The Importance Of Mindfulness In Relationships

Sylvia had always known what it was like to live with fear. When she was growing up, her parents often argued. Her father would get angry and drink too much while her mother hid in the bedroom, but Sylvia could hear her crying as the doors kept slamming. It wasn’t until she had become an adult herself and moved out that they finally got a divorce. By then, Sylvia was in a relationship of her own with a kind and intelligent young man, but she often found herself feeling anx- ious around him. Whenever he offered to drive her to work or when he bought her a gift, she felt her heart pounding and her hands begin to sweat. She had no idea why she felt this way. But when he asked her to move in together, she felt so afraid that she began …show more content…
This section will also explore mindfulness techniques such as mindful eating and mindful walking, meditation, yoga and journalling. We’ll look at the ways in which mindfulness can help you overcome fear in your relationships and finally we will address work and creativity, and the ways in which mindfulness can help lead you to your dreams.
The difficulty in overcoming our fears is often simply to know that they exist, how they are affecting us and what to do about them. Since many of our fears are rooted deep in our earliest experiences they are often below our conscious aware- ness, and so we go through our lives, day after day, feeling the effects of fear in ourselves and our bodies, in our career choices and in our relationships. Many of us attempt to cope with these unpleasant feelings by avoiding them, either with alcohol, drugs, smoking or food, or by avoiding situations, people or the feelings that are causing the distress. We live our lives on ‘auto-pilot’, never really making conscious choices that will lead us to the life we really want to live. What is …show more content…
Anxiety can often be confused with fear, and they can be hard to distinguish. Ac- cording to experts, both fear and anxiety are triggered by a threat, either real or imagined, and produce a physiological arousal. But where anxiety puts you on alert to danger, fear drives you to protect yourself in some way. However, fear and anx- iety are related because fear can cause us to feel anxious and anxiety can make us feel fearful. Eventually, you can start to fear the symptoms of anxiety so much that you begin to experience those symptoms because you are having fearful thoughts.
Fear and anxiety can easily take over our lives if we don’t deal with them effec- tively. If you feel extremely worried, panicked or fearful most of the time, you may have an anxiety disorder. This type of condition includes panic attacks, post- traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder and phobias. If you think you have an anxiety disorder, consult your doctor so that you can get professional help.
Although the symptoms and feeling of fear can often be very unpleasant, aware- ness of your own fear response can provide you with essential information about yourself and your world. Fear is not to be repressed, but noticed. The symptoms