After over six months of silence, I feel like I have something to say again. I have started a post several times in the past months, but it never seemed to be worth posting, or even finishing. It hasn't been an easy year, yet again, and it wasn't by any means clear where it was all going to lead - if anywhere. But I have learned a few things this year, and I would like to share this harvest, even if the fruit may taste a little bitter.

The struggle with anxiety that I described in my previous post continued. The book about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy taught me three things:

1. Thoughts create emotions, not the other way around.
2. A lot of the negative thoughts I have about myself are founded on flawed thinking, and therefore just plain untrue.
3. Most of my anxiety is rooted in a deep-seated need for approval and love.

Those are valuable insights, and I am grateful to have had them. I'm not too sure what to do with them, though. The suggestions in the book for how to re-program one's thinking seem facile. It really isn't that easy to change the way you think. Some patterns are so old and ingrained, some of them may even be ancestral, that it takes a bit more time. Or perhaps some of it will never be resolved.

Which brings me to the rest of my harvest. As summer faded into a warm and dry autumn, I discovered some new ways of looking at and dealing with my anxiety. The first one came in the form of mindfulness meditation. For the last six weeks or so, I have been trying out this ancient Buddhist meditation practice. Once a day, and when I'm doing really well twice, I am sitting down to pay attention to my breathing for twenty minutes. Just six weeks of this has taught me so much about acceptance, kindness and being awake to life as it happens. Certainly enough to persevere for longer.

In the past, I've always had the impression that meditation is to do with quieting your mind. So when a thought crosses your mind, you shut it up and push it away so you can return to the stillness. However, for me the consequence of that tends to be more stress: I am judging the thoughts that I have as 'bad'; I am making an effort to push them away and keep them away; I am judging myself as 'not very good' at meditation; ... In contrast, he mindfulness practice I am learning and finding very valuable, encourages me to just observe and be with what is there without judging or resisting it.

For years my guiding spirits have told me to stop fighting myself. I never knew how. And finally, this sounds like a doable way: just accept what is. Mindfulness meditation creates a feeling of spaciousness around the thoughts and feelings that go on inside me. I really believe that this sense of spaciousness is my true identity. Some people call it their 'higher self', which they see as the serene, loving and compassionate aspect of themselves. I call it the part of my that touches the universe. From that perspective, it is easier to look at myself, at my life, and accept it for what it is, without fighting it.

My compassionate self is also capable of being kind to me. I have never really known how to do that, either. I have always been my own sternest judge. Now I am learning to be nice to myself. It is actually one of the harder challenges of this process. I'm very good at harshly telling myself off for all kinds of minor failings. I am learning, slowly, to be as good a friend to myself as I am to the people I love.

My main reason for sticking with the mindfulness meditation, though, is that it teaches me something that I have always wanted to learn but never managed: to be fully awake in life and notice its beauty as it happens. Even if it turns out this meditation technique does nothing for my anxiety, it is still worth doing for that reason. I believe that all life is sacred, and we owe it our full and reverent attention.

As well as meditation, I am trying a number of other tools to help me feel my way out of my anxiety. The first thing I tried was a prayer. I felt that, after years of trying, I had clearly failed to help myself, so I needed to ask something greater than myself for some help. Even before I started meditating, I knew I needed a wider perspective, so I wrote a prayer addressed to 'the Keepers of the Great Cauldron that contains the ever swirling stars'. It helped me feel wider, more expansive, and less identified with the anxious parts of me. It really helps, and still use it every day before my meditation practice and at odd moments when I feel myself getting stressed.

I am also revisiting some of the tools I learned on the Living Druidry course a couple of years ago. I am looking at how I defend myself  from perceived threat and how my defences are actually more hurtful than helpful to me. I am finding and allowing myself to feel emotions that I have stored in my body, probably for many years. More about that in my next post.

So far, all of this seems to be helping. My mood has been more even ever since I started with that prayer. I am gaining a perspective and noticing what is going on more before I automatically react an push it away. Which doesn't mean that there aren't any bad days. Things can get really tough, especially when some of the more distressing physical symptoms of my anxiety make themselves evident.

But there is enough improvement for me to feel hopeful and ready to commit to sticking with this for an extended time. I have promised myself to stick with the mindfulness meditation until my birthday at the end of February. Let's see how it goes.

I'm learning meditation from a book recommended by another dear friend: Calming your Anxious Mind, by Jeffrey Brantley. I would recommend it even for people without anxiety problems because it contains the clearest instructions on meditation I've ever read.