How to Prevent and Release Needless Anxiety

Anxiety is a normal human experience — we all feel anxious or afraid sometimes — but excessive or chronic anxiety can wear us down and be detrimental to our long-term happiness and health. Plus, many of us are anxious about things that we don’t actually need to be anxious about.
In this talk, I shared some ideas on how to prevent and release needless anxiety.
Some key points that I covered are:
• We can feel undisturbed, undefended, and uncontracted in the moment — which is what we meditated on.
• In order to receive the present moment without fear, we have to recognize that the brain is a prediction machine and can be stuck in predictions, especially regarding fear.
• The scientific understanding of how the brain generalizes fear, including the biological and neurological mechanisms involved.
• Strategies for preventing and managing overgeneralized fear, including mindfulness, self-compassion, and self-awareness practices.
You’re welcome to join me live each week for these talks — for free — by signing up at rickhanson.com/wednesday-meditations-with-dr-r…. We always start with a guided meditation to set the tone for the evening. If you’d like to experience the meditation that accompanied this talk, you can listen to it at: rickhanson.com/meditation-talk-how-to-prevent-…
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