You're Not Your Anxiety: A 5-minute Practice for Finding Stillness in the Storm

Discover the simple exercise that can help you step back from anxious thoughts and emotions

Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version:

You’ve probably never heard of Roberto Assagioli.

He wasn’t as famous as Jung or Freud. Still, those who knew him called him a psychological wizard, the founder of Psychosynthesis. A man who walked between science and soul. A mountaineer, mystic, and wartime rebel, Assagioli developed a deceptively simple practice: disidentification.

It teaches you how to pause in the middle of overwhelm, to recognise that your racing thoughts and tangled emotions aren’t who you are.

The idea that shifts control

Roberto Assagioli’s idea is simple: we are dominated by what we identify with. If we can dis-identify, we regain control.

• You have a body.

• You have feelings and emotions.

• You have thoughts and stories.

But you are not just those things.

Think of your thoughts and emotions as weather, fast-moving, intense, constantly changing. But you’re not the weather. You’re the sky it moves through: open, spacious, unchanged by the storm.

That’s the deeper centre in you, a quiet observer who can notice it all without being consumed. A space of warm, compassionate presence. Like the eye of the storm, it’s calm, still, and able to witness everything without being overwhelmed.

Disidentification from your body, feelings, and mind allows you to then identify with your inner observer. What Assogoli calls the ‘I’, the centre of awareness.

Don’t confuse disidentification with dissociation

Disidentification means stepping back with awareness, not numbing out or disconnecting. It’s clear to see what’s here without becoming it. Dissociation is an unconscious shut-down.

My experience of disidentification

It was the first day of my Psychosynthesis training. I was nervous, anxious, and tense, unsure what I’d signed up for, sitting in a room with sixteen strangers.

Then we did the disidentification exercise.

In just five minutes, something shifted.

• My anxiety softened.

• My body let go.

• And I touched a quiet inner calm I hadn’t felt in years.

From that day, it became a daily practice for me. Simple, steady, and gently transformative.

The disidentification exercise

There are many variations of this exercise. What I am giving you is a core, simplified version, stripped back to the essentials without losing its power. I will step you through the exercise here so you can learn it for yourself.

At the end of this post, there is a 5-minute audio version if you would like to try a guided version I have created for you.

1. Grounding

Find somewhere you can be alone.

Sit down, you can lie down, but it’s better to do it upright.

Take a breath.

Hold it in for a moment, then sigh it out. Repeat.

Then tense your shoulders by raising them towards your ears, hold for a second, then let them drop.

Pause.

2. Body

Become aware of your body.

For a moment, notice the physical sensations, don’t try to change them. Just observe with quiet attention.

The contact of your body with the chair, your feet on the ground, and your breath.

Then internally say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have a body, but I’m more than my body.’

Let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

3. Feelings and emotions

Become aware of your feelings.

What feelings and emotions are you experiencing right now? Feel what comes up for you.

If it helps, label them as fear, anger, love, irritation, and jealousy. Or whatever comes. Don’t judge yourself for feeling them. Just observe.

Then say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have feelings and emotions, but I’m more than my feelings and emotions.’

Again, let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

4. Thoughts

Now switch your attention to your thoughts.

Observe as they rise and fall. If you think you’re not having any thoughts, realise that this may be a thought too.

Watch your stream of awareness as it flows by: memories, opinions, nonsense, arguments, images.

Then say to yourself slowly with attention, ‘I have thoughts, but I’m more than my thoughts.’

Again, let that land. Feel it.

Pause.

5. The shift to the centre

Now say to yourself:

I am a centre of pure consciousness.
I am the one who watches.
I am a centre of pure consciousness.

Let that land. Feel it.

And rest in awareness, just be for a moment or as long as you need.

When you are ready, stretch your arms, move your body and open your eyes.

If you have time, write down any observations you have about the experience.

Then re-enter your day.

An invitation

You may have to repeat the exercise a few times to start with to get its full power. If you try, you’ll soon be able to do it daily from memory.

The effort is well worth it.

The more you practice, the more the influences that try to capture your attention will no longer have the same hold over you.

Give it a go, let me know what you find.

Guided audio version

Here's a standalone audio version of the 5-minute disidentification exercise.