Category: Trauma Treatment

Along with the false belief that painful feelings are bad is  the false beliefs that feelings come out of nowhere and mood swings happen without warning.  You can choose to still believe these falsehoods, but believing them will probably make you feel pretty powerless.  However accepting them as falsehoods then gives you the opposite concept, that feelings come from somewhere and you can anticipate a mood swing.

Where do emotions come from?

Okay now we have something to work with.  Feelings arise from thought.   A thought surfaces and the body decides based on information it has what that thought means and then the neurochemical process is initiated to generate the emotion so you can register the message.

Will you get the message?

So let’s take the situation  of waiting for a doctor’s appointment.  You have been waiting for more than 30 minutes.  You have a lot to do that day and this feels a bit too long.  The thought surfaces that “this is too long and I have stuff to do”.  The thought surfaces, your body registers and then formulates that something isn’t right and something needs to be changed.  You then become angry or frustrated and this causes you to go up to the counter and ask the front desk person how long will this wait be and that you need to be somewhere.  You acted assertively and the front desk person checks back in the back and says “I told them you had to leave”.  They come and get you and your anger is gone.  Now if you had to wait for 30 more minutes, you may have had the thought “this is not worth it and I’ll have to reschedule”, this then prompts you to get very frustrated and leave.  Each time anger and frustration prompted action.  You took the message that you needed to act and did so.   If you didn’t get the message or decided to ignore your anger because you have heard from childhood that “Good girls are always gracious”, which you interpret as not angry, then you may have sat there all day just to find out that there was a mistake  and you were never assigned a room or they finally saw you only after it was too late to do all the other important things of your day.  (This also will breed thoughts of “it’s not fair” and “what am I going to do?”.  This may lead to more angry feelings(messages) because something still needs to be done to fix the situation.)

Are we getting the whole message?

Many times we react before we really get the entire message.  If you are angry with the kids but don’t take the time to ask “why am I angry with the kids and what needs to be changed?”, then your may overreact or react impulsively with yelling  and blaming the kids for making your angry.  When you take a moment to look at”why am i angry” and what is the real message, then you may decide “I am angry because they are fighting with one another and not working on their homework.”   And further thought may reveal “They are fighting because they haven’t eaten and don’t realize the reason they are angry is because their body is trying to tell them to eat.  As their mother I should feed them so their body stops this message and they can calm down and do their homework.”   Unless there’s a life or death situation, most situations will give you 5 minutes to take a breather before you respond.   If we train ourselves to breathe through these feeling immediately the message usually presents itself relatively quickly.

Is the message based on truth?

The message itself may not be based in accurate thought.  If you have the thought “I am mad because I am waiting too long” but then have the thought I shouldn’t be angry because jj”good girls are always gracious and angry people cannot be gracious”, you  may not feel the anger for a while.  This is only delaying the feeling till the thought comes back that you have been waiting too long.  Then the emotional message will return.   Identifying the thought that’s not based in truth will speed up you taking appropriate action to remedy the feeling.  So one might have to add the thought “This is what I’ve been told but science suggests that anger is not a bad thing so I will respond to my anger.  I can still be gracious and angry at the same time.”

Anger (or any feeling) can lead to calmness if heard and not judged.

Anger is not a hindrance to being calm if you take the message and take appropriate action.  If you continue to be angry then somehow you haven’t interpreted the message correctly.   You notice how if you react impulsively while angry you may still be angry afterwards or have another painful feeling like shame.  This is due to not interpreting and responding to the message correctly.  If we take anger or other feelings as they are, messages to do something, then we can view them without judging them “good or bad” and respond accordingly.  Once you have taken all the messages and mapped out how to respond, you usually will feel calm just from having the plan because your body will register this as understanding the message.  If you then take further action to carry through with the plan the feelings will be resolved completely and happiness will come.  Happiness tells you that things are well.  We’ve resolved all messages our body has given us.

How simple is this?

So mindfulness starts with being able to receive the message, then interpreting the message and formulating a plan is the next step.  This sounds very simple.  However if it was all this simple I wouldn’t feel the need to start a mindfulness class and there wouldn’t be so many books on how to be mindful and practice mindfulness.  Getting to the plan from receiving the message sometimes takes a long time.  We can come up with short-term fixes to being calm and taking care of things but sometimes there are emotions/feelings that keep resurfacing and we just don’t know what to make of them.  This is when we have to do deeper work, sometimes with the help of a therapist, but not always is this necessary.   The important part though always comes back to being able to breathe and sit without judgement and attachment.   My next posts will focus on this a little more along with the concept of radical acceptance.

I really want to start a mindfulness class/group at the office but my schedule has been a little unpredictable as of recently.  So in preparation, I decided to provide some resources and discussion on mindfulness until I can get something organized.

Why Mindfulness?

A lot of work that has to be done in treatment involves looking at obstacles to our goals.  Obstacles that bring individuals into therapy a lot of time involve very difficult emotions and painful memories.  In order to overcome these and begin making progress toward the ultimate goals that actually lead to peace and happiness, we have to be with these painful feelings/memories and work through them so they don’t resurface or if they do it’s at least with less intensity.

To “be” with these memories/emotions involves mindfulness, to “be” in the moment without judgement or attachment.  Of course we don’t just begin with the painful emotion/thought and teach mindfulness as we go, we have to begin with mindfulness and then use it when we are ready to face the difficult “whatever”.

Emotions as Messages

A good place to start with mindfulness is the understanding of emotions.  Many of us were taught that emotions like anger, grief, stress, loneliness, shame, guilt were bad to feel and experience and we should avoid them or get rid of them at all costs.  Emotions are just chemical messengers.  They are more specifically the mechanism to which our mind can register a chemical message from our body or subconscious.  Each emotion serves a purpose.  Anger – something is wrong and needs to be changed.  Anxiety – I need to prepare for something.  Sadness/grief – Something/Someone was important. Guilt – I should have done something differently.  Happiness – something is going well.  Fear – I need to protect myself.  Frustration – This is not going as I expected and I need to re look at the goal.  Shame – my reputation has been damaged and I will need to repair it publicly.  There are obviously more emotions and more messages.  These are just some of the main ones we experience.

How to Hear the Message

So you can see how running away or blocking these emotions can leave you in a bad situation.  You won’t get the message.  And of course if you don’t get and answer the message and nothing is resolved.  The message will continue to be released by our body.  The first step in mindfulness is staying in the moment long enough to receive the message(s).  Many times in order to do this we have to learn certain practices that may not come easy, like breathing calmly.  This means not hyperventilating by allowing slow long exhales to be the focus.  Our body does this naturally through a deep breath and a sigh.  If we continue with this deep breath and sighs, we actually are working on a skill that will allow us to experience the emotion without getting lost in it.  We overcome the fear of the emotion.  The fear telling us to protect ourselves from getting lost.  We listen to this and develop a strategy to protect and ground ourselves, which involves the deep breathing with long exhales.

Practice the Skill

The next step is after receiving the message, interpreting it and deciding if the message is coming from a reliable source or a “cognitive distortion”.  My next post will focus on the message.  In the meantime, we all can practice mindful breathing in just our day-to-day experiences.  Like waiting in line somewhere, we can breathe through our frustration.  Similarly if you have kids then when you are angry, breathing through the anger before reacting till you can formulate why you are angry. Is it because they need to change something or do you need to change something like getting something to eat.   Life gives us many opportunities throughout the day to practice mindfulness in a safe environment, if we choose to recognize it in this way.

A resource to check out:

The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction, by Rebecca Williams, PhD and Julie  Kraft, MA