Category: Working with difficult moments

Working with Negative Thoughts, part 3

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In the last post in this series, we imagined the mind as a clear sky with all thoughts –  negative, positive and neutral –  as clouds moving across that sky. When we have worked on our ability to do this – to create a non-judgmental space around all thoughts- we can move on to the next step, that of naming the thoughts. We do this by simply putting  a label onto the thoughts we are having – such as “there is worrying” or “there is planning” – without going into the content of the thinking at all. As one teacher said, we simply touch the thought lightly with the words and let it go. For the moment this is all we will do. Do not get carried away into the content of any of the thoughts, do not hook into any of them. Simply touch them lightly and let them go, and return to your awareness of the mind as a vast spacious blue sky or of the breath entering and leaving the body. Notice the attitude you bring to the labelling, avoiding any harshness or disappointement. There is nothing wrong with thinking. We simply, gently, and with a friendly approach, label the thought and let it go.

Thus, if we put the first three steps together, we practice becoming aware of our breath coming in and going out. We keep our attention there. As thoughts arise we simple return to the breath. We can imagine the mind as a clear blue sky, with thoughts simply as clouds passing through. If certain thoughts repeat, we gently label them, and continue to let them pass through, keeping our focus on the breath. We gently practice this for a short dedicated period each day, say for ten minutes.

How our fears manifest

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Good practice is about fear. Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing. With all that activity we create a cloud to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice. True practice is not safe; it’s anything but safe. But we don’t like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream. Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality. The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal spotlight: seeing things as they really are. When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything? We just live our lives.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Working with Negative Thoughts, part 2

Karl Duffy2 Comments

As I said in the previous related post, the first step in dealing with negative thoughts is simply to notice thoughts in general, as mental events that arise and pass away,  almost continually. We saw that we can develop the capacity to be aware of what is happening in our lives, by doing the simple exercise of awareness of the breath entering and leaving the body. However, what we quickly notice is often we are too busy thinking about what is happening, preferring that as a way of relating to life.

Still,  let us persevere. The more we strengthen this,  wider-than-thinking,  capacity for awareness, the more we come to understand that thoughts, assumptions and beliefs are mental events and processes rather than reflections of objective truth. In other words,we begin to see the thoughts as passing through the mind, almost like clouds passing accross a clear blue sky. We begin to realize that thoughts are not as solid as we may think they are. We see them simply as thoughts, not necessarily true reflections of reality, and we do not need to follow them. Nor do we identify with them, but rather we try to create a space around the thought and stay there, observing it in silence and without analyzing it, judging it or interfering in any way.

To do this, we can try a second simple practice. We sit and become aware of our breathing. Then we imagine our mind to be the clear blue sky, spacious and bright. As thoughts come, which they inevitably will, we imagine them as clouds passing through the sky. Some are heavy, some are light, but we identify with the sky, not with the clouds. This is the second step in working with negative thoughts, simply noticing that thoughts arise, touching them lightly as if they are clouds, and letting them go.

We are accustomed to identifying with every large or small thought that comes along. But you can train in identifying as the sky instead. When you do, tremendous confidence arises. You see beyond doubt that you can accommodate it all —sunshine, storms, mist, fog, hail —and never give up.

Susan Piver

Working with Negative thoughts, Part 1

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All of us, from time to time, worry about things. One thing worry does is increase negative thoughts and talking to ourselves. It tends to be anticipatory, referring to threatening things which we come to believe may happen in the future. These thoughts and self-talk have a significant impact upon our mood, making it more difficult for us to be content in our lives at this moment.

There are a number of ways that we can deal with negative thoughts. One very common one is to identify the thoughts and replace them with more constructive or realistic ones. For example, when a person feels bad after a failed job interview and thinks that they will never, ever,  get a job, the overgeneralizing thought is named and a more constructive one – such as “It did not go well this time, but I will prepare better for the next interview”  – is focused on.

The approach that mindfulness takes is slightly different. It simply starts with noticing that all sorts of thoughts are continually arising and passing through the mind. We do this by taking a short period – say two minutes – to sit quietly and calm the mind, not thinking of anything in particular, and just being aware of our breath coming in and going out, say,  at the nostrils. What could be easier? However, what we very quickly notice is that this is not that easy just to be aware of the breath, that we start thinking very quickly.

This is a really important insight along the way towards becoming mindful and in dealing with negative thoughts. We simply notice that it is in the nature of the mind to continually generate thoughts and that they arise and pass away all the time. Some teachers have compared this aspect of the mind to a waterfall, with thoughts thundering or rushing by. There is nothing wrong with this, so we just accept it with gentleness and non-judgment, while returning our attention to the breath.

This is the first step in developing the practical skill of mindfulness. We will move on to the second step in the next, related, post. However, for the moment we just practice this, noticing how the mind wanders and gets distracted.

Mindfulness, seeing clearly, means awakening to the happiness of the uncomplicated moment. We complicate moments. Hardly anything happens without the mind spinning it up into an elaborate production. It’s the elaboration that makes life more difficult than it needs to be.

Sylvia Boorstein

Not letting our fears control us 3: Stop running

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We are often – even sometimes without being aware of it – driven by fear. I do not mean the nervousness that comes if we have to go to a difficult meeting or give a presentation, or the useful type of stress which allows us perform better. What I mean is a deeper, more fundamental type of fear, a more deep-seated anxiety, which appears and reappears or can keep us awake at night. This type of fear is only intensified by our normal strategies to push it away, or to distract ourselves from noticing it. All that does is play with the fear, like the cat with the mouse, pushing it away briefly so as to allow it return even more nervous.

All fear is really related to our desire for safety, to feel secure in this world, a world which is by its nature insecure and unreliable. This is deeply ingrained in our make-up after centuries of evolution. However, the deeper roots of this anxiety comes from the fear to be with ourselves. We can see this most clearly when we sit down to practice. Our minds will do anything to avoid just being in the simple present with ourselves, and will run to thinking and planning and dreaming. We can notice that a lot of this thinking revolves around fixing ourselves, our lives and others.

And why are we afraid to be with ourselves? Because if we are forced to be just with ourselves we might feel that we are not good enough, that we may not measure up to the standards which we or others have set for us and which we have internalized. It is hard to be just with oneself, and not discuss with, or ask permission from, the presences in our heads, with whom we unconsciously and continually dialogue. To defend ourselves, we construct stories and fantasies, perfect futures which we use to distract from a not-so-perfect present. Fear is what happens when these stories run up against the reality of daily life and our deep inner selves. Other common strategies we use to avoid facing ourselves is that we keep extra busy, or throw ourselves into work, hobbies, a relationship or something else outside ourselves.

However, what we gradually see is that the whole purpose of practice is to work with our heart in the presence of our fears. Not in the way that many who start meditation think, namely, that it will make all fears go away. On the contrary, people often lament that they notice much more fears and anxiety after they started practicing and things were calmer before. What practice gradually does is stop us running. It gives us the courage to stay. That is why I love the simplest of all meditation instructions, the simple “Take your seat”. If we can do that consistently, and gently stay with ourselves, we go against the natural instinct of the fear and the slow healing can begin.

Not letting our fears control us 2: Open to disappointment

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One of the more important things for our psychological health is how we have to cope with disappointment. Losses are present in our lives from infancy onwards. Indeed, as Winnicott reminds us, a certain amount of disappointment is necessary as infants in order to allow a secure sense of self to develop. The parent has to gently “disappoint” the child in order to allow the child develop the independence to take on certain tasks for itself, to face the world without relying totally on the parent. This allows the infant have the resilience for facing the ups and downs of this world, as well as understanding that there is nuance in every person, and that we cannot expect anyone to perfectly satisfy all our needs.

If established well, the person can be comfortable on their own and have the space in later life to deal with the inevitable ways in which others let them down. If not, then one can struggle when a partner changes, a parent disillusions, a relationship goes sour or a job turns out to be unfulfilling, because one has looked to them to give life meaning. Another negative aspect could be that the child feels responsible for the loss and may pick up the mistaken idea that negative emotions are wrong, and to admit them is to show weakness or a lack of self-control.

Over the years all these losses add up. Some we have time to acknowledge, some not. Stephen Levine reminds us that grieving that has to go on for all the little losses and disappointments that happen throughout our days. He calls this “our ordinary, everyday grief” which builds up following the “disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives”.

One thing we can do in response is try to avoid feeling this grief, by hardening our hearts or denying to ourselves that the loss had any real meaning. However, although this provides a momentary feeling of safety, it can either lead to a gradual deadening of our experience of the world or reappear in our unconscious as anxiety or repeating behaviours. A better option is to stay open to life and acknowledge its inevitable losses, even the little ones. Ultimately, being open to feel the fear of loss is the only way to integrate it. It’s also the only way to a genuine relationship with others, because closeness to others cannot be founded on neediness or on the fear of being alone. Before we can be in relationship with others, we need to be able to accept a certain type of aloneness in ourselves. If we do not see that we will always be disappointed in the things that we think will fill it.