How To Practice Mindfulness To Help With 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

The occasional experience of anxiety is typically normal and healthy. It may not be pleasant, but it’s usually not harmful. Feelings of anxiety can include intense fear and worry.

Anxiety may become a problem when it is chronic and the result of an anxiety disorder. People with anxiety disorders may feel anxiety virtually all the time. They may also feel intense anxiety in situations that don't necessarily call for it, or that may only cause mild anxiety in someone else. 

Those with anxiety disorders tend to be more likely to experience panic attacks - episodes in which feelings of anxiety may cause frightening symptoms, potentially including shortness of breath, chest pain, a fast pulse, and other symptoms.

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.    

Anxiety may currently be on the rise as people worry more and more about COVID, economic conditions, politics, the environment, and other concerns. Some experts have said that technology has likely increased our awareness of these issues and decreased our ability to look away from them and relax. 

There can be several treatment options for anxiety, including medication and talk therapy. Please note that medication should only be started or stopped with direct supervision from a medical professional.

*If you or a loved one is witnessing or experiencing any form of abuse, please know that help is available. You can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline anytime at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

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 anxiety. 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.

Correlation with meditation

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.

If you've ever been distracted by your thoughts while reading or become suddenly aware of unintentional thoughts while taking a shower, you may have noticed that our minds don't usually shut off when we aren't using them. Even when we aren't paying attention, our minds' background activity can impact how we think, feel, and behave. 

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.

Getting to know your "monkey mind"

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.

As you become more aware of your monkey mind in your meditation practice, you may also become more aware of it in your everyday life. For most of us, what become feelings of anxiety tend to result from our monkey minds worrying about things that don't affect us, that we can't change, or that aren't even real. When you’re more aware of what your monkey mind is up to, you may find it easier to simply make up your mind not to worry about these things.

Grounding yourself

Once you've gotten better at your meditation practice, it can become easier to do "mini-meditations". If you notice yourself starting to worry, you might close your eyes and check in with your breath. You don't have to lie down or even sit. You can also try a body scan, checking in with each part of your body and taking note of any sensations. 

You can ask yourself, "What am I worrying about? Is this likely to be a problem? Is there something I can do about this? If it is a problem and I can do something about it, do I need to spend time thinking about this issue, or are there more constructive ways to address it?"

The stress response

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. 

Put simply, your nervous system is generally divided into a part that you can control and a part that you can't. The part that you can control typically includes things like your muscles. The part that you can't control may include things like your heart. Your breathing may fall into both of these areas. It can become faster or slower, deeper or shallower without you realizing it, but you can also exercise control over it.

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.

However, some studies have shown that when your breath starts to become fast and shallow, it becomes deeper and slower through exercises called diaphragmatic breathing. This can increase functioning in the parasympathetic nervous system, convincing your body that there's not a threat at hand.

How online therapy can help

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. 

However, if you constantly feel anxious, or your feelings of anxiety make you worry about your health or prevent you from living your life as you’d like to, you may have an anxiety disorder. In this case, you should generally talk to a healthcare provider and a mental health expert if you can.

How to find a therapist

BetterHelp aims to make mental health care available for everyone by publishing educational articles like this one. They also offer a service in which they can connect users with licensed therapists over the internet. With online therapy, it can be easy to find a therapist who is ideal for your specific needs and work with them without having to leave the house, pay for transportation, arrange childcare, or manage the other inconveniences commonly associated with in-person therapy. 

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