How Do I Stop Anxiety in my Head?

How do I stop anxiety? Mindfulness meditation and guided imagery can help.

How do I stop the anxiety in my head? A good first step is to realize that your negative beliefs and thoughts may be one of the factors contributing to or causing anxiety. When your thoughts are habitually negative, they send messages to your body which responds by tightening muscles, and causing you to breath faster. If left unchecked, anxiety can intensify and cause panicky feelings in your heart. Listen to what you are saying to yourself inside and realize these thoughts are based on beliefs that are not true. To stop anxiety in your head, you must challenge these beliefs and turn them around. Where does one start?

A great place to begin is with the practice of Mindfulness Meditation. Mindfulness teaches one how to observe, in a detached manner, all rising thoughts and feelings. The next step after noticing the content, quality and intensity of the thought is to remain detached, realizing that the thoughts have no power or even “truth” on their own. It is only when we enliven or empower the thought by identifying with it, for example by saying, “I am so anxious.” “My anxiety is off the chart!” or “I could die from all this stress.”

Mindfulness and meditation help stop anxiety.

There is great relief to be gained, once we learn how to see these thoughts for what they are, old beliefs and patterns without any power of their own. Meditation helps to ease anxiety through relaxing the body, calming the emotions, and focusing the mind. With the addition of applied mindfulness, you gain a set of tools that can help you in your efforts to move beyond anxiety.

Challenge Your Reality

Some typical self-limiting beliefs are: “I am unworthy,” “I am not going to succeed,” “I am unloved and unlovable.”  These beliefs are actually attached to self-images of ourselves. These thoughts and beliefs generate habits that become so entrenched that they are hard to challenge and change.

One key to understanding the persistence of these self-images is that they all begin with the words, “I am…”Contemplate that for a few moments. Your own words are labelling you, telling you what you are. Words do have power if we believe them. We say the words and mobilize the feelings they tend to call forth from within us. Pretty soon, even the environment cooks up a situation that seems to bear out our deeply held, habitual belief.

Stop anxiety by changing your self image.

Go inside and find out when you took these beliefs on.  What is your belief? Who gave you these messages? At what age?  What’s the evidence that they are the truth?  Do you remember occasions when they were not true?  If you have evidence that they are not true, then you must conclude that your beliefs are rooted in something from your past. Then realize that they are just a story that was told to you, one that you have repeated over and over to yourself until you have trouble hearing anything else. You have adopted the self-image as “you”.

Positive Self-Thoughts

Often, we are unconscious of our thoughts, but our body registers the anxiety in the physical ways mentioned in the first paragraph.  Try to be aware of your thoughts. If you hear yourself saying “I am unworthy” and then there are times when you do feel worthy, you then know that it’s not 100% true or accurate. The same goes for succeeding in life or being loved.  Review those positive life-affirming memories to remind yourself of the veracity of them.

Use positive self-thoughts, “I am worthy, able to succeed, and to be loved.”  These are like the antidote to a poison that has made you ill or harmed you. One way to apply the antidote is to write down sentences so you can remember them and use them as affirmations that you can repeat every time the self-image appears. Then calm your body using deep breathing, muscle relaxation and guided imagery in which you see and deeply feel what you want to believe, what you know deep inside yourself to be true.  Feel what it’s like to be deeply loved, deeply worthy and what success means for you.

Choose a Reality you Want

You can choose your own reality, whether it’s negative or positive, so why not create a positive one?  Deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing (in and out through your belly) can help you relax and calm your nervous system along with the physical sensations. Once you can control those symptoms, you will begin to feel better. Guided imagery helps you envision the changes you want to make. Your body and brain believe what you say, see, hear, smell, touch and what you receive through your senses. Don’t believe the lies you have told yourself. Envision living a wonderful life of calmness, beauty, harmony and serenity. Feel those energized qualities in your body, mind and spirit and say goodbye to anxiety.

Recommended Meditations for Stopping Anxiety

Here are some recorded guided meditations that will help with anxiety:

5 Minute Meditation for Anxiety - Relieve anxiety and stress with this 5-minutes meditation utilizing the powerful Ho’oponopono mantra to calm your emotions and still your mind and bring the whole of your being back into balance. A complete reset of your day in just 5 minutes.

Meditation on Joy - Learn what obscures joy and let go. Then tap into joy’s true source and share with others.

The Healing Tree Meditation - This meditation incorporates guided imagery, heart-focused breathing and hands on healing to help you clear out old energy and bring in new and fresh energy while connecting with nature.

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation - Mindfulness is a starting point. We need to become open, aware and alert to where we are, what our mind is thinking, our feelings are feeling and where our urges may want to take us. This mindfulness meditation introduces us to mind in its natural state which is spacious, open and free.

Mindfulness Breathing Meditation - This meditation introduces the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation..

Anxiety Relief Meditation - Relieve anxiety with this gentle, guided meditation. Enjoy soothing music and a loving, compassionate voice guiding you through deep relaxation and transformation. Not only leaving you feeling calm, relaxed and at peace, but also offering the opportunity for profound healing of that which has been the cause of your anxiety,

Meditation for Anxiety - this meditation works on dispelling the energies that cause anxiety.

Check our collection of guided meditations for more Mindfulness Meditations and Anxiety Relief Meditations.