Meditation!! I've had hypnosis before and it's fantastic, got rid of a bad fear of dogs when I was a kid and also for calming me down in my 20's when I was a bit of a psyco. The only down side to me about it is you have to pay.....but if it does the job then all's good I suppose. I'm now calmer than I've ever been due to taking up meditation. I've always had a fight or flight that was like a hair trigger and now it's not even thought about. There's a saying that goes, someone with depression lives in the past, someone with anxiety lives in the future, someone who's calm live in the now, the present moment. It's so true, when you meditate the first stage is present moment awareness, once you are totally in the moment then you start to watch the breath. You will have thoughts coming and going but just let them do that and return your attention to the breath. With practice the thoughts will fade away and you are just left with the breath. At this stage you will feel totally calm. The next stage when watching the breath, the breath starts to disappear, when this happens the feeling is blissful. When you come out of meditation you feel wonderful. The mind naturally loves to be calm, with practice it soon starts to trend towards this way. It's all good making plans for the future, everyone has to, but once they are made bring your mind back to the present moment. If you keep them in your head its like carrying round a big heavy bag and that will make you tired, unhappy and you won't sleep with all the thinking about them. Once you've put it down you'll feel light, energetic and you'll sleep like a baby as there's nothing on your mind. Just go back to your bag as and when needed to get the stuff of the moment out. A good example of present moment awareness, and the bag, is say a big tree dismantle. The tree has 40 branches, one of which is going to be a real challenge. Anxiety way of dealing with tree, look at tree, see hard branch, make plan for hard branch, start working on tree thinking about hard branch, worry through whole takedown and then get to hard branch, deal with hard branch using plan, all's good, finish tree. Present moment way, look at tree, see hard branch, make plan, put plan down, have a really good time and enjoy the moment on all the other 39 easy branches, get to hard branch, pick up plan and put into action, all's good, finish tree, fantastic day had by all! It was exactly the same day, just one thought of in the future and one in the now. See what I mean?
I could write for hours on this subject because its made such a difference to me and my life, and all friends I have taught it has changed their life's too. There's lots of FREE info on meditation on the net, don't go paying loads on any of the sites that say they will change your life for £xxxxxx......anxious people are easy to make money out of because they'll do anything to get rid of it.
Hope that helps. Have typed it on phone so may not be perfectly put across but hope it makes sense.
