Calming your inner demons

Our counsellor Denise Caruth gives some valuable tips and resources on how to quieten your mind when you’re feeling unsettled or agitated.

At this time of national crisis we are realising how incredibly adaptable the human being is but at the same time there is inherent stress and anxiety around as we battle against a virus no one really understands. It is at times like this that our inner demons, and imps of the mind, can come out in force. However, we do not have to let them take over our minds.
By acknowledging how we are feeling, anxious / low / worried / stressed / happy / joyful / tired / weary / disappointed / grateful / frustrated, we can co-exist with these feelings without starting to judge them. For instance, rather than saying, ‘There I go again feeling totally wound up and anxious, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I stop doing this? Why can’t I just get on with my life?’ in other words, adding judgment and criticism to how we are feeling, we can simply say, ‘I am feeling really anxious at the moment’ and let the anxiety be within you without judgment. Once we bring our ‘judging’ mind to the feeling we tend to set up an internal struggle that lasts a lot longer than the original feeling.
Yes, there are many uncomfortable emotions that come with being human but they are a normal part of being alive. Rather than being tough on ourselves we could treat ourselves with compassion, as if we were talking to a friend who was feeling anxious: ‘Gosh, it sounds like you are really worried at the moment, and I get that, it’s a pretty uncertain time right now; what can I do today to make things a little easier for you?’
There are many acclaimed individuals and theories, but some of my favourites include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Mindfulness.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Starting with ACT, Russ Harris is a very readable author who has written many books and has some excellent resources. For instance, check out The Happiness Trap – the book is a very easy read and is a practical guide to how to start living in the present with what we have (acceptance) and then focusing on the values we hold dear and committing to act/live more in line with those (commitment). He’s great! Check out the link below.

Free Resources

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Technique: from The Happiness Trap (page 143)

NOTICE FIVE THINGS
This is a simple exercise to centre yourself and connect with your environment. Practise it a few times every day.

1. Pause for a moment.
2. Look around and notice five objects you can see.
3. Listen carefully and notice five sounds you can hear.
4. Notice five things you can feel against the surface of your body.

You can develop this skill further by gong for a daily walk and spending the whole time noticing what you can see, hear, smell and physically feel (and refocusing whenever you realise you have been ‘disconnected’).

Mindfulness

Mindfulness, ‘the art of conscious living’, is a buzzword we hear banded about a lot. It was really conceived by Jon Kabat Zinn, who created a secular form or Buddhist meditation for people to deal with the inherent stresses and strains of daily life. It has been proven, almost universally, that it can have a real impact on one’s ability to function well in the world and to have choices about how we are in the world.
Briefly, check out some of his work (his book Wherever you go, There you are is a great introduction to ‘Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life’, or online:

Technique: from Wherever you go, There you are (page 30):

YOU CAN’T STOP THE WAVES, BUT YOU CAN LEARN TO SURF

One way to envision how mindfulness works is to think of your mind as the surface of a lake or of the ocean. There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The water’s waves are churned up by winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, which stir up waves in our minds.
People who don’t understand meditation think that it is some kind of special inner manipulation which will magically shut off these waves so that the mind’s surface will be flat, peaceful and tranquil. But just as you can’t put a glass plate on the water to calm the waves, so you can’t artificially suppress the waves of your mind, and it is not too smart to try. It will only create more tension and inner struggle, not calmness. That doesn’t mean calmness isn’t unattainable. It’s just that it cannot be attained by misguided attempts to suppress the mind’s natural activity.
It is possible through meditation to find shelter from much of that wind that agitates the mind. Over time a good deal of the turbulence may die down from lack of continuous feeding. But ultimately the winds of life and of the mind will blow, do what we may. Meditation is about knowing something about this and how to work with it.

Exercise:

Try sitting in a quiet place for 5 minutes, or more if you can, and with your hands gently on your lap simply watch the thoughts come and go through your mind like clouds in the sky, or waves in the sea. If you take a ride on one of the clouds and find yourself in a storm with your mind engaged in what you were going to cook for lunch, or a conversation you recently had with someone, or thinking about who you need to contact, gently and with compassion, bring yourself back to your quiet space and watching the clouds or waves. Sometimes the sky is blue with barely a could visible, and other times the sky is turbulent and full of dark, ominous clouds. Neither is right nor wrong, neither is good nor bad, that is simply the state of the sky today.

Denise is offering one-off 30-minute sessions to expand on some of the theories or techniques she mentions here. This is not therapy per se, but simply help with practical steps you can take to have more choice about how you are in the world! £25 for 30 minutes

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