Move your mind

Sometime life can be tough

Life is awesome but equally it has tough times. It’s during those times that we need supportive conversations and strategies and tools to effectively deal with difficult emotional and hardships.

Almost everything we find valuable and rewarding in life like being a parent, running a business, a successful career and relationships comes with a price tag of challenging moments  during which we feel like giving up and have disparaging negative thoughts about self, such as the ‘I am not good enough story’. Society has taught us we should be able to control our thoughts, think positively, set goals and avoid unpleasant feelings for a happy successful life.

Recently I had the honour and pleasure of spending time with Dr Russ Harris author of the Happiness Trap who contests this approach may not be working and unintentionally contributing to the problem of psychological unrest.

In this article: I share with you some key insights that I learnt from Dr Harris, his book and my Diploma of Counselling. You will learn some simple strategies you can employ to get your headspace into a better zone when faced with life’s inevitable challenges and how to live with, not change, unsupportive thoughts –  if we are open to admit it – that we all experience from time to time – to be more calm and centred instead of experiencing struggle.

Rambo got it wrong

The Happiness Trap is based on the notion we have been led astray from an early age about how we deal with emotions. Think about when you were a child, were you told to ‘‘Snap out of it, boys don’t cry, stop being such a girl, there’s nothing to be afraid of, stop being silly”

We are taught beliefs such as ‘Happiness is the natural state of being and unpleasant feelings are not to be talked about and avoided, we should be able to control our feelings and if we can’t we are weak. We should think positively to find happiness’.

We also spend a lot of time and effort trying to avoid and get rid of life’s unpleasant feelings through such behaviours as drinking, smoking, taking drugs, socially isolating, social media, shopping and even exercise (wait isn’t exercise good for us? More on that later). Societies beliefs are reinforced by eternal stories and more recently movies with heroes – like Rambo and Batman – that are brave, don’t show emotions and don’t get hurt and prevail over evil to save the day and win. But how accurate are those stories to real life?

Best friend, worst enemy?

At a primitive level our minds are set up to keep us alive. Our ancestors had to seek shelter, find food, avoid danger and reproduce. In small social communities we also wanted to ‘fit in’ and be accepted to avoid getting kicked out of the group which would leave us vulnerable to danger.

As a result the human mind has evolved to be being overly cautious, fearful, negative and worry about what other people think about us. Which is why our mind can alternate between being brilliantly creative to self-sabotaging with negative self-judgements such as ‘I am not good enough, it will never work, why should I bother and it’s all too hard.  In the Happiness Trap Dr Harris calls this negative background chatter ‘Radio Doom’ constantly broadcasting it’s channel of fear and worry.

‘A normal human mind amplifies psychological suffering’

Another way?

If our ancestral human mind and society has set us up with these beliefs and way of thinking, what can we do instead?

The Happiness Trap is based on a relatively new form of mental health therapy called ACT: Acceptance and Commitment therapy which is a behavioural therapy that helps people identify what is important and move towards it, whilst learning skills and tools for dealing with unsupportive thinking.

They key concept of ACT is rather than try to avoid or out-run unpleasant thoughts we instead learn to live with them (acceptance), create mental space between the thought and our sense of self and take valued action (commitment) towards the life we want to live.

So instead of trying to remove ‘bad’ thoughts and trying to be more positive and happy, it is about learning ways to reduce the intensity and impact of unpleasant emotions, live with them and actually use them as part of a rich and fulfilling life.

A little background

ACT is a relatively new form of therapy founded in the 1980’s by Steve Hayes and has risen to become the second most popular form of the therapy after CBT – cognitive behavioural therapy. It is scientifically backed by over 1000 randomised trials to prove it’s effectiveness to deal with a wide range of psychological issues from stress to anxiety and depression.

The root cause of a struggling mind

Many (not all) of life’s psychological struggles such as stress, anxiety, worry or self-defeating  involve two fundamental mental processes:

1. Being mentally stuck in unsupportive, negative thinking.

2. Worrying about either past or future events.

We become fused or stuck with certain stories and thoughts that we play out over and over – rigid, inflexible thinking styles. The goal of ACT is to get unstuck and defuse from this kind of thinking to develop ‘cognitive flexibility’ which will allow us to think more adaptively.

Cognitive fusion

Cognitive fusion is a key factor of the Happiness Trap, being stuck on a feeling or emotion- being ‘fused’ to it: we are the emotion – and having rigid inflexible thinking styles and rules about how we think the way the world should work. Key language that reflects rigid thinking are words like ‘should and must’s that represent how we feel things should be. Eg, People should like my posts and read my blog articles!

Perfectionism, the enemy of happiness

Perfectionism is one type of behaviour that is an example of rigid thinking. Things must be a certain way and if they are not we are not happy or satisfied ‘I am a failure, it’s all wrong, I am not good enough’. No body, no matter how good you are is going to get everything perfect all of the time, it is too high a bar to set for oneself. The antidote to which is to aim for excellence but allow space for errors, be kinder to self when they do occur and learn from them.

The key

If ‘most’ of our psychological suffering is caused by feeling mentally stuck or fused to thoughts and emotions and/or worrying about the past or future, we need to find space between the thought and our identity and also bring our attention into the present moment. This is achieved through mindfulness skills.

Mindfulness is not the same as meditation. Unlike meditation where you have to dedicate time, an appropriate space and find peaceful conditions to practise, mindfulness can be done anywhere, meaning you can use it anytime to move away from thoughts and feeling that are troubling you and find more clarity and mental calmness.

Mindfulness is essentially about being more present and having awareness for what you are doing, such as truly listening in conversation, as opposed to thinking about your turn to speak or things you need to get done or even focusing on washing the dishes for the task that it is, rather than doing with a busy mind.

Drop the anchor

Here is a simple mindfulness exercise to help you become more present and dial down a busy mind….

Step one: Ask yourself: What thoughts and feelings am I experiencing right now, don’t buy in to them, simply observe them for what they are. Sit with them for a moment, even if they are uncomfortable and troubling (remember ACT is about learning to ‘be’ with your thoughts not avoid them). Simply acknowledge their presence. Say to yourself ‘Here is sadness, here is frustration’ whatever you are experiencing.

Step two: Ask yourself: What do I notice about my body? Sit up straight, move your hands and feet, stretch a little, just become more aware of your physical body. Do you notice anything happening in your body? Tightness in your chest, an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach?

Step three: Notice what is happening around you. Notice five things occurring in your environment right now, what do you see, hear, feel?

Now return to step one and repeat the process two more times. After which you should notice any troubling thoughts and feelings are less intense and you should feel a sense of improved calmness.

This exercise is called Dropping the anchor to provide a sense of stability when around you life may be out of control, like a ship in a storm. But you also do not need to only do it in challenging times, use it everyday, for a sense of psychological wellbeing.

Try to practise this exercise once a day.

You are not the emotion

When we experience an emotion we often say ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am angry’ However you are not the emotion, even if it is positive one. You are ‘you’ experiencing the emotion of ‘x’ in a particular moment. It is a passing feeling and we cannot label our entire identity upon it.

Here is another key ACT strategy to ‘unhook’ from emotions:

Instead of saying ‘I am_____’ say ‘I am having the feeling of_____’ or better still say to yourself ‘ I am noticing that I am having the feeling of ____’

The purpose of this statement is to separate you from the emotion, not to get rid of it, but instead to unhook from it, to exercise psychological defusion, to reduce it’s significance and impact on you.

It is a very simple and very powerful exercise to practise everyday.

You are not the story

Similarly, in addition to not being the emotion, you are not the story that plays out in your head. We all have internal dialogue that unfortunately can be very self-critical. We have stories like ‘I am not good enough’ ‘I work hard I should be more successful’ ‘I am scared of flying’ ‘this is always happens to me’. Another key philosophy of ACT is that all of that self-dialogue is just a story, like pictures in a movie or words in a book. And you don’t have to buy into it – if it does not work for you.

When your mind does share a story that does not serve you just say:

‘Thanks Mind! Thanks for sharing that!

and move on.

The chess board

Life is like a game of chess. You have the white pieces, which, here represent all your good thoughts and you have black pieces which represent your ‘not so positive thoughts’. They are in a constant life -long game trying to beat each other.

Are you the white pieces or are you the black pieces?

You are neither.

Both represent your thoughts.

You are the chessboard on which the game is played.

You will always have positive and less than positive thoughts, it is part of being human. If you can remove yourself from that ‘game’ and see yourself instead as the board you have moved up in a level of awareness that should give you more self awareness.

You cannot control your thoughts

Contrary to popular belief, it is very difficult to control your thoughts.

Try this simple test to prove it: Think of an elephant. Now stop thinking about the elephant Could you do it??

Thoughts just bubble up from the subconscious mind. Sometimes they are supportive and constructive, other times they are self-defeating and negative. What we can do is choose what we do with them once they have appeared. Are they useful? Go with it. Are they unsupportive – ‘thanks for sharing mind’ and reframe it to a more realistic version of the same thought. Choose to act on it, ignore it or adapt it – it’s a skill to be practised.

Values not goals

Successful people set goals and write to do-lists. We get things done. We achieve! Right?

The trouble with goals is that they are delayed gratification: ‘I will be happy when I have achieved ‘x’ (lost weight, got a job, won an award)’ and our to do lists will never ever get completed, making us feel like we are constantly behind.

Instead of goals how about living every moment of every day by our values?

How much time have you spent thinking about what kind of person do you want to be? What kind of life do you want? What is important to you?

What are your guiding values?

One of the fundamental skills of ACT is to identify what’s important to you: your values and what kind of life you want to live and then start taking action to move towards it.

That might sound overly simplistic but think about all the things we do that are contrary to what we value. For example, most people value health but we take action that does not support that like eating too much unhealthy food and drinking too much alcohol.

When we have clarity over values then we will be in a better position to make decisions and have the motivation to do things we know we need to do that supports the life we want. Plus clarity of values is helpful to then be able to recognise more quickly when we are starting to go off track to get back on track.

I would encourage you to consider three important questions:

• What kind of person do I want to be?
• What do I want from my life?
• What are my guiding values?

Experiential avoidance

When we experience unpleasant emotions like sadness, loneliness, anger or inadequacy, it is very normal to try to avoid the feelings through distraction or avoidance. We distract ourselves with pleasurable pursuits like eating chocolate, drinking alcohol, binge watching TV… you know the rest. Or we avoid situations that bring us unpleasant emotions. The trouble is neither or these strategies solve the problem, in fact they will generally only exacerbate problems such as gaining weight, health problems or loneliness.

Whilst ACT is about acceptance that does not mean having to put up with, tolerate or like the unpleasant emotions. Instead ACT encourages giving these unpleasant feelings some space to allow you to be with them but with them, without them controlling and dominating one’s life.

The exercises shared in this article are techniques to be able to ‘be’ with rather than avoid unpleasant emotions: Drop the anchor and introducing the statement ‘I am having the feeling of___’.

Two other simple techniques are:

1. Breathe through it. When you experience an unpleasant emotion and you want to resort to a distractive technique (eating, alcohol) start to breathe deeply and slowly. This kind of relaxing breathing can help you dial down on emotions and allow them to pass. Deep breathing stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system to slow down the mind and body.
2. Ride the urge. Similarly, as well as breathing through it you can consciously choose to ride through the urge as if you were surfing a wave. Urges will come intensely but will not last forever, like a wave, they roll and break on the shore. To assist with riding the urge it can beneficial to engage a healthier supportive behaviour like drinking a glass of water, doing some exercise or going for a walk – a positive distraction.

Summary

• Psychological suffering is (mostly) caused by being hooked, attached or fused to stories we tell ourselves and feelings and emotions we experience and rules we believe the way the world should be: rigid thinking.
• By unhooking and defusing from these thoughts, feelings, stories and rules we become more cognitive flexibile.
• You are not the (unhelpful) story your mind tells you, you don’t have to buy into it –‘Thanks mind!’
• We can’t control thoughts but we can control what you do with them: reframe them to me more realistic and we can control the actions we take on those thoughts.
• Mindfulness techniques help us unhook and bring attention into the present moment to provide psychological space between thoughts and feelings and ones identity. (I am having the feeling of____.)
• Defining values helps us to be, live and move towards the person we want to be and provide us with the motivation to take action and get back on track.
• Distraction and avoidance are normal ways to not experience unpleasant emotions, they are fine in moderation but used excessively become problematic.
• Psychological wellbeing is based, in part, on being present, open, curious and avoiding rigid, inflexible thinking.

Conclusion

Success isn’t about getting rid of pain and avoiding unpleasant feelings and emotions, it’s about learning to live with it, learning from it and take it with you. Contrary to popular belief we cannot easily control or thoughts  to ‘think positively’ but we can choose what we do with those thoughts and how act upon them. Through some simple mindfulness techniques we can ‘unhook’ from unhelpful stories that hinder our own sense of self, success and happiness to regain mental clarity and focus – to live a rich and meaningful life.

About me: Timo Topp is passionate about helping to live healthier, happier lives. ‘I have been having mentally and emotionally supportive conversations with clients for 20 years which led me to study and qualify as a Counsellor’. This article serves as an exciting announcement that I am now available for counselling sessions. Combined with movement my unique approach is called ‘Move your Mind’ Get in touch to have a friendly chat about starting a supportive conversation to navigate life’s challenging moments.

Disclaimer: This article serves as a personal reflection of the book The Happiness Trap, learnings from my Diploma in Counselling and key take aways from attending a lecture by Dr Russ Harris. In no way shape or form does it or should it replace any therapies or expert advice you have gained from other sources. ACT is one of hundreds of therapy modalities to help improve psychological wellbeing and you should always seek the guidance of a qualified expert to find methods that suit and support you.