Why Is Mindfulness So Hard In Anxiety Recovery? (Episode 65)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mindfulness is good for anxiety, right? Isn't this what everyone says? Mindfulness fixes anxiety and makes you happier? Isn't that it?
Well ... not really. This week Drew and Josh are taking a look at the practical applications of things like meditation and mindfulness practice in the context of anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. A few key points:
- Mindfulness is paying attention to what you want to pay attention to without judgment or evaluation of your ability to pay attention.
- PRACTICE is the key. The practice of training one's attention is where the win is. This is something we do. A process. It's not a state we achieve or a skill to perfect. Expecting calmness, happiness, or perfection in meditation or mindfulness is not a good approach.
- Mindfulness and meditation are NOT calming tools or anxiety shields in this context. Please do your best to steer clear of trying to use these concepts to escape from your anxious state. That usually leads to frustration and a much more fragile state of recovery.
- Mindfulness and meditation apps are great! General wellness advice on how to use mindfulness and meditation is great. Just be careful about trying to apply general advice to the specific context of disordered anxiety and recovery.
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The book we talked about in this episode is Drew's "Seven Percent Slower" which is a short, friendly read on how to use the principle of slowing down to help navigate more mindfully through anxiety, fear and stress. Learn more here.
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolveable problems.
https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Want to ask us questions, share your wins, or get more information about Josh, Drew, and the Disordered podcast?
Visit us on the web at https://disordered.fm
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Drew and Josh. I've got a question on sort of meditation and mindfulness. I know it's |
| 0:06.0 | something you've mentioned in the past. It's something I've sort of explored myself. I've |
| 0:10.5 | subscribed to Headspace. Other meditation apps are available, I'm sure. But the reason for the question |
| 0:17.9 | is a lot of my anxiety issues stem from me body scanning how am I |
| 0:22.6 | feeling do I feel nauseous today do I feel tired a lot of the sort of early meditation guides I've |
| 0:28.9 | I've listened to entail a lot of inward scanning body scanning that kind of thing I'm just wondering |
| 0:34.2 | if that's something I should avoid because that's maybe something I'm doing |
| 0:37.6 | subconsciously anyway or whether it's something I should do when I'm not feeling anxious. |
| 0:42.6 | I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on meditation and whether it's sort of universally |
| 0:46.1 | helpful for everyone, I suppose. |
| 0:48.4 | Excellent question. |
| 0:49.5 | Welcome to Disordered. |
| 0:50.7 | This is episode 65 entitled, Why is Mindfulness So Hard? I am Drew Lin Salata, |
| 0:56.7 | a therapist in training in New York, specializing in anxiety and anxiety disorders. I'm an author, |
| 1:01.6 | a podcaster, clearly because I'm here, an educator, social media dude, former sufferer of |
| 1:07.0 | anxiety, anxiety disorders, and depression for many years in my life. And yeah, happy to be here again. And I'm Joshua Fletcher, also known as Anxiety Josh on social media. I'm a psychotherapist based in the UK who specializes in anxiety and anxiety disorders. I'm a previous sufferer, a co-host to this podcast, an author of the book book and how does that make you feel welcome dude |
| 1:28.7 | hi mate how you doing all right so we talk about mindfulness i don't feel very mindful this |
| 1:32.8 | morning yeah i like mindfulness but with for anxiety disorders it could be can be quite tricky |
| 1:40.9 | yeah yeah this is a great question um thank you by by the way, questions, sender, inner. |
| 1:46.4 | I like how you say that. It's a term, man. That's a question sender inner. That's there. That's a, sure. It's a person. That's a noun now. I think that's a proper noun. What are my pronouns? Question sender inner is my pronoun. So it's a good question. |
| 2:00.2 | And I think it's one that is pervasive in our community, especially this person mentioned. |
| 2:04.7 | No. sender inner is my pronoun. So it's a good question. And I think it's one that is pervasive in our |
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