Is averting Bad?

[Anemephistus]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety. I had to get treatment for the irrational variety. I had damaged my body in various ways with drug abuse and at first when my anxiety came it felt unbearable. I studied and I meditated and I learned and when my mind became empty for the first time during an episode of irrational anxiety, and the feeling was still there...I knew I had a problem.

Forgive the description, I hope it makes sense but it's hard to put into words: Mentally It was like a ball of sticky writhing energy, and each time a thought would try and arise, the goo ball would reach out for it and try to latch on and turn the thought into fear. When there was nothing it would try to make it's own thoughts. I spent days at a time watching it with my minds eye and keeping it isolated. I was exhausted and had taken the wrong road for me.

I decided that the feeling was brain chemistry.  I got a prescription to help and I continued my meditative practice, over time I learned lessons which helped and slowly I had my dosage lowered and faced the difficulty in smaller steps. Each time it has been about a year and I am still not entirely done. Most of the year I spend with a very low dose of medication just enough I don't lose attenuation, two times a year it is a little higher because that is when the storm comes. I am confident that if I were to take all of my time and devote myself entirely to overcoming it, I would eventually, but I have to live with other responsibilities and cannot spend the time in this way.

I see no problem using a mental reflex to overcome a pattern of feelings. If it continues to work then by all means, deny it the battle it brings! If it does not continue to work, consider treatment options, brain chemistry is a genetic component that has an importance that can not be easily overstated. I found when I lessened it's effect on me I was able to get a foothold to the path that has gotten increasingly easier every year since I started.

Please, keep us updated on how this goes! What works for you that you have tested and you have seen working and is making you happier and better is good! Sharing how that path is aiding you would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Ron-The-Elders post is on point for the process where I said I learned lessons

[Tirisilex]

Samana Johann, I've taken notice of your speech. It seems to me that you are really trying to eliminate ego. I notice that you say "My" person.. Who is this My? Maybe you might want to say "This person" that will convey no self more I think.

[Pixie]

This talk  from Ajahn Sumedho "Fear and stress in life" might be helpful:

http://dharmaseed.org/talks/audio_player/10/29690.html



_/|\_

[Samana Johann]

Off-Topic: hover if liking

[Dairy Lama]

OK.. I'm doing a couple of things.. I've been meditating and being mindful of for example my Anxiety.. I will acknowledge the anxiety and then I will envision it as a simple form and I will visualize it burning up and it disappears. While this works for me I'm wondering if it is bad to do this?

Is this chronic anxiety, and does it keep coming back?  Do you have the sense it is always in the background, waiting to latch onto something?

[ground]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety.

'rational anxiety' is like 'dry water' 

[Tirisilex]

OK.. I'm doing a couple of things.. I've been meditating and being mindful of for example my Anxiety.. I will acknowledge the anxiety and then I will envision it as a simple form and I will visualize it burning up and it disappears. While this works for me I'm wondering if it is bad to do this?

Is this chronic anxiety, and does it keep coming back?  Do you have the sense it is always in the background, waiting to latch onto something?

I get a couple of different forms of anxiety. One is just a random anxious feeling that isn't from any trigger. It just arises.. Then I have Anxiety that arises from the occasional delusional thinking. While I have techniques to help me deal with the delusional thinking itself the anxiety is still a problem. Is it reoccurring yes but it's not cosntant. Mainly I would say about once a week. Sometimes twice.

[Anemephistus]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety.

'rational anxiety' is like 'dry water' 

Tell the man facing the rattlesnake about to strike that his water is dry.

I am confronted with real danger sometimes due to my livelihood, my body, like any other, reacts to this and it is expected. My mind remains in focus. It fades as the hormones that created it subside. The anticipatory anxiety however was rooted in no thoughts and would even make it's own if allowed to, engaging it caused it to grow and truth would not sooth the feelings associated with it.  I was in a hole, thinking was like a shovel and I cannot dig myself out of a hole.

So I stopped thinking, and then there was only the feeling, and it would not pass though I could find no reason for it. That was like drinking dry water and trying to live, I was alive but hardly in a place which parched my thirst to be free of this suffering. I controlled my breath, stopped my mind, ate carefully, all looking for peace and slowly it grew worse. I engaged it and asked why it was there, my answer was my body. Medication has allowed me to move in steps to a goal of removing this feeling, today I suffer from it but its impact is far less.

It is possible eventually I would have gotten this far on my own, but that path would have been much farther and the focus required would have meant leaving certain attachments that I am unwilling to give up.

[Samana Johann]

Just that been known: it's of cause possible, and also trained, to suppress wholesome fear but that comes back twice and worse, and not easy seen an near cause. That is why dwelloping fear of wrongdoing and moral shame (e.g. virtue, Sila) is first on the medicine of the Buddha, to possible later trace the reason of unwholesome anxiety better, can distinguish them fom each other. To do such: firm Sila, firm abstaining of unskillful conduct, without giving place for reasoning to overstep it.

[ground]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety.

'rational anxiety' is like 'dry water' 

Tell the man facing the rattlesnake about to strike that his water is dry.

And then?

If one who is overcome by anxiety is told that anxiety is irrational that does neither eliminate his anxiety nor does the continuation of his anxiety render this anxiety rational. 

[Dairy Lama]

OK.. I'm doing a couple of things.. I've been meditating and being mindful of for example my Anxiety.. I will acknowledge the anxiety and then I will envision it as a simple form and I will visualize it burning up and it disappears. While this works for me I'm wondering if it is bad to do this?

Is this chronic anxiety, and does it keep coming back?  Do you have the sense it is always in the background, waiting to latch onto something?

I get a couple of different forms of anxiety. One is just a random anxious feeling that isn't from any trigger. It just arises.. Then I have Anxiety that arises from the occasional delusional thinking. While I have techniques to help me deal with the delusional thinking itself the anxiety is still a problem. Is it reoccurring yes but it's not cosntant. Mainly I would say about once a week. Sometimes twice.

It sounds like you are dealing with it quite well.  I suffer from chronic anxiety and have tried all sorts of things over the years.  What seems to work best for me is just accepting that it's there, and then hopefully moving on to a more constructive thought process or activity.

[Dairy Lama]

Tell the man facing the rattlesnake about to strike that his water is dry.

Exactly.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response

[Anemephistus]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety.

'rational anxiety' is like 'dry water' 

Tell the man facing the rattlesnake about to strike that his water is dry.

And then?

If one who is overcome by anxiety is told that anxiety is irrational that does neither eliminate his anxiety nor does the continuation of his anxiety render this anxiety rational. 

There is more than one form this takes, I have expressed my experience with two forms. One arises from reality as it is experienced, the other one for me first seemed like attachment to preconception then became apparent that it was a cerebral-chemical physical malfunction. The first kind I can deal with and have to with relative frequency for my culture and place in the world. The second kind I could endure but not solve. They share an element of feeling but their arising circumstances are very different.

For the first I have been faced many times with very disturbing and dangerous things that have taught me in a non-academic sense that anxiety has a place as long as it is tempered with a disciplined mind. Unless we are free of the attachment to life and can keep that freedom in focus during events that may genuinely present an immediate danger to our continued physical existence we feel anxiety as a rational response. What we do with that determines it's value. Running may be in the best interest of a being caught in a fire or faced with a snake, I assert that this is rational. With disciplined thinking one can make a good decision faster and have more energy to react and find a safe solution to the circumstance hopefully. Training and forethought is best for this.

For the second kind it can be hard to tell if it creates delusion or is based on it. Like using the mind to ask a question to which you already know the answer, what comes first? The question or the answer? For me, after much time and focus it became clear that it was a root of delusional thinking, not the result of it. It can easily be the other way around. Arising from attachment and wrong views and general Avidyā. After days sitting with mine I had an answer, there was no thought, it was in my body and was not based on thinking or not thinking, or breathing or eating, it was physical. For others this may be different. I could sooth my mind but my heart was racing and I was sweating to the point of exhaustion over nothing. I had to devote mental resources to reminding everything arising from the feeling of the truth and the process was very frequent and not always successful.  I was wrestling my mind with my mind.

Determining why we suffer is important, not all feelings arise under the same circumstances and while ultimately it may be able to overcome them, or make them bearable, for me it was physical. I see nothing wrong with the Op's approach save that if these things arise under delusion it may be better to address the root thinking that gives them rise than to deny the feeling that root creates, provided that root is addressable because it may not be in the case of schizophrenia or other illness' effect. As I said though I feel it can easily be either way and a person must find that answer through wisdom, I can only share my experience with this, because the wisdom came from the Dharma and I cannot speak for it, only my own results from learning and practice.

I think nothing irrational can be rendered rational without delusion, which is false, but there is a center between the conditions of having a feeling for an apparent reason in which that feeling provides subjective benefit, having a feeling because of wrong thinking in which it provides no benefit, and having a feeling that creates wrong thinking on it's own without input from the one having it... which has no more benefit than being stuck with a permanent flu and is an issue of health.     

[ground]

I have suffered from irrational anxiety, and rational anxiety.

'rational anxiety' is like 'dry water' 

Tell the man facing the rattlesnake about to strike that his water is dry.

And then?

If one who is overcome by anxiety is told that anxiety is irrational that does neither eliminate his anxiety nor does the continuation of his anxiety render this anxiety rational. 

There is more than one form this takes, I have expressed my experience with two forms. One arises from reality as it is experienced, the other one for me first seemed like attachment to preconception then became apparent that it was a cerebral-chemical physical malfunction. The first kind I can deal with and have to with relative frequency for my culture and place in the world. The second kind I could endure but not solve. They share an element of feeling but their arising circumstances are very different.

For the first I have been faced many times with very disturbing and dangerous things that have taught me in a non-academic sense that anxiety has a place as long as it is tempered with a disciplined mind. Unless we are free of the attachment to life and can keep that freedom in focus during events that may genuinely present an immediate danger to our continued physical existence we feel anxiety as a rational response. What we do with that determines it's value. Running may be in the best interest of a being caught in a fire or faced with a snake, I assert that this is rational. With disciplined thinking one can make a good decision faster and have more energy to react and find a safe solution to the circumstance hopefully. Training and forethought is best for this.

For the second kind it can be hard to tell if it creates delusion or is based on it. Like using the mind to ask a question to which you already know the answer, what comes first? The question or the answer? For me, after much time and focus it became clear that it was a root of delusional thinking, not the result of it. It can easily be the other way around. Arising from attachment and wrong views and general Avidyā. After days sitting with mine I had an answer, there was no thought, it was in my body and was not based on thinking or not thinking, or breathing or eating, it was physical. For others this may be different. I could sooth my mind but my heart was racing and I was sweating to the point of exhaustion over nothing. I had to devote mental resources to reminding everything arising from the feeling of the truth and the process was very frequent and not always successful.  I was wrestling my mind with my mind.

Determining why we suffer is important, not all feelings arise under the same circumstances and while ultimately it may be able to overcome them, or make them bearable, for me it was physical. I see nothing wrong with the Op's approach save that if these things arise under delusion it may be better to address the root thinking that gives them rise than to deny the feeling that root creates, provided that root is addressable because it may not be in the case of schizophrenia or other illness' effect. As I said though I feel it can easily be either way and a person must find that answer through wisdom, I can only share my experience with this, because the wisdom came from the Dharma and I cannot speak for it, only my own results from learning and practice.

I think nothing irrational can be rendered rational without delusion, which is false, but there is a center between the conditions of having a feeling for an apparent reason in which that feeling provides subjective benefit, having a feeling because of wrong thinking in which it provides no benefit, and having a feeling that creates wrong thinking on it's own without input from the one having it... which has no more benefit than being stuck with a permanent flu and is an issue of health.   

Wow ... So many words just because anxiety has never been rational and will never be rational.

Many people cannot distinguish emotionality from rationality because emotionality may at times entail activities or decisions that  appear to be 'rational' considering the cause X of this emotionality from an outside perspective.

The different chains of causality are these:
Cause X -> emotionality -> activity or decision
Cause X -> rationality -> activity or decision

While rationality always entails appropriate activities or decisions emotionality entails both, at times appropriate and mostly inappropriate activities or decisions.

Rationality is cool processing and never agitated.

[Samana Johann]

"activities or decisions" what is or should be the difference?

An ice cold killer does it also "Rationality is cool processing and never agitated", so it seems to be not really a matter of ration that make a different. It's merely to be assumed, that ration works on emotions as well, more centert maybe. So ratio might need either a feather or get rid of it.