How to Generate Feelings of Gratitude, Even When You’re Struggling

Image by Taylor Deas-Melesh

I must confess, I have a complicated relationship with social media. In some ways, I like platforms like Instagram and the newly-launched Threads because they offer an unparalleled way to communicate with millions of people, all over the world. If you’re someone like me, who combines trying to help people with having lots of ideas and wanting to share them, social media is great. I also like how powerful it has been at de-stigmatising mental-health issues like chronic anxiety and depression. That’s a wonderful thing.

But I don’t like how addictive it is. I struggle to manage my screen time and social media consumption – and of course, neither of those things is an accident. Read Johann Hari’s brilliant Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention if you want to understand the way Big Tech has knowingly and systematically made us all addicted to tech. Having given up my other vices, this is one I still struggle with, which is kind of frustrating given how much I know about addiction and how to overcome it.

I also don’t like being bombarded with well-meaning but saccharine messages all the time, especially on Instagram. When I see yet another post telling me to ‘Think positive!’ or ‘Smile! It’s another beautiful day!’ I think to myself, That’s all very well, but have you ever been depressed? Do you know how hard it is to stop ruminating, beating yourself up or seeing nothing but bad in the world when you’re down?

If you have ever been depressed, you will know exactly what I mean. It’s like your mind is stuck in an endless loop of negativity, hopelessness and gloom. Someone telling you to ‘Think positive!’ is like telling an angry person to ‘Just calm down.’ Neither helpful nor possible.

Why gratitude helps, even when it’s hard

But that doesn’t mean we should forget about trying to be grateful, even if those feelings are really hard to generate. Why? Because extensive research shows how helpful gratitude can be for a whole host of mental-health problems, including depression. And, as I often say in these posts, our newfound discoveries in Western psychology are not exactly new. Generating gratitude has been a cornerstone Buddhist practice for 2,500 years, along with fostering other positive mental states such as compassion, loving-kindness, equanimity and happiness.

Again, I am not underestimating how hard it can be to generate gratitude for your life, especially if you are struggling with depression. I have been there myself and know how tough that can be. But I also know how helpful gratitude is for me, day to day, especially if I’m feeling a bit low or struggling to find reasons for optimism.

To make this a bit more concrete, here are some simple steps you can try if you would like to generate some gratitude…

The practice: finding reasons to be grateful

1. Remember that nothing is too small. If we are struggling to generate gratitude, we may be trying too hard and thinking we have to grateful for big, shiny things like a gorgeous new girlfriend or landing our dream job. These things don’t happen to most of us, most of the time, so it’s better to focus on small, everyday things.

   Sometimes, when I’m walking to the office and feeling a bit down, I work on feeling grateful for the things we mostly take for granted. I am so grateful for having enough nutritious food to eat today, unlike billions of people in the world, I think. I feel gratitude for living in a country that is not at war. No bombs fell on my street in the night. My family is safe and can go about their lives in peace. I’m grateful to have a warm, dry place to live, clothes to wear, just being able to walk along this pavement and spend my day mostly healthy and free from pain.

   There is so much to be grateful for if we just stop, look around at our lives and notice all the small, wonderful things we mostly ignore.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. This is a key positive-psychology technique that research consistently finds to be helpful for our mental health and wellbeing. At the end of each day, write in your journal, finding up to five things to be grateful for from your day. It could be small things, like eating a delicious peach. Or big things, like getting good grades for an exam, having a family member recover from surgery, or watching your baby take their first steps. Big stuff gives us more of a dopamine hit, of course, but small things work just fine.

   Here’s a step-by-step guide from the excellent Greater Good Science Center.

3. Give voice to the good stuff too. How often do we end our day grumbling to our partner or family member about all the bad stuff that’s happened to us? (Guilty as charged – sorry Laura). And that’s fine, of course – we need to vent and get stuff off our chests, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that our version of the day can be skewed to the negative. Because our brains have an in-built negativity bias, we tend to be laser-focused on things that are hurtful, upsetting, scary or worrying. That’s just how your brain has evolved, to keep you safe by scanning for bad stuff all the time.

   Once you have vented, try to find five things you are grateful about, as in step 2. Tell your partner, friend, family member or therapist all about them. If you’re speaking to a partner, it’s extremely helpful if you can find at least one thing about them you are grateful for. This is an important tip from renowned relationship expert John Gottman, who says the magic ratio with your partner is five to one of positive/negative feelings and actions.

Give these steps a try for one month and I am confident they will have a beneficial impact on your mood, outlook and sense of wellbeing.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Why Your Inner Teenager Needs Some Love

Image by Norbu Gyachung

The idea of an inner child is not a new one. This notion has been around, in personal-growth circles, since the 60s. In fact, the term ‘inner child’ was first coined by Carl Jung in the 19th century. What is different now is we have a number of psychotherapy models based on the idea that we all have different parts of our personality, the inner child being just one of them.

Schema therapy, internal family systems (IFS), compassion-focused therapy, trauma-informed stabilisation treatment and the structural dissociation model all operate from this foundational idea that we are not a single, unitary self but are made up of a kaleidoscope of inner parts. This is especially true if you have experienced trauma, because your brain helps you cope with traumatic experiences by creating some parts to hold traumatic memories and experiences, while others form to help you cope with the trauma. The jargony term for this is ‘multiplicity of self’, which I think IFS understands and explains best.

So, most of us are familiar with the idea that we have an inner child, who is young, hurt and needs our love, warmth, reassurance and healing to help all of us feel calmer, happier and more at peace. But you are probably less familiar with your inner teenager, who is just as important. This is one of the many things I love about IFS – Dick Schwartz, its founder, believes that we have a whole bunch of young parts inside, ranging from infancy right through to young adulthood.

And if you think about it, that makes a great deal of sense. Just compare a child at three and 13 – they are like different people. Or think about pivotal moments in your childhood and adolescence, especially painful or traumatic ones. If you get the idea of parts (which is now strongly backed up by neuroscientific research and theory) then it’s a logical step to say that there is a four-year-old, holding key memories from age four, a seven-year-old holding key memories from age seven, and so on.

Getting to know my inner teenager

In my personal IFS therapy – which has been a wonderful, transformative experience – we have done a lot of work with my teenage parts. And that’s because my teenage years were tumultuous, to put it mildly. Especially from 17-19, when I was smoking weed every day, getting into all sorts of trouble and driving my parents – especially my poor mum – crazy.

Like many teenagers, I was also unhappy. I remember feeling so insecure about everything – my appearance, which I really disliked; whether I was cool enough (no); whether girls liked me (rarely); essentially every aspect of my personality, my body, the way I spoke and behaved with others was internally analysed, criticised and found wanting. Hence, I now understand, all the weed-smoking and general bad behaviour. I was really struggling and so acted out, with a vengeance.

Almost 40 years on, my life could not be more different. I live a (mostly) calm, mindful, sober existence. My wild years are long gone and the strongest drug I enjoy day to day is caffeine! Thanks to many years of personal work, surrounding myself with loving, supportive friends, colleagues and family, as well as living according to Buddhist principles, life today is mostly good.

I used to be ashamed of those wild times, but the more I understood about my teenage years and how unhappy I was, the more I also understood why I behaved that way. So I love and forgive him, that painfully self-conscious boy. He had a good heart, but was struggling, as so many teenagers do.

The Practice: rewrite your life story

I hope you are starting to resonate with the idea that you have an inner teenager living inside you, carrying all the painful thoughts, feelings, memories and experiences of adolescence and your later teenage years. And just knowing this is a good start, because these parts often feel lost and left behind before we find and start to connect with/care for them.

• This period of your life may be especially important to reframe, telling a different story to yourself about how you acted and why. Creating a new, more understanding and compassionate story for myself about why I acted out the way I did has been hugely helpful for me. You may also need to forgive yourself for some pretty wild stuff

  Or you might just have felt deeply insecure, like I did, as this is a developmental stage when we are acutely aware of what others think of us and whether we fit in, our rampaging hormones also making us suddenly, painfully aware of boys or girls and whether they are attracted to us

• Try journalling about this period of your life, trying to make sense of any behaviour you might have felt ashamed of through the lens of child development, trauma, neglect and any painful family dynamics that may have impacted on you as a child and teenager. Understand that whatever you thought, felt, said or did was not your fault

  If you have teens in your life now, think about what makes them anxious, angry, upset, lonely, hurt or depressed. And think about why they feel that way as they cope with the emotional and hormonal maelstrom of teenage-hood

• Think about what you would say to them to try and explain all of that, or how you would help them feel calm, safe and loved. Then try saying those things to your teenage self, through journalling, in your mind or out loud

  Know that this inner teen deserves love, compassion and understanding as much as any other young person on this planet. And that you can give them all the love, now, that you didn’t get at that age – through journalling, reframing painful memories and perhaps help from a skilled therapist, who understands how to identify and work with your inner system of parts. I have found this process deeply healing, so I hope you do too

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Why I Have Decided to Wind Up My Heal Your Trauma Project

I have made the difficult decision to wind up my Heal Your Trauma project this month. It’s very sad, but is something I have been thinking about for a long time, as it has become increasingly difficult to juggle all of my commitments. I loved running Heal Your Trauma – especially hearing from and meeting so many of you at my webinars and workshops. That was such a pleasure and I’m sure we will stay in touch.

When I started the project in May 2021, I wanted to help as many people as possible with their mental health – especially those who couldn’t afford private therapy or were on long waiting lists for NHS treatment. I hope all of the many resources we offered over the past two years helped you in some way. I am particularly passionate about helping people overcome the legacy of trauma and will keep doing that for the rest of my career.

Free resources for you

In some ways, not much will change. My website offers a great deal of free resources, especially my blog, which offers hundreds of posts about all aspects of mental health and wellbeing. Please sign up for my newsletter, using the form below, if you would like to be the first to read my new posts every week.

I will also keep recording new guided meditations, most of which are available for free on Insight Timer. I intend to design and teach courses for this excellent app in the future, so again, sign up below to get the latest news about that.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars are available on vimeo.com – you can purchase access for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like. Just click on the button below to watch them now.

Of course, I will keep helping people through my busy therapy practice and offering trauma-informed supervision to mental-health professionals. I also intend to write a self-help book in the next few years, so watch this space for news about that.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the wonderful people who have provided invaluable help and support these past two years: Laura Roberts; Sophie Akbar, Anna Rys, Claire van den Bosch, Gina Finegan and Farrah Whitsed.

And my special thanks to you if you have read my posts, come to our events or supported us in any way.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Are You a Perfectionist? Here’s Why That is Not Your Fault

Image by Mohamed Hassan

I read a lot of self-help books – and I mean, a lot of self-help books. I do this for various reasons. First, I enjoy them – I am fascinated by psychology and can’t get enough of new ideas, research and theories about why we all do what we do. Second, it’s my job – as a therapist, I am always looking for new and helpful techniques, innovative ways of thinking or changing entrenched habits. And third, I aim to write my own self-help book in the next few years, so I need a deep understanding of what has already been written, what is good about these books and what is not so good, as a reader.

If I’m honest, I stop reading most of these books halfway through, because often they have a great idea, tell you all about it in chapters one to three and then, well, repeat it in various ways until I get bored and give up. So the mark of a great book for me is that it holds my attention from first page to last. Not many books manage that, so I’m always delighted when I find one that does.

I am currently on page 211 of 253 of my latest book, so I’m pretty confident this wins the Hold Dan’s Attention award! It’s The Perfection Trap: The Power of Good Enough in a World That Always Wants More, by Thomas Curran, a professor of psychology at the prestigious London School of Economics. And it’s great – strongly recommended holiday reading, if you’re about to hit the beach.

Are you a perfectionist?

Let’s start here, because you may well think you’re not that perfectionistic. And you might not be, of course, or you might just not recognise this trait in yourself. Full disclosure time – until reading this book, I didn’t realise quite how perfectionistic I was! In fact, when I got annoyed with the book after a few chapters and said, huffily, ‘Why are so many of these damn books so bad?’ my long-suffering wife, Laura, laughed and said, ‘Oh my god. I can’t believe you’re being perfectionistic about a book on perfectionism!’

Crap, I thought, she’s right. My high standards for books (and music, movies, meditations, workshops, newspaper articles and much more) were always a badge of honour for me. I thought it meant I had good taste and high standards, not just accepting any old rubbish.

But I now see this is all part of my perfectionsim, what Curran calls Other-Oriented Perfectionism (this is one of three kinds, along with the Self-Oriented and Socially-Prescribed versions). My standards, it turns out, are way too high, both for myself and others. Sheepishly, I started reading again…

Where does perfectionism come from?

Another wake-up call in reading this book was just how much of my perfectionism – and yours, I’m guessing – comes from existing in a culture that intentionally creates it in us. Curran argues, convincingly, that the ‘supply-side’ economics of capitalism mean industrialised economies like those of the UK or US must continually grow to survive. And to keep growing, we all have to keep consuming – more TVs, iPhones, anti-ageing cream, high heels, washing machines, laptops and the rest – all the time.

What makes us buy all this stuff? A fiendishly clever advertising industry that makes us all feel insecure, on purpose, to then tell us, ‘What you need to feel happy is this holiday, or that new watch.’ With the advent of social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, this manufactured insecurity has reached new heights – which is why, says Curran, so many young people are so unhappy now. They are constantly told they are not thin, pretty, athletic, smart, muscular, popular or cool enough.

They feel a profound sense of not being good enough, so aspire to perfection to try and feel better. Work harder, hustle, grind your way through school, university and the increasingly insecure, gig-economy-dominated world of work and one day you will make it! Just not today – so go and buy yourself a £4 Frappuccino from Starbucks to make yourself feel better.

You are enough, just as you are

Something I am always telling my clients (and myself) is that you are enough, right now. Just as you are. You are beautiful whether you’re skinny or not, perma-tanned or not, short or tall, young or old, wealthy or broke. You are a glorious, miraculous living being, with a body that is made of stardust; and a brain that is the most complex object in the known universe.

You, I hope, have people you love and who love you. As I have written before in these posts, that is the most important thing about your life – the relationships that support and nurture you as you move through it. Not money. Not fancy degrees. Not living like some Instagram influencer. The real purpose of life is to love and be loved.

So please don’t waste your life in a frantic scramble for something that is not real and certainly not achievable. Take it from me – perfectionism is a sure road to unhappiness. Instead, go for a good enough life filled with joy, richness, meaning and, above all, love.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

You Need to Watch Dele Alli’s Powerful Interview About Trauma & Addiction

Following on from my last post, about men’s mental health, this is such a powerful interview. As a Spurs fan I have a lot of love for Dele – such a great player and obviously a guy with a very traumatic past. He was adopted and was in all sorts of trouble as a teenager, so this interview is about that and his recent struggles with addiction as the trauma resurfaced.

Please watch and share with any of your male clients/friends/family members who struggle to open up and keep their feelings locked away inside.

And big love to Dele. It took such courage to open up like this.

Dan

Why Men Are Struggling and Need Our Help

Image by Christian Erfurt

Let me start this post by saying that I am a proud, card-carrying feminist. I was raised a feminist by my fiercely intelligent and formidable mum – who was an unstinting champion for women’s rights in her decades of work as an academic and with the Labour Party. She taught me to respect women and women’s rights as a child and young man. And those values have stayed with me as part of my liberal, social-justice-loving, anti-discrimination outlook on life.

It’s clear that women still have a long way to go in their struggle to be treated with respect and as equals. To be paid fairly, feel/be safe both inside and outside their homes, as well as being represented as actual people in the media – not just idealised as skinny teenage girls and ignored/vilified once they turn 40. There has been a great deal of progress for women in some areas, but there is still a long way to go in others.

So this is in no way a pro-men/anti-women post, because that’s not who I am or what I believe. It is, though, a post that recognises a serious and under-reported problem: men are in big trouble too. As a psychotherapist, one of the biggest problems I see is that men are still much less likely to seek help when they are struggling than women. They are less likely to see their GP, for mental or physical health problems, and are reluctant to see someone like me if they feel stressed, anxious or depressed.

Just look at these sobering facts from the Mental Health Foundation, about men in the UK:

• Three times as many men as women die by suicide

• Men aged 40 to 49 have the highest suicide rates in the UK

• Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women, according to the Government’s national wellbeing survey

• Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36 per cent of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men

Why do men suffer in silence?

Having grown up in the 70s, I think I get this problem from the inside. When I was a boy and young man, talking about your feelings would have been labelled as ‘weak’ or ‘soft’, or even ‘gay’ (the ultimate insult in those rather homophobic days). I never did it. None of my friends did it. It just wasn’t a thing.

And none of us had even heard of anxiety or depression. You were either like most people (sane and ‘normal’) or you were mad and would end up in the loony bin. Madness was scary – something you saw in horror movies or read about in the tabloids. So that, for us, wasn’t a thing either.

But – and this is the crucial point – it wasn’t that we didn’t struggle with those problems, we just couldn’t talk about it. And probably wouldn’t have known what to say, even if we could. I and many of my friends had traumatic childhoods. One of my friends had a father who was a heroin addict, with all the ensuing chaos for him and his family you would imagine. And one of my classmates at secondary school was one of three brothers – his older brother was also a heroin addict and this guy clearly, with hindsight, suffered from depression as a teenager and eventually committed suicide.

So it’s not like mental-health problems have somehow emerged in the last decade, just because we are all talking about them on social media. I and my male friends struggled with exactly the same things as teenage boys do today, we just didn’t have the language to describe them or get any help from adults.

What can we do for men?

We live in a very different world today. Not only do we understand and talk about mental health so much more, we now have highly effective treatments for every kind of psychological problem, from chronic stress to complex trauma. So I think the most important thing we can all do is to encourage the men in our lives to talk openly about their struggles.

That includes feeling depressed and especially having suicidal thoughts and impulses, because the worst thing we can do is ignore it, with the misguided belief that we will make it worse or more likely to happen. Ask your brother, son, dad, grandpa, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend, colleague, boyfriend or husband how they’re doing today. If they say something like, ‘A bit down,’ or ‘Been better,’ know that this is man-speak for depressed. They are likely to underplay their symptoms for fear of seeming weak or moaning too much.

If you do think they are depressed, ask directly, ‘Are you having suicidal thoughts?’. Use the s-word, don’t feel like you’re treading on eggshells. And be persistent, especially if you’re concerned about them – one discussion is not enough, either to find out how they are or get them some help.

If you are worried about this boy or man in your life, get them to see their GP. And if it’s financially viable, encourage them to see a counsellor or therapist. Just talking about this stuff, with someone kind and skilled, can really help. If they are struggling with more serious problems – like PTSD after a traumatic incident – make sure they see a trauma-informed therapist offering schema therapy, trauma-focused CBT, sensorimotor psychotherapy, EMDR or another model proven to help.

Let’s all put our arms around the men in our lives, because they (we) are going through a tough time. And loving, kind, patient conversations are a great place to start.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

What Can Buddhism Teach Us About How to Live a Good Life?

Image by Jamie Street

Many of us in the West assume that Buddhism is mostly about mindfulness. That’s because, in the 1970s, mindfulness entered the Western medical mainstream as an eight-week programme: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). From there, interest in mindfulness snowballed until, today, we have mindfulness programmes in schools, prisons, hospitals, corporations – even the House of Commons!

And this is a wonderful thing – mindfulness has a host of benefits for our mental and physical health, so the more people incorporating it into their daily lives the better. It’s just that mindfulness, and meditation more widely, is just a tiny fraction of Buddhist teaching, practice and psychology. In fact, Buddhist teaching is mostly about how to live your life, rather than how to sit on a cushion.

As someone who has long been fascinated by Buddhism, I was intrigued by this idea – that there might be a set of guidelines about how to live a good life. And not just for monks and nuns – who have incredibly complex guidelines about how to live – but for a layperson like me.

I try to live my life according to these Buddhist ‘precepts’, which are very much guidelines, rather than strict rules. That speaks to me, because I don’t much like organised religion, the idea that this or that action is sinful and will be punished, or virtuous and will be rewarded by everlasting heavenly bliss.

Remember that the Buddha was primarily a teacher and psychologist, who offered his insights into how to free ourselves from suffering. And living by these precepts is a key part of that – so here they are…

The five precepts

1. To abstain from taking life

2. To abstain from taking what is not given

3. To abstain from sensuous misconduct

4. To abstain from false speech

5. To abstain from intoxicants as tending to cloud the mind

Let’s break these down, one by one. First, the Buddha taught that we should avoid taking life – in fact, we should not kill any ‘sentient’ being. This obviously means not killing any other human, but there is a great deal of debate about what sentient means and how far we should take it. Personally, this precept is a big part of my being vegetarian, because I don’t like to kill any other being – not cows, pigs, sheep or fish, but also ants, wasps and other pesky creatures. How you interpret this one is up to you, but given the climate emergency and ecological crisis, it certainly seems helpful to avoid harming living things wherever possible.

The second precept seems fairly simple – it basically means don’t steal. But it also means not cheating on your taxes, or exploiting other people’s generosity. If it’s not given to you freely, it’s best not to take it.

Precept three is all about sex – sensuous meaning sexual. So of course we should never assault, harass or harm anyone sexually. But I think this also speaks to not having affairs, using pornography, or otherwise letting your sexual desire lead you into taking unkind or un-compassionate action.

The fourth precept essentially means don’t lie. But this is more subtle, as it also means speaking the truth wherever possible – unless it means hurting another person. Sometimes it’s best to stay silent, or hold information back until someone is ready for it. So, as with all the precepts, it takes a bit of thought and is subtle and sophisticated, rather than a black-and-white ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself.

Finally, precept five is all about drugs and alcohol – don’t misuse them, of course, but also don’t ingest anything that will make you mindless, as opposed to mindful. Remember that the Buddha taught we should aspire to being mindful all the time. When walking, eating, drinking, talking, thinking, using the toilet, working, watching a movie, and so on. All the time. So ingesting a substance that interferes with that ability is not helpful.

Advice for non-Buddhists

Let me be clear here – I’m not trying to convert you to Buddhism! These precepts are just as helpful for Christians, Muslims and atheists as they are for Buddhists. They are simply suggestions about how to live a good life, which causes you and other living beings as little suffering as possible. Feel free to follow all of them, or none. And if you do follow them, remember they are not strict rules, but guidelines that you can adapt to suit yourself and your situation.

For example, you may love meat as part of your diet. If so, perhaps you could reduce the amount of meat you eat and buy organic chicken, say, instead of battery-farmed chicken. That will cause a great deal less suffering to the chicken you’re about to stick in your oven!

You don’t need to be a monk, or live a perfect life. Just do as much good as you can and that will make a huge difference, to you and the rest of the world.

And I hope you find these ideas as helpful as I have.

May you be well

May you be happy

May you be free from suffering

Dan

What Our Cat Has Taught Me About Mindfulness

Juno the cat

If you follow me on social media, you will have seen a fair few photos of our gorgeous little cat, Juno. We re-homed her from a less-than-ideal environment over a year ago – and, despite being a bit stressed out when she arrived, she is becoming a calmer, happier, more affectionate creature day by day.

As well as being absurdly cute and strokeable (when she’s in the mood), she has taught me a great deal about how to be more mindful. Why? Because animals, like small children, are completely, utterly, 100% mindful, all the time. They exist entirely in the moment, with no worries about the future or rumination about the past.

Juno loves our garden, which we have rewilded and so, especially at this time of year, is like a jungle – with a tangle of grasses, wildflowers, trees and shrubs. This makes it cat heaven. She stalks through the undergrowth, pursuing her prey (mostly flies, thankfully – I am dreading the day she catches something bigger).

And I watch her in this wild, verdant world – ears and nostrils twitching, sensitive to the slightest movement and most subtle sound. This is mindfulness at its most rich, raw and vibrant – a profound sensory experience, with no distraction from a pesky human brain, reminding you to send that email or worry about the unfunny comment you made on FaceBook.

How animal brains differ from ours

One reason Juno can be so mindful is because her brain is very different from mine. The region of my brain that allows me to write this post, be a psychotherapist, read books, and so on, is the ‘cortical layer’ of the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the large frontal lobes just behind my forehead. The PFC makes my brain and yours a supercomputer, which is good (writing, being a therapist) and bad (worrying, ruminating, panicking about things that will never happen).

Cats – as far as we know – can neither worry about the future, nor ruminate about the past. That’s why their life is a never-ending stream of now-ness, with a total absorption in the present moment. Buddhist monks spend decades meditating in chilly Himalayan monasteries to achieve this level of mindfulness! That’s because it’s not easy for us, with our highly evolved brains that enable us to develop complex language, build cities and fly spaceships to Mars, but make it exceedingly difficult to stay quietly present in the present moment.

What we can learn from cats

So we have a lot to learn from creatures with more ‘primitive’ brains. First, try introducing more mindfulness into your day. A simple teaching that might help with this is, as far as possible, do just one thing at a time. If you are reading this right now, just read it. Don’t listen to the radio, or grab your phone every few seconds. When you’re reading, just read.

If you listen to music, try switching your phone to Airplane mode and just listen. When you’re having a family dinner, try getting everyone to put their devices, switched to silent, in a kitchen draw. Try really listening to your partner, or kids. I mean really listening. Not just waiting for them to finish so you can say the thing you think they need to hear. Just listen, deeply and attentively – they will love it.

And we know, of course, that developing these mindful muscles in the brain offers a whole host of benefits for our physical and mental health. Mindfulness, whether formal meditation or informal, listening-to-music practices, has been proven to reduce depression, anxiety and stress. It can also help to lower blood pressure and improve sleep.

And, perhaps most importantly, being more mindful helps us be fully present in the moment-to-moment unfolding of our lives. As far as we know, this is the only life we get, so I think we should squeeze every drop of joy, meaning, richness and experience from it, don’t you?

Be more Juno – your mindfulness teacher and mine.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Now Available: Download or Stream My Webinars on Vimeo

Image by Sara Kurfeb

If you missed any of my Heal Your Trauma webinars in 2022 or 2023, don’t worry – you can now stream or download them whenever suits you. All of my past webinars are now available on Vimeo – the world’s leading video-hosting site.

For just £10, you will get exclusive lifetime access to these powerful and highly informative 90-minute webinars, which are packed full of trauma-informed teaching and experiential exercises such as breathwork, guided meditations and imagery techniques.

We consistently get extremely positive feedback for our webinars, which you can read here.

Choose from the following highly popular webinars:

1. What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed?

2. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2022)

3. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2023)

4. Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

5. How to Manage Your Inner Critic

6. Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

Don’t miss out – gain lifetime access now, for just £10 per webinar, using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Struggle with Meditation?

Image by Medienstürmer

For many years, I really struggled to establish a daily meditation practice. I tried and tried, sticking to it for brief periods before losing the habit again. Then, finally, around 14 years ago I did an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) course, which involved so much practice that it became second nature – and so part of my daily routine.

And I have never looked back. Today, meditation forms the foundation of my day – I practice every morning, which has a subtle but important effect on the rest of my day. That morning meditation definitely helps me feel calmer, more centred and grounded, with a greater sense of balance, whatever the day might throw at me.

But, having struggled to establish my own practice for so long, I understand that it’s not easy. Many of my clients also struggle to establish a daily routine, so I help them problem-solve that. Here are three things I suggest to them, which you may find helpful if you’re in that want-to-meditate-but-am-struggling-to-start place yourself.

1. Just sit. There is a wonderful – and typically pithy – saying from Zen Buddhism: Just sit. Meaning, meditation going ‘well’ or ‘badly’, just sit. Enjoyable or not, just sit. Noticing a benefit afterwards or not, just sit. Feel like meditating that morning or not, just sit.

   This is crucial because to develop a regular practice takes effort, discipline and determination. It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s enjoyable and you feel calm, grounded and quiet of mind. Other times your mind is so busy, minutes go by before you wake up and think, ‘Wait! Wasn’t I supposed to be meditating?’

   Doesn’t matter. There is a reason it’s called a meditation practice, or a yoga practice. That’s because meditating once might be nice, but won’t make any difference to your overall mood, wellbeing or mental health. Whereas meditating every day for years definitely will. So the first step in developing a regular practice is just to show up every day, no matter what, and meditate.

2. Thinking isn’t wrong. This is especially important for beginner mediators, because a common misunderstanding is that ‘good’ meditation means being calm, serene (probably in a perfect lotus position) and with a peaceful, empty mind. Let me tell you, after many years of meditating, that rarely happens! Minds are busy, busy, busy – it’s just what minds do.

   So let go of the idea that thinking while meditating is somehow bad or wrong, it’s really not. In fact, the primary purpose of meditation – especially in the Buddhist tradition – is to gain insight into the nature of your mind. So when you sit and, say, focus on the breath, you quickly notice how hard this is! Your mind is full of thoughts, worries, plans, fantasies, daydreams.

   Jon Kabat-Zinn calls this the ‘thought stream’, which is exactly how it feels. A constant, swirling stream of thoughts, which we spend most of our lives swimming in, happily or often not. Just taking a step back and starting to observe this stream is a huge shift, because then we can start to question its truth – and its helpfulness.

   So the oft-repeated teaching goes that you focus on the breath, notice your mind has wandered, gently bring it back, off it goes again, bring it back – 10, 20 or 100 times each time you practice. It doesn’t matter how often this happens, just keep gently bringing your attention back. This is like a push-up for your brain – and especially the prefrontal cortex (PFC), in which meditation helps build neural connections. And this is a good thing, because the PFC helps with your concentration, regulating your moods and emotions, having a sense of perspective, and a whole host of other good stuff.

3. Try different practices for different things. There are so many types of meditation and traditions, both secular and religious, that it can be bewildering. So a few simple tips. I would advise making mindfulness meditation your core practice. And mindfulness of breath is the simplest and most helpful mindfulness practice – you can try my guided meditation on Insight Timer, or choose another teacher you prefer. But start here, with a short (probably five-minute) practice and build up over time.

   If you are really struggling, a guided meditation will be easier, because sitting in silence when you feel awful is tough. Try one of Kristin Neff’s wonderful self-compassion practices, or Richard Schwartz’s internal family systems meditations. Find teachers whose voice and guiding style feels good for you.

   So mix it up, with silent practice forming the bulk of your sitting, but guided meditations when you are struggling or just feel like a change. That will also keep your practice fresh and maintain your interest over time.

I hope that helps. You may also be interested in my Insight Timer collection, which offers a large and ever-growing range of practices including breathwork, guided imagery and meditation practices drawn from various traditions.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

How to Take Compassionate Action for Ukraine

Image by Christopher Beloch

As I read my newspaper this morning, my heart was full of pain about Russia’s latest atrocity against the Ukrainian people – blowing up the Kakhovka dam, which has caused massive floods around Kherson. These floods will (intentionally) kill many people, drive many more from their homes and is forecast to be the worst environmental disaster in the country since Chernobyl.

My first feeling was overwhelming sadness and a kind of mental/emotional exhaustion about the latest example of how cruel humans can be. I often feel overwhelmed by stories like this, because it can seem as if psychopaths like Putin, or narcissists like Trump and Boris Johnson, continue to gain power around the world and dominate our lives.

Why do we put these terrible people in positions of power? Why hasn’t humanity evolved beyond this by now? Why do the bad guys always seem to win?

The loving majority

And then I remember that the news is deliberately filtered through a negative, catastrophic lens to highlight the worst of humanity, the most scary and upsetting stories. There is so much good in the world, so much kindness, compassion, altruism and basic decency. I passionately believe that most humans are kind and treat each other with respect.

But we live in an age when the Putins, Trumps and Erdogans of this world cleverly manipulate the media (both mainstream and social) to trigger evolutionarily ancient parts of our brain, making us scared and angry, firing up our threat systems so we lose access to the rational parts of the brain and respond with hostility and mistrust. We are manipulated into blaming outsiders, ‘the others’, who may be refugees, people of colour – or Jews, like my own ancestors, who have been scapegoated and persecuted for millennia.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We – the kind, loving, determined majority – have so much power, if we know how to use it. And one way to exercise that power, today, is to take compassionate action to help the people of Ukraine. I see one small example of that in the Ukrainian family living downstairs from us, rent-free, in an expensive flat generously offered to them when they escaped the horrors in their own country.

My wonderful community

My local community has rallied round this family and other refugees in the area, giving them money, food, clothes, furniture, help and support in a thousand small but meaningful ways. I am so proud to live where I do – East Finchley, a tight-knit community in North London – and with neighbours who deeply care for each other, whatever the colour of their skin and wherever they are from in the world.

So, as you read about Putin’s latest act of madness, please don’t be discouraged. Never give up. As Martin Luther King reminds us, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’.

And if you would like to help people – and especially children – on the ground in Kherson, please donate to Unicef using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Missed My Recent Webinars? No Problem – Watch the Recordings Now

Image by Andres Ayrton

If you missed any of my recent webinars, you can now gain exclusive lifetime access to them for just £10. We record all of our webinars and upload them to YouTube – if you attend live, you will automatically get access to the private video, but we have also made these recordings available to anyone who might benefit from them.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars last 90 minutes and are packed with teaching about the latest theory, research and key take-home learning about each subject, as well as powerful and effective breathing techniques, guided imagery and a 15-minute Q&A, where participants get to ask me anything they want about trauma, mental health and wellbeing.

We get consistently positive feedback for all of our Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops – you can read it here.

Highlights from 2022-23, now available to watch, include:

• The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

• How to Manage Your Inner Critic

• Trauma Healing with Internal Family Systems

• Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

• Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

Don’t miss out on this highly experiential and transformative teaching – gain lifetime access to each recording for just £10, using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Where is Our Compassion for Refugees?

Image by Ahmed Akacha

This is a little different from my usual posts. It’s not about mental health – well, not about your mental health, or mine. But it is about compassion which, as regular readers know, is very dear to my heart.

Living in the UK, I have watched with increasing anguish as our right-wing government demonises and persecutes people arriving on our shores, frightened and desperate for help. Many of these ‘migrants’ are in fact asylum seekers, with perfectly legitimate claims for asylum. They are fleeing war, torture and persecution in troubled countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea or Sudan.

They increasingly arrive in small boats, making the perilous crossing from France because this government has made it very difficult for people to use safe and legal routes to enter the UK. Those of us who believe in a thriving, multicultural society, with a flow of migration in and out of the UK (which benefits the economy, by the way), have watched with dismay as our former prime minister, Theresa May, created a ‘hostile environment’ to deter immigrants. Later, the self-inflicted disaster of Brexit legitimised the racist, xenophobic rhetoric our right-wing media has been trumpeting for decades.

These poor, traumatised people arriving in boats often take great risks, putting their own lives and those of their family in danger, travelling vast distances in the desperate hope of finding safety, sanctuary and welcome in this country. Instead, they are treated as less-than-human, as things – to be feared and treated with disdain.

My refugee family

This demonising of refugees is a deeply personal issue for me, because I am the descendant of Russian Jews, who fled to Britain in the early 20th century to escape the violence and persecution of ‘pogroms’. My maternal grandfather was the first-born in this country when his family settled in London’s East End – where wave after wave of immigrants have made their home.

My wonderful, wise, warm-hearted grandfather later worked for a charity, the Jewish Board of Guardians, which worked tirelessly to help Jewish refugees living in the UK, including those fleeing persecution by the Nazis. My grandparents lived in terror of a German invasion – which came perilously close during World War II – for obvious reasons.

So when I see politicians talking about an ‘invasion’ of immigrants and using language not dissimilar to that of the Nazis, it fills me with horror. Have we learned nothing from history? Have we no compassion, no humanity, no basic decency?

Compassion for all of humanity

I think it’s crucial for those of us who embark on journeys of personal growth and healing from our own trauma to remember that compassion is not just for ourselves, or those close to us – the Buddha taught us that compassion must be for all sentient beings. That means all of humanity, not just those we like, or who share our skin colour, who are part of our tribe. All humanity, without exception.

I’m sure you agree. And I’m sure you are a kind, decent person, who may already do a great deal to help others. If I could ask you to do one small thing today, it’s to take compassionate action by donating to Refugee Action, a wonderful charity helping people who arrive on our shores, desperate for help. The button below will take you straight to their donation page.

Thank you – sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Last Call for My Self-Compassion Webinar – Saturday 27th May

One of the Buddha’s great insights was that leading a human life is inevitably painful. We get sick, grow older and must face the existential reality that, someday, our life will end. The same goes for everyone we love. That alone is, of course, incredibly painful and hard to accept.

We also have to deal with stressful global events like war in Ukraine or Sudan, climate change, poverty and hunger. In the UK, the cost-of-living crisis affects millions, making day-to-day life incredibly tough. It’s clear that being human is no picnic.

But the Buddha’s other great insight was that this pain and stress alone is not what causes most of our suffering – that is caused by the way we react to these events and experiences. We can either do so with self-criticism, blame and frustration; or find a kinder, more compassionate way to deal with these daily challenges.

This message is especially important if you struggle with your mental health. If you suffer with low self-esteem, chronic stress or anxiety, low mood or depression, learning to be more self-compassionate could be life-changing. Why? Because there is now a huge body of evidence supporting the power and effectiveness of self-compassion in helping people lead calmer, happier, more resilient lives.

Kristin Neff, one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, states that, ‘Higher levels of self-compassion are linked to increased feelings of happiness, optimism, curiosity and connectedness, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, rumination and fear of failure.’

Learn the skill of self-compassion

That’s why my upcoming webinar will help you learn this key skill. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion takes place from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 27th May 2023 and is the latest in a series of Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops throughout 2023.

This event offers half-price Reduced-Fee Tickets (£10), for those who need them, or please choose the Supporter Ticket option (£20) when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. Your support enables us to help as many people as possible with their mental health.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• The difference between empathy and compassion – and why one leads to burnout, while the other protects us from it

• The key role that self-compassion plays in healing from any psychological problem, but especially trauma

• Why, sadly, having a trauma history makes self-compassion difficult – but also why these obstacles can be overcome

• Key experiential exercises – such as breathing, guided meditations, journaling and imagery – you will learn to help you develop your self-compassion skills

• How self-compassion is crucial to help you deal with stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, being overly self-critical, eating disorders, substance abuse and most other psychological problems

• And, during a 15-minute Q&A, attendees put their questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and developing self-compassion

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health. Book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Struggle with Low Mood?

Image by Rifath

If you struggle with low mood or depression, it may be helpful to know that our understanding of this all-too-common psychological problem has evolved over the years. The idea that depression is solely caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain is now questioned, with an increasing body of research challenging this idea – here’s one such study, by eminent psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff.

So if depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance (long thought to be a lack of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood), what does cause it? Well, as so often in psychology, although we often seek simple answers, the answer is a bit more complex. In my opinion, there is no single cause of depression. Instead, both low mood and depression are caused by a whole host of factors, including:

• Living in poverty or poor housing

• Facing ongoing financial stress for any reason

• Misusing alcohol or drugs

• Issues with body image or eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia or binge-eating

• Loneliness or a lack of close and meaningful relationships

• Experiencing prejudice including racism, sexism or homophobia

• Childhood trauma, such as bullying at school, or growing up in an abusive/neglectful family environment

• Bereavement, especially ‘complicated grief’ or the life-altering loss of a partner or family member

• Persistent negative or obsessional thoughts such as rumination or harsh self-criticism

• Painful schemas, formed in childhood, including Defectiveness or Emotional Deprivation

• Physical illness such as long Covid, stroke or cardiovascular disease

In fact, there are so many reasons for us to become depressed that psychological Paul Gilbert says it’s more helpful to think of ‘depressions’ than depression. But whatever the cause, no-one would disagree that the experience of depression can be incredibly painful and debilitating.

And a key message that I always teach about depression, as well as any other mental-health problem, is: It’s never too much and never too late to heal. We have such a wide range of powerful and highly effective therapies for depression now, as well as a deep understanding of how to help you feel happier, more hopeful and optimistic, however long you may have been struggling.

That’s why I am presenting a 90-minute webinar on Saturday 3rd June – Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful.

As with all my Heal Your Trauma webinars, this event offers a half-price, Reduced-Fee Ticket (£10) for those who need it, or please choose the Supporter Ticket (£20) option when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. All of the income we receive from these events, after covering expenses, is invested back into the project so we can help as many people as possible with their mental health.

All of our Heal Your Trauma webinars are recorded, so if you sign up you will also get exclusive free access to a recording of the event to watch whenever you want.

If you would like to book your place on one of our most popular webinars, you can do so using the button below. I hope to see you there!

Sending love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Are You Kind to Others But Mean to Yourself?

Image by Jeremy Perkins

I’ll bet you’re a kind person. I can say that with some confidence because you are reading this post, written by a psychotherapist, about mental-health issues. That means you either struggle with those issues yourself and/or help others who do. One of the silver linings about struggling in this way is that it means you are probably sensitive (perhaps highly so) and have deep empathy for the suffering of other people, because you know only too well what it’s like to suffer.

I would also wager that you are much kinder to others than you are to yourself. That’s because, again, if you do struggle with your mental health, you may have an especially loud, harsh and hurtful Inner Critic (known as a Punitive Critic in schema therapy) who calls you horrible things like stupid, pathetic, weak – or much worse.

These critical messages may have a different tone, sounding more motivational, pushy and determined (this would be a Demanding Critic, in schema-therapy language). I have one of these. He means well – as most Critics do – but pushes me so hard, all the time: ‘Work more, be a better therapist/person/father/husband/son/friend, write a (bestselling) book, do (brilliant) therapy in every session, supervise expertly, teach impactfully… More! Better! Never enough!’

It’s exhausting. And, despite my best efforts, sometimes these messages do get on top of me and I find myself stressed out and depleted, so have to make a conscious decision to do less, aim for good enough, forget about unrealistic notions of perfection, nourish and treat myself with kindness.

Different flavours of meanness

So, despite being kind, you may be mean to yourself in an obvious, punishing way, or it might be more subtle, with a constant pressure to achieve, succeed, aim for perfection. Either way you will end up feeling stressed, frazzled, under constant pressure. And because this pressure is internal, it operates 24/7, with a drip-drip effect that eventually overwhelms you until you crash, get sick or burn out.

Again, this is not some theoretical, hypothetical thing for me. I totally get it, because it’s a daily struggle not to do too much and try too hard. In fact, it’s this way for most therapists I know. That’s because the three most common therapist schemas are Defectiveness, Unrelenting Standards and Self-Sacrifice. Here’s why that’s a tricky triad:

• Defectiveness is perhaps the most common schema – almost all my clients have this one. It’s the ‘not good enough’ schema that makes you feel defective, unworthy, dislikable, a failure or less-than compared with others. So even if you’re doing well, deep down you feel in your gut that you are no good, an imposter, one mistake away from being found out. None of this is true, by the way – it just feels true because you have been telling yourself this negative, critical story for so long

• Unrelenting Standards often shows up as a compensatory schema for Defectiveness. So if we work super-hard, drive ourselves relentlessly on, make sure everything we do is perfect, then no-one will realise we are actually defective and crap. I see this one a lot in high-achievers, like CEOs, professors, partners at City law firms. People who are, in many ways, highly successful – but it doesn’t feel satisfying or good because they know this success is fragile and, if they make a mistake or have a bad day, it could all fall apart

• Self-Sacrifice is a big one for people in caring professions – teachers, nurses, therapists, counsellors, social workers. It comes from a good place – being kind, thoughtful, empathic and generous – but it’s way too much. If you have this schema, you might give and give, looking after everyone else while your battery drains away to 1%. So you sacrifice your own wants, needs and wellbeing to look after others

Self-compassion is key

What’s the answer to this all-too-common predicament? Well, as I often write in these posts, tell my clients and teach through my Heal Your Trauma project, self-compassion is a crucial skill to learn. It’s the antidote to the hurtful, destructive messages given by these schemas. It’s a way to respond to your Critic, whatever flavour they may be, by telling them you are doing great, thanks; that you and your work are more than good enough; that you don’t have to be perfect to be liked, loved or respected; that you are human, with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else, so you don’t have to get an A on every test life throws at you.

Learning to treat yourself with self-compassion is not easy. But the good news is that, if you are kind and compassionate to others, you have all the tools you need to turn that inward and treat yourself with the love and respect you so deserve.

If you would like to learn more about this topic – and specifically how to treat yourself with greater kindness and compassion – do come to my next webinar, The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, on Saturday 27th May. You can book your place using the button below – I hope to see you there!

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Ease Your Stress with Colour Breathing

Image by J Lee

How are you feeling, right now? Sadly, for many of us the answer would be anxious, agitated, irritable, frazzled – and, most of all, stressed. That’s because we live in a very stressful time, with challenges to our mental and physical health that our ancestors could not have imagined in their wildest dreams.

One of my recent posts was all about exercise – and why it’s such a crucial element of looking after both mind and body. But, as we all know, many of us don’t get enough exercise or simply move our bodies enough, throughout the day. We also consume too much caffeine and alcohol, as well as eating excessive amounts of sugary, processed and otherwise unhealthy food. This idea – that, for those of us in industrialised countries like the UK, the most damaging thing to our health is excess – is a very new one, because for most of human history we didn’t have enough, of anything.

Your ancestors, and mine, spent large portions of their day walking for mile after mile, hunting prey or searching for seasonal fruits, seeds and edible roots. They often had to endure periods of hardship and even famine. Life was dominated by not having enough food, rather than too much of it.

So it’s a weird time to be human. Too much stuff. Too much sitting. Too much junk food, constantly within reach, that tastes good but damages your body.

Busyness as a badge of honour

The other weird thing about being a 21st-century human is just how hectic and stressful day-to-day life is. We are all (myself included) so damn busy these days, aren’t we? Everyone I know spends most of their waking hours rushing around, meeting one deadline after another, working long days – in fact, working all the time, because work follows us home now, in a way it never used to. And, weirdly, this busyness has become a badge of honour – it’s something to be proud of, a goal in itself to fill our days with being ‘productive’, allowing no time to rest and be still.

I’m currently reading a brilliant book about how our attention has been hijacked by the goals, values and imperatives of capitalism in general and Big Tech in particular. And how to resist the constant pressure to be busy, distracted, hopping from one screen to the next from the moment we wake until we fall into a restless, fitful sleep. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by writer and artist Jenny Odell, champions time spent doing very little. Taking a break from the endless scrolling. Allowing yourself to be offline. Time to think, muse, daydream. It’s so important for the health of your brain, but so hard to do these days.

So, if your answer to the above question was ‘a bit stressed’, here’s a practice I created just for you. As regular readers will know, I am a big fan of mindfulness, as well as breathwork and other body-based practices to help manage tricky emotions and experiences. I love this practice because it combines those three things will adding an imaginary, visual element – which will provide a ‘healthy distraction’ if your mind is currently scattered and racing from one stressful thought to the next.

The practice

• Start by finding a comfortable sitting posture, on a straight-backed chair. Let your feet be flat and grounded on the floor. Gently roll your shoulders back and feel your chest open up, your lungs feeling expansive and open. This will help you breathe freely and deeply

• Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you, or soften and lower your gaze

• Scan your body and notice what you’re feeling, emotionally. You might be upset, angry, hurt, shocked, scared, threatened, agitated or feeling some other negative emotion

• Just let yourself feel whatever you’re feeling, for a few seconds

• Now focus on your body and mindfully scan your face, throat, arms, hands, chest, back and belly

• What do you notice? Perhaps tense, tight muscles. Maybe a sense of heat or rising energy in your chest. You might feel a tight knot, churning sensation or butterflies in your stomach

• There is no right or wrong way to feel, so just lean into whatever somatic sensations you are experiencing right now

• Check in with your posture, again rolling your shoulders back and letting them drop. Make sure you are sitting in an upright but relaxed posture

• Start slowing and deepening your breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Let your breaths be slow, deep and even, counting to four on the in-breath and four on the out-breath

• Keep breathing – slow, deep, smooth and steady, for a minute

• If you find yourself distracted by thoughts, memories, plans, worries or anything else, that’s perfectly normal. Your mind might keep circling back to whatever stressful situation you’re dealing with right now, which is fine. But when you notice you are distracted, just keep gently bringing your attention back to your body, back to the breath

• As you breathe in, know you’re breathing in. As you breathe out, know you’re breathing out

• Keep breathing deeply for another minute

• Now let’s add another element to this practice – as you breathe in, visualise a soothing colour. For some people that might be pink, purple, blue, green or gold, but just pick a colour that seems soothing for you

• And as you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in your soothing colour. See it travel in through your nostrils and down your throat, as it fills your lungs, chest, back and belly

• See your whole torso light up with this warm, gently soothing colour. Enjoy that for a minute

• Then on the out-breath, imagine you are expelling all that stressful energy – again, pick a colour that best represents your stressful feelings, which might be black, grey, red or some other strong colour

• As you breathe out, imagine exhaling every molecule of stress, blowing it out through your mouth like smoke, so it leaves your body for good and vanishes into the atmosphere

• Breathing in your soothing colour, breathing out your stress… Stay with that for a minute

• Again, if you get distracted it’s fine, just gently bring your attention back to your body, back to the breath, back to those colours flowing in and out for another minute

• Now you can let go of visualising the breath in this way and allow your breathing to find its natural rhythm

• Let go of all efforts and just sit, peacefully, feeling a sense of calm, ease and relaxation in your body and mind. Just enjoy that for a minute

• Then bring your focus to the weight of your body resting on the chair. Your feet on the ground. Sounds reaching your ears from all around

• Then when you’re ready, slowly open your eyes

• Now re-engage with the external world, carrying these feelings of calm, contentment and peace into the rest of your day

I hope you find that helpful – I will record this practice soon and add it to my Insight Timer collection, so you can listen whenever you need to de-stress and find a little calm and peace in your day.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Can You Turn Towards Your Suffering with Compassion?

Image by Khadeeja Yasser

Life is suffering. This is the first of the four Buddhist Noble Truths. Of course, life can also be beautiful. This can be in big ways. The birth of my grandchild last month, my sister’s incredible promotion after years of employment struggles, or the TARGIT-IORT breast cancer treatment research breakthrough recently.

The beauty of life can also be found in the smallest forms, far from the headlines. Being held in the understanding arms of the nurse at the hospital last week. Watching my cat rolling around in joy while my husband tickles her belly. Seeing two friends crying laughing and clutching on to each other in the station this morning.

Claire van den Bosch, Clinical Director of Heal Your Trauma

One powerful way of tending to our own suffering is to intentionally balance what we’re paying attention to, so that we’re also noticing the beauty.

Another powerful way of tending to our own suffering is – instead of turning our attention away from it – turning attention towards it. Sitting down with it, and opening up the tender heart of self-compassion towards it. And there is a form of suffering that I feel most moved to bring into focus in this post: the suffering of judging and shaming our suffering.

How often does a part of us observe the pain we’re in about something and ask, ‘What are you getting so upset about?’ Or, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Or, ‘When are you going to grow up?’ Or, ‘When are you going to get over this/stop being so sensitive/stop being such a baby?’

I’ve heard other practitioners refer to this as negative negativity or ‘the unnecessary suffering’.

The common humanity of suffering

In my experience of my own system, and my clients’, this self-shaming is a huge and extraordinarily human aspect of our suffering, and one of the most painful kinds, to the extent that shame is arguably the most painful of emotions.

The good news is that it is also the form of suffering most amenable to transformation through the healing power of self-compassion. As Kristin Neff reminds us repeatedly in her beautiful meditations, when we are suffering it’s possible to respond to our suffering – rather than with the voice of, ‘Why are you being such a baby?’ – with the voice of, ‘Wow. Yes. This is really hard right now. It’s really painful to feel like this. And it’s also deeply human. I know I am not alone in feeling like this sometimes. In this experience, may I be kind to and supportive of myself in the way I would with a dear friend who was having the same experience.’

Something I am struck by right now is that there are so many forms of suffering over which we are powerless. Perhaps the majority. This was very alive for me this week, supporting a friend whose daughter is experiencing the extreme distress of what seems to fit the description of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which neither my dear friend or her daughter had ever heard of.

What is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria?

RSD (you can read more about it here) is a frequently experienced, but often misunderstood part of ADHD. It can be an excruciating experience, beyond the territory of the more familiar realms of insecurity, rejection, suspicion and fear that most humans encounter in relationship from time to time.

It can feel like an unbearable howl of devastation, like a nuclear rage, an utter determination to remove ourselves permanently from someone’s orbit, to punish, or the compulsion to relentlessly demand. It can come as an absolute conviction that we are being slighted, humiliated or secretly ridiculed. It can often precipitate self-harm – and can also ultimately prompt the sufferer to create a life that avoids any chance of feeling these feelings. Which is likely, of course, to become a life of loneliness, emptiness and shame.

It is almost inevitable that someone experiencing RSD (especially if they don’t know that RSD is a thing, a matter of how the brain is wired, and a kind of distress not experienced by everyone) will experience extreme shame about their suffering. Part of them knows that their intense feelings are out of proportion in some way to the circumstances. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ ‘I’m a hideous human being,’ ‘I’m crazy,’ ‘Why can’t I control myself?’

When diagnoses can be helpful

This is one of the reasons I believe diagnosis – of whatever we have going on – can be powerfully helpful for many of us. To discover that there is an explanation that something was never within our control, that we are suffering with something dreadful that others also suffer with – can be profoundly de-shaming. Whether it’s RSD, neurodivergence in general, the menopause, a dissociative disorder, adrenal fatigue, or any of the countless neurological, organic or hormonally caused experiences with psychological and behavioural symptoms, the discovery that our experiences are not after all evidence of a weakness of character can be a profound relief.

But in truth, none of our experiences – even the most negatively consequential for ourselves and others – are evidence of weakness in our character, if we can find the courage and external support to bring radical curiosity to them. You may find Dan’s guided meditation, Working with Your Inner Critic, helpful for this endeavour.

And nothing facilitates this deep discovery more powerfully than bringing compassion to our suffering.

In place of the ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘You’re so crazy/lazy/stupid,’ we can begin to cultivate the heart reflex of ‘Wow, this is so painful, this is really hard, this is genuinely a moment of suffering for me. Please may I be kind to myself.’

In this way the first suffering may remain unchanged – the anguish of RSD jealousy, the snappy reactions of the menopause – but we have transformed the second layer of suffering, the shame about the suffering, into heartfelt kindness towards ourselves and a felt connection with the rest of humanity.

If you recognise the potential benefit for you of learning to cultivate deeper self-compassion, do sign up for our webinar on 27th May, The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, using the button below.

With love,

Claire

What I Have Learned (the Hard Way) About Self-Compassion

Image by Cris Saur

This post is not easy to write. It’s a confession, of sorts. And an admission that I haven’t been practising what I preach, despite my best efforts to do so.

I talk about self-compassion so much, in these posts, my webinars and workshops, with my clients and supervisees. I see this skill as a mental-health superpower. Self-compassion is so important, whatever psychological problems you might have and whatever has happened to you in your life to cause those problems.

And I thought I had learned this skill, myself, after 30 years of personal-development work. I do so much to look after myself: personal therapy, daily meditation, healthy diet, regular exercise, plenty of sleep, rarely drinking and much more.

But lately I have been struggling. I had a couple of health issues, one I wrote about in a previous post and another this weekend, when I had a big energy slump and did not feel at all well (in fact, I felt a lot like the crashed-out koala in this photo!). I see both incidents as my body speaking to me, loudly, telling me I was doing too much, driving myself too hard, not caring for myself in the way I teach and try to care for others.

In short, I learned a hard lesson about self-compassion – apparently it’s important for therapists too! Who knew.

Making some changes

So I have, finally, listened to my body. I have made some tough-but-necessary changes to the Heal Your Trauma project, starting with cancelling all of the upcoming workshops this year. This was a real wrench – and I am very sorry to those who had booked places. We have refunded everyone who paid for a ticket, but I know it’s still not ideal and I am truly sorry. It couldn’t be helped, I’m afraid.

Many of those workshops have been replaced by webinars on the same topic, which are much easier for me to teach, so don’t take as much of my time/energy to offer. I hope you sign up for those, starting with my next webinar (somewhat ironically) on 27th May: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion. You can book your place now using the button below.

I am also listening to and leaning on my wonderful team, including my dear friend and Clinical Director of Heal Your Trauma, Claire van den Bosch. She is a brilliant therapist, thinker and teacher, so do come to her webinar on 18th November: Overcoming Addiction – Heal Your Pain and Escape the Addictive Cycle. You can book your place for that here.

Practising what I preach

Although this is a tough post to write, I am passionate about de-stigmatising mental-health problems like stress, low mood and burnout. And one way to do that is to be honest about my own struggles with these problems. I am human, just like you. I have strengths and weaknesses, just like you. I sometimes need a wake-up call to take care of myself, just like you.

And I am looking after myself – I recently took a week off and have more holidays planned. I am taking it much easier, day to day, not filling every spare minute with busyness and productivity. Going slower, more mindfulness, more meditation, more rest. And I just came back from the gym, where I had a light workout and then sat, sipping a cappuccino, on a balcony overlooking the beautiful garden. I am so lucky to have such a lovely place as a healing resource. I feel nourished and rejuvenated, which is a good start.

Again, my deepest apologies if these changes have caused you inconvenience. We didn’t make them lightly. But I have had to accept that I need to take better care of myself, so I can help those who need my care.

Thank you for reading this and your ongoing support for the Heal Your Trauma project, it means the world to me.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

How a Mindful Pause Will Help You Make Better Decisions

Image by Jack Skinner

We have all done it. Made a quick, impulsive decision that we came to regret. It might be something small, like agreeing to go on a date with someone you know, deep down, is not right for you. Or buying something shiny and new that you can’t really afford and don’t really need. ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure,’ as the saying goes.

But, as I often say to my clients, there are times when acting hastily is a good thing. Imagine your toddler starts wandering towards a busy road. You have to act, now – rushing over and scooping them up before they get hurt. Or imagine that, as you are driving down a country road, you notice the car coming towards you weaving erratically. As the other driver gets close, they drift into your lane and come at you head-on – again, this calls for immediate, no-thinking action. Blasting your horn and swerving out of the way is, quite literally, a life-saving decision.

Your brain is very good at these quick, urgent, life-or-death decisions because millions of years of evolution have wired it to do this. These are what I call ‘escape the lion’ moments. Hard-wired by your ancestors’ many close shaves with predatory animals, or hostile tribes, the most powerful systems in your brain spring into action when needed. And this is, of course, a very good thing – you would not be reading this post without them.

When slow is better

But, unless we face a genuine life-or-death threat, this kind of urgent, reflexive action is often unhelpful. This is especially the case if we are feeling some kind of strong emotion, like anger, fear, hurt or jealousy. These emotions activate those evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain, while de-activating the prefrontal cortex – the rational, sensible, big-picture-seeing region of the brain that sits behind your forehead.

When we have a decision to make, we definitely want the prefrontal cortex making it for us, not the limbic or threat systems, which are highly emotional, reactive and urgent. So here is a simple practice I have developed, which is helpful if you have any kind of decision to make – what to say when your husband barks at you, or how to respond to a critical email from that colleague who drives you crazy. Use this technique any time you need to slow down, take a moment and act carefully, mindfully, rather than hastily.

The practice: Taking a mindful pause

• Start by finding a comfortable sitting posture on a straight-backed chair. Let your feet be flat and grounded on the floor

• Gently roll your shoulders back, feeling your chest open up. Imagine a golden thread pulling your head, neck and spine into alignment, so you are sitting in an upright but relaxed posture

• Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you, or soften and lower your gaze

• Now I want you to imagine you need to make a difficult decision, choosing between two options. The first option is what you always do in this type of situation, so it’s an easy and familiar path to take. Everything in you is pulling you in that direction – this is called acting on ‘automatic pilot’, in mindfulness-based therapies

• For example, you may be grappling with whether to eat a big slab of chocolate cake. It looks so enticing and delicious, your mouth starts salivating as you imagine all that sweet, gooey, chocolatey deliciousness in your mouth

• Just notice how that feels, in your body. There may be a feeling of urgency, or tension, perhaps a sense of being magnetically drawn towards the cake, your hand grabbing the fork and shovelling mouthfuls of cake before you even know what has happened

• There’s just one problem – that morning, you have been given a diagnosis of type-2 diabetes and been told by your doctor, in no uncertain terms, that you must reduce your intake of sweet, sugary foods or your health will be in serious trouble

• Suddenly the cake doesn’t seem so enticing, right?

• So, instead of grabbing that fork, let’s take a mindful pause. Start by taking a few slow, deep, breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Keep breathing

• And as you notice those breaths travel in and out, in and out, scan your body and see if the cake-choosing path involves a sense of urgency, of speeding up, perhaps energy rising and a slightly frazzled, tense feeling in your throat, chest, shoulders and belly

• Whatever you notice, just allow it to be there, it’s fine. Just keep breathing for a minute, allowing those feelings and body sensations to be there, without acting on them

• As you continue to breathe, you may notice those sensations start to ebb away, bit by bit, reducing in intensity like a wave breaking on the shore, then receding

• As the wave recedes, you now realise there is a second option, which is to pass on the cake, perhaps eating an apple instead. Not so fun, not so easy, but the right thing to do, given that scary diagnosis

• This is the second path that is always available to us, if we allow ourselves to pause, let the prefrontal cortex come online and make a slower, more measured decision

• Now slowly, consciously, in your mind’s eye reach for the apple and eat it, savouring every bite. It doesn’t pack the dopamine-inducing punch of chocolate cake, of course, but it’s still sweet and tasty

• Scan your body again and see if any positive feelings are generated by making this healthier, more conscious decision. You might notice some pride, satisfaction, or optimism. If so, even if those feelings are very subtle, focus on and enjoy them for a few seconds

• Then let go of this image and bring your attention back to the breath, travelling in and out… the weight of your body, resting on the chair… your feet on the floor… sounds reaching you from all around…

• Slowly open your eyes and try using this mindful pause throughout your day, whenever you have a tricky decision to make

• Do this over and over and it will become easier, with practice, helping the prefrontal cortex fire more easily and allowing you to make slow, sensible decisions whenever you need to

I hope that proves helpful for you – I will be recording this practice soon for my Insight Timer collection, so you can listen whenever you need it.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan