UNWINDING ANXIETY: FOUR resources to broaden Understanding
UNWINDING ANXIETY: four resources to broaden Understanding
Contributor: Selena Garcia
DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.
“If we feel bad, we feel like we’re failing, and it feeds more anxiety.” – Tara Brach
Sometimes we know what’s driving our anxiety, and sometimes we don’t. Often, it’s an amalgam of things setting off sirens and making us twitch. In an anxious state, our minds blow through energy just to get the small things done.
When we try to think our way out of stress, by over-analyzing every problem from every angle, we often make it worse. How can we train ourselves and broaden our understanding of anxiety? How can curiosity help us to swim with the current?
Here are four resources that each have a different tone and approach to understanding anxiety.
1) Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness (Part 2): A conversation with Tara Brach and Dr. Judson Brewer
There’s a Part 1 to this talk, which focuses more on Dr. Judson Brewer’s story. Part 2 gets to the meat. While Dr. Brewer’s excitement for his work is palpable, Tara brings a richness to the conversation that balances it out and provides grounding for the listener.
DESCRIPTION: “Anxiety is spiking around the world, and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this ‘unwinding’, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction. Together they explore the power of particular mindfulness-based strategies, including noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing curiosity and cultivating self-care. They shine a light on the genesis of worrying, share how it perpetuates anxiety, and offer ways we can become disenchanted with the habit. If you’d like to join an online community that is dedicated to reducing stress and easing anxiety with the power of renowned neuroscientist, Judson Brewer’s 3-step methodology, check out the new Mindful Friends Groups at Cloud Sangha.
(12:18) – Tara: “The two arrows: the first arrow of pain is the experience of anxiety, and the second arrow is that I’m deficient because I’m an anxious person. We attack ourselves. And most people that are anxious and depressed—and I’ve experienced this in myself—add on some sense of failing or falling short because of it, and that sense of self-judgement actually locks in the habit. Because if we feel bad, we feel like we’re failing and it feeds more anxiety, and it just fuels the […] shame-based cycle. […] In the core tool-set, there needs to be a really good tool on awakening self-compassion. […] The challenge is, because so many people feel un-worthy, learning to nurture is a life practice. Just like cultivating curiosity, or being able to remember to remember, it’s something that deepens with practice. But there are a lot of avenues, and everybody needs to experiment. […] It does feel like an essential element of un-winding any habit that causes pain.”
“Noise, smell, touch, sight, and taste all have the power to alleviate stress and bring you back to the center.” — Gretchen Rubin
2) Reduce Anxiety Instantly with These Easy Techniques from #1 NYT bestselling Author Gretchen Rubin — The Mindvalley Show with Vishen
DESCRIPTION: “Today on The Mindvalley Show, we dive into the world of your five senses with author Gretchen Rubin. Her ninth book, Life In Five Senses, gives you the tools to ease anxiety and unlock happiness by tapping into the experience of the senses. Noise, smell, touch, sight, and taste all have the power to alleviate stress and bring you back to the center. Gretchen teaches you how to enhance your environment with items that awaken your soul. By understanding your unique associations with each sense, you can clear your environment of overwhelming sensations and create a space that keeps you at ease. Getting in tune with your senses will help you with productivity, and relaxation, and can even bring you luck. Gretchen shares how she discovered how to ground herself by honing in on a single sense to cope with overwhelming situations. Join us for an inspiring conversation about the power of the senses and how you can create a more joyful life.”
“If you’ve had a factually really tough life, understandably, your brain becomes increasingly sensitized toward fearfulness, irritability, and withdrawal or attack.” – Dr. Hanson
DESCRIPTION: “We’re living in an anxious time, and part of the reason we’re anxious is because there are very real challenges we face both individually and collectively. But we’re also affected by the natural tendencies of the brain, which is easily influenced by fear and threat. On this episode of Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson focus on how we can see threats clearly and be the ‘right amount’ of concerned.”
(3:15) Dr. Hanson – “One of the things about negative emotional experiences is that they sensitize the brain over time, increasingly, and there’s not much of a similar process of sensitization toward positive experiences and toward opportunities. And so if you’ve had a factually really tough life, understandably, your brain becomes increasingly sensitized toward fearfulness, irritability, and withdrawal or attack.”
“The emotion of anxiety is not broken; it’s how we cope with anxiety that’s broken.” — Tracy Dennis-Tiwary
4) “How We Misunderstand Anxiety and Miss Out on Its Benefits” — Dacher Keltner, Kira M. Newman
“Tracy Dennis-Tiwary explains how feeling anxious can give us motivation and insights about ourselves, if we respond to it the right way.
Tracy Dennis-Tiwary: “The emotion of anxiety is not broken; it’s how we cope with anxiety that’s broken,” writes Dennis-Tiwary in her new book Future Tense: Why Anxiety Is Good For You (Even Though It Feels Bad).
“What anxiety does is it’s saying you have this uncertain future, and it’s telling you that you care about the future because you can’t ignore it and you need to investigate.
“Anxiety happens to be an activating emotion. It’s one that doesn’t just trigger fight-or-flight, it also increases oxytocin, the social bonding hormone. What you find is that especially with moderate levels of anxiety—not necessarily full-blown panic—you actually increase levels of oxytocin, which primes us to seek out social connection and support. So it’s almost like a fractal beauty that within anxiety it contains some of its own solutions.”
DISCLAIMER: The Inner Citizen (TIC) does not recommend or endorse any clinicians, counselors, psychiatrists, social workers, physicians, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on the website. Reliance on any information provided by TIC, TIC employees, others appearing on the website at the invitation of TIC, or other visitors to the website is solely at your own risk.
More FROM EMOTIONS + FEELINGS
