I came across these words recently in another online discussion of mindfulness, I thought they were really interesting:
Just thought some of you might be interested in that.Mindfulness can help for sure. For me what helped the most was changing my framing of it.
For years I wanted my social anxiety to stop. It was my big problem, my obsession. The thing that was getting in the way of living the life I felt I was capable of. And it could get pretty intense.
But as you probably know- the more you try to stop it, to push it away, to change it- the more you obsess over it- the more intense it becomes, and the more suffering it brings you.
Thanks to mindfulness, I've learned to simply become *aware* of the experience of being anxious, without making a *problem* out of it. It's not "bad". It's just what is appearing in that moment, in the same place that a thought appears, and the same place that the sound of the passing car appears. It comes, it goes. It's not a problem. It's what is.
Since framing it in this way, I no longer obsess about it. I no longer see it as something I "shouldn't" be feeling. And as a result, the experience of anxiety is much less intense. Or as Sam would say, it has a half life that can disappear the moment you see it for what it is.
This took a lot of time (although really it takes no time at all, it's instantaneous the moment you see it for what it is), so be patient with yourself. My advice would be don't *try* to stop being anxious (that leads to anxiety about being anxious). Accept that anxiety is arising. That doesn't mean you can't also take proactive action that could help with the underlying causes, whether that's working on your self-esteem, putting yourself in more of the situations that make you feel uncomfortable - facing your fears or whatever. You can do that while at the same time accepting that right now, in this moment, anxiety is arising. And that's ok. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. If anything, it's there to teach you.
If it wasn't for practicing mindfulness, I probably never would have come to this realisation that anxiety isn't a problem of mine that needs fixing. And ironically it was this realisation that "fixed" the "problem" for me.