Using Mindfulness to Reduce Anxiety and Stress

A big source of anxiety and stress (both are very connected) are thoughts. While this may seem obvious, is it in day-to-day living? For example, when you think about what you will be doing later in the day, do you maintain the awareness that what you are experiencing is just a thought? When you notice yourself worrying, always keep the context of the experience of worrying accurate. You can even put your hands on the sides of your head and say to yourself "this thought I am experiencing is occurring between my hands". Similar to how we are able to watch horrible things on television, but maintain the context that we are just watching television, and this causes us to not be affected nearly as much as we would if we lost this awareness. A lot of people that become very emotionally upset by movies become zoned in so they lose touch with the reality that it's just a television that is being viewed. In other words, it is not the behavior or external environment that is the main problem with suffers of anxiety, but the lack of awareness.

Mindfulness is one of the greatest tools for overcoming anxiety and reducing stress. What causes worrying is the lack of awareness that a thought is just a thought. Mindfulness isn't for running away from problems, but for seeing them as they actually are.

If you have any questions, or want me to further elaborate on mindfulness techniques, leave a comment below. I check comments on a fairly regular basis :)

Harmful Effects of Video Games on Consciousness

Many people believe that video games are good for kids, but this is far from the truth. There are several problems with video games which I will list below...

• Video games often induce a fight-or-flight reaction (which causes stress hormones to shoot through the roof). 
• Video games are often chaotic, encouraging a very short attention span (must switch attention from one thing to another very rapidly to get through the zones/levels)
• Video games discourage conscious awareness and encourage autopilot functioning
• Video games are often violent in nature (kill and/or avoid being killed).

Fight-or-flight

Those are just a few of the issues caused by video games. Anyone that has been a gamer or has been around a gamer knows that anger is a big part of video games. I remember when I was a child, I would get so angry at video games, and it was something about this anger that made the game even more addictive. When someone becomes enraged (which is very common for video game users), a fight-or-flight response comes about, and this not only causes stress hormones to be dumped into the blood stream, it also numbs awareness after enough time (like drinking too much coffee can cause brain fog, so can too much stress).

Short attention span/encourage autopilot

Ones ability to focus is shaped by how it is used. Parents are wrong to think that just because a kid looks focused on a television screen, that his/her brain is focused on one single thing. Consciousness when playing video games (unless it is a very slow paced game) needs to bounce from one thing to another very rapidly in order to keep up with the game play (this intensity is a big reason why the fight-or-flight response occurs). In a video games, a person's attention may need to shift from one thing to another dozens of times a minute, along with the sounds/music that go along with it, this is sensory overload. For the brain to meet the intense demands imposed by video games, it must switch off consciousness (or at least dim it down) and become reactionary (i.e. autopilot). If a person plays video games for 6 hours a day, the person will become scatterbrained, highly stressed, and be very reactionary (the recipe for ADD/ADHD). 

Violence

Essentially the brain is forced to process information about avoiding being killed and destroying others. This sort of programming can distort perceptions, causing cynicism and increased violent reactions when problems arise. 

Can video games cause an anxiety disorder?

The answer is YES.

In an earlier post I briefly talked about my hypothesis about video games causing my own anxiety disorder. As a college student (and former video game addict), I have been much too busy recently to play video games. While one would expect that the demands of college would make anxiety worse, the opposite was true for me. Today, for no particular reason, I tried playing some old-school Super Nintendo Donkey Kong (the original).  I noticed that the game REALLY PISSED ME OFF. My heart was racing, my chest was tightening, my hands were becoming sweaty--I was having a fight-or-flight reaction. It made me wonder if playing video games heavily since the age of 4 has had an effect on my psychology. I then began to think that perhaps the video games themselves don't cause the anxiety disorder, but a symptom does. A symptom of chronic fight-or-flight reactions is paranoia. If a person is constantly (more or less) in a state of paranoia (in whatever degree) this will impact how they perceive the world. In other words, being chronically in the 'offensive/defensive' causes a person to always be on the lookout for potential danger, causing them to see the world as being a dangerous place.

My anxiety was at its worse during the time I played World of Warcraft (from person experience, this game can cause intense adrenal rushes). The vast majority of games exploit the craving people have for excitement. It's counter-intuitive that people would love to do something that makes them angry, but I hypothesis that it is precisely this reaction that cause the video game craving. Essentially its an addiction to anger/stress

Random thought: wife-beating husbands also crave this anger induced fight-or-flight response which provides an emotional high.

This semester at the college, there was this kid that was on the other end of the hallway where I was. I would always hear him yelling and swearing up a storm (at first I thought he was insane, then I found out he was a video game addict). In short, it seems very plausible that video game addiction (or more specifically a stress addiction) can be the root cause of anxiety disorder (social phobia, general anxiety, etc). Video games may not only be linked to a way array of anxiety disorders, but may also be linked to anger problems, hypertension, depression, paranoia etc.


For more information on this, surf the Google, and/or check out the link below.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/she-bets-her-life/201101/video-gaming-can-cause-depression-anxiety-and-social-phobia-2

RIP Christopher Hitchens

Amazing person, very sad to see him go.

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” -Christopher Hitchens

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

Affirmation Mindfulness

Affirmation mindfulness is truly an amazing technique. If you suffer from disorders like anxiety, depression, poor attention span, anger, etc., you may want to pay attention (in fact everyone should, that's the purpose of mindfulness).

The Buddhists often use labeling during their meditations (such as labeling their breaths..."rising....falling"). This is kind of similar, but instead of using labeling to create a concept to view a sensory experience (which causes a person to swap back and forth from actual experience to a concept and vice versa), the purpose here is to make an affirmational word become a trigger to lock a person into a deep state of awareness. I believe the best thing is to focus, not on an interpretation of what we experience, but the sense itself. The following is the list of the affirmational words to be used...

• "Seeing..."
• "Smelling..."
• "Tasting..."
• "Hearing..."
• "Feeling..." 
• "Thinking..."

Basically, the point here is to be aware of the senses. We often get so wrapped up in focusing on our perceptions (a product of the imagination) that we lose touch with reality. This technique is incredibily useful for emotional disorders like anxiety, a problem caused by an overactive imagination (people with anxiety disorders are habitual when it comes to perceiving the world with concepts instead of the senses...)

Ron Paul 2012 (share this video)

How great would it be if this guy won in 2012. Spread this video around (Facebook, etc.).