All of us experience anxiety — even meditation teachers. I was nervous the other day driving down to the airport on my way to lead a retreat. I’d left it a bit late, and thoughts like “what if the traffic’s bad in Boston and I end up missing the flight?” kept popping into my head.
We all have to learn strategies for dealing with our fears.
You can think of there being an “anxiety module” in the brain. It’s the amygdala — a rather ancient part of our wiring. It’s always scanning, looking for “threats” — for things that might go wrong. When we’re in an anxious state, the amygdala is working overtime, and it’s interpreting pretty much everything as a threat (and, in my case, inventing things that could go wrong). And the amygdala is well wired into the rest of the brain. When it’s operating, we know about it. An active amygdala in fact can in fact “hijack” the higher centers in the brain (to do with rational thought, etc.) so that in a way the whole brain is being run by the amygdala. And an over-active amygdala actually becomes larger, like a muscle that’s exercised a lot.
But our higher cognitive centers have wiring running back to the amygdala, and they can (in theory) send back reassurance: “It’s OK, we can deal with this.” These inhibitory activities damp down the activity of the amygdala, and can quell our anxiety. Those pathways may be underdeveloped, but they can grow, with practice.
So the key is to keep bathing the amygdala in reassurance. One way to do this is to accept your anxiety. The amygdala actually responds to its own activity. it creates anxiety and then takes the symptoms of anxiety as a sign that something must be wrong. So if we can simply accept our anxiety, and accept that it’s OK to feel anxiety, then we cut out that feedback loop of getting anxious about anxiety. You can say to yourself, in a soothing tone of voice (internal, if you want), “It’s OK. It’s OK to feel this. Let me feel this.”
You can even send thoughts of lovingkindness to your anxiety. Notice where the anxiety is in the body. welcome it; don’t make it feel unwelcome, because that’s just feeding it. Welcome it like a beloved friend who has turned up at your home in a shaky state. You’d sit your friend down and sooth her. So let your anxiety be there, and wish it well: “May you be well; may you be happy.” Over and over. The aim isn’t to try to make the anxiety go away (again that can end up feeding it, through aversion) but to give it our compassionate attention for as long as it’s there. It’ll go away of its own accord once the mind works out that the anxiety is no longer needed.
Over time, you’ll strengthen the regulatory channels that run from your frontal cortex back to the amygdala. The amygdala will shrink. The bits of your brain to do with reassurance will get physically larger. And in time you’ll feel less anxiety, and when you do feel anxious it’ll be more “contained” within a larger context of patience, reassurance, and kindness.
Oh, and I made my flight with plenty of time to spare. The worry was completely needless.
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Another free teaching via Bodhipaksa. I’m thankful for your teachings. I appreciate the comment; ” treat anxiety like a friend , sooth it “. I refer the yoga students to the Wildmind website; some are taking the meditation course. Thanks again peace & unconditional love Namaste
Brilliant, thanks, Bodhipaksa. This post in itself is soothing and reassuring.
Great article. I especially enjoy the connection to the science. Anxiety was one of the main reasons I came to Buddhism = the use of mindfulness to harness the real power of the brain to manage our ever increasing stressful lives. Thanks for sharing. Namaste _/\_
So very true. I suffer from SAD and practicing mindfulness is helping me be more self-compassionate and friendly to my Amy-G-Dala. I hope it is ok to share, so here is a link to a paper with scientific research that explains what happens in your brain…
https://spl.stanford.edu/pdfs/Goldin2010EmotionJournal_MBSR_SocAnxiety_EmotReg.pdf
This gave me great confidence I could overcome my SAD with the right treatment; it is working though it is not easy reversing years of negative self-conditioning.
As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Smile to your sorrow.”
Thank you for this teaching. I’ve struggled with debilitating anxiety, and this gives me a boost of hope.
It’s taken me years to ‘re-train’ my brain to manage anxiety. Mindfulness, and using meditation to be present, observe and embrace my anxiety has helped to both calm me in the moment, and identify what causes the anxiety. I especially like the concept that we must embrace our emotions, regardless of how negative and debilitating they may be in order to release their power over us and put them in proper perspective. Over time, anxiety triggers are more easily identified and addressed before they become overwhelming. Daily meditation has certainly made it possible to be a more balanced person!
Namaste
Superb piece.
I could genuinely connect with this.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for this piece. I believe that accepting my anxiety, rather than constantly fight fight fighting it is genuinely going to help me. I have just started CBT for sleep-related anxiety and only last night was I lying awake at 4.45am, trying to fight this anxiety building in my stomach. I tossed and turned and was still awake when my alarm went off at 7.30am. Every waking second I spend nearly all my energy on fighting my anxiety and negative thinking patterns, constantly racing to future events questioning “what if this happens?” and generally catastrophising. I particularly liked this:
“You can even send thoughts of lovingkindness to your anxiety. Notice where the anxiety is in the body. welcome it; don’t make it feel unwelcome, because that’s just feeding it. Welcome it like a beloved friend who has turned up at your home in a shaky state. You’d sit your friend down and sooth her. So let your anxiety be there, and wish it well: “May you be well; may you be happy.”
I am certainly going to look at and feel my anxiety in a different light now. Hopefully with the meditation practices I have begun and CBT sessions I will soon be back to sleeping peacefully again without the help of medication.
Thank you