Shared Joy said:
Being in a dire strait, I me up with a profound declaration, which sounded something like this:" Today is the last day of my life; only today should I face this fear and hardship, as tomorrow doesn't exist. Could I gather enough force to cope just one day, in order to leave everything in good order behind me? Yes, I can, for one day I can do this. As today is the last day of my life , and tomorrow doesn't exist".
When I started to say this to myself the anxiety started to vanish. It was not just an intellectual exercise but it was adopted on all levels. I literally had nothing to loose, nothing to anticipate, just live one day, do all I can, and be done with it.
That's a great way to look at things Shared joy, thanks for...sharing!
It also occurred to me that while anxiety, depression etc. can be results of objective experiences and reality, they shouldn't really last too long, depending on the causal factors. If they do, it can be that we have fallen into the trap of identifying with the fear or wallowing in it, which can turn into self-pity/self importance.
A possible antidote to this is to become aware of or recognize our own relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Thinking about this and accepting it can be very liberating because it sort of absolves us of "responsibility" and by that I mean the feeling of being overly burdened with the problems of life, even anxiety, "my problems" "the problems of the world", fear etc. By ditching this subjective and rather self-focused understanding of "responsibility" - by realizing we are not so important in the grand scheme of things - we can free ourselves to chose to do and feel whatever we want in any given moment.
At that point we're free to do what is in us to do without the stress of "have to" or fear or a sense of being coerced. The result, I think, is that we end up doing what we would have done anyway, but with much more lightness and much less stress, which may open the door to more creativity, and therefore probably doing what we do in a way that is better for all concerned.