I use a technique I evolved out of a combination of several disciplines, among which are scientology, buddhism and raja yoga. Ffor the longest I did not have a name for it, then one day I described it as being "nameless" to someone... and realized I had finally given it a name.

Basically it boils down to a precise awareness of how the mind works. Here's the sequence:

1) A thought/idea or mental image will be the triggering factor.

This could be a thought like "What if some terrorist spreads anthrax through the subway when I'm on it tomorrow?" Or it could simply be a mental image such as the picture of that woman's fingers who had skin anthrax. Any thought or image has an exact size and location in space, noticing this size/location will usually reduce their power to make a person unhappy.

2) The thought or image will trigger a feeling or sensation in the body (not an emotion, see #3).

This is the mechanism by which the primitive mind/hindbrain obtains obedience from the organism as a whole by forcing unpleasant sensations onto it. This feeling or sensation will normally be in or somewhere between the head down through the abdomen and anywhere in line between. This feeling or sensation will have a specific location in the body, and the size and edges of it can be located precisely.

3) The feeling or sensation in the body will trigger an emotion.

An emotion can be a positive emotion, but we are not dealing with those here (such are dealt with in higher meditation however). In this case we are dealing with a negative emotion, such as anger, grief, fear, hopelessness, resentment and all forms of hostility. An emotion can be distinguished from a feeling or sensation by the fact that an emotion is pervasive. It occupies a whole space rather than having an exact location, the way a feeling or sensation does (though sometimes a person can have a feeling or sensation dominate the entire body, so that they seem pervasive).

4) The emotion will have a specific mental attitude connected to it. This consists of fixed ways to be right, and in the case of negative emotions, fixed ways of making oneself right by making others wrong. This attitude contains narrow assumptions and views about the world which attach to the emotion.
 

The technique:
When one is flooded by a negative emotion (such as fear), close your eyes and locate the feeling or sensation in the body which triggered it. Next spot the thought or mental image which triggered the feeling or sensation. Locate the attitude and inherent make-wrongs (service facsimiles) which ride on the emotion. Once you have found all the parts spot the attachments of each to the others. Simultaneously spot the emotion and the fact that it is originating in the body's feeling or sensation, and at the same time spot the thought or image which is placing the feeling/sensation in the body. Get as precise a location as possible. Look for other images or thoughts, but especially images, which have become attached to the original thought or image. These are sometimes in multiple layers. Take any images from the past and timebreak them by holding the image in the mind while simultaneous holding the image of present time reality in front of you. Compare them to one another. Notice how and in what ways they are different from one another.

Note on theory: The mind works by attaching/associating things to one another. This is necessary to think and reason, but it also is how the mind oppresses the spirit. The way to free oneself from unwanted or negative emotional/sensational oppression is to notice the attachments, doing which almost automatically detaches them (unless the person is in extreme spiritual/emotional/physical pain or is heavily drugged, in which case DO NOT DO THIS TECHNIQUE). A reading of the Pali language texts of Buddhism will show that Gautama spoke often of attachment and clinging. The old master knew what he was talking about...

Ouran