Page 87 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author
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HOW TO MANAGE ANXIETY & END PANIC ATTACKS
who does not integrate some form of meditation into their treatment plans. It is common sense to learn how to manage thoughts since anxiety is about how and what we think. So maybe it is time to figure out how to choose what we think about! Meditation helps us do that.
If you don’t like meditation, I invite you to give up being right about it here and to be curious and consider exploring this skill. You may think this is part of the new agey “woo-woo” stuff. For this reason, therapists of all sorts often call meditation by different names and use different language when describing it. A spiritual or Christian counsellor might call it prayer. I know of a psychologist who works on a military forces base with soldiers and officers. She offers what she calls “mind control” classes. So consider using a term or language that works for you, and let’s get this skill under your belt as soon as possible! After all, I don’t want you to get one more silly song stuck in your head and not know how to change the thought. Ever spend a day listening to Jeopardy music in your head?! Do-do, do-do, do-do doo.... Doot, do, do, do, do, do, doo....
Meditation is not difficult, nor is there a wrong way to do it. It is simply a skill that with Intention, Repetition and Reward you can master. Just like learning to ski, let’s start on the baby slopes before we jump out of a helicopter onto the side of Mount Everest!
One of the goals of mindfulness is called metacognition, meta meaning “bigger than” and cognition being the “thought process.” Metacognition is the ability to watch your thought process. Imagine yourself as a fly on the wall of the room you are now in as you read this book. As that little fly, you observe yourself sitting in the room, and you see your words and thoughts. Imagine reflecting on these words and thoughts. Do you like them? Do they serve you well? Are they going to get you into trouble?
And what if as the fly you are able to tell yourself as the human sitting there that a certain thought that showed up, or the sentence you were about to say, was really not in your best
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