mbachman

Hello,

I've been thinking lately about meditation for helping me to deal with anxiety. I have a fairly decent (decently bad) case of social anxiety, and I have been meditating off and on for years now. However, I have come to become skeptical over some of the claims by those who promulgate meditation for 'curing' ailments, especially regarding anxiety disorders. I've become concerned with some methodological flaws in research regarding meditation, and although I am not a doctor/scientist, I'm unsure of how exactly focusing one's mind would dissipate anxiety.

So, for those of you who meditate, do you feel as if it helps relieve anxiety?

Thanks,
mbachman

nandm

Anytime I hear the word "cure" related to a problem such as anxiety, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, and many other health problems I am always leery of it as many times it turns out it is someone exagerating the science behind the "cure."

KissieDumb

Your mind slows down and you concentrate on the now...simple things you miss because of the worrying about later, him, her, that, errands, finances...It resets the way you think and feel too. Have you been trying it regularly?

mbachman

Update to the above post:

I might not be doing it enough; thanks for the suggestion, and I'm going to try to up it to around, perhaps, 40 minutes a day and take detailed notes as to how it effects the time it takes me to fall asleep, how subjectively anxious I feel, how much I sweat (sweating for me is really tied to my anxiety levels), and some other things. Maybe if you could think of some things that I might be able to test for, you could put them up on this thread. Then, I can try to experiment around and see what works, and to what extent meditation helps.

Anyway, thanks for the replies thusfar.