I suffered from bad anxiety for a while post pandemic. Mindfulness meditation made me feel better during and for about half an hour afterward, but it wasn't "m

I suffered from bad anxiety for a while post pandemic. Mindfulness meditation made me feel better during and for about half an hour afterward, but it wasn't "me again": it was some altered state that not only wasn't addressing the underlying issues (that I've since made great strides on in psychotherapy). I felt periods of great calm, but it was as if I was taking some drug to achieve an altered state. I read a lot about how to "bring the meditative state into daily life", and that only made the anxiety worse when it broke through, because it sensitized me to focus increasingly on internal physical phenomena. Yeah, I tried not to "judge" them, to neither anticipate their arrival and to just observe their rise and fall, but the observing meant attention, and the attention magnified them. I finally beat the anxiety mostly for good by acknowledging and facing the problems in my life. I haven't even solved much of them yet, but I'm pretty honest about it both to myself and the people close to me.