Anxiety is something that no one wants. It creates a great deal of discomfort, characterized by fear, uncertainty, and doubt, as well as breaking out in sweats, increased heart rate and a generally bad horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach or your heart, and sometimes reverberating throughout the whole body. So, if no one wants it, then how come it happens and how can we get rid of it?
What is anxiety?
It’s just a concept in the mind that is generated by fear and worries. It usually begins in our life before we even know. It starts as a general fear in a situation that is perceived as threating and is a response to stress. For example, the first time you may have experienced anxiety may have been when your parents unexpectedly started fighting. The yelling and screaming caused you to feel afraid and threatened, and of course at the time you didn’t even know it was anxiety you were experiencing. Over time, from that moment on, any time someone raised their voice, subconsciously without knowing, it triggered that experience of your parents fighting, thereby creating a sense of fear and worry in you.
According to United States Department of Health and Human Services, anxiety comes in many forms. The above example would be considered a generalized anxiety which could be related to work, performance, and any general situation. It also comes in the form of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), panic disorders, post traumatic disorders (PTSD) and social anxiety. Let’s dive into the latter form of anxiety which is something I can personally relate to.
During primary school, I don’t recall ever having anxiety, but as I went to high school, I began to be bullied by other students, sometimes even a pack of students. As a result, I started to become afraid around groups of people. To compound this issue, when I was in a group of people, if I was mocked or criticized, it would illicit once again that same feeling of anxiety, building on top of the previous feelings and emotions without even realising it. It would get to the point whereby the time I was in my early 20’s, I was petrified at the thought of even going out. I would psyche myself up to go and have drinks with my friends, but when the moment came, I became overwhelmed with that same feeling, which crippled me to the point where my whole body was under intense tension and my mind would race and I would break down. Over time, it simply got worse. There’s a very logical reason why this happens related to how the human mind functions.
How does the mind work?
If you think about your own anxiety, is it something that has gotten worse over time, or has it gotten better? For most people, unless they have some kind of management or control system in place, it’s likely that it’s gotten worse over time. There’s a very specific reason for this.
The human mind is just like a camera, but it is a 5 senses camera. Just like a camera takes a picture and stores it in the film, the human mind is the same with our 5 senses. With our eyes, nose, mouth, ears and the entire body, we take pictures of all of our experiences, and they are stored in our mind. As we have experiences of anxiety for example, we originally take a picture of that moment and from that moment on, any similar experience we have, is overlapped by that previous experience. This is because we are “living” inside of our self-made mind world. I don’t mean this literally, but the fact that we project our past perceptions and experiences on to the present is why we are living in our self-made mind world – we are trapped in the past of our mind. This is what it means when we are living inside of our self-made mind world. And because the human mind, as a 5 senses camera, is just continuously and automatically taking “pictures” (memories, thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences, etc) then it is an uncontrollable phenomenon. If you want to understand more in depth how the mind works you can check out our other blog article here.
Again, do you want to experience anxiety? Who wants to feel that way? No one, right? Of course not! But it just happens, and we don’t actually know how to turn it off. And it’s producing 10’000s of thoughts in our minds that we are unable to control. This is anxiety! And the more we dwell on it, and it experience it, the worse it gets, and this is why it gets worse over time. Makes sense, right? All you need to do is reflect on your own anxiety to see how it’s built up over time and you’ll quickly understand the fact of the matter.
What is the solution for anxiety?
So, if anxiety is built up over time, and our self-made mind world of the past experiences is overlapped on to this present reality, then how do we actually get rid of it? The fact is, you can take medications or find some kind of coping mechanism to divert your attention away from it, but you’re only kidding yourself. The best solution is to get rid of it and return to your original mind.
Your original mind is the universe as it is, in the eternal present. The solution is remarkably simple. Simply reflect on every single situation you’ve experienced anxiety, and then let it go from your heart and your mind. As you do this repeatedly, you clear all of that trapped energy from your body, and you naturally become free of the anxiety over time and return to your original state. In the process, you become aware of the fact that all the illusions in your mind which create the anxiety, are in fact not real at all – they are just illusions. Because they are illusions, they can disappear. Because they can disappear, you can be free, forever.
The method is simple. Reflect on the anxiety. Let it go. And do it repeatedly. The difficult part here is maintaining the discipline to do it repeatedly, and to know how to actually let it go. Through meditation, you can learn to let go and empty your mind naturally, and with the assistance of an expert meditation guide, you can maintain the discipline and have the right guidance for your mind to be able to find the memories in your mind where that anxiety is stored. But you need to find the right meditation which deals with the root cause.