Hi! I’m new!

Hello everyone, I’m new here. I’ve had a few different types of anxiety for as long as I can remember, including GAD, panic disorder, and sleep issues. This year, being at home for roughly 9 months now, has reversed a lot of the resilience work I’ve done over the past few years and I find it harder to leave the house and connect with the world outside. I’m hoping to connect and learn about y’all and offer whatever support I can as well. I am a yoga instructor and I love working with anxious people because I know the experience well and have tailored my practice to help me find balance. Thanks so much for including me here! <3 L

TruthHurts said:

I've actually been considering yoga. Do you have a youtube channel? I walk, run and lift weights I've been thinking about trying meditation and yoga lately.

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Hi! It sounds like you really take care of yourself, that’s wonderful! The right yoga can be a great way to work with anxiety and balance an active OR inactive lifestyle. The yoga I offer is all online but not on YouTube. I have a membership site with a bunch of recorded classes (available with tiered pricing for different incomes) as well as live Zoom offerings. I generally offer more gentle yoga, which would be a wonderful complement to the physical work you do. Are you more interested in live or recorded classes? My website is https://www.mymisfitsyoga.com/ Feel free to ask any questions you may have <3

Cuchculan said:

Welcome the forum. Good to have you as a member. Lot of good people here. All suffering from one thing oe another. Honestly trying to figure out if you are here because of you anxiety or because you want new members for your Yoga site? I guess we will find out in time. Here helps costs nothing. If we can help we do.

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Hi! Thank you for your welcome. I’m sorry if I came across kind of salesy in that response to TruthHurts, I was just trying to answer them honestly. I’m here because I’ve started to notice that I’ve backslid a lot this year with my anxiety, especially social anxiety, and so I’m looking to connect with others. I also was diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago and think that has a lot to do with my anxiety so I want to see what other experiences are around that. I appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt.

Cuchculan said:

You are more than welcome here. Just was curious. So if I saw any posts from you, I would know if you needed help or were just making posts. Not like I own this place. Get the odd person will the one purpose and that is sites they own. You might even get a few customers. Lord knows I sit around long enough all day that I at times wonder if I could get away with classing it as Yoga. Post all you want. More posting the better. Soory if my post sounded rude.

That you in the video? Listening as I type.

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Haha, thanks. I get really anxious on forums and hide behind my work sometimes! I’m working on that. Thanks for setting my mind at ease, I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. My yoga practice is a lot of sitting around too it’s all about intention. It helps with the anxiety!

Which video? If it’s on my website then yes it’s me.

Cuchculan said:

Yes. The one on your site. If I tried some of that bending I would be like a box of rice krispies. Snap, crackle and pop. And that is just sitting on a chair. Loved the cats too. I normally watch a lot of ASRM videos. Find the right one and sit back and let the tingles begin. But with anxiety I think you will find that people find it hard to sit in the one place and even harder to clear their mind. They would have a head full of thoughts in seconds. Mainly negative thoughts. Things they might fear. Which is why it is used these days to find out a person's real fears. They are meditate for only a few minutes. No longer. In that time their fears come out to play. One thing I am hopeless at is the whole breathing exercises. If I try my breathing would end up worse because I am focused on it. I tend to skip those parts. Then it works better for me.

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I appreciate you checking it out! I love exploring the Rice Krispies sounds in my practice, but they can be alarming sometimes! It’s been a long process for me to settle in and enjoy a slower practice. I used to do really hardcore heated yoga but it made me really angry and out of balance. With meditation, I’ve learned to take a more relaxed approach that is based in building curiosity about those negative and swirling thoughts. Some days it helps, some days it induces deep anxiety, but I’ve learned to get curious about the anxiety and the difficult breathing that comes with it, too. It’s a practice, like anything. The biggest, and most damaging misconception about meditation is that we’re told we’re supposed to empty or clear our minds. Then we get a negative judgement towards all thoughts. The reality is that the mind thinks and that’s still valid meditation.

Are there certain breath practices you’ve tried that are difficult? I hear a lot of “anxiety fixer” breath practices being thrown around and a lot of them actually spike mine. I’ve found some that help but it’s amazing what helps one person can be horrible for someone else! Thank you for sharing your experience with me. I have a friend who has pretty intense anxiety and struggles to get into her body, and for me, I find relaxation by being in my body, especially my feet. Learning about all the variations of anxiety is always humbling.

Cuchculan said:

I think it is good to explore our thoughts. See what is there. I think a lot of therapists are switching towards that whole idea. Not to run from the thoughts. I get the whole idea. Same thing with dreams. We can have our fears come out as we dream. That I love. I feel so much safer in a dream. Like to keep track of my dreams. To the point were I know I am only dreaming most nights. Like been able to tell yourself ' it is only a dream '. Then you can explore all you see. Much like to overcome a fear in real life we use exposure therapy. Works with a lot of things. But not with everything. Got me back out of the house after 10 years in the house. Accepting the feelings that hit me as just feelings. Feelings that could not hurt me. Not as easy as it sounds. Lot of learning to get that far.

As for breathing I prefer to hold my breath and walk across the room. Then let it back out. Might do that a few times. Just something I used to do in training when I played football ( soccer ). To slow the breathing back down again. That has always worked for me. Other than that, music is my main thing when outside the house. Crazy Irishman singing as he walks along.

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Getting control of my dreaming has always eluded me! Do you write them down after? How did you go about developing that positive relationship with dreaming? I’ve always been plagued with nightmares and sleep paralysis and nocturnal panic attacks. In college, a friend told me to write down all my dreams and eventually I’d learn to recognize them and then be able to lucid dream, be in control and whatnot. It totally backfired on me and my dreams got worse and worse and I started obsessing over them. My husband is really supportive but he works really late so sometimes I wake up from a nightmare and he’s not home yet and then I’m back dealing with it myself. Do you have any tips for how to build that relationship that worked for you? Thank you!

That’s fascinating. I might take some time to re-approach my dreaming again. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be but I still find myself caught in nightmares or stress dreams that just seem so mundane except that I’m late for something or my students won’t be quiet and I can’t teach or my cats escape but it’s overwhelming! It seems so silly in retrospect and I’m able to shake most of them off, except the really bad ones that linger. Do you ever do anything in your dreams that is horrible? I have some compulsive thoughts that are pretty haunting and sometimes they play out in my dreams.

Fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing! That is a great way to reframe. Like a dark mirror that plays out what goes undone. I appreciate that. Crazy about your premonition-like ability. The subconscious has an ability to pick up on such subtle information and than play it out for us in a way that seems almost psychic.