Survive and thrive when you feel like things are getting on top of you

Things can feel like they are getting on top of you for many reasons. From the news of  death of a loved one or loss of a job – from the collapse of a relationship to financial problems. When you are feeling like things are running away from you, it can feel like an emotional hurricane is ripping through your  mind and body, hurling painful thoughts and feelings in all directions.

Here are some things you might like to try when you feel like this:

Slow your breathing
• Take a few deep breaths, and mindfully observe the breath flowing in and flowing out. This will help to anchor you in the present.

Take note
• Take note of your experience in this moment. Notice what you are thinking. Notice what you are feeling.  Notice what you are doing. Notice how your thoughts and feelings are swirling around, and can easily  carry you away if you allow them.

Open up
• Open up around your feelings. Breathe into them and make room for them. Open up to your thoughts too:  take a step back and give them some room to move, without holding onto them or trying to push them away. See them for what they are and give them space, rather than joining and over-identifying with them.

Pursue your values
• Once you’ve done the above three steps, you will hopefully be in a state of mindfulness. The next step is to respond to the crisis by pursuing a valued course of action. Connect with your values: ask yourself,

‘What do I want to be about, in the face of this crisis?

What do I want to stand for?

How would I like to act, so that I can look back years from now and feel proud of my response?’

Feeling more centred and calm, and being able to see your emotions as something apart from you, that doesn’t define the totality of you – these skills will help to get you into a better frame of mind to accept your thoughts and feelings and start to be able to engage with your situation.

(Adapted from Russ Harris, The Happiness Trap, 2008)

Mindfulness around the house

We’re all busy people, and many of us don’t have time (or are unwilling to make time) to practice being mindful. But we can do this as we engage with activities throughout the day. Here are a couple of exercises to help you to practice being mindful – being involved the present moment – during your morning routine, or around the house.

1) Mindfulness in your morning

Pick something that you do that makes up part of your daily morning routine, such as brushing your teeth, shaving, or having a shower. When you do it, totally focus on what you are doing: the body movements, the taste, the touch, the smell, the sight, the sound etc.

• For example, when you’re in the shower, notice the sounds of the water as it sprays out of the nozzle, and as it hits your body, as it gurgles down the plughole
• Notice the temperature of the water, and the feel of it in on your face, on your shoulders, and running down our legs
• Notice the smell of the soap and shampoo, and the feel of them against your skin
• Notice the water droplets on the walls or shower curtain, the water dripping down your body and the steam rising upwards
• Notice the movements of your arms as you wash
• When thoughts arise, acknowledge them, let them be, and bring your attention back to the shower.

Again and again, your attention will wander. As soon as you realize this has happened, gently acknowledge it, note what distracted you, and bring your attention back to the shower.

2) Mindfulness in domesticity

Pick a chore that you normally try to rush through – one you would usually try to distract yourself from. Or maybe one for which you just ‘grit your teeth’ and try to ‘get through it’. Ironing clothes? Vacuuming floors? Washing dishes? I’m sure you can think f something. Aim to do this domestic task as a mindfulness practice.

Let’s take ironing clothes as an example

• Notice the color and shape of the clothing, and the pattern made by the creases, and the new pattern as the creases disappear
• Notice the hiss of the steam, the creak of the ironing board, the quiet sound of the iron moving over the material
• Notice the grip of your hand on the iron, and the movement of your arm and your shoulder.

If boredom or frustration arises, simply acknowledge that it is there, and bring your attention back to the chore at hand. No matter what you are focusing on, when thoughts arise, acknowledge them, let them be, and bring your attention back to what you are doing. Again and again, your attention will wander. Don’t fight it. As soon as you realize this has happened, gently acknowledge it, note what distracted you, and bring your attention back to your current activity.

(Adapted from Russ Harris’s The Happiness Trap)

It’s true: the pressure to be happy can make you miserable

Living in a society where the overarching message is that you can and should be happy can actually make you more miserable.  In studies conducted in both Australia and Japan, the research found that when people think that others expect them not to feel sad, they actually feel more sad. The effect of the expectations of others was even stronger that their own personal expectations of how they should be feeling. The researchers sum up by saying, “In short, when people perceive that others think they should feel happy, and not sad, this leads them to feel sad more frequently and intensely.”

It’s interesting that the study conceptualises emotions as essentially social phenomena – not solely individual experiences – a trap we can sometimes fall into. Our emotional experiences are actively shaped not only by our own internal world, but very much also through how others expect us to feel. The ironic effect of people expecting us not to be sad actually making us feel sad more often (and more intensely) can also perhaps teach us something about our other experiences, such as with life satisfaction or depression. As a society, we tend to emphasise the experience of feeling good over other experiences. This is perfectly understandable – being happy has lots of benefits – and perhaps our intention is to inspire people to change their lives so they can also experience our shared goal of increased happiness, and spend less time in other, less valued emotional states. Yet, if we as a society are not more accepting of other emotional states and see them as valuable too, we could unintentionally be setting people up to feeling more miserable instead.

We tend to send out messages that feeling sad is a bit like failing. Happy people are vital, successful people, and the way to becoming a vital, successful person is to be happy. Different people seem to have different emotional settings – some experience more sadness than others. The difficulty comes in rejecting our own experience because we feel we should be having some other, more valued experience instead. And although our own lack of acceptance of our sad feelings can be a problem that actually makes us feel more miserable, this research suggests that societal rejection of sadness and promotion of happiness above all other emotional states can make things even worse.

Acceptance of the full range of our experience – even though some of these may be uncomfortable or distressing for us – sets us on the right path to avoid the trap of trying to control our emotions to fit in with society says we should be feeling. Controlling our experience is a natural thing to try to do when we are experiencing unpleasant states – and it works for some in the short-term – but there are long-term costs. I talk through some examples of how futile it is to try to control our experiences here.

Of course, we can also advocate for a more realistic societal understanding of the full range of emotional experience – something I believe in. It was interesting that the research participants in Japan expected more of a balance between different emotional states compared to the Australian participants, and that the Japanese tended to see the pursuit of happiness as slightly dubious. Nevertheless, the effects of societal expectations were present in both countries. There is still much work to do.

Can writing boost your well-being?

When I talk about writing, I don’t mean this – blogging – that is, writing in a public way. What I mean is writing privately about things in your life that you are finding stressful and difficult. You know, like keeping a private diary or a journal.

There is an increasing amount of evidence indicating that writing about stressful situations is one of the easiest ways for people to understand circumstances, events, feelings and thoughts that they find themselves returning to in their minds. It may also provide a means to perhaps safely expose themselves to troubling thoughts, that become less troubling as a result of the writing process. Dozens of studies have explored the many psychological and physical benefits for different populations, and the different conditions under which the writing protocol is effective. The protocol itself is pretty simple, and relatively standard. Here are the instructions we gave in a study we did:

“During today’s writing session, we would like you to spend about 10 minutes writing about a traumatic or upsetting experience that has happened to you. The important thing is that you write about your deepest thoughts and feelings. Ideally, whatever you write about should deal with an event or experience that you have not talked with others about in detail.”  We asked our participants to do this again on Day 2 and Day 3 of the study too. Of course, not everyone has a traumatic experience, but all of us have had major conflicts or stressors in our lives. That was OK to write about too.

This writing protocol is quite powerful. Time and time again, the results have demonstrated that when people are given the opportunity to write about deeply personal aspects of their lives, they readily do so. It was a very sobering experience being part of the study team in this kind of research. Even though a large number of participants across numerous studies report crying or being pretty upset by the experience, the overwhelming majority reported that the writing experience was valuable and meaningful in their lives.

Although this is a topic area that I have been interested ever since my early postgraduate days (here is a paper that I published on this technique being used out of the laboratory situation, and another early paper here on the potential benefits ), the mechanisms underlying these potential benefits are not well understood. Inhibition was originally proposed as the explanation in early work in the 1980s- that is, the work of not talking about emotional upheaval ultimately led to stress and illness, However, researchers now recognize that this is only part of the picture, and that the effective mechanisms are likely to be more complex and nuanced than this. Not talking about stressful experiences can contribute to social networks being disrupted or breaking down, a decrease in working memory capacity, disturbed sleep, alcohol and drug problems and an increased risk for further stressful events. However, it does seem that expressive writing can help to short-circuit this negative circle.

Expressive writing forces people to pause and reevaluate their life story and circumstance. The process of writing also helps to impose a structure beyond mere labeling and acknowledgement of emotions. The act of writing also forces a translation of our thoughts, feelings and images into words – an entirely different representation in the brain, memory, and how we think on a daily basis. All of this may help us to come to a different understanding of our lives, our worlds, and our place in them. As a result of this process, perhaps we begin to talk more, to connect with others differently. Perhaps we come to value the support of others around us. We also see from the research evidence that many unhealthy behaviors start to fall away. Expressive writing also seems to promote sleep and enhance immune function.

Expressive journal writing should not be seen as a cure-all,as the overall effect size for this kind of protocol is modest. We are still not sure about who it works best for, when it should be used, or when other things should be tried instead. The benefits may be slow to come, and may show itself in ways that we don’t yet realize. But it does seem like a promising avenue to research and practice. I have certainly kept a private diary at times in my life when I have been struggling to make sense of things, and I have found it useful. You might too.

You are the sky, not just the weather

When we are troubled by thoughts and feelings that seem to hook us and stay with us, it can be helpful to think about the difference between the observing and thinking self.

Your observing self is like the sky. Thoughts and feelings are like the weather. The weather changes all the time, but no matter how bad it gets, it cannot harm the sky in any way. The mightiest thunderstorm, the most terrible hurricane, the most severe winter blizzards – none of these can hurt or harm the sky. And no matter how bad the weather, the sky always has room for it. And sure enough, sooner or later, the weather always, always changes.

Sometimes, we can forget that the sky is there – but it’s still there. And sometimes we can’t see the sky because it is hidden from us by clouds. But if we can rise high enough above the clouds – even the thickest, darkest, thunderclouds – sooner or later we will reach clear sky – stretching before and around us in all directions – boundless and pure.

More and more, you can learn to tap into this part of you: a safe space inside from which to observe and make room for difficult thoughts and feelings.

Pain and love – two sides of the same coin

Suppose you had a choice:

• Option 1: you never had to experience a painful feeling ever again. That’s never. BUT, it means that you lose all capacity to love and care. You care about nothing and no-one. Nothing will matter any more. No one matters. Life becomes meaningless because you don’t care about anything whatsoever.
• Option 2: You get to love and care. People matter to you. Life matters to you. You care about what you do, and what happens. You care about friends and family. You get to build loving relationships. Life becomes meaningful. And where there is a gap between what you want and what you’ve actually got, painful feelings show up.

Which option do you choose?

This choice puts us face-to-face with the human condition. If we are going to love and care, then we are going to feel pain. Love and pain are twins, joined at the hip. In order to avoid pain, some people try desperately not to want or care or love. They can try to do this in an amazing multitude of ways, from alcohol and drugs, to social withdrawal, to declaring that ‘Nothing matters‘, or ‘I don’t care about anything or anyone‘. Unfortunately, these attempts are doomed to fail – they actually end up causing more pain, not less.

Most people choose Option 2. But what if you chose Option 1? Maybe the pain you are experiencing right now is so unbearable, that it seems like the only choice. And maybe life right now is so painful that you’d do anything to stop the pain, no matter what the cost – getting out-of-your-mind-drunk, getting high, or staying in bed all day. Maybe these are ways of trying to stop the pain. I wonder how that is that working for you, and if you find yourself in this position, I encourage you to do the same. I wonder if these strategies aren’t actually making life less painful of more painful?

p.s. there’s a really good extract in Douglas Coupland’s Generation A which alludes to exactly this sort of false choice, and the consequences of losing love. Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll send you the page numbers of the section I mean – I don’t have the book to hand right now.

The problem of perfection

“Problem? What problem? I’m proud of being a perfectionist!”

That almost sounds like me talking sometimes. What’s wrong with being a perfectionist? You get good stuff done, working hard all the way, right? Maybe some of the time. Always hard-working – possibly – but not always getting stuff done. Sometimes, getting stuff done can be compromised by being so driven.

Perfectionists start by setting very high standards. You want to be brilliant and the only way to do this is by expecting the best of yourself. But in the perfectionists’ case, ‘the best’ becomes perfection. That automatically becomes a problem. Perfection isn’t a high standard. It’s an impossible one.

Try this:

Imagine you are at the World Breathing Championships. Everything depends on you being able to breathe perfectly. How are you going to do that?

I guess you might eventually come to the conclusion that there are many ways to breathe well, depending on what you are trying to do. And even then, there might be many ways to breathe well to enable you to do that particular thing. Trying to breathe perfectly becomes meaningless.

• At this point, let’s imagine a work-related goal, you can maybe see that you can’t reach your perfection goal. You keep trying, but you always seem to miss – ever so slightly. You hear other people give you good feedback about your performance, but you’ve a way of dismissing that. You like to point out how your performance wasn’t quite up to par. Other people might tell you to ease up on yourself. But inside, you tell yourself that is rubbish and you need to push yourself harder or you’ll never achieve your goal.
• Maybe you start to feel like you spend a lot of time feeling like you’re not quite hitting the mark. You feel down but at the same time aware of the burden on your shoulders. You might start to feel like giving up, or avoiding what it is you were trying to do.
• Maybe now, you start to give yourself a hard time. You chastise yourself for not succeeding, and try to get yourself up again with punishment and self-critical language. You think to yourself, “If I just try harder, I can do this!”. You harden yourself for the next round, only to find yourself in the same cycle again, felling more and more despondent and miserable.

The perfectionist loop is completed. Sound familiar? Welcome to low self-worth, maybe even feelings of anxiety or depression. Maybe you feel like you are in a fog, or you think that you won’t bother doing the things you love because you feel you aren’t good enough to participate. Maybe you expect relentlessly high standards of your team-mates (or family members) too. You can perhaps find yourself being rigid or impatient, even though you don’t mean to be. Not a pleasant place to be.

What can you do?

• Acknowledge that perfectionism isn’t a desirable end-point. The challenge then is to notice your thinking and whether it is aligned with this standpoint.
• Realistic and challenging goals are the way forward. Where are you right now, and what should your next steps be?
• Set short-term goals. Don’t set any more until you reach that goal. Allow yourself to feel the sense of achievement, instead of denying yourself and moving on to the next one.
• Watch out for ‘should’ and ‘have to’ in your language, especially internally. If you think about what you ‘want’ to do instead, you’ll perhaps be surprised about how different that feels.
• Try thinking excellence instead of perfection.
• Playing the long game also allows you flexibility for when mistakes happen, or progress is held up.
• Watch out for black and white thinking. You don’t just succeed or fail – it is much more likely to be a mix of effective and not-so-effective.
• Cultivate an  awareness of your expectations of yourself and others. Practicing self-compassion, and compassion for others will help you to access more reasonable thoughts.
• Love mistakes. See them as ways to learn. Make learning not to make the same error over and over again your new goal.
• Pay attention to the positive feedback you get – reflect on it, and resist the temptation to brush it off and move on. Appreciate it,and appreciate noticing and giving it to others too.
• Remind yourself that you are not lowering your standards – you are re-defining them.

Let me know how you get on.

 

Wanting to be in control is perfectly normal – but sometimes, it just doesn’t work

All this stuff I write about noticing, accepting, being mindful. It can be hard to get your head around, and even if that isn’t a problem, it can be tricky to practice in our everyday lives.

The truth is that we are all in the same boat. Most of the things that you do – think about the future when you could be experiencing now, losing connection with the present, trying not to think about thoughts and emotions that trouble us – are all things that I do at times. Almost everyone does.

We all get caught up in the same agenda. We live in a society where we are convincingly sold a myth that we should feel good all the time – we get this from all angles. And everyone likes to feel good – no-one likes to feel bad. So we try to get rid of unpleasant feelings. And we keep on doing it, even though it doesn’t work in the long run and we often end up struggling and suffering as a result.

There are a few reasons as to why we do this:

1. We buy into the myth that humans are naturally happy and we should feel great most of the time
2. Because when we do try to control our thoughts and feelings in the short-term, quite often it actually works. So we try this as a long-term strategy too.
3. We think that this works for other people, so we must be doing it wrong. If we keep on trying, we will get it right, like everyone else seems to.
4. And this is the main reason above all – this is the way our mind has developed to solve problems. The essence of a problem is that it is something we don’t want. And a solution means to avoid it, or get rid of it. In the physical world, that works really well. Stray dog trying to steal your picnic? Get rid of it: shoo it away, or throw a stick at it. Crap weather? Well, you can’t get rid of that, but you can avoid it – stay indoors, or wear protective clothing. Dry ground, no good for farming? You can choose to plant elsewhere, or get rid of it by irrigation. So, our mind is like a problem-solving machine which is great for the external world, and it is very good at it. So if it is very good at the material world, it is only natural that our mind tries to do the same with our internal world – the world of thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories and urges. What we learn is that what we try in the external world only works in our internal world in the short-term, if at all. And often, even if it does work, we end up creating a lot of pain and struggle for ourselves in the process.

Do you think you can control what happens in your internal world? Completely?

Try this:

• Take a second and remember how you navigated to this web page today. Done that? Ok, now delete that memory. Wipe your history. Just get rid of it.

How did you get on? You can’t completely get rid of it. Try another one.

• Imagine that I have recruited you to a completely unethical experiment where I have wired you up to a lie detector. This detector will detect the tiniest bit of anxiety in your body. You can’t kid it at all. Even the teensiest hint of anxiety, and the bells will sound. And in this experiment, you’re not allowed to feel even a mere hint of anxiety. And if you do, I’ll pull the lever and you will be electrocuted. What would happen?

You can’t control what you feel. Not completely. Ask yourself, why are you continuing the struggle?

If it is because you don’t know what else to do, think again. There is plenty you can do. Flick through some of the pages of this blog, elsewhere on the web, or consider developing a coaching relationship.

The power of noticing emotions

In this series of blog posts, I have talked about the importance of acceptance, and how suppression can work in the short-term, but only serves to rebound and even intensify our difficulties. In order to accept a feeling or sensation (or a thought), we have to notice it first. The metaphor of observing like a curious scientist helps to foster openness and curiosity towards our own feelings – approach instead of avoidance. The simple act of observing or noticing a feeling with curiosity rather than being caught up in in often leads to acceptance – and if not, at least it is a step in the right direction.

Here’s a guide to how to take that step in the right direction:

• When you have a feeling, notice that you are having it. Notice where you feel it. Notice where it is most intense.
• Many people (but not all) find breathing into a feeling helps them make room for it. Slow, diaphragmatic breathing seems to be particularly helpful. So try noticing the feeling, and gently breathing into it.
• When you notice the feeling, and where you feel it, see if you can just imagine opening up around it a little. Give it some space.
• If this feeling was an object, ask yourself what it would look like? When you notice the feeling, you might notice that it starts to change. Notice if it does, but don’t force it. Does it get smaller? Perhaps it might get bigger. Remember though – no matter how big the feeling gets, it can’t get bigger than you. So notice it, observe it, breather into it, and make room for it.

Losses that we experience can leave us with painful feelings – this is only natural. You can notice and make room for those feelings without getting bogged down in a struggle with them. This will leave you much more able to engage fully with life, and doing what matters to you. When we recognise that it is normal and natural to have painful feelings – that it is an unavoidable and inevitable part of being human – we are more likely to accept them. If you have a story that you tell yourself that normal people don’t feel this way – there must be something wrong with me, this is going to have a big influence on your attitude towards your feelings.

Here’s an exercise to try – read the opening paragraph first

Most people agree (with some quibbling around the edges) that there are nine basic human emotions. As you read through the list below, I want you to classify them as either negative / bad emotions, or good / positive emotions. One or the other – thumbs-up or thumbs-down – no hesitation – just your immediate response.

Ready? Start reading.

• Love
• Joy
• Curiosity
• Anger
• Fear
• Sadness
• Guilt
• Shock
• Disgust

I’m guessing that you gave the thumbs-down for 6 out of the 9 basic, normal human emotions. Does that tell you anything about what it means to be human? Two-thirds of the emotions that every person will experience throughout life do not feel great. But we live in a feel-good society that tells us we should feel good all the time.

How realistic is that?

• Self-compassion – being caring and kind to yourself – adds another dimension to acceptance. Let’s go back to you noticing a feeling – which may be one you don’t like. Place a hand on where you experience most intensely, and see if you can open up around it. Hold it gently.
• Sometimes, we want to focus on our emotions, like when we are learning to notice them (like now), or if we are grieving. At other times, if we are too intently focused on our emotions that can get in the way of living life. When we can notice that the feeling that we struggling with doesn’t have to have the spotlight – that it is one of many actors on a well-lit stage, we can start to notice that the feeling we are struggling with is just one of many. It isn’t the only actor on stage: it isn’t the whole show.

Notice that feeling and notice your breathing. Notice your body, and notice the room around you. Notice that there is a lot going on.

On chocolate, Billy Ray Cyrus, and the futility of thought suppression

Imagine a tasty bit of chocolate. Imagine unwrapping it, and looking at it, anticipating what it is going to taste like. Now imagine placing it in your mouth and swirling it around, feeling it start to dissolve and become warm as you taste the sweetness spreading across your tongue. Allow yourself to linger on that thought, that taste, that flavor, for a few seconds before you read on.

Now – stop thinking about chocolate. I am instructing you not to think about chocolate again until you get to the end of this article. If you think about chocolate. I want you to stop. Note that you have thought about chocolate but stop. You are not to think about chocolate.

The point of this little exercise is to understand how difficult it is for us to not think about something. I bet you’ve already thought about chocolate. If that’s true, you are not alone. That’s just how the mind works – the more we try not to think about something – or thought suppression – the more we end up thinking about it – this is called the ironic rebound effect. Think of an annoyingly catchy 80s pop song. Maybe, “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus. Go through the chorus a couple of times. Really imagine that mullet swinging in the breeze. Here, let me help – click below for the full experience

Now, stop thinking about it. Yeah, right.

Sometimes, especially when we are trying to dismiss thoughts from our minds, it can feel like we aren’t on the same team. Still have Billy Ray Cyrus running amok in your head? See what I mean – the more you try not to think about it, the more it is there. Even if you get practice suppressing the unwanted thought, that doesn’t seem to work in the long-term either. Trying to push it to the back of your mind just – does – not – work. Thought suppression has behavioural impacts too. In one experiment, people asked not to think about chocolate ended up eating more chocolate when given the opportunity than those who weren’t given the instruction to suppress the thought.

One theory to explain this is that we try to distract ourselves by intentionally thinking about something else. Secondly – and here comes the ironic bit –  out minds start an unconscious monitoring process to check if we are still thinking about the thing we are not supposed to be thinking about – you know, to check if our conscious process is working or not.  The problem comes when we consciously stop trying to distract ourselves and the unconscious process carries on looking out for the thing we are trying to suppress. Anything it sees that looks remotely like the target triggers the thought again and round we go in yet another loop of thinking the same thought we were desperately trying to forget about.

So, the irony of thought suppression, then, is that actively trying to manage our own minds can sometimes do more harm than good. 

What can we do?

• The key is abandoning attempts to exert thought control and practicing acceptance instead. In a nutshell, acceptance is about allowing our thoughts and feelings to be as they are – regardless of it they are pleasant or painful, or just plain irritating.
• Open up, make room for them, and drop the struggle with them. Let them come and go as they naturally do.
• Distraction may work as a short-term solution, but in the long-term, practicing acceptance takes a lot less effort than constantly being on guard and fending off unwanted thoughts. As well as being a driving task, both mentally and physically. It just doesn’t work.

Coaching conversations can help you practice acceptance – get in touch if I can help