One of the meditations I’ve learned recently is to help accept anxiety as it is. It starts with visualizing the anxiety in your body. See it as an object, what is the color, shape, texture etc.
Every single time I do this meditation, I see myself lying down (I’m always in a grove in a forest), with a boulder outside of my body, pressing down on me, as my anxiety. The size and weight differs depending on the severity of my anxiety at the given time, but it is always an outside force, holding me down, keeping me in place and I can’t move, it’s hard to breathe and there’s no way to get rid of the boulder.
“Let’s see what kind of metaphor you use to describe anxiety. Fill in the blank: anxiety is ______________.
Don’t describe it — compare it to something. Is anxiety a monster? Is anxiety a roadblock? Is anxiety a train without brakes? Is anxiety war?
The metaphor that you use to describe your anxiety probably tells you something about how you view your anxiety — and your recovery process. Doesn’t it? Can you see the difference between seeing anxiety as a “roadblock” and “a train without brakes”?” (source)
When I first did this meditation, I felt like I shouldn’t be seeing my anxiety as something outside of me. I know that whatever I see isn’t necessarily ‘wrong’ because it just is what it is in my mind. The wording in the meditation made me feel like I needed to be seeing it as something that’s part of me, something inside my body. So I’ve been questioning this boulder.
During this anxiety acceptance meditation, after visualizing the anxiety as a thing, you need to allow space around it, allow it to be a part of your body but let yourself have breath around it’s shape. It is easier to see myself putting space between myself and my anxiety when it is an outside force. I breathe in and out and the boulder starts to float above my rather than weighing me down. So perhaps the metaphor is apt and okay.
It is nice to visualize this boulder get smaller, give myself more room and less weight as time goes by. While I was at first, unsure if this metaphor was a good one for my anxiety, I think I like it. I’ve said in the past, I won’t ever get rid of my mental illnesses completely and watching this boulder shrink and compact, some day it will be small enough to fit in my palm and carry with me but not affect me.
Share: How do you view your mental illness? Is it something inside of you or an outside force? Fill in the blank, my mental illness is…..
One Comment