It can be helpful to take a mindful approach if you realise that, for several minutes, you have been “trapped” in reliving past problems or “pre-living” future worries.
To develop an awareness of thoughts and feelings, some people find it helpful to silently name them: “Here’s the thought that I might fail that exam”. Or, “This is anxiety”.
Mindfulness isn’t about making bad thoughts go away, but about seeing them as mental events. Imagine standing at a bus station and seeing ‘thought buses’ coming and going without having to get on them and be taken away. With gentle persistence this is possible.
Notice how much your fears affect your life. Are they keeping you from moving forward with what you want in your life?
If your fears feel overwhelming, the distress from the fear can interfere with your ability to function and you may experience intense anxiety or nervousness.
It’s normal to have fears. You may experience fear when you ride a bike for the first time or when you start a new job. However, when fears begin to overtake your life and affect your functioning, they become a problem.
As we go about our day, doing small mindful things such as noticing the sensations of things, the food we eat, and the air moving past the body as we walk, has huge power to interrupt our ‘autopilot’ mode we often use day to day, and gives us new perspectives on life.
Most of us have issues that we find hard to let go and mindfulness can help us deal with them more productively. We can ask: ‘Is trying to solve this by brooding about it helpful, or am I just getting caught up in my thoughts?’
Mindfulness lets us stand back from our thoughts and start to see their patterns. We can train ourselves to notice when our thoughts are taking over and realise that thoughts are simply ‘mental events’ that do not have to control us.
Mindfulness allows us to become more aware of the stream of thoughts and feelings that we experience, and to see how we can become entangled in that stream in ways that are not helpful.