How to Use Anxiety - and Not Be Used by It! with Rick Hanson

Sometimes our anxiety is trying to tell us something important about a real threat, something we need to take care of, or someone we love. The trouble comes when anxiety keeps going long after it’s useful, turning into rumination, clinging, and worry about things we can’t control.

This week I focused in on how to find a middle way with anxiety: listening to the useful signals without letting them take over. Listen in to learn ways to work with your anxiety: making room for unavoidable fear, finding realistic reassurance, creating a plan and taking action where you can, loosening the grip of unnecessary worry, and surrendering what is ultimately beyond your control.

3:11 — Healthy anxiety: Why some fear and worry are normal, useful signals that help us recognize threats and take care of what matters.
6:50 — What should you worry about a little more? Using healthy concern to protect relationships, health, and the things that matter over the long term.
13:30 — When anxiety is understandable and unavoidable: Working with fear that comes from health problems, difficult circumstances, or concern for someone you love.
14:53 — Mindfulness of anxiety: Stepping back from anxiety, opening to it, and disentangling its sensations, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs.
18:52 — Turn toward realistic reassurance: Notice what’s genuinely reassuring without ignoring real risks or pretending everything is fine.
20:12 — Make a plan — and surrender the rest: Take action on what you can influence while accepting what remains outside your control.
23:18 — How clinging creates anxiety: How grasping at pleasure, approval, our views, and our sense of self can generate unnecessary suffering.
29:33 — Take the message, then hang up the phone: Learn from worry, extract whatever is useful, and interrupt the cycle of rumination when it stops helping.

You can see the meditation that went along with this talk here: https://rickhanson.com/talk-meditation-how-to-use-anxiety-and-not-be-used-by-it/

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