Discovering Trust and Support When You’re Anxious

Awareness That Heals, Episode 118.

A very warm welcome to Season Three of Awareness That Heals where we have progressed to be able to focus on one challenging emotion at a time. This will allow you to choose a specific emotion that you’ve had challenges with, and each one will have a progressive series of guided meditations that will allow you to go deeper and deeper into self-compassion. For me, it’s truly inspiring because each emotion has unique nuances for both self-care and responding to your environment at the same time. This is subtle and a rare skill as all too often we don’t stay aware of how we can care for ourselves as we are. I hope that you’ll not only find it helpful, but also give you deep resources that you can internalize when the emotion is most emerging.

(01:07)
As we have been going deeper and deeper into how we can care for our anxiety, we’re using the metaphor of the elevator, and it’s probably helpful for you to continue to visualize an elevator where you’re gradually pressing buttons going up the floors. And each floor represents tools and qualities and actions and ways that you can develop self-compassion, which also is going to help you develop compassion, of course. Viewing where we’ve been, the most important starting point is always recognizing that you are the observer. You are the one that has the capacity for being aware of whatever is happening. And you also, when you’re there, it becomes intuitively more evident that you want to care for yourself. And we’re talking about anxiety of course today, and you want to be able to care for yourself, right when you’re in the center of the storm of anxiety. When you are the observer, you gain the capacity to be humble and courageous. In fact, you’re actually using humility and courage to be the observer because a lot of the reasons why we don’t observe is we’re afraid of what we’re going to see inside ourselves. Even the act of observing requires humility and courage. So allow yourself to get ready for the next guided and put yourself in a comfortable position.

(03:09)
As we’ve said before, I see you, the first major step. You anxiety aren’t all of me. You aren’t even close to all of me. I can see both you and there’s another capacity to steer my attention. It can lead to later steps, tolerating anxiety, talking to you, caring for you, guiding you, and I need to see you more and more stable. And that’s my aspiration. The primary part of me is the seer, is the witness, is the observer. And the feelings are an important secondary part of me. And as we’ve given caution, don’t get ahead of yourself. The most important part is to see right where you are and hold it sacred. Your most friendly observer realizes that, of course, I want to care for myself. And this simple but elusive step of being aware of where you are and wanting to care for yourself is a core foundation for self-compassion. It might help to say anxiety, I’m putting my hand on my heart to be as gentle with you as I can. And whether that’s physically putting your hand in your heart or metaphorically doing it, it doesn’t matter.

(04:59)
A next level in the elevator is developing, expanding tolerance and kindness toward the anxiety. And even if it’s bear tolerance, or even if you just understand it and you can’t get to bear tolerance, no matter where you are, the aspiration is all you need to keep moving up and in toward a quality of being that’s going to be expanded throughout your life. And then we cover how important it is to learn how to ask questions from your heart, what words, what sentences or two would be the most helpful When you’re in the center of anxiety, it’s very helpful for you even now, to imagine when I’m really anxious, what would I like to hear from myself and what tone would I like to hear it in? And then as we move even further in our potential, we can move from tolerance and acceptance to welcoming.

(06:15)
And that welcoming means that we’re really at a high level of self-acceptance and evolving our heart and our wisdom. And so now we’re going to move on to another level of the elevator. So ask yourself what need or needs are most central for you when you’re in the intensity of the anxiety. Now, it would be very helpful for you to look at awareness that heals and at the Introspective Guides because it will isolate the 75 of the most important needs and qualities that will be most helpful when you’re anxious. So let yourself really look carefully at those qualities whenever you’re anxious and it will help you isolate exactly where you need to go, or maybe five directions or five qualities that would be helpful that you can put your attention on. You may, as you see it, say to yourself, I’m praying for my own love and tenderness while I’m anxious. I’m putting my trust into the real me. I’m letting it be evoked from my observer. My essential need is trust. Or it might even be my essential need is to express a need to another. And the key thing is that you’re going back to asking the questions that would most help you and let them guide you to a need or a series of needs that will support you while you’re anxious.

(08:20)
And take a moment right now, and again, just be honest with yourself. How much can you appreciate your dedication to take care of your essential need or needs to be more and more good, okay, find a sense of well-being, when you’re anxious, can you sense any appreciation? And if you can’t, you can’t. But certainly you want to plant a seed to aspire to be able to feel some appreciation for your efforts. So see how you are relating to this. And again, be sure not to get ahead of yourself. That can’t be said enough because accepting yourself as you are is the inspiration to keep moving forward. And remember that this isn’t easy for very many people, and that’s an understatement. So be as self-compassionate in your tone and inside yourself as possible. So as you’re asking yourself which needs are most important, it could be to welcome yourself. It could be tenderness or responding more and more from your heart, self-compassion, empathy, to be trusted, to have independence. You are unique. So enjoy being able to have access to 75 needs. And you get to circle the needs that are most important to you when you’re anxious.

(10:18)
And hopefully you can get a sense that that will really help you. And again, do that inner looking and see, well, if I have 75 needs that are already identified, do I believe that I can start to see what it is I need when I’m anxious? And as we end this meditation, take a careful look at how much you really trust that you’re present. Trust that you’re trying to help yourself, support yourself as much as possible. And if it is possible, give yourself a prayerful sense of, I’m proud of you that you’re at this point in your life. I know that your intention is not only to care for yourself, but to care for others. And may this aspiration be with you now and as much as possible throughout your life, and I thank you so much for your quality attention.

(11:42)
So again, looking back at the meditation, the crucial thing is always going to be where are you actually? And you are the observer right now. I’m asking you to be the observer of where you are, not where you should be, not where your ideas of where you believe you are, but where are you actually, and embrace that and whatever level of imperfection, let yourself find that wish to care for yourself, that intention to heal and recognize that this is something that you want to plant as a seed for the rest of your life. And again, thanks so much for paying attention to this and giving your time to really bring compassion into yourself and into the world.