Mediation

[Jolly_Penguin]

I have been suffering General Anxiety Disorder for over 20 years. At first it was hardly noticeable but it has now progressed to be often disabling. It is a stress and anxiety with no basis. I am told it is neurochemical, and I have tried various drugs for it.

I am now trying meditation and will be attending a meditation centre this weekend to learn from a Buddhist monk.

I am curious about your experiences with mediation. Have you found it useful? Any advice for a novice?

 

[rousseau]

If it helps it helps, although I've always been uncertain about what differentiates meditation from just sitting in silence, doing nothing.

I also suffer from something like a generalised anxiety and agree that it's mostly bio-chemical. Mine was especially bad until about 2012 when I upped the dosage of a medication I was taking just a notch, and somehow that seemed to relieve the worst aspects of it. Since then my brain is still a little wiry, but I try to attack it with the usual, exercise, healthy food, a balanced lifestyle. Lately I've been liberally drinking a lot of sedative teas too, in lieu of alcohol, which I find helps. Usually when I treat my body right, the anxiety dissipates.

Anyway, I do like the idea of meditation, but not as a strict and rigid practise. For me, when I get tired of my phone screaming at me, and people in my life pulling for my attention, I'll disappear from the internet for a while, sit in bed and listen to some music, or go somewhere and sit on a bench. Just being in my own head for brief periods of time without my attention being pulled in 20 different directions is calming and relaxing.

So I don't if meditation will be a cure-all, but the only thing that's really helped anxiety for me is focusing on my health. I think most people tend to under-state how important good health is to feeling positive. But then, I imagine for some people the bio-chemical component is bad enough that any amount of behavioural changes won't have much of an impact.

 

[blastula]

In my experience, the mediator gave the ex nearly everything. Mediation sucks.

 

[Rayschism]

If it helps it helps, although I've always been uncertain about what differentiates meditation from just sitting in silence, doing nothing.

I also suffer from something like a generalised anxiety and agree that it's mostly bio-chemical. Mine was especially bad until about 2012 when I upped the dosage of a medication I was taking just a notch, and somehow that seemed to relieve the worst aspects of it. Since then my brain is still a little wiry, but I try to attack it with the usual, exercise, healthy food, a balanced lifestyle. Lately I've been liberally drinking a lot of sedative teas too, in lieu of alcohol, which I find helps. Usually when I treat my body right, the anxiety dissipates.

Anyway, I do like the idea of meditation, but not as a strict and rigid practise. For me, when I get tired of my phone screaming at me, and people in my life pulling for my attention, I'll disappear from the internet for a while, sit in bed and listen to some music, or go somewhere and sit on a bench. Just being in my own head for brief periods of time without my attention being pulled in 20 different directions is calming and relaxing.

So I don't if meditation will be a cure-all, but the only thing that's really helped anxiety for me is focusing on my health. I think most people tend to under-state how important good health is to feeling positive. But then, I imagine for some people the bio-chemical component is bad enough that any amount of behavioural changes won't have much of an impact.

Did you know you misspelled the title of your thread?

Sorry if I seem like a jerk, I'm not trying to be,

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

If it helps it helps, although I've always been uncertain about what differentiates meditation from just sitting in silence, doing nothing.

I also suffer from something like a generalised anxiety and agree that it's mostly bio-chemical. Mine was especially bad until about 2012 when I upped the dosage of a medication I was taking just a notch, and somehow that seemed to relieve the worst aspects of it. Since then my brain is still a little wiry, but I try to attack it with the usual, exercise, healthy food, a balanced lifestyle. Lately I've been liberally drinking a lot of sedative teas too, in lieu of alcohol, which I find helps. Usually when I treat my body right, the anxiety dissipates.

Anyway, I do like the idea of meditation, but not as a strict and rigid practise. For me, when I get tired of my phone screaming at me, and people in my life pulling for my attention, I'll disappear from the internet for a while, sit in bed and listen to some music, or go somewhere and sit on a bench. Just being in my own head for brief periods of time without my attention being pulled in 20 different directions is calming and relaxing.

So I don't if meditation will be a cure-all, but the only thing that's really helped anxiety for me is focusing on my health. I think most people tend to under-state how important good health is to feeling positive. But then, I imagine for some people the bio-chemical component is bad enough that any amount of behavioural changes won't have much of an impact.

Did you know you misspelled the title of your thread?

Sorry if I seem like a jerk, I'm not trying to be,

It was me that misspelled the title of my thread, and now not only that, but somebody else gets the credit and I go overlooked. This stresses me out and I need to mediate my meditation.

 

[abaddon]

For me, meditations work inasmuch as they help slow down the crowd of thoughts.

I don't care to sit cross-legged and watch breaths, Buddhist-style. Though it's an opportunity to watch the thoughts dispassionately and "let be", still, for me, that's a tall order and so I prefer outward-focus meditations. Like going outdoors and enjoying a walk in the park, usually taking my camera with me. Nature's generally pretty captivating in itself, and recent research is showing numerous health benefits to "greening" our lifestyles. Also it's interesting how stress can even vanish in an instant if something captivating happens. I can be caught in rumination on the past or worries about the future but if a hawk flies into a tree nearby then I (and all my problems) are instantly the very least of my interests; there's no "gradual progress" about it, in these instances. Put yourself into nature enough, and they happen enough to learn how changing attention can change the quality of life.

Concentration-meditation can help with attention and the quality of it. That's why mindfulness practice is part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (a very popular variety of evidence-backed therapy). People keep describing meditation as being a way to relax. It's more to do with retraining attention and even what you identify as "self". "Me and my problems" versus "isn't the experience of life very fascinating regardless of me?" That's a choice, and pills generally can't make such choices for us.

I don't look for a fix anymore for my wobbly nerves. That was just yet another stressor: thinking I was broken and needed to be cured of it. It put my attention into the future when it needed to be on Now. ACT helped me figure out that I can accept my experience of being a generally anxious person and still live a quality life anyway if I defuse the energy of what distracted me from life and focus on some down-to-earth goals and on enjoyment instead. No "cure" needed, just a shift of how I use my attention. It changes where the energy goes.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I hope and trust you will find some relief, Jolly Penguin.

If it helps it helps, although I've always been uncertain about what differentiates meditation from just sitting in silence, doing nothing.

This bit I can address.

The 2 forms of meditative practice I have experience with differ from undirected silence in that attention is consciously controlled.

In one, attention is directed to a single concept/idea/image of your choice. I could see where that one would help anxiety because if you are gently holding the thought of the bloom on a section of a petal of a deep red rose in your mind, you don't have room for stressors.

The other teaches you to turn away from stressors and outside influences. If the heater fan comes on while you are sitting, you don't have to pay attention to it, you learn to let it do what it wants without you.

Both of these seem to me to be useful to someone who gives undue influence to outside events.

I suspect meditation reinforces calm neural pathways where anxiety is also self reinforcing by using the agitated, worry pathways so often that they become the go-to response.

Whatever method your Buddhist teaches you will take practice, but there is so much neural plasticity research showing ability to effect change well into old age that you can be pretty certain that you can reverse even 20 years of bad habits.

Let us know how it goes.

 

[iolo]

I never got much further than, 'breathing in smiling; breathing out relaxing', but it always calms me down. I no longer need blood-pressure tablets, which saves bother. On the whole, the Buddhist monks I've met have seemed sensible people, but they've all been British, and don't seem to take the smellsan'bells bit seriously.

 

[Elixir]

In my experience, the mediator gave the ex nearly everything. Mediation sucks.

A guy who lives across the river from us is a mediator... yes, really. An ex employee broke into our facility and was sent through the Restorative Justice system, and he mediated while I tore the offender a new asshole, face-to-face. A few days after that was over, Mrs Elixir spotted him (it's about 1/4 mile line of sight) in apparent confrontation with his neighbor. She said "he'll work it out, he's a mediator". I said "but what if his neighbor is a vegetarian?" (rimshot, please )