If you suffer with anxiety or depression, the first second that you open your eyes is the most important one of the day. It can make or break you!
The second you open your eyes from sleep it is necessary to make sure you focus on what is right in front of you, and not any further. Do not think about anything in your day beyond that very moment.
To help you put your hands on your stomach and focus on them. Feel your hands going up and down on your belly as you breathe. Wiggle your toes. See and feel them. Anything in reality that you can touch, feel and see is where you should focus. Don’t even try and pray, but keep your head right where you are, until you get stable.
God is inside of you, and once you get your head firmly planted in the moment you are in, you will sense Him inside. Repeat to yourself what you are seeing all around you in the room.
If your thoughts start to wander to anything about your day, your life, anything you have to do, or have done, or how horrible anything is, just see yourself saying no, and rest in your breathing.
Stay with what is real, right where you are. It is almost like pulling yourself down out of the clouds of nothingness and putting yourself back into your physical body. Depression comes from when you get trapped in between the reality of the moment and the horrible somewhere that you are running from or trying to escape to. It is a place of nothingness in between. It paralyzes you there and you can’t move. If your head is allowed to race forward, then anxiety can hit like a tidal wave.
The second I wake up I have to be very careful. I can’t allow a thought in my head that is not where I am right that second.
I am defaulted, now, to be this way, but in the beginning it took a lot of effort to get there. I had to go through obsession withdrawal so I had to be very careful where I allowed my head to go.
Even now, if I get caught up in obsession, I have to go through the effort of withdrawal from it. I can’t even think about God, or anything at all, I just have to keep staying in the reality of right now until it passes.
I don’t have to think about God for Him to be with me. He is always inside of me and when I get my head focused on Him inside of me, then your reality will become one of peace. I have to make my head line up, going no further in my mind, until all feels well. Then I can move on with my day.
You might be saying to yourself, “Well my reality sucks, everything about my life is hard right now, why should I focus on reality?” My answer is that is not what is real. Your reality is just a place you are passing through.
What is real is the Lord inside of you, right this very second. The real is not in your head and how you are perceiving your life. Perceptions are not your reality. Reality is you and the Lord holding hands together on the inside of you and walking together through it all.
Anyone who has ever had a problem with anxiety or depression can understand what I am saying.
Anxiety used to hit me like a tidal wave the second I opened my eyes. I know what that feels like, and I know that it can get better!
Remember that you can use this technique for anxiety no matter where you are in your day or what is going on.
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