Week 1: Present Moment Awareness and Acceptance Commitment Training (ACT)
With 20 years counselling experience as an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and seeing over 7,000 clients, I have fine tuned my practice to the following processes. I know it has certainly helped me in my life journey to be better able to engage in life more fully and better manage the impact of an abusive childhood and dark periods of depression in my younger years. It will work for you too!
You are not your thoughts
This is a great starting point.
Yes we have thoughts every moment of the day, some say as many as 80,000 thoughts per day!
Our minds are designed to protect us from danger so during times of stress, angst, worry, fear, we can go into overdrive as our minds try to keep us safe by fixing, controlling, changing what is happening to us. When this doesn’t work the mind often keeps trying harder, especially at 2 o’clock in the morning!
We can learn to distance ourselves from our thoughts when they are adversely affecting the quality of our lives.
We are designed to worry
From an evolutionary perspective we think primarily to keep us safe.
The evolution of thinking helps us strategise and ideally find solutions to problematic events in our lives.
Think early days of our evolution – we see a Sabre Tooth Tiger and when we learnt to seek safety and be alert to danger, our species, us human beings, have survived with less mortality.
Trouble is there aren’t too many Sabre Tooth Tigers around today (none I’m quite sure!) but it seems our minds have not evolved to worry less.
Modern day Sabre Tooth Tigers are work issues, relationship difficulties, financial stress etc.
Our minds, our thoughts can treat these modern day concerns as though there are Sabre Tooth Tigers everywhere. The process is the same. It’s inbuilt in us. But we can learn to manage this process.
Fight, Flight or Freeze
This is an automatic response generally out of the control of our thinking, problem solving mind.
With thinking we saw how the mind is geared to seek out problems, be alert to them in order to keep us safe.
If we sense danger (Sabre Tooth Tiger, Work Stress, Relationship Difficulties, Financial Stress) our body can go into protection mode. It’s automatic. Blood flow to the arms and legs increases in case we have to stay and fight the danger or run away. Adrenalin increases to prepare us for the fight or flight. A whole range of automatic body responses occur beyond our control and thinking mind. It’s all designed to keep us safe. If we can’t run or fight we then can freeze or start to shut down. Think brain fog, lack of energy, unmotivated etc. This is the evolutionary response of “if I start to shut down the Sabre Tooth Tiger might get bored and leave me alone”. Believe it or not, again from an evolutionary perspective it has helped us survive the enemy (it also works for reptiles and other animals – it’s a nervous system, the Autonomic Nervous System that we share with many other creatures).
Again it can be managed.
Connecting Our Body With Our Mind
Previously we spoke of the Autonomic Nervous System which acts independently of our thinking brain. If it senses danger it kicks into gear (think here the last time you got really scared – a near miss in your car, receiving really bad news, hearing a loud bang etc.)
If our stress goes on too long our body stops communicating with our brain (kind of). We stay in a perpetual state of stress and it becomes the norm.
Studies of the Vagus Nerve are teaching us that we can become more alert of what is happening in the body and learn to have a 2 way communication between our mind, our brain and our body such that we can better manage stress responses and ultimately feel SAFER! Thank you Vagus Nerve.
Trauma Theory
Trauma approaches today extend beyond sudden events that are life threatening. Trauma today can also include ongoing high levels of stress (a work situation that does not resolve itself, a long term relationship that does not improve, abuse, domestic violence etc).
By taking into account the:
(1) Autonomic Nervous System response,
(2) The way we think and try to protect ourselves through incessant problem solving,
(3) Understanding the role of the Vagus nerve and
(4) Learning to be more PRESENT in this very present moment, we can better manage the stresses and other unwanted responses to life events in our lives.
Being PRESENT
With worry, anxiety and fear that something adverse may happen, our problem solving brain, our thinking, will often be planted in the future trying to work out what might happen and how to mitigate this. It’s that protective mechanism trying to keep us safe. Typical thinking at times like will involve lots of “what ifs?” What if this happens? What if that happens?
This type of thinking is future based. Those thoughts including lots of “what ifs” are based in the future.
The more we become AWARE of these thoughts, we notice them and learn the art of not getting hooked into them, the greater chance there is that we can allow ourselves other options other than being consumed by the worry. As mentioned those worry thoughts are often future based. Those things we are worried about that might happen, could well happen, but right here, right now, they are not happening.
Therefore if we can bring ourselves back to the present moment, we help ourselves separate from those worrying thoughts, feelings and sensations and this process helps us find more productive options to better manage those life events that have led to the worry and anxiety. One way to connect back to the present moment is through our body. By getting out of our head and connecting to our body, we can feel more grounded with greater clarity of thought as to the actions we can take right here, right now.
Here is a 6 minute exercise you can listen to, to help you practise the process of getting out your head and connecting with your body to aid the process of getting back to the present moment.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN
That’s the process on offer!
If you would like to know more and start to implement this process, feel free to contact me to start the process. Simply fill in the contact form located HERE.
Best Regards, Mark Lockyer