Dear Aislynn:

You wrote last that you can’t even imagine what your family would think if you told them about the extent of your anxiety. What do you think they would think?

About Mindfulness: anchoring that “floating” spaced out head in a body and in the Here and Now environment. Back in March 2011 when I was first introduced to the concept by my then good therapist, he sent my email short guided meditation audios that started me on mindfulness. They all start with sitting comfortably (but I learned to do these things while lying down and later walking..), taking long, slow breaths. After that the audios were combinations of paying attention to the sounds around me (and in me), connecting to the sense of hearing, paying attention to what I see, sense of seeing, feel with my hands, sense of touch, even smell, taste and later paying attention to sensations in the body, pressure in the chest area and staying with the sensation, as well as paying attention to feelings otherwise, like sadness or anger, and paying attention to my thoughts, as in recording the thoughts I am having within a minute.

This all was a long, long process. You can’t do it all quickly. It is not a performance thing, you have to relax into it and let time do its thing. You can’t “get it” and do it …from now on. You get it for a moment, go “Ah”- and then you forget, get spaced out again…

Again and again the audios were about it being okay to lose focus, to get lost again. Mindfulness is about returning again and again to what you pay attention to. You get lost in self talk while listening to sounds, you NOTICE you got lost, you GENTLY bring yourself back to the sounds… again and again and again…

Do you think you can download guided meditations, short to start with, on mindfulness? There are different ones by different people and you can choose who fits you better.

anita