sometimes we will have to experience pain, anxiety, sadness, and any other negative emotion that comes our way.
This is OK. See the feelings, feel the feelings, analyze the feelings, but we don’t have to let the feelings take over.
Mindful Meditation
Meditation can help with this. Meditation can help us observe your feelings without judgement.
Mindful Meditation is not about making feelings and emotions disappear. It is about fully experiencing them. Allowing them the space to be processed and then growing from that experience.
What is the difference between prayer and meditation? They could really be one in the same depending on how you practice them, but generally praying is about the heart and mind, thanking and praising God. It is about laying down our anxieties before God and trusting that He will make a way.
Meditation is about experiencing your current reality and restructuring your thoughts. It requires you to be fully present in your experience.
I like to practice both. There are things that are outside of my control, those things I leave up to God, but there are things that are within my control.
How I react in a moment of stress, how I treat people who hurt me, how I handle disappointment, how I wait for a promise… these are things that I can control.
Meditation helps with making sure that I have the right mind set, prayer connects me to God.
Helpful Resources
- Christian Meditation
- Spotify – Guided Anxiety Relief: Rivers
- Relax Melodies App – allows you to create your own relaxing melodies.
