One of the most effective ways to lower your anxiety is to increase your acceptance of it.
Anxiety works like this. The more resistance you create towards it, the more anxious you feel. The friction of fighting against your anxious feelings fuels it on even further.
Each time you think ‘I cant handle this anxiety! I can’t handle these bodily sensations’ the more fuel you toss on the fire.
There is a way to reverse this and end the anxiety. You can do it by simply
increasing your level of acceptance towards the anxiety you feel.
Imagine for a moment if you could sit in absolute and complete acceptance of all the anxious sensations you feel? First of all, the type of thoughts you think would immediately change. You would no longer be worried about your health or if you were losing your sanity. Your attention would switch over from worry to the present moment.
Within a few minutes, the bodily sensations that triggered the anxious thoughts would be much less noticeable. They may still be present but at such a low level that they would hardly register on your awareness. Over the course of a few days, as your body adjusts to this worry free state, your general anxiety level would drop right down and you would feel a deeper sense of peace and calm.
That’s the goal I am sure you want to achieve. Of course the above example is the ideal state. No one is expecting you to automatically switch into such a high level of acceptance overnight. What you want to aim for, is to achieve this gradually over a period of a few weeks starting right now today. Here is how to start.
Decide to raise your level of acceptance for a short period each day. Decide that for just 10 minutes, you are not going to get upset by any of the sensations or thoughts you are having. You are going to accept them all to the very best of your ability. It’s only for 10 minutes and after the 10 minutes are up you can go back to resisting and worrying.
You think to yourself ‘OK I feel very on edge and uncomfortable right now but instead of getting upset about this like I always do, I am going to accept the experience fully for the next 10 minutes.
Remind yourself it is only for 10 minutes and that you have the rest of the day to worry and resist all you like.
By adopting this approach even just once a day, you will increase your acceptance of how you feel and create a very strong momentum for full recovery.
Remember you are not doing this with the sole intention of eliminating anxiety. If you think in those terms you will only be half accepting and half wondering why it is not working fast enough.
Instead approach it with the sole intention of practicing acceptance. Acceptance brings a state of calm as it flows and washes away feelings of anxiety. You reach your goal of feeling like your old self again through the act of acceptance.