The primary technique for recovery from anxiety is to ignore the intrusive thoughts and focus on our feelings. By focusing on feelings, we bring ourselves back to what is real.
On my journey to recovery, whenever I was confronted by anxious thoughts, I knew I couldn’t control any of it, but I did have a choice in where I placed my focus, my attention. So I would simply do my best to go immediately to my feelings – usually by asking myself: “How do I FEEL?”
The Challenge
Now, sometimes the thoughts are so loud, so intense, so convincing that it seems impossible not to engage with them. Suppose you find you can turn to your feelings when your thoughts are not too intense, but above a certain intensity you struggle. Perhaps you struggle when having a particular type of thought, or maybe you just happen to be in a vulnerable mind-frame. In any case, you find yourself drawn into engaging with your anxious thoughts. When this happens, accept it, be kind to yourself, do the best you can to focus on how you feel.
Practice Develops Skill
The more you attempt to do this, the better you get at it, no matter how intense the thoughts. So gradually you become more skilled at doing it, and your anxious thoughts tend to become less intense over time.
If we were to rate things out of 10 (note that judging, comparing is not recommended, but for the sake of this explanation I will) When we start our recovery journey, our skill is at say 1, 2, or 3 out of 10, and our scary thoughts are at 8, 9, 10 out of 10 at their worst. The goal of practice is to bring our skill up to 8, 9, 10, and (as a by-product of our acceptance) have the intensity of our anxiety reduce to 1, 2, or 3.
So, to put it really simply, I mentally diverted my attention always back to my feelings. I just kept asking myself: “How do I feel?”
The Trap
You may find this technique brings almost instant relief, or you may still struggle not engaging with the thoughts. The goal isn’t to get relief, it is to practice the skill of placing your focus on your feelings, so don’t make a big deal about the outcome of this practice.
Beware of this thought:
“I must be doing something right because my thoughts feel pretty clear now.”
We really should try not to judge our practice, and certainly not based on the outcome. Because this thought comes with the counter thought that when we practice and we still have anxious thoughts and feelings we must be doing it wrong.
That isn’t how it works. Practice is about developing a skill – becoming better at allowing our anxiety to happen. We allow the thoughts to happen, but don’t engage. We allow the feelings to happen, and we face them and accept them. None of it has to do with whether these thoughts and feelings subside, stay the same, or get worse.
The Goal
In the LONG term (weeks, months, years) as we get better at allowing and acceptance, these anxious thoughts and feelings do reduce in intensity and frequency. But in the short term, hour to hour, day to day, even week to week, these variations mean nothing, and we shouldn’t assign any meaning to them, ESPECIALLY not attribute it to how well or not we are practicing. We can be practicing the right way and still go through difficult times, setbacks etc. We can still go down the rabbit hole.
It isn’t the fact we have we a setback or go down the rabbit hole that is relevant, but how we RESPOND when that happens.
We practice facing and accepting, and there is change, or no change, increase or decrease in symptoms, setback, or no setback. Whatever happens, all we do is face and accept it (i.e., practice some more).
Whenever we are looking for any specific outcome, we are not fully accepting. We have to learn to be TRULY willing to accept however our journey goes.
