Reference: Book III: What is the Mind Really?
The Main Ideas
- Anxiety is the body and mind’s alarm system: worry, fear, or tension in response to a perceived threat.
- Anxiety may be reduced by looking at relevant memories and assimilating them.
- It is helpful to look at all the threats and moments of fear encountered in the past and assimilate them.
- The earlier are the moments that you can recall the better is the assimilation.
- When assimilation does not occur charge (tension) accumulates.
- One should take precautions against charge accumulating.
- It is good to understand this condition so you can help yourself and others.
- Here we are looking at mental objects per exercise in Chapter 5: Look, Be There and Confront.
- Such looking must follow the laws provided in Chapter 6: The Laws of Looking.
Anxiety can be understood as the body and mind’s alarm system. It appears as worry, fear, uneasiness, or physical tension when a threat is perceived—whether the threat is present now, anticipated in the future, or carried forward from the past.
This chapter approaches anxiety through the handling of mental objects: memories, images, impressions, thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations that arise in the mind. The purpose is not to suppress anxiety or argue with it, but to look directly at what it contains and gradually assimilate the experiences behind it. This follows the approach of Look, Be There and Confront and must be practiced according to the Laws of Looking provided in earlier chapters.
This exercise may not address all your anxiety, but it gives you a tool to reduce your anxiety by yourself.
Anxiety as an Alarm
Anxiety is not necessarily an enemy. Like a smoke alarm, it signals that something is being experienced as dangerous, uncertain, or beyond one’s ability to handle.
Sometimes the alarm concerns an immediate situation. For example, a person may feel anxious while driving through a severe storm because reduced visibility and slippery roads are real dangers. In such a case, anxiety may help the person slow down, focus, and take sensible precautions.
At other times, the alarm is activated by a present situation that resembles an earlier threatening experience. A person who was repeatedly criticized in childhood may feel intense fear before offering an idea at work. The meeting itself may be ordinary, but it can awaken old mental objects: remembered expressions, words, embarrassment, shame, or the expectation of rejection.
The anxiety is real as an experience, even when the present danger is small or absent. What needs attention is the material to which the alarm is responding.
Understanding anxiety helps a person respond more effectively to both their own distress and that of others. Anxiety often becomes more difficult when it is treated as weakness, irrationality, or personal failure.
The Role of Memory
Anxiety may be reduced by locating and assimilating the relevant memories behind it. A current fear often has connections to earlier moments of threat, helplessness, pain, loss, or confusion.
To assimilate a memory does not mean to erase it, deny it, excuse what happened, or force oneself to “get over it.” It means allowing the memory to be seen clearly enough that it is no longer operating as an unexamined source of alarm.
For example, a student may become anxious whenever they have to take a test. On looking, they may recall a recent exam in which they felt unprepared. Looking further, they may remember earlier school experiences: being ridiculed for a wrong answer, being punished for low grades, or being told that failure meant they were worthless. These memories may have become fused with the present act of taking a test.
As these mental objects are confronted and understood in their proper time and context, the present situation can be seen more accurately. A test becomes a test—not a repetition of every earlier moment of humiliation or danger.
Prerequisites to Exercise
If not already done:
- Read Chapter 5: Look, Be There and Confront, and practice “Exercise: Looking at Mental Objects.”
- Read Chapter 6: The Laws of Looking, and practice the Laws of Looking.
- Read Chapter 7: Looking at Memory, and practice looking at a memory.
Exercise 1
“Recall an area of life that causes anxiety.”
- This exercise may bring up a memory that contains charge.
- You must concentrate on resolving this charge first by ignoring all other thoughts.
- You resolve charge by focusing on sensations that come up, and assimilating them.
- The mind will naturally bring up an earlier memory of similar anxiety.
- Recognize the earliest memory of similar anxiety.
- Experience all sensations from that memory until the charge is gone.
- Experience your identity in that memory until the charge is gone.
- Now, you may recall another area of anxiety, and handle its memory as above.
- If the charge starts to accumulate, and becomes difficult to handle, go to Chapter 9: Overwhelm and Depression.
- When no more memories of anxiety are coming up on this exercise, you may go to the exercise below.
Exercise 2
Resolve the charge from a moment of anxiety fully as above before consciously bringing up another moment. Go over this list again and again until no new moments of anxiety are coming up.
Recall a moment when
- You felt alarmed.
- You sensed danger.
- There was a sudden sense of fear.
- There was a feeling of dread.
- Your heart was beating faster.
- Your body was physically tensed.
- You were worried about what might happen
- You felt helpless and confused.
- Something was seriously wrong.
- You felt unsafe.
- You were left alone.
- You felt something bad was going to happen.
- A loved one was very sick.
- Something bad could not be reverted.
- You were very afraid.
This is not a search for a single dramatic “root cause.” Anxiety can be shaped by many experiences. The aim is simply to make the chain of related mental objects visible, from the present fear toward earlier fears, without forcing conclusions.
With all earlier anxieties drained of their charge you will be in a much better position to address present conditions.
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