r/Mindfulness • u/Wesssiiiddddeee • 1d ago
Insight Experiences of People with GAD
i (21M) was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder, and i have been meditating consistently (missing a day or two on rare occasions). i wanted to ask people with GAD who have been meditating and practising mindfulness about their experiences, insights, and advice.
kindly share!
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u/AlternativeYak1919 23h ago
My own personal experience: meditation is a tool just like medication, exercise, therapy, etc. Each one will only get you so far. Will any one tool be enough? Sure, it’s possible but it’s far more likely that you’ll need more tools for true healing. I’ve done every one of the tools I’ve mentioned and am still on my healing journey.
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u/Wesssiiiddddeee 23h ago
hey, good to hear and good luck! i do 3 of the above mentioned things apart from medication. do you say that the combination has worked well for you? and how did meditation specifically help you?
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u/AlternativeYak1919 23h ago
Healing from past traumas was central to everything else working. Without doing that my mind would have never settled enough to do meditation. Meditation has helped me slow my mind down and not have 5,000 words flying through my brain every second of the day. Meditation has also helped me explore the deeper parts of my mind and thoughts and why they are the way they are.
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u/Acrobatic-Look3409 21h ago
Certain meditations help with my GAD while others can exacerbate it (especially when i am in a bad spot). Mindfulness meditations where you focus on the breath/senses help a lot with channeling my attention and grounding me. But the meditations that allow me to “look at” or “watch” my thoughts through visualizations (like on a cloud or leaves on a stream) are a huge trigger and end up making me experience derealization.
Overall mindfulness has really helped me channel my focus/attention on the present while allowing my intrusive thoughts/constant worrying/persevoration be in the background.
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u/SpecialistNo30 19h ago
Meditation was able to lower my GAD but never quite eliminate it. Only with a combination of meditation, exercise, and medication did I get a handle on my anxiety.
Unlike some others, focusing on the breath makes my anxiety worse. I have to focus on thoughts or sounds instead.
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u/dutch_emdub 16h ago
For me, the main lesson i learnt through mindfulness that helps me cope with GAD is to be more aware of your thoughts. With GAD, your thoughts can get really, really stuck in a super scary feedback loop that's very hard to get out of. Being more mindful or aware of the direction in which your thoughts are going can help to observe them, from a safe distance, and redirect your attention to what you are doing or would like to be doing, before going down that rabbit hole.
It's not a silver bullet, and I don't think there is one for GAD. Instead, you have to find your own combination of tools that work for you (of which mindfulness can be a very important one!) - preferably with help from a therapist! Some tools work best in one situation, and others are better for other circumstances; sometimes nothing works (at the moment), but you can live a happy and successful life with GAD!
Good luck, TO! You can't rid your life from anxiety, but you can do everything you want with anxiety!!
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u/M8LSTN 23h ago
In my experience, life are full of ups and downs of different levels. Meditation, exercise, sleep, therapy, diet, medication, socializing, trying new things they all help achieving a better mental state. Now, I don’t know where your GAD comes from, but it does come from somewhere. Not only it came from somewhere but it also can go too, if you want to (like, profoundly want to).
Most of my life, I’ve felt almost no stress, barely any anxiety. I couldn’t understand friends or family that would go through anxiety attacks, depression and such things. Finally, things went south for me and I fell into that pit too. I’m building my way back up using all the above mentioned tools (except for medication, because of my own philosophy on the subject, will never follow that path).
All emotions, thoughts are transient. A year ago, I was using every cell in my body so everyone could think I’m well but getting out of my bed was getting harder and harder and harder. I was crying myself to sleep, felt hopeless and lonely. Thinking of doing things made me sweat and keeping my job was the most intense thing I’ve ever had to do.
But all of this made me realize, it’s a blessing it happened because now I’m getting to know myself and respect myself. I used to give no shit about sleep, diet, being kind to other person. I disrespected my body with alcohol often and did exercise on/off.
Now, I understood I have a choice. You have one too! Feeling miserable and having crippling anxiety does satisfy something inside you else you’d just drop it. Self victimization, feeling like life sucks and all that stuff serves a purpose inside you. Up to you to decide if it serves your bigger purpose, as a human being. You get only one life, you can complain about how miserable things are, feel guilty pleasure when you’re right and world sucks or everyone betrays you or you can adopt a more positive mindset. Because in the end that’s what it is. I could go way further but I think it’s enough for now
Tldr; you can overcome. It’s not even as hard as you think (and I insist on the word think) it is.
Good luck to you
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u/dutch_emdub 16h ago
It is hard to overcome, for the majority of people that have been diagnosed with GAD. And I resent the suggestions that you can overcome if you profoundly want to. I'm glad that you were able to overcome whatever you had, but for many people, GAD is chronic and many of us relapse several times. I am generally a content person, with a happy marriage, a successful career, close friends and family, but also with chronic GAD for more than 10y and your suggestion that I'm still suffering from it because I don't profoundly want to overcome it, is complete BS.
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u/M8LSTN 16h ago edited 16h ago
The concept is simple, the application is hard… nothing happens overnight. Truly, GAD isn’t a permanent condition and you are not the exception to it. I understand my post provokes frustration but I highly suggest fully surrendering to it [ie whatever makes you anxious]. What thought process makes you this anxious? I can also suggest some books, if you want to.
Edit: i’m not suggesting you don’t want it. Sorry if my message could be interpreted that way.
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u/kaasvingers 22h ago
GAD and mindfulness have been a funny combination!
On one side mindfulness allows me to be present instead of overthink or cope in other unhelpful ways. On the other side mindfulness has at times turned into the avoidant behaviour I was trying to overcome and outgrow.
The overlooking 'aha' erlebnis or lesson in the mindfulness journey has been to give unpleasant or unwanted emotion the time of day it was asking for.