Re: Meditation and Social Anxiety: Please help
This isn't in direct response to your specific issues, but I thought I'd pass it on for your consideration. I'm not a psychiatrist or a shaman or anything of that sort, just someone who has overcome Panic/Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (amongst other things).
Meditation, when practiced regularly, appears to actually alter the brain and builds grey matter in important areas of the brain, particularly areas having to do with the control and management of emotions. This is part of why it's good for anxiety. It's like building your "emotional regulation muscles". Do it faithfully and it WILL improve all kinds of issues having to do with anxiety and emotions.
I say this as someone with a long history of volatile emotions and very acute anxiety (to the point of having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and full-on Panic/Anxiety Disorder, as well). Meditation has been an extremely important tool for me in overcoming these things. It didn't happen immediately or instantly, of course, but effects were noticable fairly quickly and only increased as I kept up with the practice of meditation.
So, totally without getting entangled in the specifics of your (or my!) psyche and the issues underneath (which, as noted, may well come up as a result of meditation practice), I can say for sure that meditation is an extremely good idea for any kind of anxiety. Keep at it, it will definitely help.
Here are a few links I've got stashed in my bookmarks folder. Might be of help. Or not.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 134655.htm
http://wellscripts.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... -to-relax/
http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_colum ... u-smarter/
May the light surround you, may you be blessed. May the light surround us, may we be blessed. May love and light surround us all, and may we all be healed and blessed. And so it is, and so it shall be, now and ever after.
Bookmarks