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Being present

On Friday, I went to a therapy session. Both my therapist and I are pretty visual, so we decided to do a visual mental exercise. He asked me to imagine that I was in a forest, and I to imagine that I saw an animal. When discussing it, it turned out it was an exercise about being present. This is something I find hard to do, and wrote a blog post the first time I realised I was doing it.
This feeling of being anywhere but in the now is a pretty common symptom of anxiety. For me, though, it had gone far beyond spacing out and not thinking about anything.
My therapist asked me what qualities are necessary to be present, and I was stumped. I was never in the present. It was really rare, and for the longest time, I thought that everyone thought like me. I was always in the future, or the past, and this caused me to get anxious. Even if I was thinking about something positive, I would quickly think of all the problems that could come with it, which caused me to be anxious. I'm in a long distance relationship, and I find that the time I spend with my partner is filled with worrying about one of us having to go home, instead of focusing on us and being happy.
My therapist asked me to try and stay as present as possible until I see him again. I tried as soon as I left his office, and I realised out not in the moment I am all the time. I was constantly having to pull my thoughts away from future or past situations. It was so difficult to stay in the present - there was so much to think about. But, the more I kept trying to be in the present, the more calm I became. Hypothetical situations weren't making me anxious, and past situations weren't making me feel bad. I was concentrating more. My day felt longer and somewhat less exhausting. I felt grounded and not like an alien more often than once every three months.
Being present still isn't easy. My minds default is to wander off, space out and worry. It's a hard habit to break, but I'm trying my best. I'm still new at this, so I'm sure there's quite literally millions of methods available at a Google search. Right now, I try to focus on something I can see, and tell myself that this is here right now. I keep focusing on details, or people I'm with, and it tends to bring me back to the now, at least temporarily.
I've learned that if you don't at least try to live in the moment, life will be a blur, a jumbled up and fuzzy mess of barely there memories. I want to live life and actual experience it as a person, instead of a ghost.

Image from Pinterest

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I try to blog weekly. Uni is time consuming, but the posts get up, even if they're a little late!
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