Anxiety

[AdilAzhar]

Hello everyone. My name is Adil. My anxiety is particularly bad these days. Every night I’ve got really bad tension on the left side of my neck and I can’t sleep properly. Can’t take my focus away from anything other than my physical symptoms. It’s exhausting and definitely affecting the quality of my life. I have Xanax as an emergency medicine but I don’t want to take it. I hope everyone is doing well.

[countinghyacinths]

I can relate, my left side is a constant issue for me too. It sucks and I’m sorry that it’s keeping you from sleeping. Chamomile tea plus massaging the area used to work for me, maybe that could help? I hope you can get some restful sleep soon.

[AdilAzhar in reply to countinghyacinths]

I’m sorry to hear that it’s an issue for you too. I’m glad you’ve found something that helps you though. Chamomile helps me a lot too. I appreciate the reply very much and hope you also have many restful nights of sleep.

[CLB1125 in reply to countinghyacinths]

I use volutern . It has a strong anti inflammatory in it.

[AdilAzhar in reply to CLB1125]

What is Volutern.

[CLB1125 in reply to AdilAzhar]

It is like bengay or aspercreme. It’s over the counter. I’m in the us so maybe you don’t have it where you live.

[CHRIS198412]

You can take Melatonin 10 mg, a very mild herbal sleep aid. You will fall asleep in 10 minutes. No hangover in the morning when you wake. Or you can listen to 8 hour easy music for meditation or relaxation.

[AdilAzhar in reply to CHRIS198412]

Melatonin tends to make me more drowsy than less anxious but I’ll see if I can get my hands on some. Thank you!

[CHRIS198412 in reply to AdilAzhar]

But at least ypu fell asleep.

[Worrier1960]

I obsess about symptoms as well. I have the same feelings about the drugs, but I take them anyway. Life is too short to suffer.

[AdilAzhar]

You’re probably right. Shouldn’t just add another thing to be anxious about to the fold.

[Icarus_Flight]

I experience anxiety due to pain or physical symptoms. Meditation has helped, although I haven’t been faithful to do it when I’ve been feeling better.

This course has been immensely beneficial to me over the years. The instructor, Ines Freedman, had severe arthritis from an early age and so she speaks from experience to this topic.

Here’s the handout from the course (The PDF link from the other page is currently broken):

insightmeditationcenter.org...

Here are the recordings of the class, as well as the older class:

audiodharma.org/series/57/t...

I’m currently working through this series about fear:

audiodharma.org/series/16654

I particularly found interesting his observation that “The ability to tell ourselves stories and have an emotional response is something we should not underestimate. Probably most anxiety is a product of story telling. Product of imagining futures.”

When I’m having symptoms, it seems I automatically experience anxiety, but I think there’s something to the idea of telling a story: Maybe I won’t get to sleep, maybe I’m getting worse, maybe I’ll have this forever, etc.

Hope this helps some, and hope you feel better soon!

[AdilAzhar in reply to Icarus_Flight]

I appreciate this a lot, thank you! Meditation has definitely helped me out in the past and I'm also guilty of not being as faithful to practicing it as I should. I appreciate the handouts on the course as well as the audio recordings. Also I would definitely agree that anxiety is a product of the stories we tell ourselves. Appreciate this and hope you're doing well always!

[Icarus_Flight in reply to AdilAzhar]

Since your pain is coming from tension in the neck, maybe a massage would help. I also recommend massage tools like the Theracane (the best!) or even just two tennis balls on either side of the spine while lying on the floor and slowly work them down the whole length of the back.