Mindfulness: An Antidote to Anxiety

Do you find it difficult to enjoy today because your mind is anxious and overwhelmed about the past and future?

Mindfulness is the practice of increasing focus on the present moment instead of on the past and future. Mindfulness creates space for you to live and enjoy life with less background noise. It can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression while increasing attention, calm, and presence in your relationships. 

However, our brains naturally gravitate toward past or future, distracting us from our present experience. Past thoughts are commonly about regret leaving us feeling sad. Future thoughts are commonly about our desire to control future events leading to anxiety. In reality, we can only be in the present moment.

Most often, the present moment is not the source of stress. Rather, it’s our past or future oriented, obsessive thoughts creating anxiety. Stress results from the long to-do list for later today or the difficult conversation we are replaying from yesterday. 

The hopeful news is current neuroscience says our brains are moldable and created for change. With intentional, repetitive mindfulness practice, our brains can and will embrace more present focus. Explore these mindfulness characteristics and practices to feel calmer and more present in life.

8 Characteristics of Mindfulness:

• Notice your surroundings as you observe them through your 5 senses. "I see a red car, I hear my favorite song, I feel cool air blowing on me, I feel the smooth steering wheel, I smell my peppermint car freshener."

• Let go of trying to control what is outside your control. Accept what is happening and think about how you can bring the best version of yourself into that situation.

• Let go of judging people and circumstances as good/bad. Instead notice and accept behavior and circumstances as they are. Recognize your response does not need to be determined by others behaving well or badly.

• Notice and name feelings without allowing your feelings to determine your response. "I'm noticing that sadness is surrounding me right now and I can feel it in my throat and in my eyes." A feeling can just be a feeling when you understand and name it.

• Notice thoughts and feelings come and go like waves and usually move on if we do not grasp or avoid them.

• Participate fully in exactly what you are doing right now. Let go of ruminating and begin describing your present experience to yourself through your senses. Allow yourself to become immersed fully in the present experience.

• Tend to each thing in its own time. If while you are focusing on the present moment, you are noticing a repeated invasive thought about a future task, set aside a specific time later to give the future task your full attention. 

• Do one thing at a time. There is something relaxing about refusing to multitask.

Now that you understand some basic ideas of mindfulness, use the following steps to stay in the present when past and future thoughts try to dominate your mind.

5 Steps for Practicing Mindfulness:

1.     DESCRIBE your moment by moment actions to yourself. "I am getting out of bed, the floor is cold, I'm turning on the shower..."

1. NOTICE past/future oriented thoughts. "I am noticing that I'm thinking about my work meeting tomorrow."

2. GENTLY DISMISS past/future oriented thoughts. "Now is not the time to think about my work meeting. I will spend 30 minutes tonight preparing for my meeting. Right now, I am focusing on…"

3. RETURN to describing your moment by moment experience using your senses. "I see a blue umbrella, I smell fresh rain, I feel moisture on my skin."

4. REPEAT the process over and over knowing you are retraining your brain. At some point in the near future, you won't have to work so hard at it!

It is helpful to begin steps of mindfulness during short, specific life activities like teeth brushing, eating breakfast, and driving. After you are practiced, begin putting activities together to build hours of mindfulness. Keep in mind it takes about 21 days of repetitive practice to create a new brain habit, then additional weeks of consistency to sustain the habit. 

I encourage you to commit 21 days to developing this practice and track your progress. Visit the Journeybravely.com Resources page for your free 21 Day Mindfulness Challenge PDF plus a free PDF Mindfulness Steps & Characteristics sheet. I wish you success in showing up fully in your present life!

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

De-Stressing the Holidays

There I sat crying in a butter-soaked shirt, holding a tired, screaming baby wondering why I ever agreed to 3 Christmases in one day. It was our baby son’s first Christmas, what was supposed to be a picturesque, magical day to remember. We decorated, put our son in his Christmas sweater, baked requested casseroles, packed thoughtful gifts, dressed in new clothes, and journeyed to 3 family gatherings that ended in tears and overwhelm. Is this really what Christmas is supposed to be? Stressful, exhausting, overwhelming, and disappointing? Is there another way?

Historically, Christmas and the preceding weeks were about expectations surrounding the birth of Jesus. Currently, you might find yourself juggling spiritual and cultural expectations around Christmas and other Winter holidays including stylish decorations, hosting gatherings, spiritual reflections, church activities, perfect gift-giving, family traditions, meaningful time with extended family, etc. With good intentions, you may place impossible expectations on a few weeks of the year to bring fulfillment and happy memories. Afterward, you can be left with the disappointing reality of hurt feelings, burnt ham, criticism from family, underwhelming responses to gifts, and kids preferring to text friends instead of playing family board games.

So, what can be done?

Here are 5 Ways to De-Stress Your Holidays:

1. Sort your expectations into two categories: healthy and unhealthy. Healthy expectations are reasonable, gracious, encourage growth, and don’t result in shame. Unhealthy expectations are idealistic, unreasonable, perfectionistic, involve trying to control others, and result in feeling ashamed. Reducing stress begins with getting curious about what you are expecting of yourself and others. Are you trying to present a perfect image of yourself? Are you trying to get someone else to be who you want them to be? Are you trying to get an emotional need met from someone who is not likely to meet that need?

2. Consider what you fear will happen if you let your unhealthy expectations go. Most often you hold unhealthy expectations because you fear loss of control, when in reality, you didn’t really have control in the first place. Admitting that you only have control of yourself can set you free and empower you to manage yourself in healthier ways.

3. Identify unhealthy expectations that others may have invited you to fulfill. Maybe you’re still seeking approval from your parents, or hustling to live up to social expectations of friends, or exhausting yourself trying to keep your kids happy. If you find yourself resenting someone, it’s often a sign that unrealistic expectations are present in the relationship.

4. Set boundaries with yourself and others. Adjust unhealthy personal expectations and allow time to realize your worst fears will not be realized as a result. Try giving yourself permission to say no to unhealthy requests of others even if someone will be disappointed. They will survive the disappointment and so will you. Boundaries are usually uncomfortable initially and then all involved get used to them over time. In the long-term, such boundaries create oxygen for life.

5. Decide how you will fill the space that results from letting go of unhealthy expectations. When you think about what feels healthy and meaningful around the holidays, do that and enjoy it deeply.

For us, letting go of unhealthy expectations has set us free from exhausting, expensive, perfection-oriented busyness and created space for intentional, reflective, restful, family time on Christmas Day. The difference is astounding. What will you do to create and enjoy healthier space this holiday season?

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.

Mindfulness 101

Are you finding yourself overwhelmed, irritable, and having difficulty managing life's curve balls? Maybe your brain has many tasks, fears, or disappointments running in the background preventing you from focusing on what you are doing right now. Maybe you've reflected after a day spent doing things that were supposed to be fun with your family and realized you weren't fully there because your mind was somewhere else.

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing as fully as possible on the present moment. Your brain naturally gravitates toward things from the past or things in the future, distracting you from paying attention to what's happening now. Past rumination is most commonly about past hurts or nostalgic wishes which both leave you feeling sad. Future rumination is most commonly anxiety driven, entertaining ways to control circumstances yet to come leaving you feeling powerless. The reality is that you can truly only be in the present moment and it is the moment that is most commonly neglected.

Think about it. Is it usually the present moment that is stressing you out or the thoughts running in the background while you're trying to do the present moment? In the morning, making toast and eggs isn't actually stressful if you're noticing the texture of the bread, the scent of the eggs, the color of the yolk, the sound of the toaster. The stress comes from the long to-do list you're running through your head or the conversation you're replaying from yesterday when you wished you'd thought of the excellent comeback you now have in mind.

Most of the time, the present moment is not actually that stressful when we can retrain our brains not to wander to the past and future. Easier said than done, right? I'm not going to lie. This takes repetitive mental exercise, however, your brain is wired to be remolded when you practice new habits. You are made for change. The question is, are you willing to do the work to GET WELL and LIVE WELL by pursuing presence in the current moment?

Beginning a PRACTICE OF MINDFULNESS requires that you embrace a few ideas:

• Mindfulness means NOTICING your surroundings as you observe them through your 5 senses. "I see a red car, I hear my favorite song, I feel cool air blowing on me, I feel the smooth steering wheel, I smell my peppermint car freshener."

• Mindfulness means LETTING GO of trying to CONTROL what is outside your control. Accept what is happening and think about how you can bring the best version of yourself into that situation.

• Mindfulness means LETTING GO of JUDGING people and circumstances as good/bad. Instead notice and accept behavior and circumstances as they are. Recognize that your response does not need to be determined by whether others are behaving well or badly.

• Mindfulness means NOTICING and NAMING FEELINGS without allowing your feelings to determine your response. "I'm noticing that sadness is surrounding me right now and I can feel it in my throat and in my eyes." A feeling can just be a feeling when you understand and name it.

• Mindfulness means NOTICING that thoughts and feelings come and go like waves and usually naturally move on if we do not grasp or avoid them.

• Mindfulness means PARTICIPATING fully in exactly what you are doing right now. Let go of ruminating and begin describing your present experience to yourself through your senses. "I have my hands in this warm, soapy water. It feels relaxing and the bubbles are iridescent. It smells like lemon. The sound of the water running reminds me of a creek." Allow yourself to become immersed fully in the present experience.

• Mindfulness means TENDING to each thing in it's own time. If while you are focusing on the present moment, you are noticing a repeated invasive thought about a future task, you can set aside a specific time later when you can give the future task your full attention.

• Mindfulness means DOING ONE THING AT A TIME. There is something relaxing about refusing to multitask.

Once you decide you can get on board with the ideas, begin the LIVE WELL practice of mindfulness with the following steps:

• DESCRIBE your moment by moment actions to yourself. "I am getting out of bed, the floor is cold, I'm turning on the shower..."

• NOTICE past/future oriented thoughts. "I am noticing that I'm thinking about my work meeting tomorrow."

• GENTLY DISMISS past/future oriented thoughts. "Now is not the time to think about my work meeting. I will spend 30 minutes tonight preparing for my meeting. Right now, I am focusing on....."

• RETURN to describing your moment by moment experience using your senses. "I see a blue umbrella, I smell fresh rain, I feel moisture on my skin, I hear drops of rain."

• REPEAT the process over and over knowing you are retraining your brain. And at some point in the near future, you won't have to work so hard at it!

It is most helpful to begin these steps of mindfulness during specific life activities such as teeth brushing, eating breakfast, and driving. After you build momentum in several life activities, you can begin putting your morning activities together to build hours of mindfulness. Keep in mind that it takes about 21 days to create a new habit, then additional weeks to sustain the habit.

I have found mindfulness to be an incredibly life-giving practice. I used to worry about the future throughout the day running numbers, to-dos, and planned activities through my mind. The practice of mindfulness has created a space for me to live and enjoy each day with less background noise. It has become such an ingrained habit that I now notice when the background noise returns and this is a signal to me to explore the imbalance and return to intentional mindfulness practice. Mindfulness has also significantly increased my capacity to GIVE WELL. I am more attentive, calm, and present with my family, friends, and clients without the background noise.

Mindfulness has the potential to reduce stress, decrease anxiety, improve depression symptoms, improve focus, and increase experience of daily calm. Why wouldn't you want more of that? I encourage you to take the 21 Day Mindfulness Challenge. Commit 21 days to developing this practice and track your progress along the way by journaling how you feel different.

Written By: Stephenie Craig, LCSW

Stephenie is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with 18 years experience specializing in emotional/relational health counseling. Stephenie loves hearing others’ stories and helping people find new perspective that produces peace, healing, and connection through individual counseling. Stephenie provides treatment for adults, teenagers, couples, and families with anxiety symptoms, parenting struggles, teen issues, depression, grief, divorce, and other life transitions. Realizing your life is out of balance and ready to schedule your initial counseling session? Connect here for information about counseling Stephenie provides and get your initial therapy session scheduled.