My Laser Targeted Anti-Anxiety Tool

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If there are certain types of situations that provoke unusually high levels of anxiety for you, or if there are past events in your life that plague you will guilt, anger, or other inner turmoil, here is a useful variation of the "listening" technique to help reduce the emotional impact of those events.

One of the most powerful therapeutic tools of a mental health professional is the skill of active listening. An effective psychologist will employ active listening to guide a patient into emotional self-awareness. By prompting the person to describe a memory or how they are feeling, and asking for clarifications, the patient is led into re-experiencing uncomfortable emotional energies. This emotional re-immersion in a safe environment can drastically decrease the intensity of uncomfortable emotions.

While such hand-holding can be beneficial, especially for deeply traumatic or repressed memories, the counselor is still relying almost completely on the patient's ability to heal their own emotional state. The healing is created by the experience of emotional energies that the doctor's active listening necessitates. Self Therapy empowers you with the same tool, without making you dependent on any other person for your inner harmony. There may be certain issues that you find too difficult to reflect on alone, and you should, by all means, seek a support group or mental health professional if you think that would be helpful. However, for many emotional events, especially those revolving around anxiety, you can also be a good listener to yourself, and provide to yourself the same supportive and accepting environment that promotes inner healing.

I would now like to lead you through an exercise that demonstrates how to do this.

Before getting started, please think of a moderately uncomfortable experience that you've had recently, or maybe just some general situation that causes you to feel anxious. We'll use that experience for demonstration.

For this exercise, you should be in a comfortable seated position, in an area free of distractions. You should not be driving or operating machinery of any kind.

STEP 1

Close your eyes now and relax. Direct your awareness inward now, and just feel the sensations of your body. Take a moments to relax into the feelings of your being, and let any thoughts just float away.

Imagine yourself now, in your mind's eye, in the situation that makes you anxious, fearful, or otherwise uncomfortable. Whether this is a past event that causes lingering discomfort, or an upcoming one that you're nervous about, visualize yourself in the situation as if it is currently happening, right now.

You will quickly notice an emotional reaction arise somewhere in your body. Immediately transfer your awareness to that energy. Just LET IT come. Let it be there without trying to stop it. Do not react to the energy, do not try to evaluate or analyze it, and above all DO NOT try to suppress it. Just be with the energy with all your observing awareness. Now we'll perform the steps of Self Therapy listening just like we did in the first session, instead applying them to this internally generated feeling:

STEP 2

First, greet the energy by saying something like "hello energy".

Now, keep your accepting awareness on the energy you're spending time with, listening to it -- without analysis, without evaluation, and without avoidance of the energy. Do this for a few moments now.

If you start to lose focus, say something to the energy like "I am with you. I want to know you." Again, if you lose track of the energy, re-visualize the situation and then transfer awareness back to the feeling.

Continue listening for a couple minutes.

STEP 3

Now, start describing the energy's physical characteristics... Keep your inward awareness on the sensation and reflect your observations TO it, either out loud or in your mind... Energy, you are... Sensation, you are... Feeling, you are... Do this now.

When distracting thoughts arise, just let them go and re-greet the energy... Tell the energy there is nothing more important to you right now than getting to know and be comfortable with it. Continue listening and reflecting for a couple more minutes.

As with the standard form of Self Therapy, most of your time should be spent on this step. If you would like to continue observing and reflecting to your current energy, press the pause button on your audio player until you're ready to continue.

STEP 4

Now, let the energy know that you accept and appreciate it's presence by repeating the following phrases to your energy. As you do so, know that as you continue increasing ability to tolerate feelings like this one, you will also be able to handle the situations where these energies arises.. So once again, direct your awareness to the energy, and repeat:

• Energy, you are okay to be where you are
• Energy, I accept and appreciate your presence within me
• Emotion, I do not seek to avoid or suppress you
• Energy, I let you be as you are
• Energy, thank you for making me human
• Energy, I can handle you.. I can be with our without you

As stated before, you can move between these steps as you see fit. Stay with the energy until you feel that you are able to tolerate and even be comfortable with its presence. Not only does this have the therapeutic effect of reducing anxiety, but such tolerance also makes you less likely to avoid situations that you associate with adverse feelings. Once again, the most important component of achieving this objective is the practice of non-evaluational listening and focused observation of your energy.

If you lose track of the feeling you started with, you may want to repeat the entire process. Start over by visualizing the situation so that the energy is refocused within you. You will probably notice that each time you repeat the process, the original energy's tendency to emotionally overwhelm you becomes weaker and weaker. Eventually, when practicing this method regularly, you may have a hard time even finding the adverse energies that once affected you. Ultimately, you will feel in control of yourself even if the energies do resurface, because you have consciously affirmed your ability to handle their presence.

Many other anti-anxiety exercises involve relaxation, perhaps using muscle contraction or peaceful visualizations. However, relaxation is NOT the goal of this exercise that we're doing here. To the contrary, we're actually visualizing a feared situation for purposes of re-creating and fully experiencing the discomfort without emotional avoidance. Ironically, relaxation is usually the eventual result.

If you would like to continue with this exercise, press the pause button on your recorder now.

Otherwise, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and open your eyes. Stretch your arms and legs, and take a few moments to readjust to your environment.

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