Welcome to the world of CVID-19 – no need to imagine

Our ability to cope with uncertainty is a marker of positive mental health. It is also a highly protective ability in times like those we are facing know. It is important for each of us that we foster and develop this ability and learn how to cope in uncertain times.

For many people, the uncertainty surrounding coronavirus is the hardest thing to handle. We don’t know how exactly we’ll be impacted, or how bad things might get. In that environment it is easy to catastrophize and spiral out into overwhelming dread and panic.

Why is uncertainty problematic

Not knowing is an uncomfortable experience. As human beings, we are naturally curious. We seek to understand, predict and control – it helps us learn and it keeps us safe. Uncertainty can feel dangerous because we cannot predict with complete confidence what will happen.

Intolerance of Uncertainty

From a mental health perspective intolerance of uncertainty is defined as trait like tendency to have negative beliefs about uncertainty, and what it might mean to us. Evolutionary, it was protective as it enabled us to decide very quickly whether to fight or run. In our modern world much less so as there are many unknowns. They relate less to our basic survival and often we don’t have control over these unknowns. Intolerance of uncertainty can be considered to be on a scale. Higher ratings are associated with many mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety.

On a practical level increased intolerance of uncertainty results in a tendency to respond negatively in the following domains:

Emotional – sad, anxious, no pleasure, angry

Cognitive – rumination, worry, catastropic thinking

Behavioural – withdrawal, unhealthy coping strategies such as addictions

Coping strategies

The strategies below can help you not only to cope better in the coronavirus world, but also to build your capacity beyond this to cope better and have a better quality of life.

Mindfulness to become aware of negative thought patterns associated with uncertainty, and to disconnect from them and not engage with them.

Slow / Deep Breathing as a way of connecting with our body and hence disconnecting form negative future thoughts and to regulate strong emotions.

Staying Present in simple ways by noticing what is happening in our current surroundings. What is the weather like, what is in my space, noticing colours, sounds, textures etc. This can help to avoid the future thinking associated with anxiety.

Focus on the Things You Can Control as a way of regaining a sense of personal power and control. Maybe re-organising your work space, bedroom or other home spaces. Working in the backyard if you have one.

Set Goals and Progress Them to avoid losing your sense of purpose. Maybe learning something on-line, gaining a new skill such as learning a musical instrument, or set exercise or diet goals where possible.

Stay Connected in Creative ways. Utilise online technologies that allow us to share what is going on for us with those that we can’t be physically close to at the moment. You can have a coffee or eat a meal on video-conference with someone you can’t physically connect with at the moment. If you are technology savvy you can even watch a movie together and chat about it. Be creative!!

In finishing

I encourage you to become aware of your responses to uncertain times such as those that exist now. Once you are aware, you can then try one of the strategies above that resonate with you. Developing your tolerance of uncertainty will be protective of your mental health and increase your quality of life.

Other Suggested Articles

Put your brain into shape through mental health exercise

Realistic goal planning set yourself up for success

How to increase self-esteem. a bottom up approach

In the current environment, there is an overwhelming amount of advice on how to protect ourselves from, and stop the spread of Coronavirus. Underneath this, there is also a huge impact on our mental health. As it is likely that this will continue for some time, it is also critical that we have ideas for mental health care, to support ourselves and those around to maintain good mental health.

As I have discussed in previous articles, anxiety is a purposeful feeling designed to protect us and ensure our survival. In the Coronavirus affected world we live in, it is also a useful emotion as it motivates us to take the necessary action to protect us, the ones close to us, and in fact our communities and nations. As someone listening to, and complying with, the advice from my country’s government, I encourage you to do the same. For those of you already directly impacted by the virus I offer my condolences and compassion.

The mental health challenge

Psychologically though things get a little more complicated. Anxiety can generalise, and in this current environment, it can also transition into a state of despair triggering levels of depressive symptoms. From a mental health perspective these survival orientated strategies could be categorized as “fight-flight” and “shutdown”. The fight-flight strategies increase body stress levels, increase worrying and for some can move into panic. The shutdown strategies result in a lack of enjoyment in life, withdrawing from people and things, and reductions in sleep and appetite. For some there may also be other direct physical symptoms.

Whilst these strategies are survival orientated from an evolutionary perspective, they are not useful in terms of either our mental or physical health. In fact the more these strategies take hold, the less able we are to access our higher level functions from which we access some of the more useful coping strategies.

Some ideas…

With that in mind, below are some of the coping strategies that might help. I appreciate we are all individuals, so pick the strategies that resonate most with you. For each of these I have provided a link to a previous article which provides more details and a practical exercise.

Practice self-compassion as a way of allowing your internal feelings to be felt and processed. Often when we don’t do this the emotion intensifies and can result in physical symptoms, or less useful behaviours (addictions, acting out etc).

Using attention control to avoid being overwhelmed by a current feeling. This is an alternative to the previous strategy and is designed to increase our ability to shift attention when it is in our interest to do so.

Increasing your mental flexibility to gain an awareness of your internal thoughts and feelings. This puts you in a better position to be able to recognise thoughts that aren’t supportive of you and reduce their impact.

Cognitive reappraisal is a high level brain function. It enables us to reassess the situation and potentially our response. In the case of coronavirus, it may be about the possibility of a reduction in intensity.

Self- affirmation is focusing on one’s strengths and / or focusing on values important to you. This is a protective strategy and increases your ability to implement the previous strategies.

Finally, increasing our skills to demonstrate empathy to others. We may feel empathy, but how do we express it to other in our communications. Empathy from a neuroscience perspective has benefits to the giver and the receiver as emotional regulation is facilitated in these interchanges. We are designed for and need positive interactions and they have biological benefits.

In finishing

We do live in a time that can trigger our deepest level of survival anxiety. Please consider the strategies above. If you find them useful share them. Often in explaining something to someone we gain deeper insight into it. Also, if your symptoms are causing you significant distress and / or lack of functioning, please reach out to a mental health service in your area. Many of these are now available online or by phone to ensure their accessibility.

Take care

Scott

Scaling was developed as a technique in a type of therapy referred to as Solution Focused Therapy. It was proven to be so useful that it is become a more general tool for counsellors. I would suggest it also has use as a self-help tool.

As humans we are programmed to make sense of our life circumstances and the situations we find ourselves in. Sometimes there are highly adaptive and help us to cope, or move forward in a way which protects and supports us. In other situations our internal explanation may create a sense of hopelessness and limit the possibility for even small changes. Whilst not discounting that there are situations where we are relatively powerless, even small changes can be protective of mental health in these situations. In other situations, where it is not the environment limiting us, it can result in more positive mental health and remove some blockages to goal achievement.

The idea of scaling is it forces us to notice the intensity of something, and more importantly to notice small changes, upwards or downwards, in this intensity. When working with scaling in a counselling or mental health perspective it is usually focused on internal process, such as emotions or thought intensity.

How does it work

Lets say you believe you have an issue with feeling sad or angry all the time. You might feel overwhelmed and that things are never improving.

Using scaling you would develop a subjective measure of say the intensity of this feeling over a day and / or at given points in the day. The subject measure is typically on a scale of 0 to 5 or 0 to10.

Tracking this would give you a sense of times when it is lower or higher than normal. More importantly an opportunity to gather further information associated with this change, such as environmental factors. Also what you were doing, what you were thinking etc. You would also become aware of exceptions where even if you were sad most of the time, a slight reduction on a given day is evidence of improvement.

From a mental health perspective, these exceptions aside from providing insight into the change, also provide hope that change is possible and that things will change. Hope increase the activation of high level cognitive functions which increase our resourcefulness and our ability to problem solve.

Like all good ideas, it is only beneficial to you if you use it. I ask that you consider trying it maybe.

If you already identify with mental illness and / or if your symptoms are severe, then I would suggest talking to a mental health professional before starting on this journey.

Using scaling

Identify the emotion, thought or behaviour that you feel is impacting you.

Develop a scale of say 0-5 or 0-10 and reflect on how you would notice a given level.

Using you phone or paper track either overall level at end of day, or various points during the day.

At the end of the week review the daily data. If there is a consistent value (say it was sadness and it was 8 most days, on a day when it is lower, reflect on what was different in either the environment or how you were thinking, feeling or behaving.

During the next week try to increase the influence of these factors and review the daily numbers at the end of the week.

If you continue to have exceptions (i.e lower numbers) then these are sign of progress. They are also clues about what things to change to make further progress.

Good luck !

Are you someone who practices self-compassion, but wonders why it can be so effective? Or are you someone who has found, or is finding it, difficult to process strong emotions? This article discusses some of the benefits of self-compassion, touches on some of the findings from a neuroscience and psychological research perspective around self-compassion. It ends with an exercise to practice self-compassion.

About Self-Compassion

In a previous article I talked about the benefits of self-love, and touched very briefly on self-compassion. Because self-compassion can have such significant benefits, I decided to write an article completely focused on this. Coming at things from a pragmatic perspective, I was curious as to what are the psychological and even brain chemistry benefits of self-compassion. In working with people in therapy I had witnessed the benefits of it, particularly in areas such as grief and loss, and addiction.

For those dealing with grief and loss, self-compassion enables them to slowly learn how to self sooth and sit with the strong emotions associated with loss. This helps them to reduce distraction and avoidance behavior, which wasn’t unhealthy, but they could see wasn’t helping them process the loss, with the goal of eventually being able to move forward in their life.

For those dealing with addiction, being able to understand the origins of their addictive behavior, often from earlier in life, made sense of what they were doing now and enable them to see it is an ineffective coping strategy. This helped them to step off the cycle of shame that often perpetuates addictive behavior. Also self-compassion was used as an approach to start to sit with emotions they previously would have avoided through use of their addiction.

The research from a psychological perspective suggests that therapies focused on self-compassion can provide a number of benefits, which include the ability to process strong emotions. From a neuroscience perspective, like self-affirmation which was discussed in a previous article, self-compassion is protective against the effects of stress.

Practicing Self-Compassion – Compassionate Hand

The exercise today is my adaptation of one developed by Russ Harris, the creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), called the Compassionate Hand. My perspective of this therapy is that it is a very practical one. It allows people to accept that difficult things happen in life and uncomfortable emotions are part of life. It helps the individual to accept this and by connecting with the values that are important to them. By doing this they can build the capacity to not only cope with these difficult times, but also to grow.

One of the interventions developed by Russ is called the Compassionate Hand. The idea behind this is that your hand becomes a useful metaphor for a supportive person or idea that connects you to love and unconditional support when you need this. By transferring this ability to your own hand it provides you with the ability to offer these qualities to yourself.

Compassionate Hand Exercise

1) Find a quite space where you won’t be interrupted.

2) Spend a couple of minutes just quietly breathing and noticing your breath. If you find your mind wandering just come back to your breath. If it helps, put a hand on your stomach and notice how it moves with your breath.

3) Next step is to think of something in your life that causes you pain and scan your body to see where this pain is in your body. It might be your head, your chest, your stomach, your limbs etc.

4) Now focus on one of your hands being that source of support and love, and place it lightly and gently on that part of your body.

5) Feel the warmth traveling from your hand to your body and imagine it making your body feel softer, lighter and warmer based on this touch. Imagine loving and caring travelling through your hand into your body.

6) Stay with this for as long at you like, ie 10 seconds or 10 minutes.

7) Now put one of your hands on your chest and the other on your stomach. Again, imagining caring, warmth and kindness traveling from your hands into your body.

8) Stay with this for as long as you like.

9) When you are finished slowly reconnect with the space you are in. Notice the room. Briefly reflect on how that felt for you and what you noticed about it.

If at any point in this exercise you feel overwhelmed then please STOP. Consider using a different thought next time, or possibly connect with a therapist who can help support you with the thoughts and feelings that came up.

In Finishing

Self compassion for some people is something they intuitively practice and benefits their lives. As a therapist I have found clients adopting this practice and finding it invaluable. From a psychological perspective it starts to build a capacity to process strong emotions which can avoid other less useful strategies such as acting out, or even just incessant activity. From a neuroscience perspective evidence suggests that it offsets the impact of stress. I would encourage you to try the self-compassion exercise. Also at the bottom of this post is a link to an ACT web site which has many self-help resources.

Take care

Scott

Further resources on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

As discussed in a recent article, like with physical health, there are exercises we can do to help build capacities that can protect us from mental health disease and increase our resilience in coping with difficult life events. This article provides you with another practical exercise, and again explains how this exercise can tap into the brain’s ability to change.

This exercise and related topic is around self-affirmation. Self- affirmation is focusing on one’s strengths and / or focusing on values important to you. I’ll explain later what this looks like in practice.

The Science Behind Self-Affirmation

As with the exercise mentioned in the previous article, aside from opening up access to additional cognitive resources, there seems to be some more specific benefits of self-affirmation. This particular exercise has been shown to activate what is called the reward pathway in our brain. Why this is significant is that the chemicals created by this pathway also serve to buffer the chemicals created when we are stressed, in particular a chemical called cortisol. It is suggested that this movement to the reward pathway occurs because self-affirmation results in us holding a positive sense of self. In stressfull situations, particularly those related to personal performance (i.e tests, exams, presentations, speaking etc) there is a perceived threat to self-value.

At a practical level this means that undertaking this exercise before a stressful event has been scientifically shown to be protective of the effect of stress. The research suggests that some of the factors that improve the effectiveness of self-affirmation are having a future focus rather than a past one, and to focus on a value that is the most important to us. With this in mind below are some steps for effective self-affirming.

Self-Affirmation Exercise

1) Value Identification

Think of a subject / value that is the most important to important to you from the following list. If you already know of a different value that it the most important to you, then use that.

• Creativity
• Money
• Independence
• Politics
• Friends and Family
• Religon
• Humor
• Spontaneity / Living life in the moment

2) Reflect on why this value is important to you

3) Value Imagination Task

Imagine an event in the future where you are fully engaged in an activity that relates to this value.

For example if a value important to you is family, then imagine a future event with your family. Imagine as much detail as you can.

In Finishing

A Self-affirmation exercise is beneficial at a number of levels. Like with the “Broaden and Build” exercise from the previous article, it increases our access to cognitive resources. In addition self-affirming is protective from the impact of external stress as it provides access to neurotransmitters which introduce chemicals into our body which serve to reduce the impact of stress related chemicals in our body. Whilst including this in your mental health gym schedule is recommended, it can also be used on a day where a highly stressful event is expected.

If you do try this exercise, any comments to feedback regarding your experience would be gratefully received.

Thanks

Scott

Like with physical health, there are exercises we can do to help build capacities that can protect us from mental health disease and increase our resilience in copng with difficult life events. These same exercises contribute to our overall life satisfaction. This article provides you with a practical exercise. It also explains how like physical exercise that contributes to the body’s ability to grow, strenthen and heal, mental health exercise can tap into the brain’s ability to change. Kind of like how to put your brain into shape through mental health exercise.

Neural plasticity is a word that has reached the mainstream vocabulary but has broad and ambiguous definitions. At its most broadest level it is the scientifically proven ability of the brain to change throughout an individual’s life.

How Plasticity Supports Mental Illness and Well Being

As a therapist the effect of the evolutionary “fight-flight” system gone wrong are often what is presented in therapy, whether it be through trauma or mental health disorders such as anxiety. The presenting issue is often a result of neural plasticity gone wrong as trauma has strengthened the parts of our brain that are sensitive to threats and increased their effectiveness. Effectively creating trauma like responses to non-traumatic events. The brain has in fact changed to cope with expected further occurrences of trauma.

Aside from treating mental disease, the principles of neural plasticity can also be used as part of increasing one’s overall life satisfaction. The concept of “Broaden and Build” is an example of this. The research and thinking, behind this suggests that practicing positive thinking is one way of increasing the strength and use of access to cognitive resources available only when we are in positive emotional states. In negative emotional states the brain attempts to increase resources available to potential “fight-or-flight” situations and will close down other paths not required for these responses. Also, those who in response to anxiety or trauma have adopted a negatively biased thought process will also find these paths more accessible and others less so. These resources can include the range of emotional responses and our degree of sensitivity to a particular emotion.

There are a number of positive psychology interventions designed to build this capacity, but one I wanted to discuss here is an easy one to try. It is based on building your ability to experience positive emotions via a mental imagery exercise. Research suggests that maximum benefits are gained based on two factors. One is the level of detail you can remember, and the other is your ability to experience it from the perspective of being there, rather than as an observer of yourself. Research suggests there is a strong association with mental health disorders and reviewing memories from an observer perspective. It would seem that it is easier to access negatively biased thoughts from this perspective.

Mental Imagery Exercise

Put yourself somewhere you are not going to be distracted.

Recall an event from your life that you associate with strong positive emotions. Try to do this from the perspective of you being in the event, and not from a perspective of observing yourself.

Try using the questions below as a way of cuing your memory and in particular accessing more detail and feelings associated with the memory.

Imagine the event.

Was it a sunny or a rainy day?

Was there a clear view?

What can you see?

Where are you?

Who else is present?

Where were you at the time of the event?

Which sounds can you hear?

Try to imagine what your surroundings looked like.

Which body sensations can you sense?

Visualize the clothes you were wearing at the time.

What can you smell?

Is the air fresh?

Can you sense a draft?

Which thoughts are in your mind?

Which mood are you in?

What are you doing?

How do the other people react on it?

What does that make you feel like?

Try to relive the scene as intensely as possible

As you are learning a new skill you may find it difficult so please expect progress might be slow, and any progress is success.

In finishing

The “Broaden and Build” perspective suggests that positive psychology interventions can be used to increase access to a wider range of cognitive resources, which include the ability to experience positive emotions. Neuroscience and work on plasticity suggests that the more we experience positive emotions then access to this becomes easier, and it can reduce previous sensitivities to negative emotions.

Please try the exercise above and I would appreciate any feedback on your experiences and whether or not you feel it has benefited you.

Thanks

Scott

Other Suggested Articles that include Mental Health Exercise Ideas

Using Attention Control to Regulate your Emotions

Mental Flexibility – Beyond resilience

Emotions are valuable clues for understanding our needs, wants and how we react to our environment, which includes the people around us. The better we get at reading these clues and responding in a way that supports our well being and achieves desired outcomes for us, the better the quality of our lives. In this week’s article I will provide some ideas on how to increase your emotional intelligence through emotional awareness.

As mentioned in my previous article on using attention control to regulate emotions, emotions are designed to get our attention so we can take any required action. From an evolutionary perspective, these emotions and the associated actions could ensure our survival. Also, as the regulation of emotions have such a significant connection with a number of mental health disorders, as well as our subjective well being or happiness, I decided to cover another aspect of this topic this week.

This being emotional expression and emotional awareness or, how to increase your emotional intelligence through emotional awareness. I have put these two together as not only are they connected from a process perspective, but it appears they have a circular relationship. I will explain this more later.

Emotional Expression

Emotional expression refers to the specific emotions that we express and includes the intensity of it and related body sensations. In a nut shell, a number of events result in emotional expression and these include input from our senses (loud notices, skin damage etc), learned and conditioned responses (when we see pictures of certain things it triggers a particular emotional sensation) and response to various cognitive appraisals. The last one refers to situation where we review the information about a situation and based on our own biases determine an appropriate emotional response. For example, if I’m scared of dogs then I might experience fear when I see a dog, but if I like dogs an approaching dog might trigger an emotion of excitement.

Emotional Awareness

Emotional awareness includes the ability to name an emotion and to determine its intensity which include body sensations. Some people struggle to name any emotion, others have maybe 3 emotions. Some choose from a broader number of terms. An example if someone who says they are angry to cater for pretty much all negative emotions as opposed to someone who will use the words angry, annoyed, frustrated or irritated to describe a variety of negative emotions. The second person can vary their response based on which of these terms are relevant to a specific situation. I might decide that usually when I’m irritated it relates to me being tired, but when I’m angry if could be that I have been triggered by a particular person and / or thing they have said. If I’m tired I can take steps to re-energize. If I’m angry I can decide to review the specifics of the situation and then decide how to respond. Similarly those who can notice variations in intensity are more able to vary their response to the emotion based on the intensity level. If I’m angry and I’m at a 9, I might notice some really strong body reactions, ie breathing, body temperature etc, that don’t occur when I’m at a 3 or 4.

The Circular Relationship Between Expression and Awareness

This is referred to in research suggesting that those with a greater vocabulary and discernment for emotions are also better able to express this diversity in their emotions. If we are able to notice a broader range of emotions then this increases our flexibility in expression. The end result is an ability to provide more finely tuned emotional messages, which are easier to interpret and to respond to flexibly and in a way that gets the best outcomes for us.

Exercise to Increase your Emotional Awareness

When you notice an emotion, using your phone or a journal, write down the word you would use to describe it, and the intensity out of 5 or 10. If you wish to, also include the situation and thought that preceded it.

At the end of each day reflect on the words you used. If you find yourself using non specific words like good or bad, or even non emotional words such as busy, note this. Give yourself a challenge for the next day to try to be more specific. If you need to research other emotional words, what they mean and more importantly what would expressing this emotion be like for you. Note that this is less about language accuracy but more about flexibility.

Also look at the intensity. Again, if you use the same number each time then challenge yourself to vary it. Consider what signs (thoughts, body sensations etc) you relate to a particularly intensity.

In Finishing

Getting to know your emotional world, through increasing your emotional vocabulary and even flexibility in expression, can increase the quality of your life and be protective against mental health disorders.

If you did take the option of writing down the situation and thought preceding the emotion this might also give you some clues on how you view the world. Something also to consider and reflect on.

If you interested and wish to read more see the articles below.

Getting to Know You – A Self Awareness Tool

Take Control of Your Thoughts

Enjoy from Scott

Do you at times struggle with managing your emotions? Do you find yourself hanging on to a thought and associated strong emotions for much longer than you would like to? One of the goals of my blog is to increase your understanding of the internal resources you have, how they can impact you, and how to learn to use them to your advantage. I have previously written on developing mental flexibility, and on self reflection and rumination, and the difference between the two. This week I look at attention, emotion regulation, and using attention control to regulate your emotions.

About attention

From a neuoroscience perspective, attention is a limited resource and its control determines what is in our conscious awareness at any point in time. Most people have experienced the benefits of paying attention. In completing a task correctly, in receiving instructions, in learning a new topic. You have also likely experienced the down side of not paying attention in terms of making mistakes, conflict in relationships, and not performing as well as expected on academic tasks.

At any time many things contend for our attention. These include our current goals and tasks. There is also the equivalent of a priority queue for emotionally charged items. This is part of our evolutionary design. Emotions are designed to gain attention so we can take action. In the fight and flight world of early evolution, not paying attention and quickly responding to emotions was the difference between life and death.

About Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is the ability to respond to, control and modify the duration and intensity of emotions we experience in relation to life events and experiences. Many factors contribute to what would be the unregulated intensity and duration of emotions. These include genetic factors, previous life experiences and even external factors intentionally manipulated to create a heightened level of response (Try to become aware of sensory cues such as music, volume, images and words and what emotional response you have to them). The media and adverting industries are experts at this. Without the ability to regulate we are at risk of stress, distress, mental health disorders and risk taking behavior.

One of the indicators of good mental health is the ability to emotionally regulate. There are many effective therapeutic approaches for working with individuals struggling with the effects of not being able to regulate emotion, and the associated distress, mental health disease and lack of functioning that can result. For those who do not require this level of support but would like to learn more, then paying attention to your attention is a good starting point.

Using Attention to Regulate Emotion

The nature of emotionally charged stimuli is that they are designed to gain and keep our attention. If we can increase our ability to move our attention away from them, then this has the effect of reducing the associated level of emotion and even the actual emotional state. An example is if we keep going over a negative interaction from earlier in the morning with our partner then the associated negative emotion remains, and it may even increase in intensity. Moving our attention to other thoughts will immediately reduce this emotional intensity and even change it. There is a catch, in that research suggests that the nature of these distractors will influence our ability to change the emotion. Thoughts that create positive emotions, or focus on information relevant to the task you are working on, will tend to be more effective than neutral thoughts. Therefore if your thinking about that fight in the morning, either thinking about something that makes you happy, or refocusing on the current work task will tend to be more effective. Just deciding not to think about the negative event tends to focus your attention further on the negative event. I think there is no surprise here. (Don’t think of the colour blue. What are you thinking of?)

Mindfulness

There are many great resources on techniques such as mindfulness. The article below offers a number of ideas for implementing mindfulness in your life. As this article suggests, mindfulness doesn’t need to have a spiritual basis. From a neroscience perspective it is the impact in has on attention that makes the difference.

4 simple exercises to strengthen your attention and reduce distractibility

In Finishing

Attention and emotions are very improtant resources to ensure our survival. In our modern world with an excess of emotionally charged stimulus, emotional regulation becomes critical. Particularly due to difficulties in regulation being associated with many mental health disorders. One proven group of strategies focus on attention control as a way of regulating emotion. This week I have given you some ideas on using attention control to regulate your emotions I encourage you to consider this approach and also to look at the article on mindfulness.

If your emotions are causing you significant distress I suggest you make contact with a therapist or other mental health service for support.

Enjoy from Scott

Whilst Valentine’s Day has become a vastly commercial, and for some anxiety provoking event, its ethos is the idea of demonstrating our love to those who are special to us. I believe that this idea is a good one. This week I’m suggesting we show this love to ourselves. I’m also providing some ideas for demonstrating self-love.

As I reviewed my previous articles, and reflected on my work as a therapist, I pondered on what would be some ways of demonstrating self-love, which are healthy. In doing this 3 themes emerged. These were: Self-value, Compassion and Growth

1 – Self-Value

This theme is about finding ways to value ourselves and notice our strengths. From my experience as a therapist people are often much better at identifying their perceived weaknesses or flaws. These tend to be determined based on a comparison to an unrealistically high external standard. Like judging your ability to swim against the standard set by a world record Olympic athlete. Similarly, for many people a strength is only considered one if it measures up to an almost superhuman standard. Conversely, these same people will notice and recall many positive qualities of the important people in their lives. My experience from working with people in therapy is that it is difficult to live any sort of an existence without having some strengths and without having survived some kind of adversity. Once you start looking at your life from this perspective you will be surprised what you find.

Read more:

How to Increase Self-esteem – a bottom up approach

Finding your Strengths

2 – Compassion

Often we struggle to be kind to those parts of ourselves that we don’t like. For many people they dislike their anger and also have developed a very active inner critic. Understanding the origins of these parts is important. If we can understand enough to have compassion for them, we can be in a better position to choose to change our thinking and behavior. For our inner critic it may be we have internalized the harsh words and role of someone significant in our early life. Our ability to become aware of this and understand how this may have happened provides a pathway to starting to reduce its influence. Similarly with our anger, to gain awareness of its origins allows us to see that its original intent was to protect us, but again it may have developed without awareness to become a destructive influence. Having compassion for how this happened, opens up the possibility of change.

Read More:

Working with your Inner Critic

Understand your anger

3 – Growth

Growth can be exiting, but can often be a source of anxiety and stress. For those seeking personal or interpersonal changes, the solution approach gives you a framework for understanding what would be different if that change had occurred. It includes asking questions such as: ‘How would you know the change had occurred? ‘, ‘What would be different?’. Solution focused thinking tends to be innovative and creative. It also recognises that change is often incremental.

Whilst goal setting can make the difference between successfully making a change and just contemplating it, I’m suggesting that you take a realistic approach to this process . From a therapeutic perspective, not only is realistic goal setting more likely to result in achievement of the goal, but is more protective of mental health. Here, available time and resources are taken into account to ensure that success is possible. I have seen many people put together plans based on greater than 24 hours in a day. Or not taking into account existing work or family commitments. Often optimistic goal setting which is not grounded in reality can result in people giving up, therefore failing to reach the goal. This failure can then be generalised as a personal quality.

Read more:

Realistic Goal planning: Set Yourself up for Success

A Solution Focused Approach to Solving Life Problems

In finishing

Giving ourselves the St Valentine’s gifts of compassion, self-value and growth is a way of showing self love and demonstrating self care. This article provides a few ideas for doing this and the related articles focus more on each of these aspects. You will most likely find that one of these gifts resonate with you more than the other two Trust you personal intuition and awareness as to which gift might have the biggest impact at this time.

If you are really struggling or experiencing significant distress at this time, then the best way of showing yourself self-love is to reach out for support. Pleasse contact a counsellor or other mental health service for support. You are worth it !!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, and to those who are precious to you.

Scott

Would you like to be able to have more control and influence over your thought processes in order to increase the quality of your life and / or achieve your personal goals ? This article outlines some of the ways your body controls your brain. It provides you with some ways to benefit from this.

I have discussed in previous articles some of the influences on our thinking processes, such as heuristics and implicit biases which operate under our level of consciousness. This week I will highlight some of the ways our body can influence our thought processes.

The theory of ‘Embodied cognition’ in psychology suggests that not only does our thinking influence our body, but that our ‘body movement’ can influence our thinking. The reason why I chose this topic is that awareness of what our body is doing (or how our body is moving) offers some possibilities for changing our thinking.

Some of the Theory Behind This

There is a branch of psychology called Evolutionary Psychology which studies why the brain has evolved in the way it has. It suggests that the brain has developed to support the survival of the species, and in particular our individual existence and functioning when under threat. From this perspective the brain is viewed as serving the body,. It is therefore not surprising that body movement, or the movement of others, will trigger particular brain responses.

In extreme situations when we are in danger, the ‘fight or flight’ mechanism kicks in results in the body taking control over and shutting down parts of the brain in order to increase the oxygen available to support the body. In this article I will discuss some of the more subtle ways our brain responds based on particular body movements that research has uncovered. These might prompt you to consider how you could use these movements to engage your brain in different ways in specific situations that might serve you better.

Flexing muscles increase willpower

Research suggests that the act of flexing muscles increases willpower. The idea is that this action activates a part of the brain that increases our resolve to undertake difficult tasks and increasing our level of self-control to stay on task. This activation process is like the act of muscle flexing and is a signal to the brain that the body is about to start a task which will require significant self-control to complete. In response the brain makes this self-control resource available. This might be expected from an evolutionary perspective as flexing of muscles represents preparation for a fight, and resolve and staying focused are qualities needed to win a fight.

Experiment 1

If you are preparing yourself for a difficult task trying flexing your muscles discretely, and see if it impacts your sense of being able to compete the task. As you reflect on your ‘flexing’ and its impact, consider whether in performing the task, if did you found you were less distracted and / or more focused than usual?

Body Posture Effects Mood

Research has shown that a stooped posture results in more negative mood than a straightened posture along with slower recovery from a negative mood. The contribution of body movement to emotional regulation is interesting. It would seem that a stooped posture is supportive of a negative emotional state and also a reaction to a negative emotional state. Hence this posture and the negative feeling state become like a closed loop. Changing posture to a straightened, or even a neutral stance, is a way of starting to change negative feeling states as the body position is not supportive of negative emotional states.

Experiment 2

If you find yourself feeling in a negative mood try sitting up with a straight posture and notice what effect this has on your mood. Also when you changed your posture did you find it harder to maintain your negative thought streams?

Moving towards or moving away  affects how we perceive an object

Research has shown that the physical act of moving away from, or towards, an object affects how we emotionally categorise the object, irrespective of whether it is something we would normally have negative or positive feelings about. We normally associate the choice of moving towards or moving away from somethings with a mental evaluation of what a particular object represents to us which then generates a particular body action. In this case the physical direction of movement in relation to an object has triggered an evaluation and an emotional response. It suggests that movement towards makes us feel more positive about the object. Also that moving away gives us a more negative feeling towards the object.

Experiment 3

Try physically moving towards something that you don’t like and just notice your automatic thoughts about it and whether it is less negative than usual. Then try moving away from something that you normally have positive feeling about and see if this action makes a difference in how you feel about the object.

In Finishing

Evolutionary psychology suggests that our brain developed to support the needs of our body and its broader existential need which includes procreation and survival. ‘Embodied cognition’ suggests that our body is also able to influence and trigger thought reactions. In the three examples above; the direction of body movement, body posture and muscle flexing, specific activation and responses have been triggered within the brain. In all cases manipulation of the body in different ways has created specific mental responses including in some cases changes in regulation and self-control capacities.

I suggest trying some of the experiments above as you notice what impact, if any it makes. If you find it makes a difference and results in better outcomes for you then continue to use it.

Thanks and enjoy

Scott