The reason you're suffering and the solutions for it.

Speaking as someone who had experience with panic attacks, I would invite you to read my article so hopefully you will use this information, and the additional resources provided so you can start getting out of your suffering today! :P

I originally wanted to post this article as a reply to someone, but i then decided that it was a better idea to share it with all of you guys.

I've found that there are 3 effective ways to mitigate anxiety, all having their own time and situation that they are most effective, I would not say that one of them is always the best, it depends on the person and situation. These 3 ways are:

1. Ensure yourself that whatever you're scared of won't happen. (only if the fear is really, really irrational)

2. Accept everything that might happen to you. Just accept it. Accepting is observing it without reacting

3. Laugh! Blow up the thing you're scared up into something ridiculous that you can actually laugh about it. I.e. if you're worrying about your bills: Imagine a huge, 200ft electric bill that terrorizes the city and says evilishy: "Haha, I will redeem all your money!".

Now, let's discuss this a little bit further. We start with number 1, the technique of dismissing.

this only works when you deal with an irrational fear, a fear where you are about 99,99% sure of that you never have to deal with it. Often times this is not the case and the fear can be rational, si this is not always recommended, however, you can do it whenever it feels right to do so. Now, You're problably only thinking: :"What if this, what if that?". That will scare you. You are problably very familiar with these hypothetical "What if?" thoughts. This is because your mind is conditioned to prepare you for situations that seem threathening to you, or your ego/mind (Your identification with your thoughts and mind is your ego). Your ego always wants to take you out of pain and into pleasure. But the ego is always busy with the past or the future, never with the present moment. So it always prepares you for something that could happen in the future, but it doesn't care about how you feel at the moment, it just wants to survive and feel secure in the future.

But that "future", never arrives for the ego. Because by definition the ego-mind is always busy with the past or the future. So basically what I'm saying here is: You may believe, conciously or unconciously, that you have to prepare for something bad that could happen, but that bad thing doesn't ever happen because your anxiety and worries that come fourth out of your mind are ALWAYS related to something that has happened or will happen. Let me ask you something. Do you have a problem right now

Think about it. Even when you are being in a panic attack, when your legged is being chopped off, you're never actually worrying about what happens in that moment, because that's impossible. Your anxiety comes from the thought "What's going to happen next, i'm scared of what will, may or might happen next". And when being dealt physical pain, there is no fear when the pain is too intense, because all your attention is focused on the pain. Then your body reacts to that pain by screaming so it will distract your attention from the pain source to the screaming. When the pain is less intense, you start anticipating again to what more will come, thus you start to fear again.

But the physical pain, is actually not the cause of suffering here, it is your fear. Pain in itself is just a sensation, that's all. Very wise and enlightened people see that by experience. You will only suffer when you think about enduring the pain. Enduring implies future, future implies ego-mind. You can't endure something in the moment. In the moment you can only be, that's all. So even if you are in physical pain, the pain does not equal suffering if you are present in the moment. If you're not present, you're gonna have thoughts.

The thoughts I'm talking about here are mental reactions. Thoughts do not necessarily contain words, thoughts can also easily be unconcious or unnoticed. Basically any interpretations, judgements, anticipations, memories, analysations etc are thoughts. Thoughts do not always cause suffering, let's make that clear. There are exceptions, but that's only the case if the thoughts feel creative and empowering to you because you're learning and creating. It are the thoughts in form of reactions to situations that cause suffering. But these reactions are so, so much more common than you would think.

That's why I personally prefer to use technique 2, accepting it. Because the whole reason you suffer are reactions in the form of thoughts. If you don't react anymore, you will break the conditioned pattern of the mind of reacting to everything and anything, and you will gradually move more into a state where you don't react but just observe. Accepting is also returning to a state of being, of being present. Because you accept, you retrieve the energy that was all trapped in your head, in your brain where you were thinking, back to the rest of your body that can be alive and be present. The more you start accepting the reality of what is, the less you will react, the more you will move into a state of peace and calmth. Tranquility.

Don't be scared of what might happen. Yes I know some situations can be very though, and I know some situations will cause suffering anyway at this stage, but it is a place to learn from. You can learn from everything. Not a single life experience is useless when you use it as an oppurtunity to learn from. Whether it is depression, anxiety, a car accident, a loved one that passed away, being sent to jail, financial problems. If you only reacted to it and made no effort to see it objectively and accept it, yes, then your experience was useless. If you however, decide to use the experience as an oppurtunity to learn from and grow from, then a 'negative' life experience or situation can be a really powerful transformer. Also, if you made these mistakes and were to preoccupied with your suffering and felt sorry for yourself all the time avoiding personal responsibility and getting caught up with the identification of the victim mentality, then don't beat yourself down because of it. The past has happened, there is no way to turn it around. Instead, change now.

Technique number 3, I personally find it to be a really powerful tool. Laugh about your situation. I'm quite scared of the dark. Whenever I find myself going to the toilet in the middle of the night being afraid of burglars, aliens, ghosts, or whatever my suggestive mind likes to come up with, I just imagine myself seeing them, and then dancing with them on loud house music. This breaks my pattern of fear and makes me laugh, and often I even forget what I was scared of.

Humor is the opposite of fear, so use this technique whenever you can. And you can think of something funny in every situation, there's always the comedian in you who can see the humor of it. When you get annoyed by a pop-up in the internet, imagine your computer flowing full of pop-ups and then exploding into an nuclear explosion. Make it as ridiculous as you can.

Lastly, I want you to consider this. Why is your life so important?

No, I'm not encouraging you to see that it's meaningless, and therefore you decide that it's better to step out of it. No, not at all. Rather, I want you to to realize that one of the reasons you're suffering is because you're attached to your physical body. As long as your physical body is present, your concious mind is too, you think. You're attached to this life because you think it is the only thing you will ever have.

Why are people often so sad when they know they're about to die by, for instance, cancer? It's because they think death is a degredation. Why would it be? What evidence have you got for that.

Problably you'll get some kind of huge conflict if you start regarding life as meaningless. In my opinion, life is definately not meaningless, we have a huge universal, yet individual task to accomplish. But your life in this particular physical body, only the life span of 80 +/- years, is relatively not that meaningful at all. Now even if it was meaningless, than you stiill would have no excuse to not get everything out of it. Because why not?

I personally believe in something higher. NO, i'm not religious, nor will I ever be. But I believe in reïncarnation, and that the very soul which inhabits the physical body we live in right now, will return to earth over and over again, to fulifll it's spiritual duty. To learn from the experiences on earth. In between lives, I believe we will return to the place were our true selves where ever created which is a place of total harmony and peace. Suffering is only created on earth, I do not believe in hell, how can you every be eternally punished for mistakes you've made because you grew up in a neighbourhood which was prone to violence, where your family abused you and you saw nothing but hate and bitterness. Therefore, because of all that pain that was inside you, you became hateful yourself too. You acted out bad behaviours because you were hurt, you were damaged. Nobody gave you help when you needed it most. How can you possibly be eternally punished for that if you grew up in such poor circumstances?
Luckily, there's a reason for most of our bad life situations, it's to learn from.
If you want to learn more about this reïncarnation things and souls, read Journey of souls, Destiny of souls from Micheal newton

Whether you believe in reïncarnation and souls or not, it doesn't matter. If you're a really logical and rational person, only taking information in that is derived from the senses, then go with the more logical and pragmatic information I gave you. If you don't agree what all that I said, then don't judge me as "untrustyworthy" just because you saw one thing you didn't agree with. Take in the things that you do agree with, leave the rest if you find that necessary, or incomprehensible.

Never forget that every experience is one that you can learn from, taken one the right way. Never forget to accept and laugh about everything you experience. But most of all, never stop expanding yourself and growing.

I will post some really good resources to keep you growing:

First I will post a link (if possible) to the audio program that changed my panic disorder around, it's a really good one with a "no good money back guarantee". I'd really, REALLY urge you to take a look at this one:

IlovePanicAttacks.com & Attackyouranxiety.com - attack your panic and anxiety attacks

Books:

- The power of now, Eckhart Tolle
- Intuition, Osho
- Awaken the Giant within, Anthony Robbins (very 'western psychology' and extensive, take the more spiritual-tinted books as the main things though, this book as extra techniques)
- Journey of souls & Destiny of souls, Micheal Newton.

Youtube channels:

- Elliot hulse
- Infinite waters (diving deep)
- Eckhart Tolle

Peace, Love, may you all be happy!

I would add "The New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle as well as it addresses the pain body.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Skanzi.

Good stuff!

I get stuck on #1.To tell myself that 99.9% of the time my worst fear won't happen is like telling myself not to think of a pink elephant. It's exactly the .1% that terrifies me. I feel anxious even reading it.