Anxiety Visualization

I’ve started trying to imagine my anxiety like a little round ball that I smooth down or soothe. That was okay, but it wasn’t doing it for me, why would a ball smooth down?

So I started imagining it like a scared hedgehog that had rolled up into a ball and I had to pet it to calm it down and soothe it. With each deep breath I was helping my baby hedgehog friend. In my visualization sometimes it gets completely soothed, but in reality, only temporarily.

So you have to keep soothing the hedgehog.

I don’t know how useful this visualization is, or how it will help anyone. But it’s just something I thought I would share that is helping me cope with my anxiety.

It also makes it seem not so looming or scary. It’s just a hedgehog. It’s not a big black cloud, it’s not something that is like a fog (which both of these feel like), when I try to approach it, it is the scared animal.

I also don’t think it will ever go away, so I’m just trying to learn to manage it, to exercise it, to meditate with it, to make it a part of me that I can control and be with without fear and insecurity.