Have you ever felt heart gripping fear? When your adrenaline is flowing madly and your heart is pounding crazily? Maybe you just saw a car accident right in front of you or someone pulled a gun?
Fear is the experience of an immediate threat.
But anxiety is the emotional state that arises from an anticipated or future threat. So it hasn’t happened yet.
However, both have the same basic physical responses and if you stay living like this, in fear and anxiety, it becomes chronic stress and can cause harm.
Chronic Stress
We are hard wired from evolution to look for risks and respond with fear if we see a life threatening risk. That’s why our ancestors stayed alive 60,000 years ago when we all lived in Africa: they were hard wired for fear. And that genetic trait was passed down to us. Our brains are essentially the same today as they were back then.
Negative thoughts and feelings stick like Velcro and positive thoughts and feelings slide like Teflon.
Fear and anxiety might be an evolutionary survival mechanism, but it no longer serves us to live like that.
Fearful & anxious thoughts can wreak havoc in our lives.
I have lived with anxious thoughts most of my life and some moments they can still sweep me off my feet. I have whirling thoughts, then a deep clutch of fear in my belly and tension in my muscles when I think about the climate crisis, for example.
That’s why I practice mindfulness: to give me the space to get out of the future and into the present moment.
It doesn’t mean I don’t take action on climate change because I do. But I don’t stay stuck in swirling anxiety and fearful thoughts continually. That is not helpful. Today, I make a different choice.
The neurons that fire together, wire together.
Neuroscientists have discovered that when we experience the same negative thoughts over and over again, our reactions become chronic and part of our character.
What is helpful when we’re stuck in repetitive thoughts and fears?
It goes against our grain, because it feels hard, but we know now that what works best is leaning into our fears and becoming really familiar with them is what works. Not easy, but it works. As a small child faces her nightmare creatures under the bed, so we too can face our fearful and anxious thoughts.
Three Steps to letting go of fears & anxieties:
- Become mindful of anxious thoughts: Get specific: what type of thought? what’s it about?
- Once you notice, drop into your body: Tune into physical sensations as soon as you notice: tightness, heat, aching?
- Offer yourself comfort: Add deep breathing; sense what message would be most comforting to say to yourself such as “I’m with you, it’s okay”; maybe add a gesture of kindness like a hand on your heart
Then, ground yourself and awaken your senses to this present moment; allow sounds to flow; notice the light; notice changes: how does your body feel, your heart, your mind.
You might wonder, won’t anxious thoughts return? Of course they will. I still have anxious thoughts about the climate.
But you can trust that each time you follow these steps that you are freeing yourself.
Let me know how it works for you and if you’d like to join any of my mindful classes….
