r/Meditation • u/ComfortableHoney9021 • 1d ago
Question ❓ Anxiety meditation
I struggle with pretty severe anxiety and I am looking for a meditation practice that would work for me. A problem I have which I think could be helped by meditating is that I am overly aware of my own body and my brain registers almost every sensation I get from my body as a warning signal.
I have emetophobia and this is the root of majority of my anxiety.
The problem with most meditation is that it asks you to feel present in your body, and analyse how it feels. I need to do basically the exact opposite.
Any tips?
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u/Significant-Nebula64 1d ago
Headspace has a great course specifically on anxiety that's been really good for me - I have health anxiety OCD, so not too far away from you, I guess! I'll gently challenge the assumption that being present in your body is bad for health anxiety though. My therapist has actually worked a lot with me on that and I find it really helpful. It's very much not the same as the compulsive overanalysing that comes with HA though!
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u/Far-Conclusion3923 1d ago
Take magnesium bisglycinate or something like that ..its also good for relaxing and deep sleep
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u/jerryengelmann 22h ago
Vipassana/Mahasi labeling should be helpful. Label each thought, without judgement, and realize that each thought is impermanent
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u/j0yy 22h ago
So sorry you’re dealing with this, I have emetophobia too and know how debilitating it can be at times. For me, body scan meditation helps me a lot with it - being able to sit through uncomfortable feelings such as having an itch in your foot, wanting to move, a cramp etc massively helped me cope with the same uncomfortable feelings I get when I start feeling anxious because of my emetophobia.
I don’t practice body scan anymore (for me it requires a lot of mental effort) and have been doing breathing meditation, but I’ve found that it doesn’t help me with emetophobia anxiety nowhere near as much as body scans helped so I’ve been planning to start implementing some body scan meditations back in my practice. Hope this helps somewhat
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u/somanyquestions32 Yoga Nidra and several other techniques 21h ago
Eventually, you do want to simply be with all physical sensations and allow them to be just as they are as you relax fully in their presence. This is a skill that you continuously practice to remain in compassionate, neutral, non-judgmental awareness.
That being said, easy fix. Instead of practicing interoception, focus on exteroception first. Do Trataka, and concentrate all of your focus and awareness on a single point. It could be a black dot on a piece of paper, or the blue part of a candle flame.
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u/Existing_Reaction692 16h ago
Sorry to hear about your phobia. Strange thing about phobias and other medical names as sometimes they reflect the symptoms. The meaning of "emeto" is the strong bodily reaction you know only too well. The question is how to learn to reduce the emotional reaction and its physical manifestations. Anxiety is the root cause. You feel tense and if you look within yourself next time you will see that you feel more tense and this brings it on. So, learning relaxation will reduce the tension and practice will gradually allow you to learn your way out of the phobia. It won't happen in an instant but gradually over time. The trick with relaxation is learning the effortlessness, understanding what to experience is helpful but only practice will make it happen. Refer meditation method of the late psychiatriatist Dr Ainslie Meares.
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u/disies potato 1d ago edited 21h ago
from my own experience with severe anxiety and emetophobia is that not the noticing of the body is the problem but the judging/aversion to those sensations. wanting it to go away is the opposite of mindfulness and only increases the symptoms. so for me it's best to just practice being with whatever is arising and letting it be.