My Thoughts Are Not Facts — 10 Minute Guided Meditation for Anxious Thoughts and Worry

If your mind is full of anxious thoughts right now, thoughts that feel urgent, thoughts that feel true, thoughts that tell you something is wrong, this session is for you. What if those thoughts weren't facts? What if your mind was simply doing its job and you could learn to let them pass, like clouds across a clear sky without believing every single one? This is exactly what we're going to do today.

Welcome to calming anxiety. I'm Martin, Clinical Hypnotherapist and I was a former frontline paramedic. Every single day I create these 10 minute guided meditation sessions to help you manage anxiety, quiet the worry and find genuine, lasting calm. Over 10 million of you have found your way here and I'm glad you're one of them.

And if you're new, please do subscribe and leave a review. It costs nothing and it helps someone else find their way to calm. Now find your quiet place to sit or lie down where you won't be disturbed. Let your hands fall open and if it's safe to do so, gently close your eye.

Before we go anyway now, we'll give the body the signal that needs because anxious thoughts travel on a nervous system that believes there is danger. We're going to tell it though gently and firmly that there isn't any. As a paramedic, I used to watch people arrive in crisis, heart racing, mind and overdrive and the first thing I ever did before any dramatic big interventions was breathe to teach them to relax on the outwrapped. Today's breathing always in through the nose and this will be for four.

We'll hold and pause at the top taking note of that moment of time and then out, relaxed and deep through the mouth for six. Ready with me in two, three, four, hold two and now release slowly through the mouth.

Again, ready? In two, three, four, hold two, exhale, two, three, four, five, six.

The extended out breath, activating the vagus nerve, the brake pedal of your nervous system. It physically lowers your quarters on and begins to shift you out of the fight or flight every time you breathe out slowly. You are choosing calm overcal. Again, one more time with me in two, three, four, hold two, relax, two, three, four, five, six.

You're breathing, find its own gentle rhythm now, soft and easy. You're already changing the chemistry in your body. The anxious thoughts, they'll still be there, perhaps, but you are no longer inside them. You are stepping back.

Now I'd like you to use your imagination and your imagination is a powerful clinical tool. It speaks directly to the part of the brain that cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. So stand at the edge of a forest. A head of you through the trees is a clearing, an open space, lit by gentle warm light filtering down through the branches.

The ground is soft, the air is still and there is bird some somewhere in the distance. Quiet and unhurried. You walk towards the clearing and as you step into it, you notice something. Across the clearing, like shapes moving through the mist are your thoughts.

Your worries, the things your anxious mind has been presenting as facts. And here is what I want you to understand. You are not those thoughts. You are the one watching them.

You are standing in the clearing, still and quiet and they are moving through like weather through an open sky. There goes a worry about something you said. Watch it drift. There goes a thought about the future, something that hasn't even happened and may never happen.

Watch it drift. You do not need to solve them here. You do not need to judge them. You simply stand in the clearing.

Calm, rooted, present and you let them pass. And within this clearing, here and visualize these words. I am not my anxious thoughts. I am the calm space in which they arise.

My thoughts are not facts. I can notice them without believing everyone.

I am allowed to let a thought pass without acting on it.

I choose to return to the present moment where I am safe and I am well.

My nervous system is settling. My body knows how to find calm.

I release the need to control every thought. I trust my mind quiet on its own.

I am stronger than the worry. I am wider than the fear.

To carry this feeling of calm into the rest of your day, here are three daily caring tips. One, name the thought not the feeling. An inanxious thought arrives, try saying it to yourself. I notice I am having a thought that and then finish the sentence.

That tiny shift from I am anxious so I am having a thought that it will create distance, create choice. Two, the five second pause. Before you react to an anxious thought, before you google it, overthink it or call someone for reassurance. Pause for five seconds and take one slow breath out.

That breath is not avoidance. It is the space between stimulus and response. In that space you are in control. And three, write it down and close the notebook.

If a worry is looping, write it down, just one sentence and then physically close the book. You are telling your brain, the information is stored, I no longer need to hold it. That simple act of externalizing anxious thoughts is one of the most effective evidence-based techniques for worry reduction that there is. Now gently begin to return.

Liggle your fingers in toes. Take a slow breath in and then as you breathe out, stretch the muscles in your arms and legs and then slowly open your eye. You just practice something that anxiety does not want you to know. Your thoughts are visitors, not residents.

They pass through. You remain. If you are ready to understand your anxiety at a deeper level, my anxiety circuit breaker course is waiting for you at calminganxiety.fm. Five hypnosis sessions built on clinical techniques I've used with thousands of patients and it's only 67 dollars.

I'll be back tomorrow my friend. I'm here always. A shoulder to lean on, that gentle squeeze of a shoulder in need. Don't give up, ever.

We will go through dark moments and I've been through a fair few, which is why I created this and I've finally, after many years, I've become me and I want you to be you.

Have a lovely day wherever you are, whatever you're going through. Smile often, positivity as much as you can and then to your beautiful soul. Be kind.