my successful anti-anxiety visualization

[leroyskagnetti]

Hey Everyone --

     So for the past year or so as I have delved further into mysticism and projection I have experienced a lot of social anxiety (panic and discomfort spending time around other folks - basically just having a hard time processing information about them that I'm not used to having).  From time to time it's been so bad that I've had to flee a scene on the spot from irrational fears, etc.  Well, on Monday night I came home from my girlfriend's feeling love all over and climbed into my warm bed, where I had this flash of insight.

As the love I had felt from her that night began to fade away and my regular anxiety returned, I began to notice something very interesting.  I sort of visualized (I hesitate to limit myself to just this word, because it's not quite visualizing, but more like pretending that you're doing it) that I was lying on my back with my arms and legs stretched out in a completely empty room that was the ruddy color nearest to the color of the inside of flesh.  As I lay stretched out I began to associate these waves of anxiety that I get with a little earthquake that shook my room back and forth.  Though the room was shaking I knew that all I had to do was concentrate on just lying still and letting it happen....just kind of feeling myself get tossed around a bit and being okay with it - just kind of noticing it in the same way that we notice our thoughts or other elements of our consciousness as we meditate. 

Interestingly, I also had a very intense and meaningful dream about my family that night and woke up feeling very hopeful.  On Tuesday I tested out the technique almost all day... I just kept seeing myself lying stretched out on the floor and trying not to do anything but feel what it's like to lay still and not react to being tossed around. 

It worked spectacularly all day and has not stopped working since!

If it's just light anxiety, I imagine slight tremors causing the room around me to vibrate.  As it corresponds to some of my physiological symptoms, when I get this type of anxiety I can feel the lactic acid/cortisol begin to bubble up in my ankles and calves...kind of a light iciness.  With the visualization, I still do experience the physiological symptoms, but I am able to disconnect myself from them so that my breathing patterns and mental state remain steady.  The anxiety passes and I return to a feeling of mellowness.  Often, the state that I feel right after waiting out the anxiety is even calmer than my usual non-anxious state.

Needless to say, this is a huge personal victory for me.

I've played around with the visualization a bit and found that it actually works just as well with other situations.  For instance, if I'm feeling embarrassed about something and that's taking me away from the calm I want to be in I change the visualization so that the walls of the room kind of pulse slowly with the same pink/red that your cheeks would get when you're embarrassed - and my goal is to simply not react to it.  Same type of thing if I'm getting distracted by worrying about someone else's conversation or if someone is staring at me - or really whatever demon I'm needing to overcome.  if it's someone else's attention that's bothering me I imagine a window in the room I'm laying in and a gigantic unblinking eye gazing at me through the window.  whatever it is, the idea seems to be to acknowledge it as best as I can and simply not react to it.  It's great, because in the visualization my body is already on the floor lying still, and it's fairly simple to continue doing what you're doing once you're doing it.  Currently I'm using the technique to tighten my attention overall and slowly eliminate all of my fears.  If there's something that would cause me panic I put a big red and blue police siren in the room and let it blare away while I lie on and feel the ground below me.   if it's something that is trying to distract me then I put it square in the room, put in the circus and the big band or what have you, and let it try to do its worst while I just lie there noticing what it's like to lie there, and step up the intensity of the anxiety-visualization to match what's happening to my external reality.


There you are!  I'd love to say that this has conquered my anxiety, but it's only been 4 days - granted, these 4 days have had almost no problems      I totally recommend this technique to everyone, especially if you are like me with your panic attacks.

[Stookie]

Excellent! For me, anxiety was the biggest hurdle in really being able to enjoy life. It can kill what should be a enjoyable experience. Meditation was also the key for me in removing it(and it's much better an healthier than anti-anxiety meds that just cover it up).

You're visualization reminded me of a similar method I recently read about: You take a situation (such as anxiety) and visualize a landscape that represents it, like dark skies and dead trees. Then you walk around your landscape and transform it into something you consider beautiful. Every day you come back to the visualization where you left off at and keep transforming it, knowing that it's effecting your subconscious and the problem itself.

It also seems similar to the progress being made with virtual reality in helping people conquer their fears. Amazing stuff.

[RooJ]

Congrats  . I recently came up with a similar technique,
Id imagine myself sat cross legged on a hill overlooking a body of water, kinda like this: http://www.bighornweb.com/stockphotos/stock-lakes-05.jpg but greener, no bare rock, just heather n stuff (kinda scottish-like)
I imagined that the water and sky reflected how i was feeling, so the calmer the water, the calmer i was. When i felt anything like anger or anxiety id see that the water was rough, full of waves crashing about and the sky was ripped with fast moving black rolling clouds, possibly rain too. I see that its my feelings that cause this chaos. I then picture the water getting calmer and eventually still, and at the same time the clouds breaking and beams of sunlight getting through.

My idea was obviously anchoring the bad feelings to the conditions in my visualization and as i reduce the conditions, i reduce the feelings. Im yet to fully test this out (only used it about 3 times) but it seemed to do the trick for me  .

Im going to commit your technique to memory too, i always find the power of visualization fascinating.