Tag: Psychology

When things go wrong

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A lot of practical things went wrong for me today – computers, recordings, simple practical details around courses. This added extra work onto the calendar and in speeding up things gets lost and mislaid. Have you ever noticed that sometimes  when things like this go wrong and disturb us, we have a tendency to think that something is wrong with us or the overall direction of our lives.  We may simply think we are doing too much. Sometimes it can go deeper and we think our whole life is out of sync. We seem to have a deep-down tendency to identify with a difficulty and let that affect how we see ourselves or how our life is going. This can also lead us to split the world into “good” and “bad” – or them and us-  seeing the situation or a person as all bad, and thinking that the best way of dealing with difficulties is to move them completely out of our life. Sadly, this maximizing of distance in order to increase a sense of personal safety often just solidifies our fearful or defensive sense of self.

Splitting is one of the primitive defense mechanisms described from Freud onwards, and is found particularly in Melanie Klein’s work. It is one of the more simplistic ways of dealing with life’s problems, rooted in the baby’s tendency of associating good experiences with a  “good” person and bad experiences with a “bad” person.  It is generally replaced as the child gets older by an understanding that good and bad occasions can reside in the one person and that does not make them “bad”. It is,  nonetheless  a common  way of behaving even in adults.  It is often activated when we are threatened, and means that we are unable to see complexity in a situation or a person, preferring rather seeing it or them as all bad.  It tells us that there is no grey area, and as a result people are frozen into a certain moment or fault and we let that moment define them. We can do it to ourselves also and solidify the most negative core beliefs about ourselves, letting them define our life, seeing it as threatened or frightened.

Mindfulness practice can help us be aware of this and other defense mechanisms arising, – to see fear forming – and help us notice the desire to withdraw –  normally accompanied by a kind of defensive story-line- as it appears.  If we can spot this happening we may have enough of a gap to see the whole drama . If so, we can question what is feeling threatened, whether it is really actually me, or some story which I have about myself and my life. If we can resist the tendency to split we can come to see that everything is actually workable. We can then experience for ourselves that it is ultimately possible to be open to everything, and to keep a compassionate heart available for others and for all that occurs in our lives.

Where we should invest

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The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists at Imperial College, London was told that the evidence-base for the therapeutic value of meditation for a wide range of health problems was significantly stronger than most pharmaceutical products. A new meta-analysis of 823 randomly controlled trials of meditation, conducted by the US National Institute of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, showed the clinical benefits of meditation across a wide range of physical and emotional disorders.

Meditation is a way of life rather than quick fix achieved by using gimmicks such as incense, music and light, Dr Avdesh Sharma, past president of the Indian Psychiatric Association, said. It doesn’t work immediately. You need to practice it for several weeks before the effects begin to be felt. Dr Sharma added: If meditation was a drug, we’d all want shares in it. It has a beneficial effect on most physical health problems and is very effective for mental health problems significantly reducing levels of depression, anxiety and insomnia by improving relaxation, oxygenation of the brain, and energy levels.

Developing a Secure Sense of Self 3: Attunement and how meditation can help

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In order for a secure sense of self to develop, caregivers need to be attuned to the child’s desires. They need to be able to set aside their own needs in order to have the space to respond to the child’s emotional and physical needs. On the one hand, this means that they address the child’s needs promptly, so that the child feels secure. Using modern means of communication as an analogy, at times they need to respond to the child as if they have received an Instant Message and not wait for an email.

However, as well as being able to respond to certain needs swiftly, they also have to be able to leave the child alone, without insisting that it be there for their needs. They have to provide a non-demanding presence during times of rest so the child can simply be and develop its sense of being, before any need to do anything or earn the parents’ attention. In this way the child learns to simply enjoy each moment, without any intrusive aims or fears.

Winnicott calls this state “going-on-being” and writes about the importance of this capacity to allow the child simply exist: The mother’s non-demanding presence makes the experience of formlessness and comfortable solitude possible, and this capacity becomes a central feature in the development of a stable and personal self. This makes it possible for the infant to experience …a state of going on being…out of which…spontaneous gestures emerge.

We can see here the importance of being before doing. If the parent is excessively working through its own needs then it can happen that he or she impinges on the child’s quiet time, and continually draws the child’s attention.  One consequence is that the child has to attune too early to the needs of others, rather than having time just for itself.  In later life as an adult he or she can repeat this dynamic in a number of ways. One is by repeating the parents’ pattern and continually create interruptions and dramas. So, for example,  when a relationship is in danger of being reliable the person repeats the drama of the parents – because that is more familiar – thus preventing the  other person getting too close. The parents’ dynamic means that only unhealthy relationships are maintained; sadly, ones that have the potential to grow are rejected.  Or the adult compulsively neglects his or her own needs, looking after others in an excessive way. In both cases we can see that, in a sense, the child has never managed to leave home.

This is where meditation practice can help. As Jon Kabat Zinn stated again in a talk which I was present at recently, we are essentially human beings before we are human doings. Sitting practice recreates a period when we can just simply be, without having to acheive anything. We simply watch the mind and body without holding on to anything or pushing anything away. This has the capacity to recreate and heal our early life experiences. As Gil Fronsdal has said, mindfulness practice can act as an antidote to the hurt caused by parents who did not have the space to truly see their children. He says that by being mindful, by quietening the mind, by being simply present with our experience, we are loving and healing ourselves. We learn to sit with ourselves and our lives as they are, without having to be afraid of them and try continually to fix them.

Rescued out of the depths

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I watched the first of the Chilean miners being brought out alive from the depths of the earth where they had been trapped for nearly 70 days. It brought to mind the biblical tale  of Jonah who was trapped in the whale for three days  and all those stories and myths about people descending to the underworld to remerge later. These rich themes seem to speak deeply to aspects of our experience. Today I am just interested in the aspect of waiting, which some call of being in a state of limbo.

We can sometimes be in a phase of our life when we feel like we are waiting or we are stuck, and that can make us uneasy. It seems like we are going nowhere. There may be an acompanying sense of unease or low mood. However, what we may not know is that these periods can be ones of important growth. We may go through a dark period, but that doesn’t mean that we are depressed. We sometimes have to have the courage to wait until a new direction becomes clear. Our culture today prizes achievement and fast forward movement. To stand still is seen as the same as going backwards.  Staying quiet and waiting is not valued as a process.

In this understanding, we can see that these periods, when we may feel stuck, even buried or in darkness. can be periods of rebirth. We are leaving behind some elements of the past only to emerge into a new light. As in the story of Jonah, we can be moving in a direction even if we seem to be trapped. The darkness is taking us where we need to go. Sometimes this becomes apparent only afterwards. Not all growth takes place in bright sunshine; as Thomas Moore reminds us, darkness is also part of life’s processes.

You may be so influenced by the modern demand to make progress at all costs that you may not appreciate the value in backsliding. Yet, to regress in a certain way is to return to origins, to step back from the battle line of existence, to remember the gods and spirits and elements of nature, including your own pristine nature, the person you were at the beginning. You return to the womb of imagination so that your pregnancy can recycle. You are always being born, always dying to the day to find the restorative waters of night.

The whale’s belly is, of course, a kind of womb. In your withdrawal from life and your uncertainty you are like an infant not yet born. The darkness is natural, one of the life processes. There may be some promise, the mere suggestion that life is going forward, even though you have no sense of where you are headed. It’s a time of waiting and trusting. My attitude as a therapist in these situations is not to be anxious for a conclusion or even understanding. You have to sit with these things and in due time let them be revealed for what they are.

In your dark night you may have a sensation you could call “oceanic” – being in the sea, at sea, or immersed in the waters of the womb. The sea is the vast potential of life, but it is also your dark night, which may force you to surrender some knowledge you have achieved. It helps to regularly undo the hard-won ego development, to unravel the self and culture you have woven over the years. The night sea journey takes you back to your primordial self, not the heroic self that burns out and falls to judgment, but to your original self, yourself as a sea of possibility, your greater and deeper being.

Thomas Moore, Dark Night of the Soul

Creating a more stable base for attention

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One reason we need to create periods of rest is to counteract some of the effects of modern society on the brain, and nurture habits of stability and patience.

Nicholas Carr is the author of the book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. In it he outlines some of the ways that modern technologies are not only affecting our ability to pay attention but are also changing our brains. These technologies tend to fragment our attention, speeding up our need to know and plan, thus reducing our capacity to just rest in ourselves and our own space. This can increase the sense that our  day to day is running from here to there, with no time for ourselves, just a succession of  things to get done.

In an interview with CNN he said, “I became aware of changes in my own thinking a couple of years ago….… I came to realize [that] I was losing my ability to pay deep attention to one thing over a long period of time. When I’d sit down to read a book, for instance, I was only able to sustain my concentration for a page or two. My mind would begin to crave stimulation and distraction — it wanted to click on links, jump from page to page, check email, do some Googling….The habits of mind the net encouraged had become my dominant habits of mind.

It is no surprise that when we have an activity that demands patience and perseverence, we find it difficult to concentrate, missing the inner quiet needed for sustained activities. We become what we practice: If we are continually practicing distraction and small, bite-sized bursts of information, the brain can get used to distraction. If we practice resting and calm, the brain can become more calm.  As Carr continues: Other people – and I’m one of them –  believe that while it’s important to be able to skim and scan and multitask, our deepest and most valuable thinking requires a calm and attentive mind. If you exist in a perpetual state of distractedness, you’ll never tap into the deepest sources of human insight and creativity.

Once again, we can learn from nature in these days. Real growth takes time and is patient. As the proverb reminds us  “Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow”, not immediately, but slowly, over time. Let us create gentle periods of less “productive”, more reflective activities – walking, reading, reflecting, meditating – and thus nurture other habits of mind.


Encouragement

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I have always liked the person of Barnabas in the New Testament. He was known as the “Son of Encouragement”. I have always felt that I would love to be known like that, as one who encourages. We all need encouragement and know what it feels like when someone believes in us. Someone who sees us, not as we are, but as we have the potential to become. That gives us courage.

…… If I accept the other person as something fixed, already diagnosed and classified…then I am doing my part to confirm this limited hypothesis. If I accept him as a process of becoming, then I am doing what I can to confirm or make real his potential.

Carl Rogers