Mindfulness is a useful tool to help you manage your moods and calm your mind. Regular mindfulness practice can train your mind to become less reactive, leaving you better able to cope with the ups and downs of life. Whether that means stressing less or easing away your anxiety, simple mindfulness-based strategies have been shown to help, so why not give them a try?  

The signs and symptoms of anxiety 

To begin with let’s be clear - anxiety isn’t the same thing as being stressed out or worried; it’s more intense and ongoing. While feeling anxious from time to time (in response to situations where you feel under pressure) is considered quite normal, problems arise if these feelings stick around most of the time, and start to make it hard for you to function as you usually would. 

Although stress and anxiety share many of the same traits, there are distinct differences between the two states. Stress is a heightened emotion in response to a specific situation that creates a short-term reaction, whereas anxiety can last a lot longer and the cause may be harder to identify. You can think of anxiety as your body’s response when stress escalates. Brief moments of anxiety are quite normal and something everyone will experience, but living on permanent high alert in an ongoing anxious state indicates it’s time to get some professional help.

Many millions of people worldwide live with anxiety that can be either mild, moderate or severe in nature. The kind of treatment pathway you choose will depend on how severe your anxiety is and how much it’s interfering with your ability to function. There are a number of effective options available, including in-person or online psychological therapy, and prescribed medication.

Mindfulness-based approaches to anxiety 

As well as psychological or pharmaceutical interventions, more and more people are turning to mindfulness-based therapies, including mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) programs, to effectively train their mind to manage mild anxiety more mindfully. These mindful approaches to ease anxiety can offer effective ways to work with your anxiety using mindfulness-based tools and scientifically proven practices.  

HOW MINDFULNESS HELPS ANXIETY

I define mindfulness as “a way of curiously noticing what’s going on, without getting too caught up in it”. Mindfulness explains how you pay attention to the present. The more mindful, or aware, you are, the easier it becomes to pay attention to what’s most important and act accordingly, perhaps changing how you react to certain situations and meeting life’s more difficult moments with a wiser response.  

While mindfulness isn’t a magic pill that claims to cure everything, you can think of it as a personal superpower of sorts. With awareness comes the ability to know when stress is rising and anxiety is looming. Training in mindfulness makes it easier to break unhelpful patterns of automatic reactivity, giving you the opportunity to replace these moments with a more conscious response.  According to scientific research, building your capacity to be mindful can help to alleviate mild to moderate anxiety and has been shown to improve your overall mental wellbeing. 

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

The popular 8-week Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program has been found to improve both mental and physical health in those who sign up. In this program, you’re expertly guided on how to show yourself kindness and acknowledge stress or anxious feelings arising, whilst letting them be. This non-reactive approach towards anxiety allows you to tune in to what’s going on in your inner world and break free from the old, unhelpful patterns that have been holding you back. 

Developing an increased awareness of your thoughts, feelings and actions and approaching them with curiosity and kindness, rather than avoiding them or blindly reacting to them, has been shown to work effectively and bring about positive results. Relating to your anxiety in a more mindful way can change your brain for the better, it also reduces anxiety’s hold over you and can lessen the suffering you experience as a result. 

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy 

Another alternative intervention program is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) which blends mindfulness-based practices and cognitive behavioural therapy techniques. Over 8-weeks, you’re taught how to adapt your cognitive skills in a way that leads to improved mental health. Similar to MBSR, this approach develops deeper mind-body awareness through basic mindfulness training, however, it also includes information and exercises based on cognitive-behavioural therapy that focus on understanding how the way we think impacts how we feel. 

In a 2015 study, the MBCT approach was found to effectively reduce the rate of relapse in those experiencing recurring depression equally as well as antidepressants. Further research to date has found this approach to be potentially effective as a treatment for anxiety and mood disorders, too. 

In both MBSR and MBCT, you are trained to change your relationship to your thoughts and given effective tools to work through your most challenging feelings in a healthy way. Both approaches have the potential to improve mental health and wellbeing and the research into how, why, when and for whom they work best continues to be explored.  

Ease away your anxiety 

Life can be challenging and at times, incredibly stressful. There’s a reason why anxiety rates are so high globally. When you’re feeling anxious, it’s only natural to push away the unwanted thoughts or uncomfortable feelings, but avoiding them can, in fact, cause them to build up and become an even bigger issue in time. Instead, you can come face to face with your feelings in a mindful way by being curious, open and accepting of the challenges that arise. With practice, this approach will help you to discover that you are not your thoughts or feelings - and that that they are constantly changing anyway.

Finding peace in the everyday

If you’re new to the world of mindfulness and are looking for more information, effective tools and simple strategies to help you manage your stress effectively then check out my new book, Mindfulness: finding peace in the everyday. It’s filled with ways to keep calm and live life more mindfully, relieve stress and improve your wellbeing. In the book, you’ll find step-by-step meditations and breathing exercises for beginners, as well as tonnes of tips and practices to make every day more peaceful and pleasant. The book is available to buy worldwide, now.  

 #discovermindfulness with Annika Rose.