77. The benefits of mindfulness when dealing with anxiety

Our minds are amazing at many, many things. Our minds are capable of remembering the birthday of the ones we love, calculating a budget for our next trip, thinking about our next writing project, and coming up with questions for a podcast. Our minds are also capable of ruminating, dwelling, coming up with strange thoughts, announcing all types of bad scenarios, and many more …why are our minds both so awesome and so challenging to deal with at times? How can we skillfully and effectively deal with our busy minds?

In today’s episode, I interview Josh Malina, host of the podcast “Anxiety Book Club.” We discuss the different ways in which our minds influence our physical and mental health and the different approaches to dealing with them.

Josh and I discuss how mindfulness and meditation can help us deal with our busy minds; he points out different times in which anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and worry thoughts took him away from being present and pushed him to play-it-safe.

You will hear from Josh how regular mindfulness practice has helped him transform his relationship with his thoughts, become an observer of his thoughts, and be non-judgmental of his worries, fears, and anxieties.

We discuss in particular three practices: exposure exercises, acceptance and commitment skills, and internal family systems.

I leave you with this quote:

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve or would’ve happened… Or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.”

– Tupac Shakur

Key Takeaways

• What is OCD
• What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• What is Internal Family Systems
• What is perspective taking
• Values
• Exposure therapy
• Talk therapy
• Transcendental meditation
• Choiceless meditation
• MBSR

(*) Show notes and resources of this episode

(*) Receive free weekly science-based, compassionate, and actionable skills to stop ineffective playing-it-safe

(*) Figure out your playing-it-safe profile in 5 minutes and identify the key thinking strategies that keep you living in your head

(*) Learn ACT skills for anxious achievers by taking Dr. Z. ACT courses

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