[edith]

Originally Posted by QuantumJules

I would be more interested in how you do the anxiety as opposed to why you have these feelings. Once you have an understanding of the process you go through to feel anxious, you can start to develop a better strategy.

I just read a book on using mindfulness to deal with depression, and it said a similar thing. Recognize the physical symptom, deal with that - separate it from the emotion. It's been a very helpful strategy for me.

Also of interest, is what you get out of feeling this way. This sounds like a rhetorical question, but many people will get some kind of secondary gain from their problem.

This is such a great question. I think the answer helps a person to really tease out why they keep repeating patterns of negative thought. I was down and out one time, and my bro-in-law asked me what I was getting out of feeling that way. It helped me step outside the morass I was in and see it for what it what it really was.

It's been a great question I've used for a long time, but the other day I found that it's also helpful to use when thinking of if in terms of manifestation. If I have a conflict with someone, I may at first see all the reasons why it's their fault but if I ask myself what gain I am getting from it being their fault, I see how I could be manifesting their obnoxiousness - to satisfy something I want.

As far as anxiety about meeting someone goes, you might ask yourself if you're jumping too far in the future with the person (in your imagination). You may be attaching too much to your ideas about him, grasping too much. He's just a guy and you don't know him well (yet) and it could be that you might not want to be around him after you get to know him a little bit. Focus on the now. Now he is a person you don't know. The next Now is introduction. The Now after that is...whatever. You don't know because it hasn't happened yet!