How Much Mindfulness Reduces Anxiety & Stress?
If you want to banish anxiety, just how long is ‘now’?
Professor Brian Cox’s ‘The Science of Dr. Who’ lecture at the Royal Institute was on the telly box again last week.
This excellent & eccentric chat bounced around the topic of time, space & travel as you might expect. His ultimate conclusion was that because of relativity & Einstein, we humans are, in our own small way, time travelers.
Time travelers.
It’s a topic I come back to every now & then in therapy. We are quite literally traveling in time although it has to said that it’s a rather tedious uni-directional journey. Unless you’re a Time Lord, of course.
However, from a therapy point of view, mental time travel’s something we do pretty much all the time. Whether it’s thinking about what to buy at the weekly shop or going over that report you’ve got to present next week or replaying yesterday’s argument with your partner, we spend a shed-load of time thinking about anything except what’s happening right in front of us.
It’s especially prevalent in those of us skilled at using anxiety & stress.
I once came across a definition of the difference between anxiety & stress. Sadly, I’ve no idea who to attribute it to, so it’ll just have to remain anonymous.
“Anxiety lives in a negative future that hasn’t yet happened.
Stress lives in a negative past that no longer exists.”
Anxiety & stress are a by-product of our ability to mentally time travel, projecting ourselves into the future or sliding back into the past.
It even gets more complex when you realise that you’re stressing about the time you were worried you’d be late for the meeting & might get volunteered for that presentation in 2 weeks.
If you’re not careful, your mind begins to believe that the imaginary scenarios it’s playing with are its reality. It isn’t, anxiety & stress are just very compelling guesses. That’s all.
What is ‘Now’ & why’s it so important
In theory Time just ticks along at its own pace. Each tick of the universe’s clock slides a ‘now’ sized chunk of time from the future into the past, never to return. There’s a brief moment of now-ness that is neither in the future nor the past.
And as most of your mental time is spent everywhere else except ‘now’, that means now has some special properties.
When you focus on ‘now’ you aren’t in your imaginary future or your no-longer-existing past. The places where anxiety & stress live.
In other words, ‘Now’ is a stress & anxiety free zone.
So the longer you can spend in ‘now’ the better, right?
Well, up to a point. You see, we didn’t develop the ability for mental time travel just for the hell of it. It’s a super-effective survival trait.
Reviewing the past and projecting the future, with a “let’s think of all the ways way this could go wrong” attitude, lets your brain steer a safe passage through life. By identifying & anticipating possible future calamities & learning from past catastrophes, your brain gets you safe & well into tomorrow.
If we didn’t do mental time travel we’d never learn from our mistakes and wouldn’t recognise danger as it looms overhead with its salivating jaws.
So there’s a balance to be had, it seems.
Too much time travel not only misses out on what’s going on right now, you end up living in a world full of anxiety & stress.
On the other hand, too much ‘now’ switches off our ability to identify & avoid dangers.
So how much ‘now’ is good for you?
Well, the jury’s out on this one. If you listen to some of the mindfulness chatter out there, you’re best to spend every waking moment in-the-moment, so to speak.
Others say you should make a point of deliberately stepping into the ‘now’ several times a day for as long as is practical, (hour-long meditations & the like).
Part of the issue is exactly how long is ‘Now’?
If you’re trying to be aware of the moment, how long does the moment last that you're attempting to become aware of?
Various studies indicate that a ‘moment’ of consciousness is around 2-3 seconds long. But that’s if you treat a moment as something that you’re inside, the least possible length of time you can be aware of.
Another way to look at this is to consider when the past finishes and the future begins. In between the two events must be where the ‘present’ lies. And of course the ‘present’ is what we think of as ‘now’.
This leads to vastly different subjective concepts of nowness, ranging from a few seconds to a minute or even hours.
A key aspect of how long to spend in the now, is what’s it for & what benefit does it bring?
Well, from an anxiety therapy point of view, it’s not so much ‘being in the now’ that matters. It’s about upskilling your mind to step away from time-traveling into being ‘in-the-now’.
And as you’ll remember from earlier, ‘Now’ is the place that anxiety & stress aren’t.
So training yourself to become aware of the moment teaches your mind two vital skills.
To recognise when its time-traveling in a negative way
To choose to step into ‘now’ at will
This helps your mind to find more peaceful moments and to understand that anxiety & stress isn’t reality, just imaginary projections designed to keep you safer.
It’s better to think of it like this:
What’s the least amount of ‘now’ time that’ll reduce anxiety?
From a therapy perspective, I’ve found that practicing for around 10 minutes each day gives you the best effect. It’s not so long you have to work hard to find the time and it’s long enough to feel like you’ve done something.
If 10 minutes is too tricky because your brain’s currently too easily distracted, I go by the adage of “Anything more than nothing is progress”. Even 30 seconds is better than nothing.
How do I learn to focus on ‘Now’
There are two ways I’d recommend
If you like step by step instructions:
Head over to my website: Meditation Made Simple
Check out my Mindfulness Meditation hypnotherapy mp3
How soon will I see the benefits?
If you practice each day, you’ll begin to notice things that indicate progress within a few days. Within a month your anxiety & stress should show signs of being lower and more under control.
As always, if you’ve any questions just get in touch.