Interrupt Anxiety with Gratitude
Interrupt Anxiety with Gratitude
Author: Sarah Wilson
Sourced from sarahwilson.com
http://www.sarahwilson.com/2017/01/interrupt-anxiety-with-gratitude/
Early this year, Sarah Wilson continued the conversation started in her recent publication; ‘First We Make the Beast Beautiful’. She wrote on the topic of anxiety and gratitude;
I like this. I’ve dug around on the topic of late. Alex Korb writes in The Grateful Brain, ‘Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain only has so much power to focus its attention. It cannot easily focus on both positive and negative stimuli.’ Literally, you can’t be grateful and anxious at the same time. You can, thus, derail your anxiety by being grateful. Chuck a bomb under it!
On top of this, research shows gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that regulates anxiety.
Korb adds that the brain loves to fall for the confirmation bias – it looks for things that prove what it already believes to be true. ‘So once you start seeing things to be grateful for, your brain starts looking for more things to be grateful for.’
And thusly interrupting anxiety even more.
I asked Danielle a little more about her anxious thinking.
Me: Why do we get anxious?
DLP: Because every time anxiety shows up, it’s our psyche’s way of saying, “Knock knock, I’ve got something to show you about yourself that you really should see.”
Me: How do you cope with it?
DLP: I get in front of it. I prepare every day with a regular esoteric practice. I meditate every morning.
Me: Tell me more…
DLP: The fuzz and fogginess of anxiety creates a kink in your energy system. And distorts perspective on EVERYTHING. So it’s difficult to reach for courage or positivity when we’re anxious. But reach we must. So that’s why we have to practice for when it comes.
Me: Meditation…and what else helps?
DLP: Breathing exercises. Anxiousness is just ordinary and reasonable fear without the breath. Add in breath and you come back to centre.
Me: The worst upshot of anxiety?
DLP: It tells us the lie that we’re not safe.
(The above article is an abridged version to comply with copyright terms)
Comments
Sarah Wilson’s portrayal of her personal history with anxiety adds glue to the known relationship between anxiety and gratitude, in which anxiety can be regulated and or derailed by gratitude.