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When we ask our community what they need support with, fear and anxiety continue to be at the top of the list, so I decided to write a little more on this topic. I’ve found that there are many ways to overcome fear. What’s miraculous for one person might not have the same impact on another. In the right scenario it might be life changing to grab someone, look them in the eyes, and yell, “Snap out of it! Life is a miracle! Don’t let your runaway mind eclipse it!” In the wrong scenario, that might lead to the recipient screaming, “Ahhhh! Get your germs off me!”
That’s why I recommend scheduling a tele-session with me – rest assured I will neither grab you nor get germs on you! But seriously, a skilled outsider is often helpful because they can offer perspective and may be able to discern what the core instability is and how best to address it.
That said, almost everyone can do this themselves if they’re willing to take the time, do the work, and be uncomfortable. Actually, even if you’re working with a practitioner, you still have to take the time, do the work, and be uncomfortable if you really want to heal completely. But that work, time, and discomfort are all in service to a higher goal – real freedom and the emergence of your Highest Self as the true driver of this life.
There are two very common pitfalls along the journey of healing from chronic anxiety. The first is temporary comfort – finding ways to feel less anxious without really healing or changing how we relate to life and our mind. This isn’t specifically bad, but it almost inevitably means having relapse after relapse after relapse. The second pitfall is building a tolerance to a state of anxiousness. We get used to it and stop trying to overcome it, even though it degrades our quality of life.
If you feel ongoing anxiousness or fear, I encourage you to settle for nothing less than a lasting change in your fundamental orientation. That is: becoming a peaceful person. I don’t mean a person who never experiences strong emotions – including fear – but one who isn’t dominated by these emotions in a habitual or prolonged way.
A good place to start is by pondering what I said above about taking the time, doing the work, and being willingly uncomfortable. Almost nobody wants to do these things, especially since there used to be a time when you didn’t need to work to simply feel normal. We just want the feeling to go away. But when it keeps coming back, you may start to think, “What is it about my fundamental orientation that allows fear – specifically fear of imagined scenarios – to get a hold of me?” Then you may decide that finding ways to distract or soothe yourself are no longer enough, and so it’s time to get to work.
It’s natural to hope that there’s a way in which some influence – a healer, a dietary supplement, a crystal – will just correct you. If you find it, congratulations! But in the meantime, let’s look at what this time, work, and discomfort entail.
Everyone’s work is unique. Someone could point out to you, “This is how you’re operating and you’re suffering because of it,” but that won’t change anything unless you experience it, you make the connection, and you choose to change course.
It’s work you’re totally capable of doing. You’ve done harder things in life, but because they were more objective – like finishing college or assembling an Ikea nuclear reactor – you had a clearer sense of how far along you were and how much farther you had to go. Unfortunately, the milestones aren’t as clear with working through fear, but they are there, and actively noticing them is an important part of keeping yourself on track and feeling positive. For example, looking back and rating each day or each week as to how peaceful you were, or rating how well you handled a certain situation, will give you something more objective to validate your progress.
I want to point out that I don’t call it “work” because it’s such a long journey to get to peace. The state you yearn for – a state of true stability and inner calm – isn’t far away. It’s so close. It’s right on the other side of the thinnest veil. You are entirely capable of cutting through that veil of fearful thoughts and remembering the truth – that you are bigger than all of this, that what you are is eternal and can never be harmed, that you are one with the Divine, one with Love, and that peace and lightness and clarity are a choice that is always available to you.
The reason I call it work is mostly because you’re coming up against longstanding habits. It takes consistency to undo the way you’ve been thinking, and more importantly, the way you’ve been letting your thoughts steal all your attention and run the show. It’s work to become mindful, and mindfulness is the single most powerful cure for chronic anxiety. It means paying attention in a way you probably haven’t done much since childhood. Paying attention to the truth of what’s here and now rather than paying attention always to your thoughts and letting them take you out of the moment. And sometimes, it takes work to unearth the deeper underpinnings of fear – whether from a trauma, from early childhood, or inherited from generations before you. Again, it’s work you are absolutely capable of doing.
For now, the work I recommend is this:
(1) As often as you remember throughout the day, bring your attention to whatever you’re doing. Not to the goal of what you’re doing, but to what’s happening right now. Stay. In. This. Moment. Notice how it opens and deepens when you give it your full attention.
(2) When fear arises, take every opportunity to be curious about it. Take every opportunity to follow it and engage with it in a non-resistant way. Your job is to stalk it, gain it’s trust, catch it, become the world’s foremost expert on it. Learn where it lives. Learn it’s tricks. Ask it to show itself. Be willing to feel it with your whole being. Always ask for more. When you feel a flutter of it, notice the tendency to avoid it, to distract yourself, or to push it down. Instead, always turn toward it. Always engage it. Always invite it. Always expect it to come back. And always remember you can do this.
Love,
Peter
[post_title] => How to Rescue Yourself from Fear and Anxiety
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Sometimes I think about moving to a place where it’s always warm, like southern California or Hawaii, but it seems that every time I mention it, there’s someone around who insists that it would be boring without having four distinct seasons. And as I imagine myself being bored while swimming in the ocean in December, and being bored while picking oranges off my trees in January, and being just so incredibly bored as I go on a hike in flip flops and shorts in February, I shudder and get back to shoveling my driveway.
I’m still undecided about a future in a warm place, but I am very glad to have gotten the experience of four very distinct seasons. Growing up in New England each season was so unique. If I were magically transported to a random time of year in Massachusetts, I would have no trouble determining in an instant which season it was. That might be trickier in, say, the Pacific Northwest, and even harder in San Diego.
Part of why I appreciate my exposure to the seasons is that the world displays so clearly the prevailing dynamics of the Earth and Sun. Daoist sages developed a language around these expressions, and applied this language to everything – including human lives, politics, and relationships. Knowing some of this language encourages us to tune in to what’s happening around us and to apply our observations of Nature to our inner and interpersonal processes.
Winter is the season of dormancy. Plants die or go to sleep. Most of their energy is down in their roots or stored in seeds. So, it’s a time of emphasis on potential energy. For humans, it’s a good season for taking inventory. In wintery places, we’re often confined indoors and there are no food sources available except what we’ve put in our cupboards. The season is ruled by Water, and often there’s a lot of it, in the form of rain or snow, falling from the sky and blanketing the ground. The healthy emotion associated with Winter and Water is awe, and when out of balance, it becomes fear. Our core fear is the fear of death, and in many ways Winter is kind of like death – cold, quiet, and dark.
Spring comes next, and it’s a season of new growth, awakening, and planning. In the Pagan traditions, Spring is marked by fertility festivals, with symbols such as bunnies and eggs. In Christianity, Spring brings Easter, the holiday of rebirth. And in Judaism, there is Passover, which is full of references to fresh Spring greens, eggs, and new hope after a time of despair. The season is ruled by Wood, which is represented by plant growth – especially eager buds exploding on trees and pushing through the crust of the earth, and vines growing rapidly as if on a mission.
The healthy emotion associated with Spring and Wood is vigor – like the vigor plants employ to break out of Winter’s dormancy in Spring. In imbalance, this becomes anger, which is a feeling that is likely to come up when our plan encounters an obstacle or when we’re thrown off our trajectory. Plants encounter obstacles all the time, and they usually display some of the virtuous characteristics of healthy Wood – flexibility, and the ability to stay on their purpose instead of getting indignant.
Summer is the greatest expansion of the growth that started in Spring. In the plant world, it’s a time of flowering, and therefore, communion and sexuality. Flowers are not just sexual organs but a plant’s time to express its beauty, radiance, and glory. Summer is ruled by Fire, which has a similarly expansive and radiant nature to a flowering plant. Fire is also the element that presides over sexuality and connection. It’s a transformative, exciting force. It illuminates darkness and obscurity. The healthy emotion associated with Summer and Fire is joy. When out of balance, we feel hysteria, anxiety, or jitteriness.
Late Summer is a season unique to Chinese philosophy. It’s the latter portion of summer, when nights tend to get colder and flowering gives way to fruiting. It’s the season of ripening and the harvest of crops. Late Summer is ruled by Earth, the element that presides over nourishment. In the human body, the primary digestive organs also correspond to Earth. The healthy emotion associated with Late Summer and Earth is contemplation. It also relates to our capacity to focus and analyze. When out of balance, it becomes worry.
Finally, Fall is the season of decline. It’s the season when activity diminishes and outward growth stops; we begin to focus inward and reflect. Fall as associated with Metal or Air, both of which are good reminders of a lesson in real value. Metals, like gold and silver and the other “shiny stuff” in life, is often valued above all else, yet it is almost worthless when it comes to sustaining life. In contrast, Air is invisible and insubstantial. It’s so easy to miss and take for granted, yet we’d die in minutes without it. Hence, a main challenge of this element, whether we call it Metal or Air, is to remember that it’s the intangible things that are of greatest worth in life. The healthy emotion associated with Fall and Metal is reflection – the capacity to reflect on what has passed and gain value from it. When out of balance, it becomes grief.
There are many ways to apply these characteristics of the seasons and their associated elements in order to better understand ourselves and the world, and to more gracefully move through periods of difficulty. I created these diagrams to more clearly depict these phases as part of an ongoing cycle. The first diagram shows how each season leads to the next, and some of the key dynamics of each.
In this next diagram, we see how the characteristics of the seasons could be seen as phases in a life or project. In the Winter/Water phase, for instance, a new project is just an idea or a seed. We might call this the resting phase or the conception phase. Conception perhaps occurs near the frontier between Winter and Spring. In Spring/Wood, the project is launched (the seed germinates). The structure is defined, a plan is created. Growth begins. In the Summer/Fire phase, growth is at its maximum, and the project “blossoms.” In the Late Summer/Earth phase, the project comes to fruition. It yields a desired return on all the energy that was invested in it. We “harvest” the fruits of our labors. In the Fall/Metal phase, we “release” the project, either because it is over or because it moves to a new phase in which we are no longer attached to it. Here we are able to reflect on the value gained from going through the cycle. As we move into the Winter/Water phase again, there is the need for stillness and rest before the cycle begins again.
Every human life follows this cycle, and within every life, there are many smaller cycles, and cycles within cycles. Consider contemplating the cycle of the seasons and applying it to a few of your own endeavors – past and present. What season is trickiest for you? Is there a season you tend to skip over completely? For instance, do you plant seeds, tend to them for a while, but then neglect them and plant new seeds? Do you nourish your projects and invest your energy in them, but don’t let yourself actually celebrate the “harvest”? Do you go from one cycle to the next without ever letting yourself have a fallow period, when you let yourself do nothing and feel okay about it?
I encourage you to invite Nature into your life and see how much more colorful, alive, and right things feel.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
All rights reserved © 2015 Peter Borten
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[post_content] => 16 years ago, I wrote an article on preventing and kicking colds and flus, and since then it’s been read more than almost any other article on our site. We hate being sick! But the school year has started and there’s already been one cold that has passed through our community in the past month. So, I thought I’d revisit this topic and offer some of the big-picture concepts that I believe are most worthwhile.
Attitude is everything. When I started studying medicine, one of the biggest lessons came not from a lecture or a book. It happened when one of my professors cancelled a class and I saw him walking to his car. When I said hi to him, he told me he was going home to get in bed because he had caught a cold. I had always seen this man as the picture of vibrant health, so I said, “You get sick, Dr. C?!” And he replied, matter-of-factly (even with a bit of admonishment), “Everyone gets sick.”
The difference between how I perceived him and who he really was, was that he didn’t see sickness as a sign of imperfection or weakness. And because he fully accepted the reality of whatever was happening with his body, he was all the better able to respond effectively and move through it. Our intolerance of illness tends to exacerbate it and prolong it. So, I recommend that you learn to accept sickness at the first sign so that you can take measures to support yourself.
Instead of fighting sick feelings, we can practice accepting them, breathing into them, and letting them go. In my experience, the sickness becomes less unpleasant, and the duration significantly shorter when I stop “arguing with reality.” This is what’s happening in your body. Slow down. Feel it. Can you be at peace even if you’d prefer to feel differently?
In terms of pragmatic measures, the best medicine is almost always rest. You can’t get it in a pill and I know you don’t want to stop what you’re doing or cancel your plans. But if you can rest (ideally, good deep sleep) you’ll almost certainly recover much more quickly than if you just push through it and remain active. When you sleep, you’re donating most of your energy to your immune system.
It’s essential to learn to recognize the first symptoms of sickness. Though different viruses may manifest with different initial symptoms, many people have one or two symptoms that consistently arise. Some of the common ones are a heavy, dragging tiredness that feels different than just insufficient sleep; a scratchy throat (important to distinguish from having slept with your mouth open); feeling unusually chilled; feeling unusually hot and perhaps sweaty; a headache; and a stiff neck. Sometimes you’ll notice a runny nose, sneezing, or cough, but there’s usually something subtler that came earlier. Also, there are plenty of causes for a headache or stiff neck (most commonly postural strain), so you’ll need feel what the difference is when these are due to a virus.
There are lots of useful supplements, but most of them aren’t nearly as effective in the middle of a cold as they are at the very beginning. Some of the many supplements my patients and I have found effective for infections include: high dose vitamin C (500 to 1000 milligrams every hour or two); high dose vitamin D (10,000 international units a day for adults); high dose vitamin A (25,000 to 100,000 international units a day for non-pregnant adults with no liver problems); lysine; monolaurin; arabinogalactans; zinc lozenges; probiotics; and herbs such as echinacea, osha, elder flower and berry, umckaloabo, lemon balm, garlic, ginger, yarrow, the Chinese formulas Yin Qiao and Gan Mao Ling; and many others. You can read about these in greater detail in my previous article on this topic. The key isn’t so much which of these you take as it is that you take it as early as possible. This may require keeping some in your purse or desk. **http://thedragontree.com/2012/12/14/how-to-avoid-andor-kick-a-cold-or-flu/
When there are sick people around you, it’s a good time to avoid sugar. It’s smart to minimize your sugar consumption in general, but it’s especially important when you want your immune system to function well. Many a time I felt well then had a big dessert and almost immediately began to get sick. Other times I had been fighting a cold and starting to feel better, then ate a bunch of sugar and got sicker again. Sometimes I need to learn things the hard way.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the transitions between seasons are thought to be a challenging time for staying in balance – thus, we’re more apt to get sick in these periods. So they’re key times of year to allow yourself extra resources for adaptation. Let yourself sleep more, schedule less work, eat especially well, and don’t push yourself too hard. Having consistent routines during these transitions (going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, eating at roughly the same time each day, exercising about the same amount each day, etc.) will help you manage them better.
Exercise. When you’re not actively sick, exercise regularly to keep your immune system strong. Regular exercise helps improve resistance to infection. However, if the exercise is excessive, it can be depleting rather than strengthening. If you feel exhausted after exercise, it was probably more than your system could favorably handle. When we push ourselves beyond our means, we engage stress mechanisms and consume adaptation energy to a degree that leaves us weaker than we started. I’ve had numerous patients who are extreme exercisers and also deficient in vitality. Listen to your body and learn your limits.
Keep your hands off your face. Don’t put your hands in your ears, eyes, nose, or mouth unless you’ve just washed them. If you establish this habit, you’ll get fewer colds.
Finally, I reiterate: when you do get sick, don’t argue with reality. Keep loving yourself, keep treating yourself with kindness, keep letting go of your frustration and resistance, keep accepting and allowing what you’re feeling, keep thanking your body for working hard to bring you back to balance, and keep being open to learning something through the process. What if this is your body’s most desperate attempt to get you to slow down?
Be well (and forgive yourself when you’re not),
Peter
P.S. Again, to read the original article, which goes into much greater detail on specific strategies, click here. http://thedragontree.com/2012/12/14/how-to-avoid-andor-kick-a-cold-or-flu/
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[post_content] => When we ask our community what they need support with, fear and anxiety continue to be at the top of the list, so I decided to write a little more on this topic. I’ve found that there are many ways to overcome fear. What’s miraculous for one person might not have the same impact on another. In the right scenario it might be life changing to grab someone, look them in the eyes, and yell, “Snap out of it! Life is a miracle! Don’t let your runaway mind eclipse it!” In the wrong scenario, that might lead to the recipient screaming, “Ahhhh! Get your germs off me!”
That’s why I recommend scheduling a tele-session with me – rest assured I will neither grab you nor get germs on you! But seriously, a skilled outsider is often helpful because they can offer perspective and may be able to discern what the core instability is and how best to address it.
That said, almost everyone can do this themselves if they’re willing to take the time, do the work, and be uncomfortable. Actually, even if you’re working with a practitioner, you still have to take the time, do the work, and be uncomfortable if you really want to heal completely. But that work, time, and discomfort are all in service to a higher goal – real freedom and the emergence of your Highest Self as the true driver of this life.
There are two very common pitfalls along the journey of healing from chronic anxiety. The first is temporary comfort – finding ways to feel less anxious without really healing or changing how we relate to life and our mind. This isn’t specifically bad, but it almost inevitably means having relapse after relapse after relapse. The second pitfall is building a tolerance to a state of anxiousness. We get used to it and stop trying to overcome it, even though it degrades our quality of life.
If you feel ongoing anxiousness or fear, I encourage you to settle for nothing less than a lasting change in your fundamental orientation. That is: becoming a peaceful person. I don’t mean a person who never experiences strong emotions – including fear – but one who isn’t dominated by these emotions in a habitual or prolonged way.
A good place to start is by pondering what I said above about taking the time, doing the work, and being willingly uncomfortable. Almost nobody wants to do these things, especially since there used to be a time when you didn’t need to work to simply feel normal. We just want the feeling to go away. But when it keeps coming back, you may start to think, “What is it about my fundamental orientation that allows fear – specifically fear of imagined scenarios – to get a hold of me?” Then you may decide that finding ways to distract or soothe yourself are no longer enough, and so it’s time to get to work.
It’s natural to hope that there’s a way in which some influence – a healer, a dietary supplement, a crystal – will just correct you. If you find it, congratulations! But in the meantime, let’s look at what this time, work, and discomfort entail.
Everyone’s work is unique. Someone could point out to you, “This is how you’re operating and you’re suffering because of it,” but that won’t change anything unless you experience it, you make the connection, and you choose to change course.
It’s work you’re totally capable of doing. You’ve done harder things in life, but because they were more objective – like finishing college or assembling an Ikea nuclear reactor – you had a clearer sense of how far along you were and how much farther you had to go. Unfortunately, the milestones aren’t as clear with working through fear, but they are there, and actively noticing them is an important part of keeping yourself on track and feeling positive. For example, looking back and rating each day or each week as to how peaceful you were, or rating how well you handled a certain situation, will give you something more objective to validate your progress.
I want to point out that I don’t call it “work” because it’s such a long journey to get to peace. The state you yearn for – a state of true stability and inner calm – isn’t far away. It’s so close. It’s right on the other side of the thinnest veil. You are entirely capable of cutting through that veil of fearful thoughts and remembering the truth – that you are bigger than all of this, that what you are is eternal and can never be harmed, that you are one with the Divine, one with Love, and that peace and lightness and clarity are a choice that is always available to you.
The reason I call it work is mostly because you’re coming up against longstanding habits. It takes consistency to undo the way you’ve been thinking, and more importantly, the way you’ve been letting your thoughts steal all your attention and run the show. It’s work to become mindful, and mindfulness is the single most powerful cure for chronic anxiety. It means paying attention in a way you probably haven’t done much since childhood. Paying attention to the truth of what’s here and now rather than paying attention always to your thoughts and letting them take you out of the moment. And sometimes, it takes work to unearth the deeper underpinnings of fear – whether from a trauma, from early childhood, or inherited from generations before you. Again, it’s work you are absolutely capable of doing.
For now, the work I recommend is this:
(1) As often as you remember throughout the day, bring your attention to whatever you’re doing. Not to the goal of what you’re doing, but to what’s happening right now. Stay. In. This. Moment. Notice how it opens and deepens when you give it your full attention.
(2) When fear arises, take every opportunity to be curious about it. Take every opportunity to follow it and engage with it in a non-resistant way. Your job is to stalk it, gain it’s trust, catch it, become the world’s foremost expert on it. Learn where it lives. Learn it’s tricks. Ask it to show itself. Be willing to feel it with your whole being. Always ask for more. When you feel a flutter of it, notice the tendency to avoid it, to distract yourself, or to push it down. Instead, always turn toward it. Always engage it. Always invite it. Always expect it to come back. And always remember you can do this.
Love,
Peter
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Thank you, Dr. Borten for this comprehensive and valuable video on dealing with allergies. I look forward to trying out several of these to see if they can help with my seasonal and dust mite allergies.
You’re welcome, Melissa! I hope it helps!
Please subtitle or add captions to your videos so they are accessible 🙁
Thanks for the reminder, Molly! We’ll definitely start doing that.
Thank you so much for all the information! I was wondering if these remedies would be ok for children. I’ve been trying to find my 7 year old relief naturally but she’s suffering quite a bit and I refuse to go to over the counter meds. Thank you!
Absolutely. The Bio-Allers products are safe for kids, and so are probiotics (I give my kids Yum Yum Dophilus), acupuncture, nettles tea, a supplement called D-Hist Jr. (which contains several of the supplements I mentioned), Antronex, and the lifestyle recommendations, like washing hair & staying hydrated.
Dr. Borten, Time with you is always time well invested. Lots of information in brief form. Much appreciated, as always.
Glad learn about and look forward to sharing the nasal oil I just discovered via this video.
I enjoy being your student to help others…glad I do not have allergies. But I received my third variety of Muscle Melt (oil, patches and now balm) this week and applied after working in my yard then a friends yard yesterday.
Thank you for learning then sharing; creating and sharing.
Thank you, Susan, and you’re very welcome.
I have a friend I’m sending the link to, but Spanish is her first language and I’m afraid she will miss a lot of your suggestions in frustration. Is there a chance to get a transcript? Someone else wrote in about subtitles, which would be great, too.
I will ask our web developer about it, though I’m not sure it’s something that can happen soon – we just may not have the resources for it. I can review for you, though, some of the things I mentioned:
– underlying weak digestion – improve digestion by eating well, eating slowly, avoiding foods you’re sensitive to, reduce sugar and dairy consumption; try probiotics
– some supplements that some people find useful (ask your doctor first) include: zinc, vitamin B5, quercetin, n-acetyl cysteine, nettles (capsules or tea), Antronex (made by Standard Process), homeopathic remedies of specific allergens such as those made by Bio Allers
– wash hair before bed if you’ve been outside and have pollen allergies
– stay hydrated
– exercise