My "Anxiety Buster" protocol

This was something I started doing back when I was having some anxiety issues. it helped to break the anxiety. I never really thought until now about just doing it for general “mindfulness”. I think if I were to do it for that purpose, I wouldn’t go the three iterations each time. Once through would be enough to bring me back into the “moment”.

I think this might be a great thing to do whilst listening to a sub to be “in the moment” whilst listening.

Original:

What follows is a protocol I’m working on for helping to alleviate feelings of anxiety.

Anxiety is rooted in thought patterns that are future-focused and worry-based.

Even when we feel anxious about something in the past, it’s because we’re projecting the worry into how the future might play out in regards to that situation.

When you feel anxious about something, whether you know the reason or not, Try the following steps three (3) times through:

Look around your immediate environment, and look for an item of the following list of colors, one at a time, IN ORDER

  • Red
  • Orange
  • Yellow
  • Green
  • Blue
  • Purple
  • Brown
  • Black
  • White

It is important that you do this one color at a time, IN ORDER.

When I first started trying this, I used the familiar ROY-G-BIV color scheme most of us learned in our youth to remember the colors of the rainbow. The problem I myself ran into is that I really don’t have a good mental idea of Indigo and Violet, so I just went with “Purple”.

Remember, go through this list, one at a time, IN ORDER, three (3) times.

When you’re on your 2nd and 3rd iteration, it’s best if you notice a new item each time, but it’s OK if you use the same items in a pinch.

This may seem cumbersome at first, and that’s fine. You’re learning a new skill.

After just a few times of playing with it on the very first day of coming up with it, I noticed it became easier and easier.

One caveat: If you catch yourself starting to “obsess” overdoing this, take a break. The point of this process is to help stop feelings of anxiety in the moment by actually BEING in the moment. But if you start to feel anxious about the process itself, take a break and come back to it later.

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What if most of my stuff isn’t colorful? In front of me right now is a wood-colored desk (IKEA, so not real wood grain), a pair of large black widescreen monitors, black keyboard, black mouse, a black & white landscape photo in a black frame, a black iPhone, white earbuds… The only spot of color is the green Seagate label on an 8tb hard drive I’ve yet to install in my file server.

I don’t have a lot of color anywhere, really… my bookshelf has colors, but even those seem to be mostly black, white, or dark blue on the spines… side effect of mostly nonfic reference books and adventure fiction novels I suppose!

Then you’ll suffer from anxiety FOREVAR :wink:

Daaaaaang.

Or I’ll listen to Halcyon. lol.

lol that works too. I definitely want to try out Halcyon or something similar once my custom kicks in full gear and I’m spinning up income streams like water. Been hit/miss lately, thankfully more “hit” than “miss”

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Go for it, the “Recipe” is in my journal. :slight_smile:

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