What do you do when you get an anxiety attack or high stress levels out of the blue? Well, we’ve been through this many times on Sane Advice haven’t we. We just accept the current situation and accept the fact that we ALL have some “bad days” no matter how centered and relaxed with “think” we are.
So last post I was actually writing in the middle of a full blown panic attack which was quite the experiment for me. I could still think and type words on my computer, but I was literally in a huge anxiety fog or cloud. I tried to analyze what was going on in my life, and figure out why I was so freaked out all of a sudden. I looked at my personal life, my relationships, my sleep patterns, eating patterns, exercise routine (or lack thereof), my financial situation, my fun factor, my business, my medication – my health, and on and on and on and on. Of course thinking about it didn’t help much – just made it worse of course.
Then all of a sudden it lifted. For no rhyme or reason, my fear, extreme anxiety, and stress lifted. So out of the blue, the stress came on hard, and then the stress just left. The only thing I did different that seemed to help allot was the meditation I started doing with my brother and sister-in-law. they had just come back from Whistler, B.C., where they went to a Deepak Chopra event that lasted 6 days and nights. They went deep into the practices of relaxation, physical and mental centering, and you name it. They are meditating twice a day now, and it has changed their lives for the better. I will also be meditating going forward because it did make a huge difference in how I felt. Meditation may be the reason my anxiety just floated away out of the blue.
One thing I noticed before the stress came, was my “stinkin’ thinkin”. For some reason I was telling myself that everything I saw was crap. No matter how much I tried to remind myself of the truth – the truth being that everything is actually beautiful and perfect, which makes the ego mind very angry. In fact, when the ego mind is angry and making itself miserable, just hearing the truth drives it crazy.
I know enough now about how the ego mind works, that I should know better than to let it run amuck – right! – right!? ……… wrong. We all have our days (and sometimes weeks) when our egos take full control of our minds and bodies. When the ego is having full rein of our day(s) it goes hard like a starving bear in bakery.
I told my wife what was going on, and I said to her,
You know when the universe told my ego about enlightenment, it thought it heard entitlement.
She said,
Did you just make that up?
We both agreed that was kinda funny, so i thought I would share the line with you. You see, life is strange – we wake up one morning and decide that everything is pure bunk, and we completely throw out everything that is real and true. We know that this is the ego sensing some weakness, and pouncing into have a hay-day with misconceptions, exaggerations, fear, anger, and all around STINKIN’ THINKIN’. Now I didn’t make up that old phrase. That was something I heard my mother use after her Al-Anon meetings and readings.
I can see that in the future of my own life, these bouts with stinkin’ thinkin’ will be less and less frequent. I truly believe everything I say here on the blog, and I truly believe what Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Michael Beckwith, the Dali Lama, Eckhart Tolle, Jesus, and Buddha are saying. The step that I (and we) need to take is from believing to KNOWING.
We can read all of the blogs and books, go to seminars, watch DVDs, and listen to CDs until we saturate our minds with the truth – that helps – I’m not saying it doesn’t, but we have to get to stage of knowing, and not just believing. This is where meditation and lifestyle comes in. This is when discipline comes in. This is what the ego dislikes intensely.
The ego still wants to be lazy, sleep in, eat whatever it wants, never exercise, watch T.V. for many hours at a time, smoke, take drugs, drink alcohol excessively, and complain whenever possible about everything it sees. When you change these lifestyle patterns with discipline knowing comes in and believing becomes concrete.
Imagine never watching the news, reading a newspaper, or sad and violent television programming. Imagine never filling your body with cigarette smoke, or chewing tobacco. Imagine never drinking more than one glass of wine in a two month period. Imagine meditating twice a day for 20-30 minutes. Imagine exercising every day. Imagine only eating good food and never to excess. Just imagine.
For most of us humans floundering around, we have trouble imagining the above, because we have never lived liked that, and we shudder (or should I say our egos shudder) at such a lifestyle. I just read the above paragraph back to myself and it scares the crap out of me! (just kiddin’) But just imagine how we would feel. I read that and I think of how much that would change the lives of the people around me. I would be living a much different life of sure.
My suggestion to all (and to myself) is to slowly start bringing that lifestyle into reality. Start by eating “a little bit” better. Start meditating 5 minutes a day. Take a really short walk around the block every couple of days. If you smoke cigarettes, try cutting back a few cigarettes a day. You can do that by not smoking from pure habit, and only when you are really having a nicotine withdrawal reaction. Just start slow, and move towards healthier habits. DO NOT go hard and make yourself miserable by infuriating the ego. Be kind to your ego and treat like the spoiled little whiner child that it is. Slowly take your ego by the hand and compliment it on it’s efforts. Tell your ego that you are just going to back off the unhealthy habits “a little bit”, and tell your ego you have no intention of getting rid of it. Tell the ego the truth – it will always be there and a part of you, but it doesn’t have to fear anything. Say to your ego,
Everything is going to be O.K.
Which it is. The ego does like to hear these words too. Don’t forget that the ego is frightened at the prospect of ANY change at all. It fears goodness and happiness changes, it fears badness and unhappiness changes too. It wants everything to stay the same, because it’s barely hanging on to accepting what it real and what is now.
So when you are making these changes in your life, little by little, remind your ego that everything is going to be O.K. You can use affirmations which you can repeat over in your head. These affirmations are a wonderful method of quieting the frightened ego and it’s childish fears.
So when you see that out of the blue, you are feeling frightened, angry, unsatisfied with what is, or just plain sad and depressed, just know that it’s the ego at work, and it’s days and hours are surely numbered – and they are. The ego’s total control usually only lasts a day or so in most humans, before reality sets in and they begin to feel better.
For those of us who have BIGGER egos, we can go into the pain for weeks and sometimes months at a time. We end up sometimes taking medication just to calm ourselves down. We sometimes consumer unhealthy things like alcohol, drugs, and massive amounts of nicotine to try and feel better. Those of us with the big egos will suffer more, but we TOO swing out of the funk and begin “getting real again”. That’s when we can start making some gradual changes towards a better lifestyle.
Gotta run – gonna go play some golf today.
Love ya – Jacob