Compassionate Mindfulness for Anxiety
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.”
- Lao-tzu (600 BC)
You might wish that your anxiety would just give it a rest and go away.
When anxiety shows up it can often feel like a tensing, a hardening or a sense of closing down. There are the physical symptoms: sweating, rapid heartbeat, feeling queasy or shaky, even lightheadedness. Then there are the thoughts: the worst case scenarios, the fears fears that lead from one to the next. The entire selves become overwhelmed and the anxiety starts to feel like a runaway train, completely out of control. You’re being taken for a ride. I call it an “anxiety spiral”. The thoughts and sensations truly feel factual and you become stuck on the problems that triggered the anxiety. The anxious parts of yourself scrambles to try to protect you, somehow, by thinking it through over and over even though it may make you physically sick to your stomach. You may even feel the anxiety double down when you realize what’s happening. You think, “What’s wrong with me? I know this isn’t helping”! I know it because it happens to me too! It’s truly difficult to pull yourself away from the thoughts and feelings, they often reinforce and perpetuate each other until we either become exhausted, distracted or numb.
The truth is that it’s completely, 100% human to have difficulty pulling away from anxiety spirals. It’s backed up by basic evolutionary psychology. Anxiety is part of the universal human experience. Anxiety is there to keep you safe. In ancient times, we needed anxiety to help us stay vigilant in dangerous situations, to learn from our experiences and to plan better for the next time. You might even say that without anxiety, humans would not have survived as a species. Our highly intelligent brains give us the ability to plan and avoid danger and get creative about how we influence our environment. You wouldn’t want to banish anxiety that kept you safe, and your brain knows not to anyway. This is why, even though we may try, it is so difficult to override anxiety. You might have the most rational retort or amazing coping skill, and sometimes it still doesn’t work. On auto-pilot, the brain will always prioritize safety.
This safety first strategy isn’t inherently bad or problematic.
The real problem comes in that our minds cannot necessarily distinguish between what is a safety threat and what is not. Our minds are still prioritizing safety all these millennia later. And in some sense, even if something is not a “true” physical safety threat, they may be threats in other senses. The threat of being alone, disliked, rejected are all real worries when we have evolved to be highly interdependent and social creatures. As the father of compassion focused therapy, Paul Gilbert, says, “An alone monkey is a dead monkey”. We may have moved on (for the most part) from being chased by predators and not knowing where our next meal is coming from. But we are living in an age of heightened stress, loneliness and fear. Our brains could not have possibly evolved to cope with the added stress of modern life at the same pace at which the world became globalized, the internet age took off, and as climate and social catastrophes became part of everyday existence. Supportive community life has become more rare and we are more isolated generally. Suffice to say, the opportunites to be hooked by anxiety are more plentiful than ever before.
The ancient part of the brain that lies far beyond our conscious control isn’t going to let go of an anxious spiral just because you say so. It’s a paradox, illustrated in the opening quote, that the more we struggle against and try to banish anxiety, the more it wants to cling on. The protective part of our brain doesn’t want to let it happen. So what are we to do?
Now before I go on, I realize that after reading that you might be thinking, “What the hell. Is it really all that hopeless?”
I’d like to clarify that I say all this to validate and normalize the experience of anxiety. It is NOT hopeless. Too often people are made to feel crazy for having anxiety. I think this is straight up not helpful, and it denies the reality of how the mind truly functions. Anxiety is hard, anxiety is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to rule your life. There are ways of coping with anxiety that are soft, yielding and fluid. If you are tired of anxiety taking over and then shaming yourself or trying to banish the anxiety to little to no effect, I know how frustrating it is and I know of other ways to work with anxiety.
Cue, compassionate mindfulness.
I’ll break down mindfulness and then move into how compassion enhances mindfulness for anxiety. Mindfulness as a part of treatment for anxiety makes a lot of sense. Mindfulness involves practicing awareness and acceptance of the present moment as it truly is. And by “truly is” I mean with an appreciation of how the human mind really operates. Mindfulness is not some unrealistic ‘just stop it” approach. It doesn’t mean trying to make your mind go blank either, which is a misconception about meditation that sometimes mindfulness gets roped into as well. Mindfulness of anxiety involves developing an awareness of the sensations and thoughts you are having as they are happening. I like to think of cultivating mindfulness as developing the ability to slow down and pause. This is crucial for intervening with anxiety because we need to be aware and slow down enough to even have any hope of guiding ourselves into a calm state of mind.
Another misnomer about mindfulness comes up around the idea of acceptance. By acceptance mindfulness practitioners do not mean that you should like what’s happening, or have to succumb to anxiety or just “take it”. It means acknowledging anxiety for what it is. It’s a painful experience, a form of suffering. You would not have chosen this experience for yourself nor is it your fault. It’s not a personal failing and it’s not irrational. Mindful acceptance of anxiety means we see what anxiety is clearly, without layering on shame, and without making it more than it is either. Anxious sensations and thoughts are still at their core just sensations and thoughts. They feel intense, which explains why we buy into them as fact in the moment, but they are temporary, fleeting and only hold as much power as we give them. For example, when I think, “I’m a terrible friend” when I’m running late, I can recognize that this is just a knee-jerk response, and not reflective of some objective truth.
If mindfulness is slowing down and noticing, compassion is taking that present-moment awareness and meeting it with love and kindness. Compassionate mindfulness is an active, caring, conscious stance toward your mind, body and experiences. You are awake to your experience of life in the present moment. You notice your thoughts, sensations, emotions and environment. You don’t have to like or agree with them, but it does involve noticing what is truly happening in the moment without judging. From this place of awareness, you can respond in ways that acknowledge the anxiety, make is easier to bare, and even alleviate it.
Imagine a friend you love describing everything you experience during an anxiety spiral. What would your wise compassionate self say to them? What would you do? I know you wouldn’t hurl insults or tell them they are silly for feeling that way. Since you also have an inborn caring system, you’d likely empathize with your friend. Tell them how much they care and see that you are suffering right now. You might even place your arm around them and remind them that it’s going to be okay. That the feelings and sensations will pass. You’d ask how you can help them talk good care of themselves in that moment. The goal of compassionate mindfulness is to meet yourself and your anxiety with kindness, softness and gentleness, like you would do for a good friend. With practice, you can weaken the tug of the self-critical mind that keeps you feeling stuck and anxious, tense and shift into a being a kind observer and a resource to yourself during hard times. It is in this way of relating to our anxiety with open awareness and compassion that we can move with anxiety instead of against it, let go of the unnecessary suffering and find greater peace with who we are, anxiety and all.
Using compassionate mindfulness during a moment of anxiety:
Start by recognizing that this is a moment of anxiety, and a moment of suffering.
Softening the urge to run from of avoid your anxiety. You can withstand these sensations.
As you soften, acknowledge what is happening for you in this moment.
Use soothing touch, like a self-hug or a hand on your heart.
With this awareness, begin bringing a sense of kindness care to your anxious self, as if you were a good friend.
Validate normalize and zoom out on the anxiety if possible. Is there a trigger or context for this feeling? Remind yourself that given your unique life experiences, it makes sense that you feel this way.
Remind yourself that this is temporary and it will pass.
Ask yourself, what do I need right now? And follow through. It could be validation, tenderness, acceptance, support, distraction, nourishment, or a break (to name a few!).
