Mindfulness for Stress and Anxiety

The Research-Proven Way to Deal with Anxiety and Stress

Anxiety is the most common mental health concern in America. Every year, almost 20% of adults struggle with an anxiety disorder. Stress is even more common. 80% of Americans feel stressed on a weekly basis. But more than two thirds of those struggling with anxiety and stress never receive help or treatment.

Mindfulness is a research-proven way to deal with anxiety and stress. But what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is being aware of the present moment, and mindfulness meditation is the formal practice of cultivating this full awareness. When we practice mindfulness, we practice being aware of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and other aspects of the present moment. When we practice mindfulness, we are not trying to change or get rid of our thoughts or feelings. Instead, we are just allowing them to be there, accepting whatever is in the present moment.

In over 200 studies of mindfulness and meditation, mindfulness has been found to be very effective for helping adults heal from stress and anxiety. But why are these ancient techniques so effective for our modern problem with stress and anxiety?

The Usual Strategies Don’t Work with Mental and Emotional Pain

First, let’s take a look at the strategies we typically try to use when we encounter mental and emotional pain like stress and anxiety. When we humans encounter a problem, the first thing we usually try to do is to fix it or get rid of it. The strategy works great with problems in our external world. For instance, if I have a problem with mice in my house, my first priority is going to be getting rid of those mice (in the most humane way possible, of course!). But the strategy of fix and get rid of whatever is bothering us does not work as well with our mental and emotional pain.

Many other approaches to psychotherapy and self-help offer certain solutions to end pain. They might promise an end to anxiety, depression, stress, burn out, trauma, or chronic pain. And of course we humans would want to get rid of our pain. Pain is miserable! Why on earth would we want to experience it? It also seems to make logical sense that any solution to our psychological problems would involve “fixing” or getting rid of that problem. It seems logical that if we want to overcome stress, we have to eliminate all (or at least most) of our stress and stressful feelings. If we want to overcome depression, it seems like we must first get rid of any feelings or symptoms of depression. If we want to overcome anxiety, it seems like we have to get rid of any anxious feelings and learn how to relax. To overcome trauma or chronic pain, it seems like we must rid ourselves of those things.

But research suggests that the more we struggle to get rid of our mental and emotional pain, like the painful thoughts or feelings that are bothering us, often the worse our suffering becomes. Our attempt to avoid the thoughts and feelings that cause us pain is called experiential avoidance. When I have a painful feeling of sadness, accompanied by the thought, “I am a worthless person,” if I try to push away that thought and feeling, or ignore it, or argue with it, or distract myself from it, I am engaging in experiential avoidance.

Research in recent decades suggests that when we engage in experiential avoidance, we get stuck in our pain even worse than before. For instance, research suggests that people who engage in experiential avoidance experience worse anxiety. When we try to avoid or get rid of our anxious thoughts and feelings, our anxiety actually increases. The same with depression: Research suggests that when we don’t accept the thoughts and feelings driving our depression, we become more entrenched in our depression, and we suffer more. Research suggest the same is actually true for trauma. According to the research, if we try to avoid the memories, thoughts, and feelings that our trauma causes, we are more likely to have PTSD and for our trauma to have a negative impact on our lives.  

As crazy as this sounds, if you take a moment to pause, I bet you have found this to be true in your life. Before finding my website, you have probably tried all sorts of techniques – some of them recommended by other professionals – to fix, solve, and get rid of your mental and emotional pain. But if you are visiting my website, I am also going to bet that those techniques haven’t been completely effective. Why is that? Let’s dig into why trying to get rid of our painful thoughts and feelings doesn’t work.  

Our Quicksand Minds

The mind is like quicksand. The more we struggle again our minds, and against our thoughts and emotions, the further we sink into the quicksand. The more I try to push away a painful thought, the further I get stuck in it. The more I struggle against a painful emotion, the deeper into it I sink. But when we stop struggling, that’s when we have a chance of getting free.

This is why I like the metaphor of our minds being quicksand so much. If I were stuck in quicksand, the more I struggled to pull myself out of the quicksand, the further I would sink into it and the more I would get stuck. To escape the quicksand, I would have to completely relax (which I imagine would be a pretty difficult thing to do if I were stuck in quicksand!) and float on my back. The only way to get out of the quicksand and not be swallowed who by it is to accept I am in it, stop struggle, and float.

Mindfulness the practice of not struggling in the quicksand of our thoughts or emotions. When we practice mindfulness or meditation, we aren’t trying to get rid of unpleasant thoughts or feelings. We aren’t trying to push them away. We are just letting them be, and we are letting ourselves be present with them. We aren’t fighting them anymore.

Paradoxically, when we stop fighting painful thoughts and emotions, they hurt us less.

 Pain versus Suffering

Buddhism describes this as the difference in pain and suffering.

Pain is unavoidable. It is part often human condition. We get sick. We get hurt. Our bodies stop working. We experience physical pain. People love get sick and hurt. People we love die. We know we will die. We feel painful emotions like sadness, fear, anger, and grief. The Buddhists believe pain is an unavoidable part of being human. There is no way to be human and totally get rid of our pain.

But suffering is different from pain, and according to the Buddhists, suffering is optional. Suffering comes from our struggle with our pain. When I try to deny or avoid or push away my painful thoughts and feelings, I am struggling with my pain. This struggle gets me further stuck in the quicksand of my mind, and this struggle is what causes my suffering.

 When we practice mindfulness, we are accepting our pain, which is inevitable. Remember, pain is not an optional part of the human experience. We can’t get rid of anyway. When we don’t struggle with our pain, we reduce or eliminate our suffering. And this is why mindfulness is so effective in helping our stress, anxiety, and other psychological concerns.

I Bet This Sounds Very, Very Strange

I want to pause here to acknowledge how weird and strange what I am saying probably sounds. In fact, what I am saying runs completely counter to how you have been thinking about your problems and concerns for years and years. What I am saying runs completely counter to how our culture thinks about solving problems in every part of our life.

 I believe that trying to use mindfulness to stop our experiential avoidance can only happen after we have tried other solutions to ending our pain, and after we have seen how these other solutions haven’t worked.  

I don’t use these techniques from the fields of mindfulness with my clients because of some distant and cold academic interest in them. I use these techniques because they have been the primary things that have helped in my life, and I have seen them help so many of my clients, as well. Like my clients, I am human. I have unavoidable human pain, and I am familiar with the desire to get rid of and “fix” that pain. I tried many different approaches in my personal life to do this, but, as you can guess, nothing worked. It wasn’t until I realized there was no way out of human pain that I found something that helped. I realized the pain is not optional. But what is optional is our suffering. If I am willing to accept my pain and not fight against it, I can decrease my suffering.

In future posts, I want to talk more about these concepts and offer some self-help techniques you can start using to practice mindfulness, accept your painful thoughts and emotions, and decrease your suffering.