How to remain free from anxiety?
Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.
Questioner: I have suffered from anxiety a lot, I have also been to many psychiatrists, and they have always advised me to be secure in my environment, they say “You should have faith in your environment and your parents,” but I have found that it is something very false. I can have faith and start believing that my life is good but there is something very egoistic, they tell me to be egoistic and be comfortable with whoever I am and with my environment but I think that I am escaping from the fact that I am anxious. I am very confused, they have also advised me for medications but I have never taken the medicines. When I feel that I should face the fact that I am anxious, that time I start panicking, lose all focus.
Acharya Prashant: See, I am going to say something and do not take it as just wordplay.
It is not anxiety that bothers you; it is your anxiety about anxiety. Just as we are afraid of so many things, we are also fearful of fear - “What if I become afraid?” Similarly we are anxious about anxiety.
Now is there anything here right now that makes you anxious? Still you talk about it because you are anxious about being anxious.