Living in the "Age of Anxiety"

If you’re human, then in all likelihood you will sometimes feel anxious. But for many of us, our anxiety can feel out of control or really dominate our lives. Sometimes this age we’re living in is even called the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Our lives are packed and busy, we are surrounded by media images of the bodies or lives that we’re ‘supposed’ to aspire to, and social media keeps us updated on all the difficult and painful realities of our world, moment by moment. Perhaps we’re living with a painful body, a tricky brain or challenging life circumstances. It all makes for a lot of triggers for our anxious tendencies.

This reality is what made me personally turn to mindfulness! At a time when my daughter was really ill, it helped keep me sane. In more recent times, it’s helped me build resilience, self-compassion and steadiness in the face of life’s challenges. There’s plenty of evidence that mindfulness is generally helpful in coping with stress. But, there’s more to it, it seems...

Matching mindfulness to anxiety matters

One thing that I’ve noticed is that over the years my mindfulness practice has changed to fit what seems to work best for me at any given time. So, I was really interested to discover some recent research showing that not only is mindfulness practice not all the same, but neither is anxiety.

Practitioners and teachers have experimented with this for a long time, but now we have scientific evidence that suggests we could indeed be onto something!

Not all anxiety is the same

• State anxiety – sometimes you feel nervous because of something specific that’s happening - maybe you’re about to hear some important exam or medical results, go on stage to do something you love, talk to your boss about a raise, or are just having a difficult day. While this kind of anxiety (‘state’ anxiety) can be a pretty rough ride, it usually passes when the exciting or worrying event passes.
  
  
• Thought-driven anxiety (anxious apprehension) – often our anxiety is thought-driven. We feel like we’re being bombarded by thoughts and worry - perhaps we’re ruminating about something that has happened or is going to happen, something that was said or might be said. It can feel like our brain just won’t switch off. Scientists call it ‘anxious apprehension’. And, as we all know, it’s exhausting!
  
  
• Body-based anxiety (anxious arousal) – then there’s the kind of anxiety that is very body-based. We feel on-edge and jittery. We may experience a flood of sensation in our body, or feel overwhelmed by our emotions or feelings. Our whole nervous system is in a heightened state. Though sometimes we’re well aware of the reason for our anxious state, at others we may not even really know what’s causing us to feel like this. The official name for this one is ‘anxious arousal.’
  
  
• Trait anxiety – finally, you may be one of a group of people who have a strong tendency in their system or personality to feel anxiety, as a kind of general baseline. This type of anxiety is referred to as ‘trait’ anxiety.
  
  

And, of course, these different kinds of anxiety aren’t all completely separate. You might find these different types, or ‘flavours’, of anxiety overlap or even set each other off for you.

Not all mindfulness is the same

There are two main approaches to mindfulness practice, sometimes referred to as ’classic’ mindfulness and ‘natural’ mindfulness. Both have great strengths, and both can be really helpful. By exploring each approach, you can find the practice that best suits you, and helps relieve your particular experience of anxiety (or other challenging experience such as physical or emotional pain.)

1. Classic mindfulness: Focused attention practice

You may be familiar with ‘classic’ mindfulness which involves practising focussing your attention on one, specific part of your experience, for example sensations in your body, sounds around you, or the feeling of air flowing in and out as you breathe. We sometimes call the thing that you’re focussing on the ‘anchor’ for your attention. Whenever you notice that you’ve got distracted or your mind is wandering, you gently bring your attention back to your ‘anchor’.

That’s probably because it gives you somewhere other than thoughts that you can practise resting your attention. The more you do this, the more you are able to notice when you’ve got lost in rumination or worrying during your everyday life, and begin to have a choice to take your attention somewhere other than your spiralling thoughts. This can be very calming.`

A ‘focussed attention’ practice

1. Sit or lie comfortably and take a moment to become aware of your body just resting on your chair, bed or wherever you are.

2. Gently bring your attention to your breath – it could be the sensations of air entering and leaving the body at your nostrils or mouth, or perhaps the movements of your chest and back as you breathe.

3. Each time you notice thoughts pulling you away, gently guide your attention back to the breath, without criticising or judging yourself for the fact your attention wandered.

4. Try this for a few minutes, noticing if your mind feels steadier.

2. Natural mindfulness: Open monitoring practice

The ‘natural’ mindfulness approach is about broadening your attention to include whatever is present - thoughts, feelings, body sensations, sounds - allowing everything to come and go without focusing on any one thing. It may also involve tuning into awareness of awareness itself. It’s a very simple approach, but not always easy!

One way of practising like this is called ‘open monitoring’. In this practice, you let everything you’re experiencing be without you have to do anything about it. There’s nothing to fix, and you lean into the part of you that is simply aware, not busy trying to sort out your life’s problems! Think of it a bit like practising being the big open sky that clouds are passing through – here the clouds represent things like your thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body etc.

The research suggest that natural mindfulness or open monitoring may be most helpful for people whose anxiety is more physical (anxious arousal), or those who feel overwhelmed by sensations or emotions. It can help us develop a sense of ease or flexibility in relation to our experience, and become less emotionally reactive.
 

It can help us develop a sense of ease or flexibility in relation to our experience, and become less emotionally reactive.

An ‘open monitoring’ practice

1. Sit or lie quietly and let your body settle into the chair or whatever you’re resting on.
   
   
2. Let your awareness rest in the whole field of experience – a bit like when you take in a whole scene rather than just looking at one thing (watching the movement of your football team over the pitch in general, rather than just one player, for example).
   
   
3. Notice sensations, sounds, thoughts, and feelings as they arise, but don't focus on or push away anything in particular. If you get hooked into one particular thought, feeling or sensation, that’s no problem, just gently expand your awareness again to the whole ‘picture’.
   
   
4. If it helps, you could imagine you're sitting on the bank of a river, letting everything flow by.
   
   

Finding the right mindfulness practice for you

However we practise, over time, mindfulness helps us ‘de-centre’, which means we learn to experience thoughts, sensations and emotions as passing events rather than personal truths, which in turn can lessen the grip of anxiety in any form.

You might like to try out both styles of mindfulness practice over the next week. Notice which approach feels more supportive for your current pattern of anxiety. Remember, there's no one right way - what matters most is finding what helps you meet your experience with greater kindness and ease right here and now.

Explore more mindfulness for anxiety and stress

To explore classic mindfulness approaches further, you could check out Breathworks’ signature 8-week courses, Mindfulness for Health and Mindfulness for Stress.

(There are also several compassion practices in each course, and a lovely Open Monitoring practice called the ‘Open Heart’ practice in the Mindfulness for Health course.)

If you’d like to find out more about natural mindfulness approaches, I'd love for you to join me on my 6-week course, Evolving Awareness, which introduces some of these practices that I’ve found very helpful myself.

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Last updated: 04 September 2025
Author: Ginny Wall