Always an anxious person. At times it can be crippling. I have found mindfulness and identifying the catastrophic thinking and rejecting it quite helpful in recent years.
I have conditioned my mind to a habital pattern of worry and see a therapist 3 times per week. She has spoken to me about mindfulness, but she has never explained the 3 stages to work through. This explaination made it much easier to see how to make this work. I am going to start practicing this technique. Thank you for the free video, your assistance and making this available to everyone who has access to the internet and Facebook is humble. Thank you.
This video really helped me in a moment of need. Worry has been both a friend and enemy throughout my life. Finding a way to work with it in the moment is a profoundly helpful thing. Thank you Tara Brach.
When working in a customer service job, My brain can’t process fast enough to do all the steps needed to rent ski equipment, take a deposit, enter all the info, and process the transaction and all the relevant paperwork. When there is a lineup, I panic, especially when the electronic equipment stops working and I’m supposed to do yet another multi step workaround!
I grow up with a sadly disfunctional family and the pattern of thinking negatively is always present. It demands so much effort and concentration that I hardly find there is anything wrong with me at all anymore. It is a way of thinking that I am stuck with. SOmeone said that it can be genetic and generational. It is just something that is there to stay.
Idon’t like to think and to worry it just makes me worry more, it is a vicious circle that is never ending and keep me up at night. There is no way around but just stop your thoughts and look around away from the dark to hook and get into some other thoughts that may make you dull and back to where you are. Great support, thank you
Thank you ??
I think habitual worry also applies / & denotes less of a negative connotation than addictive worry
I like the mindful approach – stopping the habitual tights of worry
I think, it is importand to know yourself wen the addiction worry is coming and to lern to say: stop! to make a breake, to breave. Most is it helpthy to go on a walk
I have been suffering with anxiety since adolescence. It has prevented me from reaching my full potential in life. I have been unable to keep jobs,have had physical ailments due to my anxiety. I do go to therapy,take meds,go to a DBT group,and try to practice mindfulness.
A great explanation of anxiety and the practical ways to help with it. I love the simplicity, clarity and practicality of this video. This is very accessible for clients to use.
Tara, Thanks for sharing. Anxiety has been a companion to myself and clients for awhile. It is nice to separate thoughts from sensation and breath in the moment. Blessings
Clients caught in a worry loop can change with a mindfulness practice if they are willing to practice.
I have found clients who are aware of their triggers catch themselves before the looping begins by asking themselves 3 questions from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior:
Where am I, reply here.
What time is it, reply now.
Who am I, reply this moment.
After repeating the questions over and over clients get distracted and forget what they began worrying about.
Thank you Tara for this very informative and important share.
After hearing this simple and powerful process, the importance of practice comes to mind. Doing this just once won’t change much, but doing it over and over again will make a difference. It seems important to remind clients (and myself) that this won’t make anxiety disappear after one attempt, but that repeating the process will have a progressive effect for moving toward relief and freedom.
For me and what I experience with clients is the way that worry is a soothing technique that moves us away from something unpleasant in the present moment. When we worry we project the fear out into the future so that we don’t have to feel it right now. Even though we likely don’t like worrying, it feels safer than having to feel fear. When I visit the fear with loving presence, I like to use the affirmation “there’s nothing wrong now.” Thank you Tara. I’m so grateful for all of your offerings and love how connected I feel to you through your teachings of Truth.
I wish you had captions as my hearing loss makes it difficult for me to understand. It’s easy to add captions. Please consider making these accessible to people like me
This has been a transformative inspiration! I will start to be aware of this subtle but powerful fear of rejection that is deeply inside my skin. I know realize how this fear has shape my relationships and my work. I am very exited to start the course with Tara!
Thank you, love Tara’s gentle and kind approach. In my own experience worry can also be about the past, something not said quite right, creating a reaction in another, leading to feelings of failure etc. She may address this in the next video but I do think that anxiety is not only fearing the future but also regretting the past and dealing with flaws in our own self image.
I just self diagnosed myself with general anxiety disorder. All my life, I was told there was something wrong with me. Different diagnoses were reached some were right, some were wrong. I have suffered from depression most of my life. I have heard the strangest things said about me. I have been prescribed inappropriate medications and dosage because of that I stay clear of psychotropic drugs. I am now 47 years old and I have just realized that my whole existence has been ruled by fear. I truly didn’t know. I thought it was normal to be afraid all the time. To have a 100 questions in my head at all times. To suffer from chronic insomnia. I have been suffering from insomnia since I was 4 years old and other ailments and I never knew that fear was ruling my life. It came as a shock. I realized the amount of energy it took to maintain a calm composure. Over the years I have used coping mechanisms that have helped me to survive but they leave me exhausted and empty.
My son has challenged our skill as parents with addictions, anxiety, and depression. We are not sure what came first! We have had many scary episodes with him. This creates tremendous anxiety for me and my husband. Your video was soothing and gives some tools to bring ourselves back into the moment. The main benefit of this is that we can start to think clearly. It is true that often things are not as bad as we fear they will be.
Thank you, that is such useful advice for self reflection and to pass on to clients. Someone asked me the other day what advice I would give to my younger self in 2 words, I would say – pause, breathe. Learning to be mindful of worry has greatly improved my life.
Thank you – sometimes what seems like the most insurmountable problem can have such simple solutions. I am so tired of my anxiety controlling so much of my life and have been attempting to learn to be more mindful and to take back some of that control!
Yes. Some of my clients do not know what it feels like to not worry and that is their fear of what life would be like if they did not worry!
In session, moments of deep breathing and becoming mindful of their physical pain helps them to feel something very different and hopefully, they will continue to experience a sense of not worrying in moments throughout their day, after leaving my office. Thank you for these steps.
I am 61. I experienced a debilitating major depression right around my 15th birthday. I have lived with depression since; there has seldom been a time when I was not depressed on some level. From 2004 until 2010, I was hospitalized for severe depression and acute thoughts of self-harm more than 10 times. The hospitalizations would last anywhere from one week to almost a month (when receiving ECT – I had 3 different courses of ECT). I was unable to work during this period of time. I had experimental Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery for depression in December 2009. It took another 5 years and 4 additional surgeries before I began to experience less emotional pain and suffering than at any time in the previous 30 years of my life. I have been able to work full-time since; I am a licensed clinical social work (psychotherapist). I was not someone that was addicted to worrying prior to that first depression over 45 years ago. Since though, anxiety has been a constant companion – anxiety, in this case, as a consequence of depression and the horrible internal and external world-views that permeate one’s whole being when chronically depressed. I think now the issue is not specifically dealing with the depression, so to speak, but attempting to deal with the hyper-vigilance, cognitive distortions and meaninglessness that are still present. I think some of the anxiety and fear that currently occur are due to, both consciously and otherwise, the not knowing if and when depression will once again descend and envelope me. Living in a world where it appears that most people are enslaved to the notion, and practice, of “being busy equals being productive”, which really means a lack of self-reflection and critical thinking, only reinforces the view that living a meaningful life, or, having some meaning in one’s life, may only be a chimera. Just some thoughts.
An insightful video. It is always nice to hear some of the information I am using with clients and students from someone else. I loved the comment from Mark Twain. “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened”. It holds merit in my life as well. Thank you!
Very worthwhile videos. Thank you for posting them. They have helped confirm some of the things I am already doing with clients are valid and I have gathered some more ponts to help strengthen my skills to continue to help my clients build their emotional toolbox.
I live with a fairly regular/constant questioning around aspects of my life – is my relationship good enough? Am I doing enough? Am I working hard enough or living up to my values enough? But there’s also this current of unease a lot of the time which manifests I think in a questioning of – ‘what am I worrying about? What’s the problem here?’ and I start trying to find and fix something. The trouble is, my brain wants to know for sure that there’s nothing to worry about before it can stop looking. It’s like, sometimes I can’t trust my mindfulness practise to help me stay safe from the things I haven’t found out are worthy of worry or not! My brain maybe is stuck in a trap of needing to look for a worry…But it needs to make sure!
I think I am a freeze type, which means that I am not aware of the tension in my body or the thoughts, but it still limits me and has me avoid things that are scary.
I wish for emotional balance, being able to concentrate and read, the end of decades-long chronic anxiety and pounding heart in spite of applying TTC methods and others, and accomplishing a life-purpose for the last part of my life.
When dealing with a situation that I can’t control, such as an adult child in active addiction, I think I worry because then I at least feel like I’m doing something. The feeling of helplessness is awful but at least I can worry and suffer a little along with her. And I know that doesn’t help anything and the root is my own guilt but that is a giant mountain to climb. I appreciate your videos and I am practicing your strategies. It helps for sure but I wonder if I will ever settle into a place of peace naturally and easily.
I’m so glad that you and other professionals are addressing mental health. I was afraid that People were unable to cope with the stress in the world. Like anger and fear were making people sick. How have I handled the feelings that no one seemed to care about? After years of running away from it I wished for health. It was actually a New Years resolution. That was 1982. Ever since then I’ve had things/people/modalities cross my path and I’ve accepted all as gifts from Heaven. Mental habits have been positively affected by acquiring a good posture, a lifted heart, steady practice at my own pace. My worry, now, is being caught by old feelings of helplessness around people who don’t like me, never did.
When working with clients and listening to them talking about how they are anxious and fearfull then explaining to them that they are really in a vicious circle that how they are feeling is having an effect on their thoughts and behaviour and also their physical health too and then explaining that we all feel this but we all deal with it differently then explaining that mindfulness can help this , I like the way the look as if to say yeah right whatever and you practice a little then ask them to try it as homework and they come back even just a little more positive is a big achievement.
I see a new future for myself! Thank you Tara ?
Always an anxious person. At times it can be crippling. I have found mindfulness and identifying the catastrophic thinking and rejecting it quite helpful in recent years.
I have conditioned my mind to a habital pattern of worry and see a therapist 3 times per week. She has spoken to me about mindfulness, but she has never explained the 3 stages to work through. This explaination made it much easier to see how to make this work. I am going to start practicing this technique. Thank you for the free video, your assistance and making this available to everyone who has access to the internet and Facebook is humble. Thank you.
Wonderful process. Thank you.
This video really helped me in a moment of need. Worry has been both a friend and enemy throughout my life. Finding a way to work with it in the moment is a profoundly helpful thing. Thank you Tara Brach.
When working in a customer service job, My brain can’t process fast enough to do all the steps needed to rent ski equipment, take a deposit, enter all the info, and process the transaction and all the relevant paperwork. When there is a lineup, I panic, especially when the electronic equipment stops working and I’m supposed to do yet another multi step workaround!
Why can’t I save these for my own future reference?
I grow up with a sadly disfunctional family and the pattern of thinking negatively is always present. It demands so much effort and concentration that I hardly find there is anything wrong with me at all anymore. It is a way of thinking that I am stuck with. SOmeone said that it can be genetic and generational. It is just something that is there to stay.
All addictions are shame-based and practicing Self-Love and Self-Compassion help to break a loop of unloving and anxious thoughts.
Idon’t like to think and to worry it just makes me worry more, it is a vicious circle that is never ending and keep me up at night. There is no way around but just stop your thoughts and look around away from the dark to hook and get into some other thoughts that may make you dull and back to where you are. Great support, thank you
That was meant to be a question following session 3.
If in answering “who would I be..” the result is pain and regret, what’s the next step you take that you find helpful with clients?
Very good explanation. Thankyou.
Thank you ??
I think habitual worry also applies / & denotes less of a negative connotation than addictive worry
I like the mindful approach – stopping the habitual tights of worry
I think, it is importand to know yourself wen the addiction worry is coming and to lern to say: stop! to make a breake, to breave. Most is it helpthy to go on a walk
I have been suffering with anxiety since adolescence. It has prevented me from reaching my full potential in life. I have been unable to keep jobs,have had physical ailments due to my anxiety. I do go to therapy,take meds,go to a DBT group,and try to practice mindfulness.
It was good suggestion.
Excellent Tips will definitely use them daily.
Really useful tips simple grounding and soothing. Thank you !
A great explanation of anxiety and the practical ways to help with it. I love the simplicity, clarity and practicality of this video. This is very accessible for clients to use.
Tara, Thanks for sharing. Anxiety has been a companion to myself and clients for awhile. It is nice to separate thoughts from sensation and breath in the moment. Blessings
Clients caught in a worry loop can change with a mindfulness practice if they are willing to practice.
I have found clients who are aware of their triggers catch themselves before the looping begins by asking themselves 3 questions from The Way of the Peaceful Warrior:
Where am I, reply here.
What time is it, reply now.
Who am I, reply this moment.
After repeating the questions over and over clients get distracted and forget what they began worrying about.
Thank you Tara for this very informative and important share.
Wonderful points – I love “Offer a gesture of kindness to the vulnerability within you”
After hearing this simple and powerful process, the importance of practice comes to mind. Doing this just once won’t change much, but doing it over and over again will make a difference. It seems important to remind clients (and myself) that this won’t make anxiety disappear after one attempt, but that repeating the process will have a progressive effect for moving toward relief and freedom.
For me and what I experience with clients is the way that worry is a soothing technique that moves us away from something unpleasant in the present moment. When we worry we project the fear out into the future so that we don’t have to feel it right now. Even though we likely don’t like worrying, it feels safer than having to feel fear. When I visit the fear with loving presence, I like to use the affirmation “there’s nothing wrong now.” Thank you Tara. I’m so grateful for all of your offerings and love how connected I feel to you through your teachings of Truth.
I wish you had captions as my hearing loss makes it difficult for me to understand. It’s easy to add captions. Please consider making these accessible to people like me
This has been a transformative inspiration! I will start to be aware of this subtle but powerful fear of rejection that is deeply inside my skin. I know realize how this fear has shape my relationships and my work. I am very exited to start the course with Tara!
Thank you, love Tara’s gentle and kind approach. In my own experience worry can also be about the past, something not said quite right, creating a reaction in another, leading to feelings of failure etc. She may address this in the next video but I do think that anxiety is not only fearing the future but also regretting the past and dealing with flaws in our own self image.
Thanks for sharing the three steps it’s been very helpful for me to get out of the loop
This is so needed in these times. Thank you. I appreciate the simple step by step approach.
I just self diagnosed myself with general anxiety disorder. All my life, I was told there was something wrong with me. Different diagnoses were reached some were right, some were wrong. I have suffered from depression most of my life. I have heard the strangest things said about me. I have been prescribed inappropriate medications and dosage because of that I stay clear of psychotropic drugs. I am now 47 years old and I have just realized that my whole existence has been ruled by fear. I truly didn’t know. I thought it was normal to be afraid all the time. To have a 100 questions in my head at all times. To suffer from chronic insomnia. I have been suffering from insomnia since I was 4 years old and other ailments and I never knew that fear was ruling my life. It came as a shock. I realized the amount of energy it took to maintain a calm composure. Over the years I have used coping mechanisms that have helped me to survive but they leave me exhausted and empty.
My son has challenged our skill as parents with addictions, anxiety, and depression. We are not sure what came first! We have had many scary episodes with him. This creates tremendous anxiety for me and my husband. Your video was soothing and gives some tools to bring ourselves back into the moment. The main benefit of this is that we can start to think clearly. It is true that often things are not as bad as we fear they will be.
Thank you, that is such useful advice for self reflection and to pass on to clients. Someone asked me the other day what advice I would give to my younger self in 2 words, I would say – pause, breathe. Learning to be mindful of worry has greatly improved my life.
24/7 problem for me. No refuge , no safe place because wherever I am, my anxiety comes along.
Thank you – sometimes what seems like the most insurmountable problem can have such simple solutions. I am so tired of my anxiety controlling so much of my life and have been attempting to learn to be more mindful and to take back some of that control!
Hi, I am not sure what to do with my anxiety it seems to fill up my life and stops me from any sanctuary from negativity
Yes. Some of my clients do not know what it feels like to not worry and that is their fear of what life would be like if they did not worry!
In session, moments of deep breathing and becoming mindful of their physical pain helps them to feel something very different and hopefully, they will continue to experience a sense of not worrying in moments throughout their day, after leaving my office. Thank you for these steps.
I am 61. I experienced a debilitating major depression right around my 15th birthday. I have lived with depression since; there has seldom been a time when I was not depressed on some level. From 2004 until 2010, I was hospitalized for severe depression and acute thoughts of self-harm more than 10 times. The hospitalizations would last anywhere from one week to almost a month (when receiving ECT – I had 3 different courses of ECT). I was unable to work during this period of time. I had experimental Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery for depression in December 2009. It took another 5 years and 4 additional surgeries before I began to experience less emotional pain and suffering than at any time in the previous 30 years of my life. I have been able to work full-time since; I am a licensed clinical social work (psychotherapist). I was not someone that was addicted to worrying prior to that first depression over 45 years ago. Since though, anxiety has been a constant companion – anxiety, in this case, as a consequence of depression and the horrible internal and external world-views that permeate one’s whole being when chronically depressed. I think now the issue is not specifically dealing with the depression, so to speak, but attempting to deal with the hyper-vigilance, cognitive distortions and meaninglessness that are still present. I think some of the anxiety and fear that currently occur are due to, both consciously and otherwise, the not knowing if and when depression will once again descend and envelope me. Living in a world where it appears that most people are enslaved to the notion, and practice, of “being busy equals being productive”, which really means a lack of self-reflection and critical thinking, only reinforces the view that living a meaningful life, or, having some meaning in one’s life, may only be a chimera. Just some thoughts.
Thank you so much for this. We have been diagnosed with severe anxiety and even my children have this
An insightful video. It is always nice to hear some of the information I am using with clients and students from someone else. I loved the comment from Mark Twain. “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened”. It holds merit in my life as well. Thank you!
Very worthwhile videos. Thank you for posting them. They have helped confirm some of the things I am already doing with clients are valid and I have gathered some more ponts to help strengthen my skills to continue to help my clients build their emotional toolbox.
I live with a fairly regular/constant questioning around aspects of my life – is my relationship good enough? Am I doing enough? Am I working hard enough or living up to my values enough? But there’s also this current of unease a lot of the time which manifests I think in a questioning of – ‘what am I worrying about? What’s the problem here?’ and I start trying to find and fix something. The trouble is, my brain wants to know for sure that there’s nothing to worry about before it can stop looking. It’s like, sometimes I can’t trust my mindfulness practise to help me stay safe from the things I haven’t found out are worthy of worry or not! My brain maybe is stuck in a trap of needing to look for a worry…But it needs to make sure!
I think I am a freeze type, which means that I am not aware of the tension in my body or the thoughts, but it still limits me and has me avoid things that are scary.
I have thought about worry as pay on a debt I don’t owe yet … it helps and your three steps codifies what I do to ease the worry addition. Thanks!
Thank you for sharing such a simple skill to release anxiety.
I wish for emotional balance, being able to concentrate and read, the end of decades-long chronic anxiety and pounding heart in spite of applying TTC methods and others, and accomplishing a life-purpose for the last part of my life.
When dealing with a situation that I can’t control, such as an adult child in active addiction, I think I worry because then I at least feel like I’m doing something. The feeling of helplessness is awful but at least I can worry and suffer a little along with her. And I know that doesn’t help anything and the root is my own guilt but that is a giant mountain to climb. I appreciate your videos and I am practicing your strategies. It helps for sure but I wonder if I will ever settle into a place of peace naturally and easily.
Yes some of them go over negative thoughts again and again.
.
I’m so glad that you and other professionals are addressing mental health. I was afraid that People were unable to cope with the stress in the world. Like anger and fear were making people sick. How have I handled the feelings that no one seemed to care about? After years of running away from it I wished for health. It was actually a New Years resolution. That was 1982. Ever since then I’ve had things/people/modalities cross my path and I’ve accepted all as gifts from Heaven. Mental habits have been positively affected by acquiring a good posture, a lifted heart, steady practice at my own pace. My worry, now, is being caught by old feelings of helplessness around people who don’t like me, never did.
When working with clients and listening to them talking about how they are anxious and fearfull then explaining to them that they are really in a vicious circle that how they are feeling is having an effect on their thoughts and behaviour and also their physical health too and then explaining that we all feel this but we all deal with it differently then explaining that mindfulness can help this , I like the way the look as if to say yeah right whatever and you practice a little then ask them to try it as homework and they come back even just a little more positive is a big achievement.