A SIMPLE WAY TO REDUCE ANXIETY

Give yourself time | Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

I would like to introduce you to Time Decompression; or Time Expansion, if you prefer.  It is a technique I developed while researching counselling psychology, and studying the way time seems to work in therapy sessions.

If you have ever watched yourself when you were anxious, or reflected on it afterwards, you may have noticed that anxiety often has at its root an impatience for things to be otherwise, and quickly.  Perhaps you are anxious because you have an exam next week, and you do not feel that you know enough.  This kind of anxiety has four components:

1. You feel that something in your life needs to change

2. You feel that it is difficult or fearful for you to effect that change

3. You (consciously or unconsciously) conceptualise a time limit for that change

4. You (consciously or unconsciously) feel that the time limit is too short

WHAT I NOTICED IN COUNSELLING SESSIONS

Therapy sessions are often set at 50 minutes.  Some therapists try to offer convoluted reasons for this, but the main reason is that an hour is western humans' go-to time for meetings, and therapists need to wee, and make notes (10 minutes therefore deducted).  The strictness is so that therapists can appear very professional.  I mean, really, what would therapists have to denote ther professionalism if they did not control the time, and pathologise anyone else who wanted to control it?!

What I noticed was that anxious clients often felt the need to cut meetings short, and certainly were out of the door quicker than depressed clients.  It was as though anxious clients lived in accordance with an invisible rule: get home as quickly as possible.  Home, whatever it was conceived to be, was a place of safety.  Time pressure was evident pretty much all the time, even in micro-behaviours.  Such clients tended to be watchful of other people's movements, and keen to detect when it might be time to move on.  It was as though they were alarm clocks, set with a hair-trigger mechanism, liable to panic at the least provocation.

Time felt compressed.  As a counsellor, I often rely on absorbing a sense of where a client is in the moment.  Internalising into myself what was going on for them, I became aware of a kind of impatience, and over-watchfulness, together with a sense of personal inadequacy - a feeling, in short, that, as above, (1) something was wrong, (2) it was difficult to confront, (3) it felt urgent or pressing, and (4) waiting was not an option.  Thus the body became a kind of pressure cooker, boiling up with urgent need, perhaps the skin flushing, panic symptoms arising... all in a kind of impatience with the world.

I don't want to pathologise my clients.  I experience the same thing too.  Most of my human knowledge is gained from self-observation.  I am at least as guilty of anxiety as the next person.  But I am outlining what I think I saw.

HOW THIS APPLIES TO EVERYDAY SITUATIONS

This, to me, is to do with our experience of time.

We all, consciously or unconsciously, apply time frames to our lives.  You might feel you should be married by the time you are a certain age, or out of bed by a certain time, or have disposed of a lost loved one's possessions by a certain month... we are often full of self-imposed requirements that our worlds change by a certain time.

In my research, I took this thought, and tried to apply an opposite.  If anxiety is often characterised by time compression (i.e. wishing things could quickly be otherwise for us), then perhaps anxiety could be reduced by time-expansion (or time decompression), by lowering the pressure to change our world in a short time.

TIME-EXPANDING TASKS

I began to ask myself: what tasks do we perform which might be time-expanding, and anxiety-reducing?

A CLUE IN BOREDOM

In my ponderings, I noticed that boredom was a kind of opposite of anxiety.  I noticed that, when bored, individuals' adrenal systems closed down, and they started to fall asleep.  They no longer needed to be alert and hyper-sensitive.  Now, I bet you have never heard a doctor prescribe boredom as a medicine for patients!  But perhaps it is not such a silly idea.

Boring situations have certain characteristics, which are in many ways the opposite of the anxious characteristics:

1. We feel that our challenge or extreme action is not necessary

2. We feel that it is all too easy to assimilate and experience

3. There seems to be no time limit to things (such as an interminably boring lecture!)

4. There seems to be no urgency (perhaps everything is flat, routine, predictable)

DESIGNING YOUR OWN TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

I am not suggesting we live our lives permanently bored!  But I am suggesting that we apply to anxiety an opposite context, in order to balance it out and calm it.

If you are anxious, I suggest you design for yourself an activity which consists of the following:

1. A manageable, minimal level of challenge

2. A fairly easy thing to get your head around

3. A time guide which is much longer than the activity needs

4. Something that is not urgent

An example for me: if I wish to calm down easily, I pick up my boots, and polish them.  I know how to do it; it's easy; I give myself half an hour, much longer than I need; it's not urgent (my life won't end if I can't polish my boots!).

For you, it may be something else.  But try to choose something easy, and give yourself a longer time than necessary to do it.

THE BENEFITS OF TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

There are several benefits to this approach.  I have used it a lot myself (I am my biggest experimental guinea pig!); and friends and clients have seemed to find it helpful.  A few classic benefits are:

1. It reduces adrenaline levels.  We all need to use our adrenaline systems, but not all the time, and not on overdrive!

2. It makes you feel more peaceful.  Your friends will appreciate your chilled-out manner :)

3. It broadens your attentional bias (when anxious, your world compresses; when peaceful, you can see more)

4. It gets something useful done! (Even Formula 1 drivers need their cars cleaned... you are giving yourself a 'pit stop'.)

5. It teaches your mind, conscious and unconscious, that everything is not urgent.  And it really isn't.  The universe has billions of years available.

Think of your diary as an elastic band.  When your appointments are constricting and urgent, you will feel your flow constricted and strangled by urgency.  Your body will tell you that it is tired, but your adrenaline system will tell you that things are urgent.  This is the formula for adrenal fatigue.

Time-expanding activities relax the elastic band a little.  Your life is still held together by a little structure, but you have room to move, to breathe, to be yourself.

SUMMARY

When anxiety is getting the better of you, try to find a simple activity that you enjoy, and give yourself a nice long time to complete it, much longer than you need.  You will find your adrenal system relaxes, your attentional system expands, and you become more peaceful.  What more could you want?

If you are interested in practicing this or other forms of relaxing activity in your life, do get in touch, and I'd be happy to work with you, and learn from you, in developing helpful techniques.  Everyone is different, and I welcome the opportunity to meet others who want to join together and find practical ways to be peaceful.

WHAT'S YOUR UNOPENED PACKAGE?

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What's your unopened package?

When things happen to us, we have one of two reactions.  If the experience is an easy one to assimilate, to understand, then we process it then and there.  But if it is difficult in some way - if we don't have time to process it, or we can't afford to, or it's too much for us to understand... then we make a little package.  We don't even know we're doing it.  We move on to the next thing, but the unopened package will sit there at the back of our minds for as long as we leave it, like an unopened gift left over from Christmas.

Except that it doesn't feel like a gift.  If, for instance, we have been abused in childhood, and didn't understand what was happening to us, then our unopened package can be like a ghost, haunting us without even telling us it is there.  If a current experience gets close to the one that we tucked away, then we can react in ways that we ourselves don't understand.  Our sensitivity seems out of proportion to the current event.  But it is only our mind trying to protect itself from the difficulty of having to open up the old package in order to understand, unblock, the current situation.

THE MISUNDERSTOOD STORY

Another way of understanding this is as a story we have failed to comprehend, to assimilate into our life story.  We all write for ourselves an autobiography.  When other talk to us about life, we recount selected events from our life as symbolic of who we are.  But we choose those events we publicise: we are our own PR team, desperately struggling to offer the world a clear and coherent picture of a successful human.

Except what happens to those stories, those experiences, that happened to us, but that we couldn't find any sense in?  The unexpected death, the unfair deprivation... these stories pile up behind the scenes, in that department of our mind called 'untold stories'.  We cannot tell them properly, because we have not found in ourselves the words to encompass what went on.  It is only when we have a language for it, that the 'it' becomes our story.

In that sense, the misunderstood story is the untold story, something that cannot be part of our autobiography, because there seems to us no sensible way of incorporating it.  It is denied, put away, left unopened, neglected.

THE ROLE OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL LANGUAGE

One thing that can be a great healer in providing language where there is none, is contemporary language.  Until there are enough words and stories in circulation, you can end up feeling alone, as though there is no way of expressing how you feel.  But as soon as your experience finds a parallel in modern life, finds a way of expressing itself by saying 'Yes!  That!  My experience was like that!' - once that happens, there is a kind of relief in associating one's own experience with general wisdom.

The person who years ago never came out as gay, can point to other coming out stories and say: 'Yes, that's me too.'  The person who has suffered at the hands of others, whether bullying, harrassment, or any other kind of abuse... that person can watch the film, read the book, learn the language, and then say 'Yes, that's what happened to me, too.'

THE ROLE OF POETRY

Some experiences, however, are too complex to be unwrapped by a single film, or a political movement, or a story.  They are the experiences that are left over, making us feel isolated from the world, because it may be that no one understands us.  Even if we suspect that others feel the same and have been through the same, there is no way of proving it.

Poetry is one way of offering that proof.  The way the system works, is that a poet makes a new form of words that attempts to encompass an experience or set of experiences.  If you like, the poet is defining a new emotion, as separate from anything anyone has defined before  A new modification.  In this way, the title of a poem can become iconic, as though it represents an experience set that has been somehow nailed to paper for once.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of poetry is in the communication with the listener.  The listener can be the poet themselves: it's a perfectly valid form of poetry, words from the self to the self.  It can be transformative.  But, in addition, there are times when a whole room, or a whole body of readers, can participate in an enhanced understanding, simply by being open and hearing a new way of putting a story, an emotion, an experience.

THE ROLE OF COUNSELLING

Some experiences have the unlucky characteristic of being unshareable, for whatever reason.  It may be that they are family secrets which cannot be released more widely without repercussions.  Or personal secrets, where an individual needs to share and express inner voices which their usual world wouldn't understand.

A good counsellor understand their role in this respect.  The client may have come to them as an act of trust, so that they can begin to disclose to an other things which have had to be kept under wraps.  The client brings their unopened package.

TRIAL AND ERROR

Often, a client brings, at first, a small package.  They are testing the therapist, seeing how well they can handle a client bringing before them something confidential, sensitive.  If trust is found, then another, bigger package is shared and unopened together.  Then another.  Until, perhaps much later, a big package that has been clogging up the hallway is brought in for gentle dismantling and opening.  It is essential that this process is safe: it can be like unwrapping an unexploded bomb.  It deserves ultimate respect.

An analogy from real life is the friend to whom one brings one's problems.  You may have different friends for different problems, because you have learned that different people can and can't handle different things.  Often, in adult life, you will be drawn to friends who can hear things your parents couldn't.  You are seeking that listening ear you didn't get back then, so that you can open the packages from childhood that you deferred opening because you didn't understand them, couldn't relate to them.

WHAT'S YOUR UNOPENED PACKAGE?

 So, I'd ask again, I wonder what your unopened packages are.  The unresolved stories you have lying around an untidy mind.  The emotions that get stirred when a current experience has a weirdly profound effect on you. 

You are a richer mind than you know, full of these things, waiting to be explored.  How much, or little, you want to explore them, is up to you.  But it can be quite a rewarding thing, quite freeing.

And to be able to help others open their unopened packages, in safety and in confidentiality, that's a skill and an art worth developing.

SUMMARY

We all have stories from earlier in our life that we can't yet process, and hide away.  In our adult life, we make up stories about ourselves, and collect them together into a well-practiced autobiography that we rehearse in conversations.  But the untold stories never come out.

Sometimes, though, new cultures offer new languages, new stories, with which we can see our past.  We watch a film or read a book, and see our own reflection for the first time.  Or we write a poem, and offer a new sharing of something, a new way of opening life's incomprehensible packages.  Or we go to a counsellor, or a trusted friends, and respectfully and carefully unwrap each other's unknowns.

It's always a question worth asking: what have I not understood?  What have I packed away without bothering to open it up?  What are my unopened packages?

WHY WE GET ANGRY

Why do humans get angry?  We've all been there.  You're half way through an argument with someone, and something happens.  It is as though you stand apart from yourself, and look at yourself, and marvel at your own capacity to be irrational.  You can hear yourself say these strange words, accusing someone, or blaming someone.  But you carry on, as if you are locked into an inevitable story.

And it is a story, in a way.  We all tell ourselves stories about what is happening, and those stories define our reactions.  It is part of our evolutionary heritage.

THE STORIES ANIMALS TELL THEMSELVES

I am not one of those who is convinced humans are the only self-conscious beings.  I think that's just arrogance.  Many animals tell themselves stories about the situations they find themselvs in.  Interpretation of situations is a skill most common mammals have.  And going further back, a huge amount of life lives according to long-understood participation in chains of events.  True, a lot of the time it's what we call instinctive rather than rational thought.  But we're a little too rigid about that distinction.  Much of what we think of as rational is instinctive, and vice versa.

A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF AN ANGRY DOG

Take a dog as an example.  A dog is faced with something unusual, perhaps a sudden noise, or an unexpected behaviour.  A useful simplification, transferable to humans, might be: that dog has a choice, made in an instant.  That choice is: 1. Do I withdraw, run from this unusual thing and hide until I understand what's going on?  Or 2. Do I attack, try to scare this unusual thing into not attacking me first?

Those who know dogs will know that they differ widely in their responses.  Some will usualy choose to sit back and watch; some will usually choose to come forward and attack.  But both, in a sense, are living out a story.  For the attacking dog, they are living in a long tradition of animals who survived by attacking as a standard response.  For the withdrawing dog, they are living according to a long tradition of animals who survived by withdrawing.  Their conscious mind may or may not see all this and understand it; but their being knows the story, is familiar with it.

ANGER IN HUMANS

Anger, in a way, is the impulse that lies behind the attack dog's behaviour.  People who get angry usually see themselves as vulnerable in the moment, and the story they are living out, is that they need to assert themselves in order to defend themselves.  So, ironically, the angry person who hits somebody, or lashes out verbally, sees themselves as the victim.  It seems absurd from the outside, but we all know what it feels like from the inside.

What about the withdrawing humans?  Don't they feel anger?  Oh, absolutely.  But a funny thing happens in their case: the anger gets turned inwards.  All that energy has nowhere to go, so it turns into internalised fear.  When you're disabled, paralysed by an unnameable fear of the world in general, sometimes it's just the anger you have turned inwards.  It's the choice you make as an animal: that you're not going to lash out.  So instead, you lash inwards against yourself.  A lot of depression has its root in this kind of self-laceration.

IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE?

Whether you're an 'innie' (someone who turns their anger inwards), or an 'outie' (someone who barks at and attacks others), it would be nice if an alternative could be found.  Both tendencies can be destructive.  Sure, they helped us survive over milliions of years, but in modern society we aren't so often under threat of death.  For us, anger raises its ugly head not when our bodies are under threat of death, but when a more abstract thing, our identity, is under threat.  It feels like dying when your identity is threatened: this is because your identity is your ongoing picture of yourself; and if you lose it, you imagine that your very self (i.e. your self-image) is dying.

So what's the alternative to this reaction we are all prone to, the one that has us becoming rude to others, but insisting that we are only defending ourselves?

LOSING YOUR SELF

In a good way, I'd like you to think what it would be to lose yourself.  Deliberately.  What if you willingly gave up any concept of yourself as something that needs protecting.  If you accepted, especially, that your identity is fluid, not fixed; flexible, not static.  What if you forget the evolved story of yourself as a separate being that need protecting at all costs, and replaced it with a different story... a story where you are a bit like water; you just run through the world like a river through a valley.

Who could hurt you (or hurt your identity) if you thought like that?  If a person or situation suggests that you are not clever; or not good... and you just thought 'yes, you're probably right', and got on with living.  Who could hurt your pride?  No one.

ANGER IS JUST PRIDE IN ACTION

Watch someone next time you see them get angry.  I challenge you to find any story other than this: they feel threatened, and are blaming someone or something for their feeling of threat.  They are playing out a story of 'poor me'.

I am not referring to those times when a person passionately fights for what is right in others' interests.  That kind of response I would suggest is more of a fierce wish for the right thing to happen.  I am referring to those times when a person is anrgy at the world, or others, because they are not getting what they want, and their identity is being threatened.  It's pride.  Simply selfish pride.

A MEDITATION PRACTICE: GIVING YOUR SELF AWAY

Next time a difficult situation arises, maybe try to imagine you are willing to give away your current identity.  imagine you don't need it, that you can simply flow into a new understanding whenever necessary.  You are like an octopus - you can squeeze into unusually tight spots, because your shape is malleable.

Instead of being like a brittle piece of glass, not budging until you break, you are being like a blade of grass, bending with the wind.

Notice how this makes you feel.  Maybe you feel relieved, that you won't have to waste energy on maintaining a self-image.  Maybe you feel suddenly free, because you're not so invested in fighting back unnecessarily.

A NOTE

I would like to emphasise that I am not saying roll over and accept other's misreatment of you.  But I am saying that the best form of reaction is not anger, but a fierce desire for the right thing to happen.  The difference is in your focus.  You can still defend yourself.  But your mind is no longer clouded by the illusion that you are of supreme importance.  You can now fight without your heavy crown of pride, and you'll probably be more effective.

SUMMARY

Your evolutionary story traps you into either fight or flight.  When you fight, you end up misbehaving.  And when you fly, you end up mistreating yourself.  Try stepping aside of evolution, and losing your sense of self.  If you have no self to defend, in the sense of an artificial identity, then you can see clearly.

So watch yourself, especially in difficult situations.  Learn to get over your self-importance.  And you will find your need for anger disappears, and peace returns.

In short, next time you are either fearfully self-punishing, or angry with others, get over yourself, and develop a sense of humour.  Eventually, you will become able to just watch situations without self-interest.  It's a healthy ability, because you won't be so frustrated.  You'll flow better.

THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF POETRY

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

Poetry is a funny thing.  It is merely a collection of words on paper (or stone, or spoken through the air).  But its value is disproportionate to its apparent modesty.

LIKE JEWELLERY

Perhaps its true therapeutic value lies in its density.  By density, I mean the way it manages to compress whole networks of meaning into one small space.  An analogy I often use is jewellery-making.  An expert jewellery-maker will think about their craft; plan their design; and ensure that there is no wasteage in the way the item expresses itself and fulfils its function.  In the same way, the writer of a poem thinks about the form, the arrangement of their words; will take care over their order and pacing; and try to make sure that their poem expresses, economically and richly, the experience they are sharing.

EXPRESSING EMOTIONS

The words we have for emotions are quite poor in themselves.  Psychologists have even tried to reduce human character to six key words.  This tendency of the caring professions to reduce emotion to a few key words can be quite distressing to clients.  It can create a disjoin between what someone knows they feel, and the words they seem to have available to express whats inside.  'I'm anxious', or 'I'm depressed' doesn't seem to cut it sometimes.  It's great when you need a diagnosis, or a quick way of categorising where you are and what help you might need.  But as a rich expression of experience, these words are lacking.  And it's made worse by the diagnostic manuals' insistence on reducing these key words to a set of predefined symptoms, which usually have to be miraculously felt for six months, or a year, or some equally improbable and artificial time span.

EXPRESSING DEPTH OF EMOTION

Again, the caring professions often rely on the emission of tears in order to be able to say that subtlety of emotion is being expressed.  Trainees talk of 'breakthrough moments', but sometimes don't realise they are merely taking the moment a client cries as an indication of depth of feeling.  This is great, and often true.  But it ignores the fact that, for many clients, tears are not the most subtle expression of what's inside.  The clues to their depth of experience are differently expressed, perhaps in a turn of phrase, perhaps in a movement of the hand.  To limit depth to crying is absurd.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF POETRY

Poetry is attentive.  There is an understanding between writer and reader/listener that attention has been paid to its production, and attention is being paid to its communication.  Poetry is 'the communication of special words in a special form', if you like.  As such, for the person-centred practitioner, there is already, in the transaction, a version of the three most famous, so-called 'core' conditions, positive regard, empathy and congruence.  Poetry as a transaction relies on positive regard for its successful communication; it seeks to understand, and so empathy is in its bones; and it seeks truth in a situation, and therefore congruence is its meat.

Poetry offer us an opportunity to communicate with one another at great depth.  What is more, in terms of time, poetry works differently to normal conversation.  Because it is produced in such a dense way, and written down or memorised, it acts as a lasting record of what is felt about an experience.  Communicants can return to it again and again for strength or exploration, and parts of poems can become iconic in the memory, landmarks on the emotional landscape if you like.

HOW POETRY MIGHT WORK IN THERAPY

There are already many practitioners who use poetry in one way or another.  Some of the key ways in which it can work are:

• A client can introduce a therapist to poems that mean a lot to them.  The bringing of a poem, or any meaningful piece of art, becomes a kind of gift, received by the therapist, and part of the sharing relationship.  The client can learn a lot about whether to trust the therapist by watching how the therapist handles the introduction of such an object.  It offers a third thing in the room, which can acts as a structure around which empathy can be gently offered, and join exploration can happen.
• A therapist can encourage a client to write some poetry of their own.  This encourages a form of self-exploration in expression akin to meditation or yoga.  The client is daring to stop and listen to themselves, and then to choose a mindful action which matches or expressed what is going on for them.  Poetry in this sense is an intimate act, and can help a client to develop the ability to communicate and self-extend in other social situations.  The therapist can, by unconditionally accepting the poetry, and taking an interest, demonstrate to the client that they matter, and that what they have to say matters.
• A therapist and client can work on poems together.  The client may be afraid of more direct forms of interaction, and working together on a poem, perhaps one the client has drafted, can help the client to learn interactions through an indirect medium.  The two people are focused on a third thing, which enables some clients to communicate what they find it hard to communicate face-to-face.  Furthermore, it is an analogy of many therapeutic interactions: the client offers an expression of self; the therapist offers understanding and clarification; both work together to hone and manage the joint expression of what is happening until a new reality is found, or at least a new way of seeing, for both parties.

HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

In my therapeutic practice, I have had the privilege to experience, several times, the introduction of literary influence by the client.  Not always, but often, it has had the following three stages:

1. The client tentatively introduces into the room a book, a story, a poem, or a picture.
2. The therapist receives the offering, listens carefully, and communication begins about what the object might mean.
3. The interaction is used by the client as a kind of test of the therapist's authenticity.  If the object is dismissed or somehow belittled, then the client knows not to trust the therapist.
4. A new understanding is reached by both parties about the client, and usually about the relationship in the room.  A great sense of appreciation often results, a kind of indescribable gratitude that such sharing has been possible.
5. The art work becomes iconic in terms of the therapy, either for the client, or the therapist, or both.  It is useable as a reference point, a lasting reminder of a shared experience and a new understanding.

SUMMARY

I am encouraging you to consider introducing appreciation of written poetry into therapy.  In particular, I am suggesting that encouraging a client who wants to, to write some poetry of their own, can enhance the therapeutic experience, and provide several advantages that are quite hard to get any other way.

I have explored the reasons for this.  How poetry is carefully designed like jewellery around our experiences.  How it offers greater depth of description of emotion, beyond our poor few official words for feelings.  And finally, how it offers a new comminucation experience between two people, which, if appropriately valued, can build great trust and understanding.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation, at its most basic, is the simple art of taking time to contemplate.  Contemplation, in turn, is a kind of relaxed, controlled thinking, which lets the mind rest on its object of focus.  So, if you sometimes find yourself looking at a leaf or a tree, or even a person's face, and dwelling peacefully on its features and nature, then you meditate, whether you are aware of it or not.

THE OPPOSITE OF MEDITATION

One way of thinking about meditation, is to consider what would be its opposite.  Have you ever seen a person in the middle of road rage, spitting with anger at something another driver has done?  Have you ever been in the middle of an argument with someone close, and said a lot of things that you later regret?  These things are the opposite of meditation.  When you have road rage, or when you shout at someone else in anger, then you are showing three things:

1. You are not in control of yourself.  Your mind and body seem to take on a life of their own, not listening to anyone or anything.  You, literally, 'lose it'... 'it' being the ability to master your actions.
2. You are not aware of your surroundings.  You may notice, when in a rage, that the world reduces to the size of a pinhead.  Some people call it tunnel vision.  You are so incensed, that you have no resources left to observe, as if from a distance, what is happening.
3. You are selfish.  That is to say your own needs in the particular situation outweigh everything and everyone.  That is why we do so much damage when we are in a temper - because we have become so afraid of what we might lose, that we cannot bend to the perspective of others.

MEDITATION AND RELIGION

Meditation is often associated with Buddhism, but contemplation has a long tradition in most religions.  Islam relates that the Prophet Mohammed often withdrew to a cave to meditate and pray.  In the Hindu tradition, meditation is a practice of self-awareness whereby a wise person comes to understand their relationship with others, and with reality.  In Judaism, an individual may set themselves apart to contemplate, either intellectually or intuitively, bringing greater insight.  The Christian tradition uses meditation as a time of reflective study and focus.  Buddhists meditate to develop mindfulness, concentration, peace and insight.  And so on.

A BASIC PRACTICE

Common to almost all types of meditation are a few basic steps, which can be the background to any meditation practice.

1. Preparation - make sure you are settled in an environment which enables you to focus, and be sure that you yourself have established an intent to take time to contemplate.
2. Bodily alignment - you can adopt a comfortable sitting position, or lie down, or kneel, or even stand or walk slowly; the important thing is that your body is aligned, or arranged, in a way that enables you to focus.
3. Focus your attention on a single object of contemplation.  It may be your own breath; you could listen to it enter and exit your body.  It may be an external object, such as a sunset, or a candle, or a tree.  Or it could be a particular piece of wisdom or scripture that means something to you.
4. When you sense your attention disappearing (perhaps your usual worries and distractions begin to reappear in your mind), then gently realign your focus onto the object of your meditation.
5. Remain in that contemplative state for a period of time, returning your mind to the object of meditation whenever you sense it straying.

WHY IS MEDITATION SO POWERFUL

What is the power of meditation?  Remember the list above, of things that are the opposite of meditation.

1. You are not in control
2. You are not aware of what is going on around you
3. You are obsessed by your own needs

You may notice that these three symptoms are characteristic of a lot of mental illnesses, and certainly of a lot of distress.  Meditation, on the contrary, seeks to establish three opposite things:

1. Control - learning to focus in a peaceful state brings you the ability to control your thoughts, and ultimately your feelings.
2. Awareness - learning to observe and contemplate, and to apply this to yourself and others, gives you greater awareness, as you are less distracted, and therefore make fewer mistakes of observation.  You see more clearly.
3. Kindness - learning to set your own worries and internal chatter aside, makes you better able to listen and attend to others.  Because you are not attached to any one outcome, you can more easily flex your perspective and see life how others see it.  Therefore, you will be better able to match your actions to the wider context, and should experience greater flow in your movement and thinking.

There are many cognitive reasons why meditation works, but perhaps they can all be summed up in the above.  If you wanted to drive someone mad, you would make them lose their sense of control, blur their sense of focus, and make them fear for their own safety.  In contrast, then, if you want to bring yourself peace, then to practice mastery over your thoughts, to enhance your awareness, and to widen your perspective beyond your own attachments, seem entirely logical.

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS, AND HOW IS IT RELATED?

Mindfulness usually refers to a state of enhanced awareness, in which you observe and accept your own feelings.  A state of mindfulness contains all the things we have talked about above: self-mastery (so that you have not 'lost your mind' any more), awareness (so that you are not 'driven to distraction' any more), and kindness (so that you are not obsessed with your own needs any more).

Mindfulness, therefore, is pretty much the name we could give the meditative state.  In an argument, a mindful person would be one who showed their ability to keep control of themselves, to see the whole context clearly, and to act without self-obsession.

THE BENEFITS OF MEDITATION

Setting aside time each day to meditate has a number of benefits.  In particular, do you notice how, in the course of a normal day, you are subject to aggravations, distractions, frustrations, difficulties?  A bit like a computer, you need time to get your house in order, and regain your focus.  You need to clear up loose ends, let go of what is bothering you, and return to 'place zero', a place of rest from which you can face the world again.

Using another analogy, imagine you are a Formula 1 driver.  Would you be a good driver if you spent all your time racing round a track at breakneck speed?  No.  You need rest, you need recuperation, you need focus.  Nature is full of rhythms to be wisely respected: there are day and night; there is activity and reflection; there is expenditure of energy and regathering of energy.  In the same way, part of your daily practice is to take time to regain your control, awareness, and perspective.  To refocus.  Otherwise you will be good for nothing, a bedraggled wreck.

There are wider benefits too.  We have focused on the individual.  But wider societies and ecologies can benefit from mutual self-mastery, awareness and selflessness.  An ability to take different perspectives, and not just act out of fearful self-defence, is sorely needed in the political and environmental world today.

A SUMMARY

Meditation is the practice of taking time out to focus peacefully.  It enhances self-control, awareness, and kindness.  Daily meditation sets an example to everyone that you are prepared to calm your own 'road rage', to see the other side, to take account of the whole picture, to take responsibility.  If you learn the art, then eventually it will become part of your normal behaviour.  You will find life easier, and others may find you more helpful and companionable.  Moreover, you may find your mental health improving, as you attend to the wonderful being that is you, and let it accept its wider place in the universe.

WHY DO I GET SO EASILY DISTRACTED?

We live in a world that is forever trying to grab our attention.  That's what advertising is.  Literally.  Ad=to, vert=turn.  People and things are trying to turn your head.  The outside world, full of advertisers, is trying to get hold of your attention, and keep it.  It would be a mistake to think of advertising as a recent invention.  Watch nature.  Birds are the epitome of advertisers, always tweeting this and that, making sure that they are noticed.

But it's distressing to many, all this advertising.  It clouds our heads.  Advertisers give us shorter and shorter time spans, firing images at us every second.  We end up punch drunk, unable to take much in consciously, but with a constant stream of images feeding us from our eyes.  We lose control of our lives, and become information feeders, turning to Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, or some other screenbased distraction, to provide our eyes with images-without-thought. 

We don't notice our distress immediately.  We only notice that we are becoming less and less able to stand on our own two feet.  Silence without a screen becomes difficult, hard to bear.  Nothing happening threatens us with an unnameable fear.  We turn back to our screens for comfort - at least something is happening there; at least the screens want to talk to us.  But the screens are feeding us the same thing as millions of others are receiving: the information equivalent of sweets, designed to keep us hapy for a while, and then to crave more.

DISTRACTION TRAINING

We are being trained to be distracted.  Advertising, after all, feeds on distraction: it is essentially the same thing.  If we could not be distracted, then we could not be successfully subjected to advertising.  Commercial forces have a vested interested in enhancing our ability to passively receive images from the world around us; and they also have an investment in making us fearful when those images are absent.

THE RESULTANT HUMANS

The result is the creation of a generation of humans that does little except watch screens passively.  When we are not doing that, we are worrying about the silence.  So we go back to the screens.  And so on.  We are deceived into thinking that we are doing something.  What did you do today?  Oh, this and that.  Actually, I watched some screens.  But I don't want to admit that.  So I will make up some things.  This and that, I will say.  But I wont say 'I did nothing but watch screens.'

THE RESULTING ATTENTIONAL ISSUES

Let's think what we are creating.  We are becoming beings who cannot exist without something to grab our attention.  Our mobile computing devices are becoming our carers, effectively screening us out of the world around us, and into the world that they create.  Developers are constantly creating pathways which they believe we can easily travel down.  Places they can make us go in our minds.  Until, before we know it, we have given in to all the tunnels and roads that the internet leads us down, and forgotten the real world we live in.  Even better, we have compromised our idea of real, so that we see these offered screen-realities as just as real as our lives outside them.

WHY WE ARE SO EASILY DISTRACTED

To summarise the above, we are being trained by the modern comercial world to be easily distracted, and unthinking.  That's what advertisers are aiming for. Imagine a consumer whom it was impossible to distract, and hard to persuade.  That consumer would cost you a lot of money.  Instead, you want a population that has the attention span of a gnat, and few powers of steady rational thought.  The fact that we are easily distracted, is a result of our training.  By television, by a world of screens.

AN ANTIDOTE

I was wondering what the opposite to all this distraction would be.  And I thought, maybe it is a mind that is so well-mastered that it is not amenable to being distracted.  And so I began to try the opposite of the distraction.  I imagined to myself that nothing in my environment could attract or engage my attention.  I used a lot of the techniques I had gained through years of meditation.  I noticed distractions fleetingly, and I let them go.  Noticed another one, and let it go.  Noticed another, and let it go.  Soon I could bypass the noticing and letting go.  The distractions started to become fewer, to lose interest in me.

DEVELOPING SELF

I went for a walk.  Even though the basic distractions had disappeared, some old distractions came to take their place.  It is as though we have a working memory space where thoughts and sensations come to offer themselves.  Imagine a glade in your mind, in the middle of the forest of your self, where available thoughts, feelings and sensations come to gain your attention.  If you tend to them, they stay.  If you ignore them, they go.

OLD PROBLEMS RETURN

I found that some old, rather magnetic thoughts entered my glade.  A few family problems, for instance.  I found myself tending to them, forgetting myself.  Then I noticed, remembered myself, and let them go.  More and more, deeper and deeper thoughts came and went, now not stopping in the glade to check for my attention, but simply wandering across and out of the other side.  I realised that, once normal distractions were removed, old problems came into the space made available and tried to gain traction, attention.  I didn't give them the time of day, and they went away.

BIGGER PROBLEMS

After that, some really enormous problems came into the glade of my imagination.  Death, love, things like that.  World-defining issues that, they argued, really couldn't be ignored.  'Look at us,' they said.  'We are the really BIG problems of the world, able to speak to you now that you have dispensed with the smaller issues.  You absolutely HAVE to attend to us.'  But I didn't.  I ignored them, and let them go, and left myself alone.

A DEEP COLD

Soon, I felt very cold.  Nothing was around me, just infinite space.  All the problems and issues that normally flooded my brain had left me.  It was just me, and an infinite expanse of what felt like darkness.  I wondered whether I could cope with this cold, this alone-ness.  Nothing seemed to flourish there.  It was like being trapped in a big underground cave with no escape.

WARMER

But soon, a little warmth came back.  A sun shone onto my skin, and I felt it.  I realised I did not need to notice it for it to have its effect.  Then I saw some plants.  Then I knew again the space in the forest, the place where I had had all my thoughts in the past.  It was the same place, but it felt less fussed.  And nothing in there was trying to gain my attention.  Everything was flowing through me as though I wasn't there.  But I felt as though I were a part of everything.  I didn't really mind being absent.  Ironically, I was present, too.   The closest analogy I can think of is the air in a balloon.  I was the air in the balloon.  You couldn't see me.  But the balloon would not be the balloon without me.  I was the space in the middle of everything.

BEING SPACE

I guess what I am trying to say is, today I left behind all my worries and distractions for a while.  I found a way to just be, and let the world go on around me.  I didn't need to be needed.  I didn't need to grab hold of anything and make it my own.  Philosophically, I guess you could say I became space.  Like the air in the balloon.  Mystically, one could say I lost myself, and became one with everything.  Casually, one could say I dropped my selfishness and became a quiet watcher.

THE RELEVANCE TO DISTRACTION

I tell this story because I want to talk about how we might deal with distraction.  I tell it as a story because, in many ways, it is a circular journey.  You drop your usual worries; you drop the bigger worries that then invade; you drop the biggest worries you can think of, like death and relationship.  Then you just sit.  And the world comes back.  Everything that you had before comes back.  But your relationship with it is different.  Now, you are not distracted by any one part of it all.  You are identified with the all, and so the parts cannot affect you.

Thing of being a parent at a children's party.  The party is full of little stories, of little Jill being mean to little Jack, of little Jimmy losing his presents, of little Jane losing her friends.  But you are outside all of that.  You care, but it is not a caring that is obsessive, or controlled by events.  It is a caring that sees the whole picture, and therefore finds it hard to be discombobulated by any one part of it.

AN IDEA FOR YOU

I have an idea for you, a little project.  Set aside a day, not so long in the future, just for you.  On that day, pretend you are a new kind of human being, one that cannot be distracted by internet, by screen, by person, by situation, by drama, by problem.  You are just you.  Imagine in your mind a forest glade, which is your space.  Watch the thoughts come and go in that space.  Eventually, lose your connection to them, so that the whole forest dissolves into itself, and runs without you.  Now you have your own dispensability, your own redundancy.  Your redundancy is your greatest weapon.  

Now sit with it, with your redundancy, your absence, and enjoy it.  It will feel cold and lonely for a while, but in the end you may feel warmth returning.  You may be able to re-engage with the world in a different way, still seeing everything, but not controlled by it.  You will have become a quiet watcher.  That is meditation.  That is pretty much it.  You'll be able to smile.  In fact, you'll want to smile; because you now know that nothing matters, so everything matters; that nothing needs your attention, so everything can have your attention; that nothing is, so everything is.  It's quite relaxing.

SUMMARY

We live in a world where everything is striving to grab our attention.  It is exhausting.  It makes screen addicts of us all.  So find some time, perhaps a day, for yourself.  Go for a walk, or sit, or do something else relaxing.  Learn to detach from any problems that arise in your mind.  First the little problems.  Then the bigger ones that take their place.  Finally, let yourself sit in complete, empty space.  You will find you slowly become a part of the world, but in a different way.  You will not be attached to any one thing, but you will be all-present.  It will be very relaxing.  You will have arrived.

Or, if this all means nothing to you, you have just read something you disagree with.  But that's fine.

HOW CAN I BE MORE PATIENT?

Patience is a quality we all want.  From time to time, we all encounter situations which benefit from patience, whether it be a neighbour making too much noise, or a friend 'pushing our buttons' and making us angry or upset.  Patience is the ability to encounter such interruptions to our environment, and remain calm.

I have a picture on my wall of a dog lying quietly on the ground while a kitten plays with its mouth.  To me, it illustrates patience, because much of patience is to do with tolerating things which would ordinarily be taxing, but which we allow peacefully and calmly because we have an understanding of the situation.  In the case of the dog in my picture, it seems to understand that it cannot expect the playful kitten to be patient.  It flexes its behaviour wisely to the situation.  At other times, I imagine the dog would growl, or take evasive action.  But it reads the current situation, and decides not to react violently.

I thought I'd offer a few techniques for remaining patient in adversity.  But first, what characterises the situations that tax our patience, and why do they tax it?

SITUATIONS WHICH CHALLENGE PATIENCE

Here are, I suggest, the main types of situation which challenge patience:

1. Events which aggravate our senses (for instance, loud noises)

2. Events which prevent us from performing our intentions (for instance, traffic jams)

3. People who don't seem to learn as quickly as we would like (for instance, people slow to learn something we are expert in)

4. Being ignored, discounted or passed by for long periods of time (for instance, not being given a pay rise for years)

5. Events which spoil our preferred patterns of understanding, environment or behaviour (for instance, a shop running out of our usual food)

Tracing these types of situation to their causes, we find they have a few things in common.  Hint: we don't usually get impatient about things that happen half way across the world.  I suggest the common factors are:

1. All these things challenge our sense of importance

2. All these things challenge our assumption that we should not be slowed down

3. All these things challenge our assumption that we should not be interrupted

4.  All these things challenge our existing customs or habits

5. All these things challenge our sense that the world should adapt to our needs

In summary, we operate with a set of assumptions which, combined, read like this:

'I am important and have my expectations; it's the world's job to adapt to my ways, and not to challenge me.'

THE KEY TO REMAINING PATIENT

The key to remaining patient is to reverse the above set of assumptions.  If you reverse the above set of assumptions, you get the following:

'I am not more important than others, and have no expectations; I accept the world's ways, and accept its challenges.'

In short, the qualities to develop are humility and acceptance.

TECHNIQUES FOR REMAINING PATIENT

Here are a few techniques you can learn; they are simple to try, and believe me, you get better with practice.

1. If you experience sense interruptions (e.g. loud noises), then actively welcome them.  Say to yourself 'thank you, teacher noise, for putting me in my place'.

2. If you are slowed down (e.g. by traffic), then actively welcome it.  Say to yourself 'thank you, teacher traffic, for putting me in my place'.

3. If someone is slow to learn, then actively welcome the slower pace.  Say to yourself 'thank you, slow learner, for putting me in my place'.

4. If you are ignored, then actively welcome the ignorer.  Say to yourself 'thank you, ignorer, for putting me in my place'.

5. If your habits are disturbed (e.g. by a shop being out of stock), then actively welcome the shortfall.  Say to yourself 'thank you, poor supply, for putting me in my place.'

Saying 'thank you' reminds you of acceptance, and saying 'putting me in my place' reminds you of humility.

A NOTE

Some people think the above is wrong because it can imply acceptance of injustice (for instance, if a woman is paid less than her male colleagues).

However, you are still free to make your argument for justice if you choose.  It is just that, first, you have reminded yourself to accept the situation as it is, and to behave with humility.  You can then, if you wish, fight for a particular outcome.  Your arguments will probably be better communicated because of your patient manner; the listener may be more inclined to hear you, and you may find it easier to think clearly and plan your course of action.

SUMMARY

If you want to learn patience, then practice saying 'thank you for putting me in my place' whenever you are inconvenienced.  You can then take your next action from a place of peace.

WHY AM I AFRAID?

Fear is a much-disliked emotion.  Humans try to avoid it if at all possible.  But what is this thing we call fear, and how might we harness it constructively?

OUR BIOLOGICAL PAST

Think of a species evolving.  What we call evolution is simply developing over generations, with members of a species that behave in one way dying, and members who behave in another way surviving.  Simplified, but essentially what happens.

Imagine a group of people growing up with no sense of what to avoid.  They eat all the wrong things, even poisonous things; they put themselves in the way of being eaten by dangerous animals; they walk over cliffs... anything dangerous, and this group of people ignores it, and walks into it as though it were nothing.

A happy group of people it may be!  But you can't argue with the fact that they might end up becoming extinct.  If enough of them meet up with danger and receive a bad deal from it, without learning why danger is a problem, then there will be none of them left.

This illustrates the beginnings of fear.  Fear is the emotion that causes us to draw back from possible danger.  Even micro-species seem to have this response built in.  It is incredibly advantageous to have a natural response of withdrawing when you are near danger.

But there is something even better than this instinctive withdrawal response.  What if, instead of having to wait to be in the proximity of danger, a group of people can learn an emotional aversion reaction when there is even a distant sniff of danger? Instead of having to wait until risk is imminent, this group of people sees danger coming at a distance, and takes aversive action very early.

This is the origin of our fear response.  Groups of animals, and groups of humans, avoided death because they were hard-wired to be averse to risk.  They even had slightly too much of it, so that they had some spare, unused fear of the unknown which wasn't allocated to any particular risk, but was just experienced as a general existential anxst.

YOUR NATURE

This is the nature you have evolved with.  Because your other ancestors died, your lineage includes millions of forbears who were afraid (experienced a deeply-felt aversion to possible danger) much of the time.  It is no use wishing you weren't afraid: fear is hard-wired into your system.  You learn to walk the pavements and keep away from possible traffic; to eat your normal food and keep away from possible poisons; to relate to your friends and keep away from possible enemies.

THE POSITIVE SIDE

The above illustrates the positive side of the fear you experience: it has stopped your ancestors, for generation after generation, from dying.  It is, quite literally, the reason you are here.  Without it, you would have to work out, painstakingly and logically, and without motivation, what actions to take to avoid mortal danger.  You would not see why you shouldn't damage your neighbours and be destructive; you would be missing a key socialising force - fear of the consequences of stepping out of line.  Fear plays a part in your social conscience: it keeps you on your guard, consistently obedient, law-abiding, social, kind.  It is not your only motivator, but it is an important one, and one it is hard to un-wire from your system.

THE NEGATIVE SIDE

The bad news is that you are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.  Social life nowadays does not require us to worry about predators around every corner.  If our society provides a minimum of protection, then we can go about our lives without the likelihood of falling prey to danger.

However, try telling your brain that.  Your brain was developed thousands and thousands of years ago, and is kind of designed for a more dangerous environment than you now experience.  But you live a safe life.  Most of us are not going to die tomorrow from lurking danger.  Put these two things together (a risk-averse brain, and an unrisky environment), and what you have is spare fear wandering around wondering what to do with itself.

Put numerically, modern life has a danger quotient of 2/10, and your brain is wired for a danger quotient of 6/10.  You have 4 points-worth of brain-wiring which is unnecessarily fearful.

YOUR EXPERIENCE

How you experience this will change through life, depending on your age, your upbringing, and your internal messaging system.  But most people, at one time or another, will have an internal feeling that goes something like:

'I feel unnecessarily worried about everything, full of an unnameable fear that is hard to express.  I wake up afraid, am averse to going out and socialising.  I just want to curl up into a ball, be in my safe place, and ignore the world for a while.  Don't make me go out there.  I feel it's all dangerous, even though I know intellectually that many things I fear can't really hurt me.'

THE LOGIC OF FEAR

This is entirely logical when you think over millions of years.  Your brain is part of a development process that is a natural response to the environment, and those who were not like you died years and years ago.  You're a survivor.  But you're still experiencing the trauma of danger millions of years ago.  You are worried about things that stopped happening literally ages ago.

HARNESSING FEAR

Here are three suggestions as to how to use your fear for constructive purposes:

1. MEDITATE - Sit and listen to your brain.  Notice it worrying on overdrive.  If you sit for long enough, just listening, you will notice your whole being relaxing as it comes to understand, more and more, that your fear is useless, and not founded in the present.  You are participating in the human race growing up.  You are becoming less fearful.  Good on you.
2. INVOLVE YOURSELF IN CREATIVE ACTIVITY - Creative work is great for mopping up spare fear.  Here's why: instead of worrying about monsters round the corner, you become concerned about correcting anomales in your creative work.  You work harder to iron out the problems, to anticipate them and overcome them.  In other words, you have found a safe battleground to use up your fear-emotion constructively.
3. TEST OUT YOUR FEARS CONSTRUCTIVELY - Cognitive Behavioural Therapists know this trick.  What you do is: 1. Identify and name one of the fears that haunts you; 2. Develop a test to see whether it is a valid worry; 3. Review your results.  Most of the time, you will find that your fear is irrational.  You kind of knew that anyway, but it stops your fear growing monsters in your mind: you have found a way to test out the monsters, and prove they don't exist.

IN SUMMARY

In summary, then, fear is something you were born with.  It's not abnormal; it's the natural response your species has used to get so far.  Unfortunately, your generation has been left with far more fear than it needs.  You can learn to play with this extra fear you don't need: if you dare, you can sit with it and watch it until it's effect lessens and you master it (more or less what is meant by mindfulness); you can find it a harmless channel in creative work; or, if you want to, you can become your own cognitive scientist, and go about proving to your mind that its fear module is overactive and needs putting in its place.  All these methods can be a lot of fun, and are infinitely preferable to letting fear get the upper hand.

Enjoying testing it all out.