September Newsletter

Perhaps the oldest and wisest piece of advice for escaping depression and living a happier life is to live in the present moment. Virtually every spiritual teacher and wise person through our history has suggested this solution. And although many of us have heard this age-old advice, and have even agreed with it, the question remains: why is it so difficult? The answers to this question is surprisingly simple. There are two factors that keep people tied to their past and speculating about a negative future, - very few people have the necessary understanding of their own thinking, and very few people understand the power of their own moods.

If you believe that your thinking is something that happens to you - instead of something that you are doing to create an experience of life - it is impossible for you to live in the present moment. If you feel, for whatever reason, that you must follow trains of thought as they enter your mind, you will be unable to remain in the present.

Let’s suppose you are all alone reading a gook when suddenly a thought crosses your mind. ‘I’ll never be able to……….’. It could be any thought at all, it really doesn’t matter. If you follow that train of thought, where do you suppose it’s going to take you? If however, you see that all that has occurred has been a thought racing through your head - a simple and harmless thought which you choose to dismiss - you will be free from its effects.

If you feel the need to follow every train of thought that happens to enter you mind you will be too busy elsewhere (in the past or in the future) to remain in the present moment; you will be too busy chasing and studying the various forms of negativity that enter your mind. There will be too much activity going on in your mind for you to control its contents, since somewhere in the region of fifty thousand thoughts will pass through your mind each day! If you believe that your thinking is caused by other people and the events going on around you, it’s easy to see why your thinking can become overwhelming. As your understanding of thought deepens, however, and as you begin to see immersing yourself in this moment, you are speculating about the future or rehashing the past.

As an adult, you may have got into the habit of allowing past regrets and future concerns to squeeze the life out of your present moments. As you become conscious of how you sabotage your life by your thoughts of the past and the future you can begin dropping those thoughts and noticing a happier feeling returning within yourself.

One of the problems with living in the past or future is that thinking in these terms will never produce a happy life. A mind that believes it will be happy only when certain conditions are met will always create new conditions to satisfy once the old ones are completed. A cycle of ‘I’ll be happy when……..’ is created. The particulars can be virtually anything: ‘When school is complete ’.I’ll get a job’, ‘I’ll get promotion’, ‘I’ll make more money. Goals are a good idea, but future orientated thinking will guarantee that you will not enjoy the process of achieving these goals and it will guarantee that you will not enjoy the results once you get them, Your mind will start again and you’ll be in the same place you are right now.

If you want ‘someday’ to be different, you must make a personal commitment to begin to enjoy your life today, as it is right now.

One of the secrets of living a life is to eliminate the sense of hurry. Hurry is nothing more than a bad habit; it’s not a scheduling problem, it’s a state-of-mind problem. There are many extremely busy individuals who almost never feel hurried and even more people who really aren’t very busy, but who feel busy almost all the time.

The degree to which you feel hurried in your life is dependent entirely on your ability to keep your attend in the present moment. Can you imagine what it would be like if all of your thoughts centred around what you hve to do and how little time you have to do it? We fill up our present moments with thoughts of a hurried future.

The solution of all hurry is to live more in the present moment. In fact it is impossible to feel hurried regardless of what you are doing when you become less consumed with what needs to be done, and more consumed with using each moment to its fullest.

Life is meant to be lived, one moment at a time. Whether you are 18 or 80, male or female, dark or light, rich or poor, you are given the same gift and it’s administered in exactly the same way. The gift is life itself and it’s given to us our one precious moment at a time. Life isn’t an emergency, it’s an adventure

People who live for the now are not sacrificing future plans or success. On the contrary, a person who is immersed in the present is doing the best possible job that can be done. If you look at the greatest athletes you’ll watch how totally absorbed in the present day the are, and that is the secret of their success.

Just as goals can only be achieved one step at a time, so too can problems only be solved by doing what you can one step at a time, continually moment to moment and day to day. As your attention focuses on the moment, on what can be done, instead of on the problem or on how difficult something is, you are marching towards solutions.

Remind yourself over and over again of how truly wonderful life is when you aren’t reviewing past mistakes or worrying about future concerns. Remember that you are in control over what you choose to think about once your understand that you are the thinker of your thoughts. If negative or worrisome thoughts enter your mind, forget about them. If something needs to be dealt with you will deal with it. By all means learn from the past then let it go. Know that the future will be fine if you approach it one moment at a time.

From Stop Thinking Start Living by Richard Carlson.

WHAT IS RELAXATION

It is perhaps easier to say what relaxation isn’t. It isn’t just sitting watching television. It isn’t even dozing in a chair. You can be fast asleep all night and still wake up tense and sore. Relaxation is a skill which has to be learned, rehearsed and constantly practised. It is a skill to be learned and then used. It is the antithesis of tension, and our main weapon against it.

At the moment you have no weapons. Your body runs your life. You are a slave to it and it makes you miserable. Relaxation isn’t the answer to all your problems, but learning to relax is a very efficient start because it puts you back in control, and you may have begun to think that you would never be in control again. You can relax physically, and you can be calm mentally. You have everything to play for.

You will find it disappointingly difficult at first and it will take time, but it is possible for anyone, no matter how tense they may be now, to learn how to relax. It’s worth the effort.

You must practice conscientiously every day until you have mastered the technique. That is of the utmost importance, so don’t give up or be impatient.

When you achieve relaxation you will know because your will feel warm, comfortable, sleepy and….relaxed! It is a pleasant almost forgotten sensation. It is worth working for because it has two uses. Firstly it can be used as a weapon again muscle tension and that is something you will be very pleased to have in many situations. It will open the door to a new way of life. Secondly, it will make you aware of when you are getting tense much earlier than you currently do. The earlier you become aware of the tension in your muscles the sooner you can do something about it.

Overbreathing can cause muscle tension by changing the chemistry of your blood. This is different from the sort of panicky breathing which you might experience in a crisis. It is a chronic condition which can contribute to your day to day anxiety by making your tense. You may breathe faster than normal, breathe more deeply than normal, or you may have developed the habit of sighing frequently. In fact all of those things are all a matter of habit, but bad habits can be replaced by better habits, and you can learn to breathe more correctly. It takes effort but it can be done by practising breathing exercises.

For these exercises you don’t need a private room, just sit in a semi-reclining position, in a comfortable armchair.

When you are at rest your breathe with your tummy muscles. That seems strange but it is true as you are about to find out. It is only when you are exercising that you use your chest muscles to raise and lower your ribs, forcing the air in and out of your lungs. If you are using these chest muscles in your semi-reclining position you are overbreathing.

In order to find out what is going on place one hand on your chest and the other on your tummy. That’s all you have to do When you are in this position, notice which of your hands is moving first. It is the hand on your tummy which should rise first when you are breathing normally. However if it is the hand on your chest which rises first then you are overbreathing.

Now all you have to do is to breathe slowly and quietly, trying to let your tummy hand do the work. Try not to sigh or to breathe too rapidly. Just let yourself relax and breathe normally. Stay in this position as long as possible because these skills are not learned quickly. Your should spend the evening taking notice of your breathing, and as many weeks as it takes to break the habit of incorrect breathing. Your are trying to develop an awareness of something which is usually automatic, but which for you may have gone slightly wrong so that it has become set at too high a level, like an inaccurate thermostat.

Once you have learned relaxation and correct breathing you have the tools to do what you have to do in order to get on with your life.

Taken from Banish Anxiety by Dr Kenneth Hambly.

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR IDENTIFYING AND COUNTERING SELF-TALK.

Negative self-talk is nothing more than an accumulation of self-limiting mental habits. You can begin to break these habits by noticing occasions when you engage in unconstructive dialogues with yourself and then countering them, preferably in writing, with more positive, rational statements. It took repetition over many years to internalise your habits of negative self-talk, it will likewise take repetition and practice to learn more constructive and helpful ways of thinking.

1 Notice

Any occasions when you’re feeling anxious, including the onset of a panic attack

When you anticipate having to face a difficult task or a phobic situation

Occasions when you’ve made some kind of mistake and feel critical of yourself

Occasions when you’re feeling depressed or discouraged.

Situations where you’re angry at yourself or others

Situations where you feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed.

2 Ask yourself any or all of the following questions.

‘What am I telling myself that is making me feel this way?’

‘Do I really want to do this to myself?’

‘Do I really want to stay upset?’

Sometimes you may actually wish to continue to be upset rather than change the underlying self-talk. Often this is because you’re having strong feelings that you haven’t allowed yourself to fully express. It’s common to stay anxious, angry or depressed for a period of time when there are strong feelings that you haven’t acknowledged - let alone expressed.

Another reason you may maintain your anxiety is because you perceive a strong need to ‘keep everything under control’ Often you’re overestimating some dangers or preparing for an imagined catastrophe - and so staying tense and vigilant is the way in which you give yourself a sense of control. Your vigilance is validated by the feeling of control it gives you. Unfortunately, in the process you can make yourself more and more tense, until you reach a point where your mind seems to race out of control and you dwell on dangers and catastrophe almost to the exclusion of anything else. This in turn leads to more anxiety and tension. The only way out of this vicious cycle is to let go and relax. The next step, relaxation, is crucial for you to be able to slow down your mind and sort out patterns of negative self-talk.

Relax - Disrupt your train of negative thoughts by taking some deep abdominal breaths or using some methods of distraction. Let go, slow yourself down, and relax.

Write down the negative self-talk that led you to feel anxious, upset, or depressed. It’s often difficult to decipher what your telling yourself by merely reflecting on it. The act or writing things down will help to clarify what specific statements you actually made to yourself.

Identify the type of negative self-talk you engaged in. Also look for the distortions that were present, such as overestimating, catastrophising etc., After doing this for a while, you’ll become aware of the particular types of negative inner dialogue and particular types of distortions you prone to.

Answer or dispute your negative self-talk with positive, rational, self-supporting statements. Answer each negative statement you’ve writing by writing down an opposing positive statement. These statements should be worded so that they avoid negatives, are in the present tense and in the first person. They should also be believable and feel good to you.

It will take some time and effort to write down your negative self-talk along with positive counterstatements, however, this will be time and effort well spent. The practice of writing down counterstatements repeatedly will help you to internalise a new habit of reversing your negative thinking whenever you notice it beginning to start. After a month or two of writing everyone down, you’ll find that you begin to counter negative self-talk automatically and effortlessly as it comes us. Cultivating the habit of countering is one of the most significant steps you can take in dealing with all kinds of anxiety, as well as panic attacks.

Taken from The Anxiety & Phobic Workbook by Edmund J Bourne.