Archive for August 2010
Take five minutes
The whole thing about sitting quietly and noticing is hard to do. The whole thought of it may sound boring. But the thing about noticing is that it gets us to decrease auto-pilot behavior. Auto-pilot behavior is the kind of thing we do when emotions take over, and we are not in the pilot seat flying the airplane.
So here is an exercise on noticing. Sit quietly and get in touch with your breath. Then try to sit still for five minutes. Focus all of your attention on the rising and falling of your breath.
Here are some of the things you might notice:
An urge to get up, change position, or do something “worthwhile.”
An itch.
Discomfort.
A desire to shift your position.
Difficulty staying in touch with your breathing.
Thoughts about your future, past, or present.
Emotional pain.
Problem solving, ruminating.
Thinking about what you are going to do after the exercise.
Lethargy.
Thinking about what you are going to say to someone.
Thinking about what you said to someone.
Physical pain.
Wondering what is the point of the exercise.
Wondering if this will help you solve problems.
Boredom.
Wondering if there is something else that would work better.
Hearing sounds or noises in your environment.
Feeling your heart beating.
Having your cat, pet, or child interrupt you.
Tension in your body.
Wondering if you turned off the coffee pot or the stove.
A desire not to do the exercise.
Wondering how much longer you will have to sit still.
Wondering if you timed yourself for five minutes, if the five minutes is up or not.
Difficulty paying attention to your breathing.
Feeling anxious or energetic.
Having a phone conversation or other conversation in your head.
Trying to figure out how to tell your DBT skills therapist or meditation instructor that you have ADHD, and that this not only impossible, but indeed rather silly.
Annoyance.
Agitation.
So if you could try to notice for five minutes…Hard to do? Absolutely. When I took my mindfulness based cognitive therapy class, they made us sit for a whole hour and do this sort of thing. Can you imagine??
Taking in information with your five senses: Marjoram mindfulness
Last week in mindfulness I introduced my clients to the herb marjoram. Getting acquainted with marjoram was something of a new experience. We went through the different senses by looking, touching, smelling, and tasting marjoram. We did it slowly and quietly, to give reverence, sort of speak, to the marjoram. As in if marjoram was, for the moment, the only thing in the universe.
Using the five senses to pay attention to what the world has to offer, however simple, is one way of getting in touch with experience. Lots of my clients complain about numbing out, going on auto-pilot, or getting stuck “playing the part” without any real connection to their experience. They survive, sort of speak, like they are puppets responding to their environments instead of being “there” inside their own bodies.
How do we know that we feel? How do we know what we feel? First we have to pay attention to sensory information. If we’re so busy ignoring this information, however small or simple, we might miss out in a major way. Paying careful attention to what our bodies tell us includes getting acquainted, sort of speak, with the small things that may or may not seem so obvious. When is the last time you smelled, touched, or tasted fresh herbs?
Posted in Distress Tolerance, Mindfulness | 
Tags: Mindfulness, Understanding emotion | 
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ACT Made Simple by Russ Harris
I have to give some attention to this book because I really, really like it. This book is practical to use for both clients and therapists, has very compelling exercises and handouts, and really gets at the heart of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT (a relative of DBT). This book is amazingly accessible.
ACT is known for addressing values and long term goals. This is about your life- in context! The big picture includes searching for meaning and direction. Often we get so caught up in problematic and self-defeating thoughts that it takes us down a road we aren’t willing ourselves to follow. We miss what we hold dear when we get caught up in trying to get rid of discomfort. Getting in touch with what matters can guide our interactions or distress in a direction that we are willing ourselves to go- even though current experience is painful.
The other thing that I really love about this book is the plethora of creative suggestions for relating to thoughts. If people could see their thoughts and feelings, sort of speak, their number of options for what to do with them could increase. The agenda here has to do with changing our relationship to our thoughts and feelings, rather than try to suppress, change, or get rid of them.
Here is a sample of what is in the book, taken from “Attempted solutions and their long term effects” on page 87. “What have you done to avoid or get rid of problematic thoughts, feelings, memories, sensations, or emotions? Did your thoughts and feelings go away? Did they return on the long run? Has this brought you to a rich, full, and meaningful life? What has this cost you in terms of time, energy, or money; negative effects on health, well-being, work, leisure, or relationships?”
If it’s cost you quite a bit, it might be time to try something else.
Radical openness
In the book Dialectical Behavior Therapy in Clinical Practice, there is a chapter by Thomas Lynch and Jennifer Cheavens in which they explore the concept of what it means to be radically open. It is clear the authors put a lot of effort into explaining openness, and did a nice job. I believe that radical openness goes hand in hand with radical acceptance, which is introduced as a skill for tolerating extreme distress in DBT.
One of the things I like about the concept of openness and acceptance is that a person doesn’t have to approve, like, or necessarily welcome the circumstances when they are open and accepting. I’ve had moments of radical openness in which I can see the reality of something in front of me, and even though it is painfully sad, the ability to acknowledge and accept the whole truth of the situation allows me to move on. It isn’t like there is no grieving process, but somehow there is a way in which I don’t stay stuck. I get it. I understand it. And I can let go, sort of speak, of working overtime to impose my will on a reality that isn’t open to me at that moment.
Some of the basic principles of radical openness posed by the above authors include “deciding to be in the moment and staying available to all possibilities, looking forward without preconception or expectation, looking back without judgment or shame.” Being open to something is not “rejecting the past” or “ judging it good.” It is not “approval, expecting good things to happen, being naïve,” or “always changing” (page 275).
Living in fast forward
Unnecessary, restless, and agitated energy; difficulty sitting still, feeling a constant need to be “on the go”, fixing things, running around and trying to keep everyone happy- anxiety sometimes gets us to act in a way that perpetuates more distress. Sometimes people feel as if they are not doing something, then things would fall apart. Or maybe they would fall apart. Perhaps, if they were to slow down, they would not feel worthwhile. Thus frenetic action is about trying to feel better. Or different. Or not feel at all. So slowing down is avoided at all costs.
While taking action can bring about a desired result (thus serving an important function), sometimes anxiety loses its usefulness as an emotion. It is too much. It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t help people accomplish goals, it manufactures more chaos, and it leaves people in a dizzy tizzy. Life is lived in fast forward.
Mindfulness is about pausing living one’s life in the here and now. In just this moment. Sometimes when people start to pay attention to this moment, they start to get in touch with all that busy business they are trying to avoid. The slowing down, the feelings within their body, the unpleasant sensations that accompany worries about being valued, being worthwhile, living up to expectations, and failing. And sometimes it hits hard: the tears, the pain, the realization of change or loss.
Yeah, that stuff.
Overwhelming, perhaps at first. But if you take it taken moment by moment, then you can be mindful of what is right in front of you instead of all that is beyond you. And if you take care of the present moment, you will be taking care of the future.