Mindfulness And Anxiety

A recent, groundbreaking study compared two groups of people: one group that underwent an intense daily meditation practice, and another group that took a common medication for anxiety. The results found that daily meditation could be just as effective as medication in reducing the symptoms of anxiety. Meditation for anxiety may once have been seen as a pseudoscience, but as more studies come out, it’s becoming increasingly clear that meditation and mindfulness practices can have incredible effects on the lives of those with anxiety. In general, mindfulness involves focusing on the present moment, often by paying attention to the breath. For more guidance and additional strategies for anxiety management, you might consider working with a licensed therapist online or in person.

An introduction to anxiety disorders

Anxiety and chemical imbalances

Sometimes, anxiety can be caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain in which messenger molecules are not produced or used in the right amounts. Other times, however, anxiety can be caused by life events, including prolonged stress from a demanding job, abuse*, or other long-term difficult life changes or situations. Anxiety has also been associated with lower levels of mindfulness and self-compassion—connections which help explain the increasing focus on the use of mindfulness meditations for symptoms of anxiety disorders.    

If you or a loved one is experiencing abuse, contact the Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Support is available 24/7.

What are mindfulness exercises?

Mindfulness can be defined as a series of practices that aim to allow the practitioner to focus on what is going on around them in the present moment. The general idea may be that most of our stresses and anxieties stem from things that already happened or things that might happen in the future, and focusing on the present moment can ease some of our psychological burden.

Much of mindfulness is usually based on ancient practices developed in the Asian Pacific region. Most ideas about using meditation as a way to stay in the moment come from Zen Buddhism, a philosophical school developed in China, Japan, and India.

A key principle in mindfulness is nonjudgmental awareness—identifying the thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, painful memories, and other experiences you encounter without passing judgment on them. For example, when difficult feelings like anger or jealousy arise, taking note of them instead of labeling them as bad or negative emotions can help you avoid fostering a ruminating and wandering mind.

How to practice mindfulness

There are several ways of practicing mindfulness. Many people choose to participate in a guided meditation, which ushers participants through specific meditation programs. Mindfulness can also be practiced while performing everyday activities. You can work, exercise, or clean in a mindful way, focusing on the task at hand while engaging in conscious breathing and recognizing thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations as they arise. 

Mindfulness, as promoted and practiced by mental health experts, may also be largely based on the idea of person-centered therapy. Developed during the previous century, person-centered therapy generally takes the focus on mental illness away from ideas like Freud's subconscious or Skinner's behaviorism and instead focuses on how the individual perceives themselves and the world around them.

Mindfulness practices and interventions

A growing body of research suggests that mindfulness-based interventions are effective methods of managing both anxiety and depression. In a comprehensive meta-analysis published in the journal Clinical Psychology Review, researchers found that mindfulness-based therapy was as effective as traditional therapies in reducing anxiety. They also concluded that mindfulness techniques could reduce stress and recurrent depression, which are common comorbidities for those who experience anxiety. Additionally, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, the results of one study suggest that an eight-week mindfulness intervention can help calm anxiety as effectively as escitalopram, an anti-anxiety medication. 

Several different mindfulness approaches have been developed over the years. One common mindfulness intervention for anxiety is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which combines aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy with the principles of mindfulness training. Acceptance and commitment therapy is another modality that focuses on improving emotional health through mindfulness. Mindfulness-based stress reduction—which was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who first integrated mindfulness with modern therapeutic techniques—is also widely practiced. Though there are key differences between these modalities, they all focus on fostering inner peace through increased awareness and acceptance. 

Mindfulness may be practiced by the individual, with aids found online or in books, or under the watchful eye of an expert, such as a therapist. Be careful in choosing such a guide, though. People who claim to practice mindfulness rather than therapy may be able to maneuver around licensing requirements that usually help in the vetting of other mental health experts.

As mentioned above, mindfulness typically relies on heavy use of meditation. Don't let that discourage you; mindfulness meditation may be much less mystical than you may imagine when you see the word "meditation". Mindfulness meditation usually focuses on exercises that draw the meditator's attention to the sensation of breathing.

Focusing on breathing can be calming in and of itself, but we'll talk more about that later. One of the key objectives of mindfulness meditation is typically to help the meditator become more aware of their passive thoughts.

Mindfulness experts borrow from older texts in calling this aspect of our personalities "the monkey mind". The goal of mindfulness meditation is usually to make the meditator gradually more aware of what their monkey mind is up to so that they can prevent it from going in dangerous directions that may lead to a panic attack or anxious thought processes.

Mental health experts working with mindfulness usually have tools to teach their clients regarding how to cope with panic attacks.

A quick mindfulness meditation

There may be many online resources for mindfulness meditation, such as a mindfulness workbook that you can follow to help you through the process, especially as you are getting started. Over time, you can pick and choose your favorites and recognize what works for you so that you can create your own exercises and do them without assistance anytime you need them. 

Try to do this for at least five minutes per session, with at least one session per week. As you continue in your practice, you can meditate longer and more often. As mentioned above, you may benefit from experimenting with other kinds of mindfulness exercises to see what works for you.

If you do the meditation exercise above long enough and often enough, you may get a lot better at being aware of what your monkey mind is up to.

There may be at least one more way in which mindfulness meditation helps reduce anxiety, and that may come down to breathing.

Breath awareness is a fundamental mindfulness technique that can help with stress management. According to Harvard Medical School, taking deep breaths as part of a mindfulness practice can help you improve cognitive function when you’re feeling anxious. 

During the stress response, which can lead to a panic attack, the sympathetic nervous system typically tells your lungs to take faster and shallower breaths.

If you only tend to feel nervous or anxious from time to time, you might not have an anxiety disorder. If that's the case for you, practicing mindfulness, as discussed in this article, may help you see a significant change in symptoms. 

A series of scientific studies into online therapy have found that online therapy can be effective in treating anxiety and the effects of stress.