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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

> I just realized that there was nothing I could really do about anxiety or the physical symptoms that came along with it. I decided to mostly try to quit noticing and thinking about it. And that really helped.

I think this is mission accomplished from your mindfulness practice, you realized that you're not really doing anything and that anxiety just appears, you accepted it and it felt better.

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I had work related anxiety for awhile, and then one day I realized I could co-op that energy to go faster, by body and mind eventually decided they didn't like that mind hack and the anxiety subsided.

There are some problems with that type of approach - there are some things that won't vanish, if you stop thinking about them.

There is a big difference between having anxiety about something and the thing itself. Your anxiety can go away without the thing you are worrying about going away or not. So it doesn't matter whether or not something goes away, you can still lessen your anxiety about it.

It won't vanish.

Acceptance just makes it hurt much less.

One can either become the anxiety (you're wrapped up in it), or be conscious of it's presence as an observer (more like a third party observer).

Personally, I prefer the latter.

There are major differences between attempting to forcefully stop thinking about something, and accepting that you're thinking about something and then able to move on to something else.

In the first case, you're working against your brain, and getting it to behave is more likely to require some kind of violence and cause some sort of damage.

The other way, where you accept and then can move on, is more like moving with your brain.

Instead of trying to stop the river, you redirect it.

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