The World Needs Your Love & Compassion, Now More Than Ever

Image by Clem Onojeghuo/Unsplash

This is a hard post to write. Part of me just wanted to hide under the duvet today. Regular readers will know that I very much wanted Kamala to be President, so the election result feels like a body blow. And there is no doubt that the next four years will be rough. From the plight of immigrants in the US, to protection of the natural world, the fight against climate change, respect for democracy, truth and the rule of law, it’s a dark day.

But I felt compelled to write, because another – much larger – part of me feels hopeful and determined. I keep thinking to myself about how precious life is, how fragile, and that this is my one and only life. I refuse to let anyone take four years of that precious life from me. In fact, I refuse to let them take even one day.

Of course, if your political views are aligned with mine, it’s perfectly natural to feel a whole host of hard, heavy feelings today. If you feel sad, scared, hurt or overwhelmed, let yourself feel whatever you are feeling. My heart goes out to you and my beloved readers in the US, especially, who will bear the brunt of whatever unfolds in that big, beautiful, complicated country. But also to those in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere, who will also fear the ramifications of this dreaded result.

The only answer is love

As I often write in these posts, we are evolutionarily primed to respond with anger, hatred and hostility when we feel fearful or threatened. But I refuse to do that. It’s not who I am or how I wish to live my life. Instead, I will respond with even more love. More compassion. More acceptance and goodwill toward my fellow man – even those who disagree with me, or make decisions that negatively impact others.

My inspiration in this, as in so many things, is the Dalai Lama, a man forced to flee Tibet by the Chinese invasion, who has lived in exile since 1959. He has lost everything and watched in anguish as his countrymen and women were imprisoned, tortured and traumatised. But I have heard him say that he refuses to hate his tormentors, because then they would truly win. He is determined to remain compassionate, even to those who have done his people such harm, because that is his deepest value – to treat all sentient beings with love, kindness and respect.

That means we love every person, every creature – all life, in my view, from the tiniest sapling in the forest to every one of the eight billion humans with whom we share this planet. Not just the ones we like and agree with, but all humans, even the ones whose views seem ugly and hard to fathom. The Dalai Lama also teaches that we all seek happiness and to avoid suffering. There is no us and them, only us – we are all members of the same human family, stretching back millions of years to common ancestors, who walked out of Africa and populated the world.

So, whatever darkness unfolds over the next four years, let’s meet it with light. Hatred with love. Selfishness with altruism. Racism with respect. Othering with open-hearted welcome. I have a tattoo on my wrist which reads, be the light. It’s to remind me that, especially when times are hard and it looks like darkness is winning, it’s not enough to remember that there is light in the world too. We have to be the light, each of us in our own way.

Sending love and warmth especially to my US readers today, whether you are devastated or elated, red or blue, brokenhearted or bleary-eyed from celebration.

May you be happy.

May you be well.

May you be free from suffering.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Why is the World So Angry? And What Can We Do About it?

Image by Bob Dmyt from Pixabay

As I write this, I am nervously awaiting the results of tomorrow’s US presidential election. I must confess that I am glued to the news right now, because whoever is the next President will have a profound impact, not only on the US but around the world. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I am very much rooting for Kamala Harris – if you’re a US citizen and read this before voting closes, please vote for her!

If she wins, she will be a remarkable leader, not only because she would be the first woman – and woman of colour – to hold that sacred office, but because of who she is as a person. Watch footage of her interacting with people as she criss-crosses that vast, beautiful country and her warmth, empathy and humanity shine through.

On the other side, of course, we have a person who seems motivated by anger and hatred, not kindness and compassion. But this post is not about Trump-bashing, it’s about the virus-like spread of anger, in the US and around the world. And the way we have seen anger, hatred and hostility becoming normalised in politics, as well as other spheres of public life.

In the UK, we have seen a parallel process since Trump’s first election success and the Brexit referendum in 2016, when my country essentially split in half around this highly emotive, deeply polarising issue. Ever since that (in my opinion, nationally self-destructive) result we have seen a steady erosion of basic civility and respect: in our politics, our schools and communities, as well as in mainstream and especially social media.

I long ago left Twitter because I was dismayed at the rudeness and hostility I encountered on a daily basis. I do post to social media (or rather my brilliant social media manager, Jaime, takes my words and does magical things with them) but I always try to stay positive. If anyone responds rudely I have a rule of never engaging in conflict or even debate, I just block and delete.

And that’s not because I am averse to debate, or intolerant of people disagreeing with me. It’s just because social media encourages polarised, emotional, right vs wrong communication, which is one reason for the wildfires of anger we see igniting all over the world in recent years.

Big tech profits from anger

One of the best books to explain the way that Big Tech companies not only tolerate, but actively encourage inflammatory posts, conflict and discord on their platforms is Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. He interviews key figures behind influential platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to find out why tech in general, and social media in particular, is so addictive.

Hari explains that tech companies had the brilliant idea of hiring the people who designed slot machines in Las Vegas, employing the same use of colour schemes, dopamine-inducing psychological rewards in the form of likes and shares, as well as other ingenious strategies to make sure we keep posting, liking, sharing and scrolling.

He also explains that social-media algorithms actively promote inflammatory content that will make users scared, angry and reactive, because that’s what keeps us glued to our phones. This cleverly taps into the biases inherent in the human brain, which has evolved to be threat-focused, keeping us fixated on anything that might be dangerous or threatening, to ourselves or loved ones.

As I often write in these posts, anger is usually a response to fear. So all those people shouting at each other on social media, or attacking neighbouring countries in the numerous horrific conflicts raging around the world, are fiercely motivated to protect themselves, their family, their tribe, their land… because they are scared. Scared people easily become angry, even violent people.

Let’s all take a breath

Whatever the result on November 5th, I am sending love and support to my many US readers. Whether you are red or blue, a Trump fan or Harris devotee, I care deeply about you and your family. I hope you are happy and well. You are human, like me, and you seek happiness for yourself and your loved ones. You don’t wish to suffer. This is the common humanity that unites us, so let’s all take a breath and remember that we are all one human family, whatever our political views.

The world needs a bit less anger right now, wouldn’t you agree? A bit more kindness. A little more perspective. A reminder that hatred, conflict and violence never solved anything. I profoundly believe in a better future for us all, because we live in an age of miracles. The same technology that can do so much harm can also be a remarkable, transformative force for good. After all, you are reading this right now because I can beam it from my computer in London to you, wherever you are in the world, in a few seconds. Isn’t that amazing? I think so.

And to my American friends, one more gentle nudge to go vote, get your friends and family to vote, knock on doors, donate, do whatever you can to help advocate for decency and preserve democracy in your wonderful country. Go to iwillvote.com to find out more about how to vote where you live.

Thank you – and please stay safe, as emotions will be running high up to and after polling day.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Why Childhood Trauma is in the Little Things too

Image by Oxana Lyashenko

When we think about childhood trauma, we often think of the worst things. And as a therapist who specialises in trauma healing, I work with many people who have experienced truly awful childhoods. Hearing their stories can be heartbreaking – and if you went through something like this, my heart goes out to you, as it may well have caused internal wounds that you are still struggling to heal.

But experts in the trauma field increasingly understand that smaller, less obviously hurtful experiences can also be traumatic for children. Dr Francine Shapiro, founder of EMDR, calls these ‘little t’ traumas, which she argues be just as problematic as ‘big T’ traumas like being in a car crash, or on a battlefield. What does this mean in reality? Here are some common little t traumas:

• Being bullied, at home or in school

• Witnessing domestic violence in your family

• Being invalidated, unsupported or belittled by your parents

• Experiencing racism, or any other kind of prejudice

• Being neurodivergent in a school designed for neurotypical kids

• Having a sibling who is clearly loved and cherished more than you

• One of your parents abusing substances on a regular basis

• Losing a parent, or another beloved family member, suddenly and traumatically

• Being forced to move home, or school, often throughout your childhood

Your developing brain

One of the reasons experiences like these are so impactful on children is that, when you are small, your brain and the rest of your nervous system is still developing. For example, in small children the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant, with the left hemisphere developing later in childhood. And the right hemisphere is (broadly, although as with everything in the brain it’s more complex than this!) focused on emotion, with the left hemisphere specialising in language, detail and rational thinking. This is one reason small children are so emotional, because they lack the brain structure needed to self-soothe, or understand their experience in a rational way. Little kids just feel, deeply and overwhelmingly, whatever they are experiencing.

If you are a parent, or have kids in your life for any other reason, you will know exactly what I mean. Children feel their emotions – anger, hurt and sadness, or joy and excitement – in a beautifully rich and profound way. Also in a deeply somatic way – watch a toddler having a tantrum, face screwed up, kicking their legs and pounding their little fists to see what this looks like. Feeling intense and and frustration is a whole-body experience for them. They also struggle to make sense of what’s happening, to give it context or make meaning of it, because their developing brain just doesn’t have the neural architecture to do this yet.

Changing the story of your life

This is why trauma-informed therapy can help you make sense of what happened to you, using your high-powered, fully developed adult brain to tell a new story about your traumatic childhood experiences. For example, if you were bullied at school, your adult brain can understand that this was not a sign of weakness or some other character flaw on your part – it was all about the bullies, unhappy kids trying to gain some sense of power and control by taunting their more sensitive classmate. If your parents favoured a sibling over you, your mature brain can see that this is just bad parenting – it’s Parenting 101 to love all your kids equally, to make them feel cherished and valued, so had nothing to do with your likeability or lovability as a child.

And this is one reason I write these posts – sharing key ideas with you from the worlds of psychology and psychotherapy, to help you make sense of painful life experiences and tell a new, more hopeful and self-compassionate story about your life. This is step one of the healing process, alongside learning coping skills to help regulate your nervous system, process traumatic memories and build healing, compassionate relationships with the hurt parts of you. There are many trauma-informed therapies that can help with this process, including sensorimotor psychotherapy, trauma-informed stabilisation treatment, EMDR, schema therapy and internal family systems.

I hope that helps – and please do find a good trauma-informed therapist if you are struggling with the impact of childhood trauma. You may also enjoy this practice I created for Insight Timer – The Story of You: How to Build Self-Compassion. Click on the button below to listen to it now.

Love,

Dan ❤️

What I Have Learned from 30 Years of Studying Psychology

Image by Jr Korpa

As a psychotherapist, I have spent over 30 years learning about mental health, psychology and psychotherapy. During that time I have taken a deep dive into a number of therapy models, including:

• Cognitive behaviour therapy

• Compassion-based therapies like compassion-focused therapy and mindful self-compassion

• Parts-based, transpersonal therapies like psychosynthesis

• Trauma therapies, especially Janina Fisher’s trauma-informed stabilisation treatment

• Somatic therapies like polyvagal theory and somatic experiencing

• Schema therapy

• Internal family systems

• Mindfulness-based therapies such as MBSR and MBCT, as well as Buddhist psychology

I now integrate the best of these powerful, highly effective models into a unified treatment approach with my clients. Here are some of the key principles of my approach.

trauma-informed therapy

As someone who specialises in helping people with the impact of childhood trauma, I have come to understand that trauma is at the root of most psychological problems, such as depression, chronic stress or anxiety, eating disorders, addiction and substance abuse, low self-esteem and relationship difficulties. I am currently writing a book about healing trauma which will take readers on a step-by step guide to using an integrative approach to heal the wounds of a painful childhood.

After decades of research, including the groundbreaking Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, we now understand that most of the psychological problems people struggle with have their roots in trauma or neglect in childhood. These may be single-incident traumas like a car crash or natural disaster, but are more likely to be complex trauma, such as bullying in the home or at school; experiencing any kind of abuse; having a parent with substance-abuse or mental-health problems; being harshly criticised, feeling unloved or unvalued on a regular basis; growing up in a high-conflict home, or witnessing domestic violence; experiencing poverty, homelessness or frequent upheavals in childhood; experiencing any kind of discrimination, especially racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia.

Whatever you may be struggling with, it’s likely that childhood trauma or neglect is the root cause of your problems. And this needs addressing, which means you need a trauma-informed approach. Linked to this is a thorough understanding of the nervous system, as trauma dysregulates your nervous system and other systems in the body. So it’s helpful to understand that through the lens of somatic approaches like polyvagal theory or Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing. I have created a wide range of breathwork, meditation and guided-imagery practices for my Insight Timer collection, many of which will help you calm, soothe and regulate your nervous system. And these approaches form the foundation of therapy, before we move on to trauma processing.

an attachment-based approach

Most of the trauma we experience as children is relational, meaning we are hurt by those who are supposed to love, protect and care for us. Very sadly, most abuse happens within the family, despite the scare stories of ‘stranger danger’ published in the media. And more subtle forms of emotional neglect can be extremely painful for children, such as having a parent who is chronically depressed, so – through no fault of their own – struggles to attune to your needs in the way all children require to develop a healthy mind and body.

A core need for all children is secure attachment with their caregivers – feeling safe, protected, loved and cherished by their parents, or other key family members if they are raising the child. This secure attachment in childhood translates to a secure attachment style, which we know around 50 per cent of adults possess. The other half of the population are mostly either anxious or avoidant, both of which create problems in forming healthy, nourishing relationships.

If you have an insecure attachment style – like most people seeking therapy – you need an attachment-based therapy, which will help you learn to feel safer and more secure in relationships, bit by bit. Schema therapy is the gold standard of this approach to therapy, so I integrate all the richness, wisdom and practical tools from this model into my work.

a parts-based model

One of the major revolutions in psychotherapy began in the late 1980s, when a number of parts-based therapy models were developed. These include schema therapy, internal family systems, Janina Fisher’s approach, Gestalt therapy and many others. My approach is also a parts-based, because it’s clear from a neurobiological understanding of the brain that your mind, and mine, is formed of a number of parts – this is known as ‘multiplicity of self’. It means that you have parts, like the Inner Critic or Inner Child, who either hold painful beliefs, memories and experiences from difficult times in your life, or work to keep those hurt young parts safe.

My work with clients draws especially on internal family systems, because it’s a warm, compassionate approach to healing these hurt and hardworking parts. But I strongly believe that no one model of therapy holds all the answers, so its better to draw from a wide range of models, creating a bespoke treatment for each individual client. I have found this to be the most powerful way to heal trauma with my therapy clients and have taught this approach to many other mental-health professionals, in my supervision and wider teaching.

Compassion at its heart

Finally, my approach involves a strong emphasis on learning self-compassion, because this is perhaps the most important skill you can learn – and especially if you experienced childhood trauma. Most of my clients are highly self-critical, with negative and self-lacerating beliefs about not being good enough, being dislikable or unlovable. None of these things are true, but are unhelpful ways of thinking about themselves they learned as a child – what are called ‘schemas’ in schema therapy.

Any effective therapy involves learning a new story about your life, one which is kind, compassionate and realistic, rather than highly negative and demeaning. Learning to think differently about yourself is a key part of any good therapy – and learning to be self-compassionate is an antidote to the noxious and harmful ways of thinking you developed as a child.

If you would like to know more about my approach to therapy, do sign up for my newsletter using the form below – you will get to read my latest blog posts, which are enjoyed by half a million people a year. You will also be the first to hear about my new courses, webinars and workshops, as well as my new book, when it is published in 2026. Also check out my Insight Timer collection, for a wide range of practices, most of which are free or donation-based.

I hope you find the help you are looking for from me or the many brilliant therapists and teachers globally, all of whom are dedicated to helping heal people struggling with the legacy of trauma. As I always tell my clients: Whatever you have been through in your life, it is never too much and never too late to heal.

Love ❤️

Dan

Why Attunement is Crucial for Children (and Parents too)

As a trauma therapist, I hear some truly awful stories. Very sadly, some of my clients endured the worst kinds of childhoods imaginable – and, as adults, find day-to-day life a real struggle, because the wounds of their childhood are so hard to heal. When we hear the word ‘trauma’, these are the kinds of experiences we think about, but it’s important to understand that much milder, albeit highly painful experiences, also shape children’s personalities in surprisingly powerful ways.

I’m currently writing a book on healing childhood trauma (not due to be published until 2026 I’m afraid, but watch this space for details), so am thinking about these kinds of problems non-stop. What is it that causes childhood trauma? Why are some kids profoundly affected by seemingly quite mild problems in the family? How much of that is nature and how much nurture – meaning, are these vulnerabilities primarily genetic, because of the parenting we receive, or a mixture of the two?

There is obviously a lot to talk about here and the answers to these questions are nuanced and complex – that’s why I’m writing a book about it! But I would like to focus on one key idea for this post, which is the concept of attunement. This refers to the ability of your caregivers to attune to you, from birth onwards. The focus here is often on the mother-baby relationship, because our mother is often our primary caregiver, especially in our early years (if someone else fulfilled this role for you, like a father, older sibling, grandparent or adoptive parent, please adapt the language to fit your experience).

How secure attachment forms

Let’s bring in a related concept, which is that of attachment. Ideally, your attachment bond with your mother would have been secure, helping you form a secure attachment style for the rest of your life. Research consistently shows that around 50 per cent of children are lucky enough to experience this, while the other 50 per cent normally have either an avoidant or anxious attachment style. If you were one of the lucky ones who experienced secure attachment, being in your mother’s arms would have felt like the safest, most delicious place in the world. (There’s a reason researchers call this state attachment bliss, because it feels wonderful for both the little boy or girl and their attachment figure).

She would have fed you, kept you clean and dry, comforted you when you cried and entertained you when you were bored. This is how secure attachment forms, because you would have felt warm, happy and deeply connected to her, with an in-your-bones kind of trust and safety. And attunement is the skill your mother would have needed for that secure attachment to form.

That would have meant attuning to you, on a moment-by-moment basis, to figure out what you needed. Especially in your pre-verbal years, this would have been tricky, because of course you couldn’t let her know whether you were too hot/cold, hungry, wet, bored, needed a nap, scared of the dog, dazzled by those bright lights, overstimulated from too much play, mad at your brother for stealing your favourite toy, or whatever else may have been going on in your little mind and body. As any parents out there know, learning to interpret what your baby’s noises, movements, body posture and facial expression means is no easy task!

But good-enough mums – and dads too, of course – are able to attune to their baby, learning their language before they have the power to express it with words. And when your caregivers were not able to attune in this way, I’m afraid it can be subtly but profoundly hurtful and cause lifelong problems. I call it a subtle ‘missing’, when your mother doesn’t really listen to you, is always a bit distracted or simply lacks this crucial parenting skill, probably because she never received it from her mother when she was little.

The impact of feeling unseen

Think about that: not feeling seen, heard, understood or validated over and over again, thousands of times throughout your childhood and adolescence, into your young adulthood and probably right up to this moment. One of my mentors called this ‘the air we breathe’ as children – not something bad that only happened rarely, but a lack of warmth, kindness, care or attention, happening all the time in your family.

So if you now struggle with low confidence or self-esteem, have negative self-beliefs about not being good enough, likeable or lovable, find intimate relationships baffling and unsatisfying, or feel like there’s a big hole in your chest that can never be filled, no matter how much love you get as an adult, this subtle but repetitive missing could be the reason.

If you are struggling, you might find my Insight Timer practice, Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation, helpful. This guided imagery practice will help you take in positive new feelings and nourishing beliefs that will help ease that feeling of not being enough, in some way. Repeated exercises like this, perhaps alongside the help of a skilled therapist, will start to undo the years of misattunement you experienced as a child, and so help you feel more confident and build a sense of inner peace, warmth and self-compassion, which you so deserve.

Love,

Dan ❤️

What Can We Learn from Autumn? That Life is Beautiful, But Impermanent

Image by Jeremy Thomas

What’s your favourite season? They all have their pleasures and joys, but for me it’s a toss-up between spring and autumn. Spring is hard to beat, especially after a long, dark winter. The vibrancy and effervescence of life bursting forth as the first green shoots appear, the frothy joy of blossom, that delicious day when your winter coats get banished to the back of your wardrobe. Who doesn’t love spring?

But autumn is surely close behind. The colours – the colours! Even in my decidedly urban slice of north London (well, for now anyway) the roads are lined with trees clothed in glorious shades of yellows, oranges and reds. It’s just so lovely and keeps cycling through new palettes daily as the leaves morph from luscious green to lifeless brown, before drifting languidly to the pavement below.

As I often write in these posts, we have a great deal to learn from the man we call the Buddha, who lived in northern India 2,500 years ago. His teachings, wisdom and guidance on how to live a happy, meaningful life remain as fresh and true today as they did millennia ago. One of his core ideas was that of impermanence: that everything, including us, is in a state of constant flux and change. Like those beautiful leaves, nothing stays the same, however much we might want it to.

We are all connected

Another of the Buddha’s ‘three marks of existence’ is that of interconnectedness. As with all the Buddha’s teachings, this concept is a bit complicated and it’s easy to get lost down internet rabbit holes if you try to research it! What I think he meant is that all life is interdependent, none of us existing in isolation. Those trees on my street can only exist because the water cycle creates clouds and then rain, because there is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plants can breathe in (luckily for us, allowing them to breathe out oxygen), because there is just the right amount of sunlight, and so on.

Like the trees, we too are interdependent – on all living beings, but especially other humans. One of the sad things about our angry, polarised times is the idea that there is an ‘us’ and ‘them’, members of our tribe to be welcomed and cherished, while outsiders should be shunned and kept at bay. In reality, we are all ‘us’. You, beloved reader, are part of my family – if we traced our family trees back far enough we would reach a common ancestor, from whom we both descend.

On a more intimate level, we are interconnected with those in our immediate families, our colleagues and neighbours. Humans are tribal animals and we do well in loving, supportive connection with a web of other humans. This is one reason loneliness is so painful for us, because we are not designed by evolution to live alone. That’s why calm, loving people help soothe your nervous system, because your brain, nervous system, hormonal system and every other part of your body is designed for attachment, connection, relationship. Buddhists knew this long before Western psychologists discovered the idea that human-to-human attachment is key. (Of course, the idea of attachment is a tricky one in Buddhist theory, but that’s for another post).

Pain is inevitable, suffering is not

The third fundamental aspect of existence, according to the Buddha, was that of dukkha. This has many translations, but among the most widely accepted are ‘stressful’ or ‘unsatisfying’. Meaning, life is inherently painful and, unfortunately, we can’t escape that hard truth. I love autumn and don’t mind winter overly much, but many people I know just hate it. They struggle with seasonal affective disorder, their mood dipping with the temperature and light levels. For these folks autumn brings a tinge of dukkha, because it leads inevitably to winter, and so months of struggle before spring ushers light and hope back into their lives.

Although I have great compassion for anyone who struggles in this way, I do think it’s an example of the Buddha’s teaching about how humans turn inevitable pain into avoidable suffering. Some aspects of winter – cold, dark days; wild, destructive storms; leaden grey skies – are certainly painful. But suffering comes when we think ‘I just cannot abide winter – I wish it were spring!’ on 1st November. Thinking this way every day for months will of course lead to low mood, unhappiness and frustration, which could also be called suffering.

Instead, it’s far more helpful to remember that change is inevitable and a normal part of life. We are all connected, in countless magical webs of life, to the trees, each other and all living systems on Earth. And that pain – illness, ageing, loss, many things not being as we wish them to be – is also part of life. When we resist this, fight against it or fervently wish it was not so, it becomes suffering. Life is hard enough already without doing that to ourselves!

The practice

You might find my Mountain Meditation helpful, as a practice to experientially explore some of these Buddhist concepts. I adapted it from the brilliant Jon Kabat-Zinn’s guided meditation and it’s one of my most popular tracks on Insight Timer. A deep bow to him, for being at the forefront of the mindfulness revolution for decades – and helping millions of people experience the transformative power of mindfulness.

I hope it helps – and that you enjoy this glorious, ever-changing season as much as I do.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Why Calm, Safe People Help Soothe Your Nervous System

Image by Omar Lopez

How are you feeling right now? Take a moment to mindfully scan your body and just notice whatever’s going on, physically and emotionally. You may be feeling calm and peaceful, with relaxed muscles, a happy digestive system and slow, steady heartbeat. If so, that’s wonderful.

But you may not feel like this at all. As you scan your torso you may notice places of muscular tightness and tension, a racing heartbeat and a bloated, uncomfortable gut. If you’re in this heightened, uncomfortable somatic state, I’m guessing you also feel stressed, anxious and frazzled. You may also be a bit hyper, with a fizzing energy running through your body.

Or you may notice your body feeling heavy and slumpy, low energy and with limbs that feel like lead. You might be low in mood or depressed and feel spacey, detached or dissociated. Not a nice place to be.

All three of these feeling states correspond with branches of your autonomic nervous system (which does all the stuff out of your awareness to help your heart beat, keep you breathing, digesting food, avoiding danger and much more). The first state is called Ventral Vagal, the second Sympathetic and the third Dorsal Vagal. Anyone familiar with Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory will have a firm grasp of these somatic states, but if this theory is new to you, it’s a way of understanding your nervous system – why different parts of it get activated by certain triggers, how it functions to keep you safe in the world and how you can shape it to help you exist in that calm, pleasurable, mindful Ventral Vagal state more of the time.

Polyvagal 101

I have long been aware of Polyvagal Theory, but I am currently taking a deep dive into this brilliant model. If it’s new to you, or you need a refresher, I strongly recommend Deb Dana’s excellent book, Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory. She is a warm and insightful therapist who successfully translates Dr Porges’ complex and somewhat hard-to-grasp theories into everyday language. One of the many ideas to grab me in her book is that of neuroception, which is the way your nervous system perceives messages from inside your body, other people and the world.

Perception is the way your brain perceives your inner and outer world. It involves your sensory experience of the world, so what you see, hear, feel, taste and touch. Your brain then translates this information into conscious ways of thinking about these inputs, like: ‘Oh, she just smiled at me, which means she might be attracted to me, or maybe she’s just being friendly,’ or ‘I love that cologne, it reminds me of the one my dad used to wear. I must buy him some for his next birthday.’

Neuroception, on the other hand, is a subconscious process where your nervous system constantly evaluates your experiences, looking for cues of safety or danger. So that might look like: ‘Oh, she just smiled at me, which means she is friendly and so probably safe,’ or ‘What’s that horrible cologne? Oh crap, it reminds me of that bully in school. Time to get the hell out of here!’

In reality, this process is even faster than that, because thoughts like these are your conscious brain making sense of those cues of safety/danger and then creating stories about them. Your nervous system acts way faster than that, sensing these cues and compelling you to act – fighting, fleeing or freezing – before your thinking brain has any idea of what’s happening. This could look like you being startled and scanning anxiously for the source of a loud bang, or walking into a room, getting a bad feeling – the hair on your neck standing up – and then walking straight out again.

People who make you feel safe

Finally, one more idea that’s important for all of us, but especially those who have a trauma history, who have such a hard time feeling safe in the world. And that’s the way your nervous system is constantly looking for neuroceptive cues of safety/danger from every person you meet.

For example, I have long struggled with narcissistic people, because some of my more dysfunctional family members were very narcissistic, as were other hurtful people in my life. So my nervous system is exquisitely sensitive to cues of narcissism, from facial expression to body posture, voice tone and language. I jokingly call this my N-dar™ – it’s remarkable how sensitive I am to these folks and how much my nervous system/inner parts react around this personality type.

On the other hand, people who are kind, warm, gentle, compassionate, good listeners, mindful and thoughtful make me feel safe. That’s why I married someone with these qualities. Why my best friends are like this. And why I love being a therapist so much, because most of my colleagues exhibit these qualities, so I feel safe and happy hanging out with them.

The practice

Spend some time journalling about this. Think about the people in your life you feel edgy and uncomfortable around. This may be more of a ‘felt sense’ than anything conscious or obvious – your nervous system is just telling you: not safe. Spend some time writing about the ways they speak and behave that make you uneasy. Are they unkind? A bit loud? Do they interrupt you a lot? Do you feel like they’re not really interested or listening when you speak? Perhaps they stand, move or make facial expressions in ways that just feel a bit off to your nervous system. Maybe their values or political opinions really clash with yours. Whatever it is, just spend some time journalling about the things that make your nervous system say no to these folks.

Now think about the people in your life you like, love and have positive feelings toward. What’s that about? Are they kind, calm, soft, gentle, easygoing? Or maybe you like people who are a bit more energised and extroverted, if you’re wired that way. There is no right or wrong here, good or bad, it’s just helpful to understand what makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable with particular people. They might be generous, with their time, money or heart. Perhaps they have helped you in a time of need, giving freely with no expectation of receiving in return.

You may notice them treating others well, and that makes your heart feel warm. Perhaps they do a lot for charity, help elderly neighbours or donate to the food bank. These things might signal safety to your nervous system, which is why it says: safe. And why you then feel a strong yes towards them. Just spend some time writing about that and see where it leads you.

Finally, see how much time you spend with people who make you feel unsafe and how much with those who help you feel safe and are deeply drawn to. Is that balance right, or a bit off? What could you do, practically, to have more safe people in your life? That might mean choosing partners more wisely, shaking up your friendships, changing career or pursuing hobbies with like-minded folks. Remember that, especially if you have experienced trauma, you deserve to feel safe and happy in this world. You have suffered enough. And, as far as we know you only get one life, so try to live it in a way that brings you joy.

Life’s too short and precious to spend it with people who make you feel bad!

Love,

Dan ❤️

How to Embrace Change, Even if it’s Scary

How are you with change? Some people love it, finding new relationships and experiences exciting and invigorating. Others find change a bit scary, unsettling or discombobulating, preferring familiar places and comfortable routines. I think I have parts of me who like both – I am excited to learn new things all the time, enjoying the feeling of having my mind stretched and preconceptions challenged. But in other ways, I like things to be comfortable and familiar. I enjoy going to my favourite restaurants, drinking the same smoothie every day after the gym, watching beloved movies over and over.

My friends and family tease me about this, knowing how much I like these well-grooved, familiar patterns of life. But my wife, Laura, and I are now embarking on a major new adventure – moving to the country. It’s exciting, as we have been on the brink of this move so many times over the years. We are finally going for it, with a range of push factors meaning it’s time to leave our cosy little flat in north London; and various pull factors drawing us to the lush countryside of East Sussex.

So if you’re more on the change-avoidant side, here are three things I have learned from this unsettling-but-exciting process of moving house, which you may find helpful too…

Feel the fear and do it anyway

In the classic self-help book by Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision Into Confidence and Action, readers were encouraged to confront their fears, rather than letting them run their lives. Almost 40 years on, this remains good advice – if we let worry and anxiety control us, we would never do anything new or difficult and stay in a narrow comfort zone where everything was predictable and familiar.

It’s helpful to remember that, for all humans, uncertainty is anxiety-provoking, as is feeling out of control. This is why we constantly seek certainty and try to be in control of everything, even though this is clearly not feasible. One of the Buddha’s great insights was that we try to be in control of everything, which is impossible, so this search for control only creates more suffering – in this case stress, frustration and anxiety. I don’t know how it’s going to be living in a small town in East Sussex. I hope it will be enjoyable, that our lives there will find a new rhythm, that we will meet kind, like-minded people. But I have to embrace the uncertainty around that, accept the loss of control I have in my familiar environment, otherwise I will inevitably suffer.

Life is constantly changing, whether we like it or not

Another of the Buddha’s profound insights was that we seek safety, certainty and comfort by wanting things to stay the same. We don’t want to age, so we spend a fortune on anti-ageing products or cosmetic treatments in a desperate attempt to slow an inexorable process. We can no more fight growing older than we can control the tides. Western science now backs up the Buddha’s 2,500-year-old wisdom, helping us understand that everything, from the atomic level on up, is in a state of flux and change.

The more I accept that I am growing older – and that my life goes through stages, different relationships, homes, phases of my career – the calmer and more content I will be. Counterintuitively, accepting change makes us far more comfortable with it. Fighting change over which we have no power only causes suffering.

How might this apply in your life? Do you find yourself clinging on tightly to things that are, in actuality, beyond your control? How are you with ageing? Do you fight or embrace it? This is not to say that we should passively accept our fate and never try to grow or change, or resist destructive forces like climate change or injustice. But the old AA saying applies, that we should try to change what we can and accept what we can’t. Otherwise we inevitably suffer.

There are cycles and seasons to Life

Laura says she thinks in 10-year cycles of her life, which I think is characteristically wise. We have lived in this flat for around 10 years. And we lived in the last one for about 10 years before that. So maybe this next stage will last around a decade, then we can try something else, maybe somewhere else. And this is how life goes, no? We have the big, meta seasons of life: childhood, young adulthood, middle and old age. Other cultures knew this and people lived their lives accordingly. There were rituals, stories, rhythms to life. This shared understanding helped make ageing easier, as it was a communally shared flow, not an individual struggle.

What are the cycles of your life? Are they clear? This might be a good journalling exercise, to look back at your life in decades and think where you lived, who your friends/partners were in these different life stages, your values and goals, hopes and dreams. It’s interesting to see these change through life, even the things we thought were profoundly important to us or a bedrock of our existence when we were younger.

For example, I used to have a deep, burning desire to be a novelist. I even wrote three (unpublished!) novels when I was younger, had an agent and was on the cusp of becoming a published author, but it didn’t work out. Although that was painful at the time, I now see that this was how I learned to write – through the process of writing. This led to a first career in journalism and later as a psychotherapist who writes extensively, including posts like this one. I don’t think I will ever write another novel and I’m fine with that. Different life stage. Different season.

So as we start the somewhat gruelling process of packing boxes, clearing 10 years of unloved and unwanted stuff from our loft and all the other mundanity of buying and selling a property, although parts of me are nervous about all this change, most of me is excited, ready. It’s time for a new season – one which will, I hope, make us both happy. In the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. Watch this space to find out how it goes!

The practice

Whenever you feel anxious or stressed about change, it’s always helpful to breathe your way through it. This will calm and soothe your nervous system, giving you a little more mindfulness and non-reactive space in which to make a calmer, clearer decision. You can try one of my breathwork practices on Insight Timer, Ease Your Stress with Colour Breathing, which you can listen to now by clicking on the button below. I hope it helps.

Love,

Dan ❤️

To Find Greater Inner Peace, Let Go of Hate

Image by Mattia Faloretti

I have long been interested in Buddhism, both personally and professionally, because the Buddha’s teachings offer such a rich, deep seam of wisdom, knowledge, love and compassion. And you can draw on that wisdom even if, like me, you are not a religious person. It seems clear that the Buddha was a real person, living in northern India around 2,500 years ago. He was a teacher, psychologist and healer, who laid out a system of thought and principles for living that offered freedom from suffering – which all humans naturally seek, Buddhist or not.

Despite my longstanding interest, having been raised as an atheist, it’s hard for me to fully immerse myself in Buddhism. I don’t believe in the afterlife, heaven and hell, reincarnation or many of the more esoteric practices that some schools of Buddhism embrace. One of the best descriptions for my particular spiritual path is that I’m a ‘Buddhist atheist’, a term coined by the former monk and brilliant teacher Stephen Batchelor (if you haven’t read his books, I strongly recommend them – his Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is a great place to start).

But I do try to live my life according to the five Buddhist precepts, which are:

1. Not killing (anything at all, which is why most Buddhists are vegetarian).

2. Not stealing (anything from committing major fraud to avoiding paying tax).

3. Not misusing sex (having affairs, using pornography, being sexually inappopriate in any way).

4. Not engaging in false speech (not lying, essentially).

5. Not indulging in intoxicants (not drinking alcohol or taking drugs that lead to ‘heedless behaviour’, meaning saying or doing something you would not do when mindful and sober).

These deceptively simple guidelines are incredibly helpful if you are trying to live an ethical life, and be a force for good in the world. One of the many reasons I like Buddhism is that these precepts are guidelines, not commandments – it’s a good idea to follow them, but if you make a mistake there’s no need to beat yourself up. The Buddha would definitely not want that.

Try letting go of hate

We live in a world where hatred and anger seem to proliferate, from the many awful wars raging across the globe to the rise of the far right, hating, demonising and othering refugees and people of colour, the LGBQT community and anyone who seems somehow different to them. As I elaborated in a recent post about the far-right riots in the UK this summer, this fear gets ruthlessly exploited by unscrupulous politicians and other bad actors. On my less-optimistic days, I despair about the levels of anger and fear we see around the world.

But there is a small, positive act you can take, today, both to help yourself and create a ripple of positivity in your family, community, society and the world. And that is to delete the word ‘hate’ from your vocabulary. I did this a few years ago and it really seemed to help. As I adopted the five precepts and thought deeply about how I operated in the world, I started noticing how often I thought or said I hated things. Those unscrupulous politicians. Traffic. People who hurt animals. Racism. Violence. Bullying.

Just a constant stream of micro-hatreds throughout the day. Often in my own head, so the only person I was hurting was myself. The Buddha called hatred a ‘poison of the mind’. Such a powerful phrase, because if you think about what’s going on inside when you are hating, it really feels that way, doesn’t it? Hatred is a corrosive emotion that feels bitter, hostile, dividing the world into people or things that are good, lovable, to be embraced and approved of; and people or things that are bad, wrong, to be rejected and hated.

I really got what the Buddha meant, on a deep level, so I just stopped using the word hate, in my thoughts and speech. And I felt a little lighter. A bit less angry, frustrated and tense. With less of a tendency to see everything through binary lenses of good vs bad, like vs dislike. Even far-right politicians – who are definitely not my favourite people – are just scared. Scared of change, of losing power and control, of the beautiful and unstoppable forces of multiculturalism, progress and change. They know the world is changing and they really, really don’t like that, because it makes them feel powerless and frightened. So they use hate as a way to feel powerful again.

The practice

If you would like to stem the flow of poison in your mind, try changing your language today. Another simple change is to stop using any bad names about yourself, like stupid, weak, useless or failure. This is another poison, which constantly saps your self-esteem and self-worth. You are none of those things – you are a complex, beautiful, multifaceted human being doing the best you can to navigate this tricky thing we call life.

You have strengths and weaknesses, good days and bad, areas in which you thrive and others where you struggle. Just like me – and the eight billion other humans with whom we share the planet. Let go of hating others, but also let go of hating yourself. You don’t deserve it. In fact, as the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw says, ‘A person who deserves more love and affection than one’s own self, in any place or anywhere, cannot be found.’

I hope that helps. And that you have a blessed day.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How to Respond to the UK’s Riots? Meet Hate with Compassion

I have been watching with great sadness, shock and disbelief as the far-right have rioted in towns and cities across the UK over the last week. Today they will hold a rally near me, at a service helping immigrants in Finchley, which will no doubt descend into violence and chaos.

This violence breaks my heart in so many ways. As the descendant of Jewish immigrants – who fled persecution in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and found sanctuary in England – I know all too well the fear of being othered, attacked and persecuted that refugees across the UK must be feeling right now. This was so acute for my grandparents, who lived through the horrors of World War II, working for a Jewish charity helping those who fled Hitler’s terrible reign from across Europe. They, like most of us, would have believed that we had evolved beyond poisons of the mind like hatred and racism – and they lived in Finchley, so would be horrified to see this ugliness so close to their door.

These poor refugees, who have escaped horrendous conditions and oppressive regimes in countries like Eritrea, Afghanistan and Sudan, thinking they had found safety here only to be terrorised again. My heart goes out to them and I feel nothing but love and compassion for them and their children.

It’s also heartbreaking to see all this violence and hatred erupt in my country. And it’s hard to know how to respond, because the more primitive parts of our brains fire up when under threat and we too feel hatred and fury, wanting to demonise the rioters and seeking harsh punishment for them. And, of course, they should be punished – by the legal system, which they will be, as our new prime minister has made very clear.

But I also take this Martin Luther King quote to heart, knowing that if we respond with anger and hatred, nothing will ever be solved. Hatred begets hatred. Violence begets violence. Instead, I think we need to address the fear these men must feel, on some deep level. They feel threatened and scared – and this fear is easily manipulated by nihilistic politicians and other bad actors online. And their fear becomes anger and hatred, directed at ‘them’, who they think will take their jobs, harm their families, become the dominant culture.

But these refugees are just humans, like you and me. All they want is to live in peace, send their kids to school, work hard and pay taxes and contribute to their new community and society. And of course we need immigration – our NHS could not run without immigrant workers, for example, nor could our farms or transport networks – so we need to help people understand that. Let’s do everything we can to counter all this hate and misinformation with love, compassion – and firm boundaries, because of course it’s never OK to terrorise innocent people.  

If you would like to take compassionate action right now, I recommend donating to Refugee Action, who are on the ground helping those affected by these terrible events. You can donate now using the button below.

And if these events are making you feel anxious and unsafe – especially if you are a person of colour, an immigrant, Muslim or Jewish like me – sending you all my love and warm thoughts,

Dan ❤️

Stuck for Summer Holiday Reading? Try These Superb Self-Help Books

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If you’re lucky enough to have a summer holiday – and I very much hope you are – it offers many pleasurable changes from everyday life. No frazzling commute, boring meetings or stressful emails. Just that most precious of commodities: time. Days unfolding slowly as you move slowly from breakfast to beach, beach to lunch, lunch to beach, and so on. Dolce far niente, as the Italians say – the sweetness of doing nothing.

Amidst all this slothful bliss, one of my favourite things to do on holiday is read a book or two. I tend to read novels, as the holidays are the only time I’m not reading psychology books, but I might pack a self-help book or two just to mix things up. If you’re about to start packing and are stuck for holiday reading, here are my top three self-help books of all time…

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, by Dr Elaine Aron

I remember so clearly reading this for the first time, mouth agape, feeling like Dr Aron had written it just for me. Her groundbreaking theory that around 20 per cent of the population are Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), with exquisitely sensitive nervous systems, was life-changing for me. I had always known I was more sensitive than most people, but realising I was an HSP was deeply validating and helpful.

I especially like the way Dr Aron explains that being highly sensitive is just a neutral genetic trait, like having blue or brown eyes, blond or black hair. It’s neither good nor bad. But it does make life a real struggle, because it means you are far more affected by the noisy, busy, overly stimulating world than non-HSPs. I am very sensitive to bright lights, loud noises, crowds and strong smells. As a youth, I thought this was a sign of weakness, that I just needed to man up and – as I was told a million times – stop being so sensitive.

This book has been part of a long journey in embracing my sensitivity and realising that it also brings great gifts – of empathy, insight and the ability to attune to other humans. I couldn’t be a therapist without these gifts, so would never give up my sensitivity, despite the challenges it brings. I have recommended this book to so many clients, because I realised that most of my clients were also HSPs. They love it and I think you will too.

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness, by Dr Richard Schwartz

Regular readers of my blog won’t be surprised to see this one included. As an Internal Family Systems Therapist, I devour everything I can about this incredible model. But this book is my favourite because it explains IFS in straightforward language, and makes it incredibly easy to understand. It can be a tough model to explain, or sell to sceptical clients, so I often direct them to read this before we begin IFS therapy.

If you’re new to IFS, this is a great place to start. You will learn all about the different parts of us – both young, hurt parts and their protectors – as well as the existence of Self, a wise, loving resource we all possess, even if it gets hidden if we struggle with our mental health. Dr Schwartz is such a wonderful human being – he really embodies Self-energy, teaching and writing with wisdom, compassion and, above all, great humility. His warmth and deep insights really shine through in No Bad Parts – I hope you enjoy it and that it’s the start of a long, healing journey with IFS.

The Good Life and How to Live it: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness, by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz

I saved the best one to last – this is my favourite self-help book of all time. It’s so warm, moving and uplifting I just can’t recommend it highly enough. Written by the programme directors of the 80-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development, this book is brimming with insights about what it takes to lead a happy, fulfilling life. The study alone is remarkable – it began by enlisting 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 and has run ever since, expanding all the time to include 456 inner-city Boston residents, as well as 1,300 of the men’s offspring. It is the world’s longest-running study on human happiness.

I won’t give you all the study’s findings here, but the biggest takeaway is that of the many things you can do to lead a happy life, creating warm, supportive, loving relationships is the most important. The men, whose lives were pored over in regular interviews and questionnaires, reported that loving relationships were more important than money, status or success. And their wives and children backed this up.

The authors report all this data in a light, accessible way, including moving and inspiring stories of the men who found happiness and those who struggled. It’s just a lovely book, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I may even pack a copy to re-read on holiday!

Whatever you are doing this summer, I hope you find it nourishing and manage to recharge your battery. I think mine is on around 3 per cent right now! Have a great summer and look out for my next post in September.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Allowing Yourself to Rest is an Act of Self-Compassion

Image by Austin Schmid

I must confess, I’m not very good at resting. And in some ways, that’s a good thing. I have some extremely hard-working, driven, determined parts who have helped me achieve quite a bit in my career. Building a busy therapy practice over the past 14 years, training in a number of trauma-informed models, teaching meditation, writing, supervising other therapists and all the other things I love to do – those pedal-to-the-metal parts helped bring to fruition.

As I often say to my clients, working hard, being ambitious, having high standards for what you produce: these are all good things. The problem for them – and for me – is when hard work tips into a relentless, hamster-wheel existence, when work comes to completely dominate your life. And when those standards ratchet up from merely high to perfectionistic. When you feel like nothing is ever quite good enough, that you could always do more or try harder. When it’s difficult to feel any satisfaction or sense of accomplishment, no matter how much you achieve, because you’re straight on to the next goal.

The biggest downside of all this overworking is becoming exhausted, because the parts of you that drive you so hard may not know you’re human. With an all-too-human body and mind and nervous system, which all need to just, stop, sometimes. If this sounds familiar to you, I’m guessing you might also suffer from various physical ailments, like tension headaches, IBS, skin complaints, musculoskeletal problems and chronic fatigue. These are all ways for our body to communicate to us that we need to stop, rest, recharge. Otherwise, we risk burnout – or a much more serious illness, which is, sadly, common for those who charge relentlessly ahead, oblivious to their body’s increasingly urgent warnings.

It’s not your fault

For those readers in industrialised nations like the UK or US, it’s important to remember that our inability to rest is not just a personal problem – and certainly not your fault. We live in countries with capitalist economies and co-evolved cultures that esteem hard work, rewarding long hours both financially and with approving language like ‘grinding’ or having a ‘side hustle’. The rise of online working means we can now work anywhere, any time – it’s well documented that many workers now struggle to switch off, responding to emails and other messages from early morning to late at night, as well as at weekends.

And none of this is an accident, of course. Big corporations recruit and highly value employees willing to work long hours, soak up unhealthy levels of stress and give 24/7 commitment to the corporate cause. That’s why so many of my clients have worked in sectors like banking or law, where a relentless work ethic is the minimum expectation, causing untenable levels of stress and anxiety which lead them to my door.

It’s helpful to remember that humans are not designed to live this way. As I’m often writing in these posts, millions of years of human evolution designed us for a hunter-gatherer way of life (how every human on the planet lived until the Agricultural Revolution, just 10,000 years ago), with short bursts of intense activity (hunting, climbing trees for fruit or honey, scaring off hungry predators) followed by long periods of complete rest. We are designed to be either completely on – flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, muscles pumping, pushing our bodies to their limit – or completely off – blood rich with oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, digesting a meal, sleeping, singing and telling stories around a fire.

Rest = Self-compassion

Every system in your brain and body needs rest. You’re like an iPhone, designed to give maximum output for only so long before you need recharging. We can also think about giving yourself a much-needed rest as an act of self-compassion. Because another thing I always tell my clients is that their health and wellbeing need to move much higher up their list of priorities. If you have ever been seriously ill you will understand that if you don’t have your health, nothing else really matters. No amount of money, accolades or professional achievements can compensate for being so grindingly exhausted you can barely climb a flight of stairs. Or the vision-blurring, nausea-making suffering of severe tension headaches, day after day. Or the severe bloating and discomfort that come with IBS.

Your body and brain are the most precious, miraculous, beautiful things. Treat them with care and they will help you live a rich, meaningful, flourishing life. Take them for granted and, I’m afraid, life may be a bit more difficult, especially as you grow older – take that from a grey-bearded 56-year-old! Your health becomes a much more precious commodity as you age, because you realise both how valuable and fragile it can be.

So, let’s make a deal. Next month is August, when many of us take time off to rest and recharge. I have decided to take two whole weeks off this year, to see my friends and family, spend time with my lovely wife and son, journey to some wild places and breathe clean, fresh air while hiking through Nature. If this hard-working therapist can carve out that time, could you? I know for many of you that won’t be easy – you may well have family commitments, childcare worries over the summer, financial pressures or a whole host of other reasons rest is elusive.

But we can build short periods of rest into even the busiest day. Even on days I am back to back with clients, I always meditate and do some exercise before the busy-ness begins. I also try to take a walk at lunchtime and build in other short IFS or self-compassion practices throughout the day. Could you? I hope so – because you are a wondrous, unique being. There has never been anyone quite like you in millions of years of human history and there never will be. Value yourself enough to rest – let’s both give it a try and see how we get on.

The practice this week is my Sleep Meditation: Deeply Relaxing Body Scan. As the name suggests, it’s designed to help you sleep, but will also aid rest and relaxation whenever you need it. Try it now by clicking on the button below – I very much hope it helps.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Are You a Therapist Looking to Learn Internal Family Systems?

Image by Komsan Jitarmat

If you are a mental-health professional – psychotherapist, psychologist, psychiatrist or counsellor – interested in Internal Family Systems therapy, one of the best ways to learn this highly experiential model is to have some IFS therapy. As a Level 3-trained Internal Family Systems Therapist, I have opened up a few spaces in my online private practice for clinicians interested in learning this groundbreaking model from the inside out.

You may be completely new to IFS or have done some training in the model. I am happy to work either long or short-term, if there is a particular problem you would like help with. I’m also a highly experienced supervisor, drawing on a range of trauma-informed, parts-based models, so I can also help with consultations if you would like to view stuck points or countertransference issues through the lens of parts and internal systems – your own or your client’s.

If you are a clinician and would like to experience IFS therapy with me, email me at dan@danroberts.com

Warmly,

Dan

How to Resolve Painful Inner Conflict

Image by Jonathan Meyer

Have you ever felt like there is a battle raging inside? Feeling a powerful urge to do something, while an equal but opposite force urges you not to? This battle is often fiercest when we are trying to give something up, like comfort-eating food we know is not good for us, or trying to quit smoking. One force inside says, ‘Eat the cake!’ or ‘Just have one cigarette, you know you want to. You can always quit tomorrow.’

But the opposing force responds, ‘Don’t be an idiot! You know how much you want to lose weight before your wedding,’ or ‘Are you kidding me? You watched your grandpa die of lung cancer. How could you even think about smoking again?’

And this internal battle plays out, over and over. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. And it’s so frustrating, isn’t it? Whatever you do, it can feel like you’re at the mercy of forces more powerful than yourself. Eat the cake, don’t eat the cake. Just have one cigarette, don’t have a cigarette. And on it goes, until you’re exhausted from all the fighting.

When parts get polarised

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has a name for this battle – it’s called a ‘polarisation’. This means that two parts (or sometimes teams of parts) get polarised inside, trying to protect you with completely opposing strategies. Let’s look at this through the lens of someone trying to drink moderately, after years of problematic drinking.

Imagine you have, finally, taken steps to reduce your drinking. Your partner and family have been worried about you for years, but you resisted their entreaties to cut back, insisting you didn’t have a problem and drinking helped you blow off steam from your highly stressful job. Your doctor has also started expressing concern, after tests showed early signs of liver damage. After years of denial, you must face the truth: your drinking has become a real problem and if you don’t cut back, your relationships and health will suffer.

You go out for dinner with a friend on one of your newly designated sober days. Unfortunately, he is one of your old drinking buddies and thinks everyone’s making a big fuss about nothing. He orders a bottle of your favourite wine and, before you can stop him, pours you a large glass. ‘Cheers!’ he says with a mischievous glint in his eye, raising his glass for a toast. And the internal battle that has been raging for months starts up again.

Inside you hear two voices, one saying ‘Go on, what’s the harm? You know you’ll love it. And think about how stressed you’ve been all day. Your boss was a nightmare and you felt like you were having a panic attack in that big meeting. One glass will really take the edge off.’ With this siren song comes a powerful, visceral urge to pick up the glass and take a big gulp.

But another voice stops you. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ it says in a worried, urgent tone. ‘You know what the doctor said – keep drinking and you’ll end up with cirrhosis. Your wife will leave you and you’ll lose everything. And you’ll feel so ashamed after you drink it, won’t you? Like you’ve failed, yet again.’

See the polarisation? One protective part, which is called a Firefighter in IFS, wants you to drink the wine to numb out all the stress and anxiety of your day. The other protector, called a Manager, has the exact opposite strategy for avoiding painful feelings like embarrassment and shame. The irony is that both parts have the same goal – avoiding painful feelings – but try to achieve that goal using diametrically opposing strategies.

Who are they protecting?

Imagine an upside-down triangle, with these warring parts at the top two corners, pulling in opposite directions. And at the base of that triangle is another part – the one they are trying to protect. This is almost always a young, hurt little kid who is feeling all the painful feelings above: stress, anxiety and overwhelm about your job and potentially embarrassment and shame about drinking when you swore not to.

So this is the part who needs help. Sadly though, as long as we’re laser-focused on the protectors, we lose sight of the only strategy that will actually work, and end this war – identifying, connecting with and healing the hurt young part. There are many routes to this inner-child healing, but my favourite is following a number of ‘healing steps’ in IFS. After we heal this young part, we go back to the protectors and see if they are willing to give up their extreme roles – usually they are, which is great.

Next time you’re struggling this way, especially in an ‘addictive process’ involving the compulsive use of some substance or activity, think about the upside-down triangle. Remember there are at least three parts involved in the process, even if you can only see one. And remember that, at the root of your problems is a small, scared, upset or lonely child, who just needs comfort, love and a big hug.

If you would like to start working on any polarisations in your inner system, try my Fire Drill meditation. This is a highly effective way to approach one of these polarised parts with curiosity and compassion, rather than frustration and hostility. You can listen now, for free, by clicking on the button below.

I hope it helps – and sending you warm thoughts if you are struggling right now, for any reason.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Harnessing the Healing Power of Self-Energy

Image by Daniel Mirlea

How do you feel on your best day? When everything just seems to flow, you feel calm and steady, dealing with life’s stressors without getting blown off course. A day when you feel – perhaps unusually, if you struggle with your mental health – that life is good. It may not be a whole day, of course, but even a good hour. An hour where you feel calm, wise and compassionate. Where you are glad simply to be alive.

This state of calm, grounded, authentic aliveness, is one we all aspire to. It’s why you’re reading this post, right now. It may be why you engage in therapy, read self-help books or meditate. When you taste it you want more, because it just feels so good. But it’s also elusive – very few humans feel this way all the time, unless they are enlightened. The Dalai Lama seems to embody this energy every time I watch him speak, but he wakes up at 3am and meditates for two hours every day, which is perhaps too much dedication for most of us!

If you struggle with your mental health in any way, and especially if you have experienced trauma, feeling this way even fleetingly may seem even more out of reach. If so, I’m sorry – it’s incredibly hard to live that way. But I also have good news, even if this calm, grounded state feels impossible to attain right now. Internal family systems (IFS) teaches us that everyone has an inner resource they can learn to access, with a little help. In IFS this resource is called your Self, and the energy this Self generates is known as Self-energy.

The idea of Self is not a new one

Although IFS was created by Dr Richard Schwartz in the 1980s, this notion of an inner resource is not new. In fact, every religious tradition has a similar idea, even if it has different names. As an atheist, I have long struggled with that notion, but the tradition I am most drawn to is Buddhism, which calls this inner resource Buddha Nature. You could also think of a life force, both in Nature and inside all living beings, which has an innate drive to health. The same force that heals your cuts, regenerates your cells, cleanses toxins from your bloodstream and removes viruses before they make you sick could be seen as Self-energy.

The only difference is that this energy is psychological, healing your trauma, wounds from the past and, through an IFS lens, your hurt young parts, who carry all of that old, unprocessed hurt. Self-energy is the only resource in you that can heal your hurt parts, or the ones who sometimes go to extreme lengths to protect them from further hurt. This is the arc of IFS therapy – and in fact of all therapies, whether that’s the overt goal or not.

The thing is that, as Dr Schwartz says, until you experience this for yourself it’s all just words. So I would encourage you to try the meditation below, or one of my other IFS practices on Insight Timer. You will also find meditations by Dr Schwartz there, as well as other leading IFS practitioners. Give them a try and see what you think. I hope you will enjoy them – and that you will be able to start accessing more and more Self-energy in your day-to-day life.

And if you would like a taste of Self-energy right now, try my Insight Timer practice, Accessing Healing Self-Energy, by clicking on the button below.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Vote for Hope. Vote for Kindness. Vote for Compassion

This is a post about how to save democracy. It is also a post about kindness and compassion. And about how to create a better world.

We live in challenging times, as humanity faces an unprecedented array of problems. Biggest among these is the climate crisis, which makes all other problems we face pale into insignificance. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels and treating the natural world like a resource to burn through, we are in big trouble. Linked to the global impact of climate change are problems like mass migration, rampant inequality, racism and other forms of ‘bad othering’, in which we look for simple solutions to complex problems, blaming groups of people we don’t like for issues that have nothing to do with them.

And all of these problems cause trauma, individually, societally and systemically. This is one of the many reasons I love internal family systems as a model, because it directly engages with these societal problems, aiming to heal not only individuals but, bit by bit, all of humanity. This may sound overly ambitious, but I passionately believe it to be both possible and essential. The rise in populist parties around the world is driven by fear, which is then exploited by unscrupulous politicians. If we can help more people – and their frightened parts – become less scared, more loving and accepting, we can fix our broken politics too.

Vote for humanity

That’s why I am urging you to vote in the general election wherever you live. If you’re in France, please vote on Sunday to keep the far-right out of power. For those of us in the UK, this Thursday I would encourage you to vote Labour, or for the progressive candidate best placed to win where you live. If you’re in the US, choose the Democrats come November (and yes, that may mean Joe Biden, with his many faults and frailties).

I am passionate about politics, because to me there is no separation between mental health and trauma, and wider social issues – they are completely intertwined. I was raised by parents who dedicated their lives to social justice, feminism, climate activism and improving the lives of those who were suffering. I have always followed their lead and done all I could to advocate for politics of love, kindness, fairness and justice. That said, I have complete respect for those who disagree with me and choose to vote differently – that’s what democracy is all about, after all, which is why it’s so precious.

But I think most people reading this would like a kinder, fairer, more compassionate world. One in which everyone had the chance to live in peace, to feed and house their family, for their children to be happy and safe. A world in which we cherished and lived in harmony with the natural world. And one in which we could co-exist peacefully, respectfully, tolerating our differences, not hating any person or group because they are ‘them’ and we only care for ‘us’. There is no them and us, just billions of humans who, as the Dalai Lama would say, all want to be happy and do not want to suffer.

Vote for a better world

I know that no political party is perfect. Certainly none of the ones I am advocating in this post. Our leaders are flawed, imperfect human beings – just like us. So I would also urge you to choose a good-enough party and good-enough leader. Remember your vote is so precious, hard-won by our ancestors who fought and died to protect freedom and democracy. Squandering that right is a disservice to those brave souls.

So please vote this week, in November or whenever your country’s elections are held. Vote for love. Vote for peace. Vote for a better world. And if you’re not happy with the choices your leaders make on your behalf, shout loud and clear so they can hear you and change direction. But opting out of voting is not the answer, because that lets the forces of darkness win. They are gathering strength around the world right now so we all need to do everything we can – peacefully – and vote, donate, sign petitions, organise and march to protect our freedom and human rights.

Thank you for reading – and for your support, as ever. It means the world to me.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How to Comfort Your Inner Child

Learning to comfort your inner child is key to self-soothing, especially if you are feeling stressed, anxious, upset, or some other strong emotion. In my brand-new practice – How to Comfort Your Inner Child: IFS Meditation – I guide you through a process of first connecting with, then calming, and soothing the little boy or girl inside.

This short, simple practice could be transformative, especially if you try it every time you are struggling in some way. Over time, you will establish a warm, loving connection with your inner child – and so begin to feel calmer, happier, and more at peace in your day-to-day life.

Try it now by clicking the button below or visit my Insight Timer Collection.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How is Trauma Passed Down Through Generations?

Image by Markus Spiske

As someone who specialises in helping people with childhood trauma, I have long told my clients that trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. This always made sense to me, when I heard someone’s story about the trauma or neglect they experienced in childhood, and the painful experiences of one or both of their parents, their grandparents, and so on. The pain clearly cascaded from one generation to the next.

Heartbreakingly, we can see this trauma being created before our eyes in war zones around the world, as well as countless angry, chaotic, impoverished, substance-abusing, harsh, cold or otherwise unhappy families all around us. As much as humans can be kind, loving, altruistic and compassionate, we can also treat each other with great cruelty. Sadly, these two forces – light and dark – do constant battle in our minds and souls. Too often the dark side wins.

But it remained a mystery to me to understand exactly how trauma moved between generations, until I read a brilliant book by Mark Wolynn recently – It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. Wolynn is a family therapist and explains the various mechanisms through which trauma passes along a human chain, from parent to child, through the ages.

Some of these mechanisms are common sense – for example, if your father had a terrible childhood and grew up to numb his pain with alcohol, his drinking will almost certainly inflict suffering on his own family, especially his children. He might come home from the bar in a drunken rage, being violent to his wife and children, smashing up the living room before passing out in a stupor. Clearly, his traumatic childhood shaped the man he became, who then inflicted suffering on his poor, traumatised wife and kids.

The genetic inheritance of traumA

Wolynn also explains the way trauma gets expressed through your parents’ genes, which is somewhat mindblowing but also makes sense if you think about it. Let’s say your mother grew up in a high-stress, high-conflict family environment. Her bloodstream would have been awash with stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, her fight-flight-freeze response would have been triggered on a daily, if not hourly basis, her brain and nervous system would have been dysregulated and on high alert for danger, all the time. Then she grew up, traumatised child becoming a traumatised adult, got pregnant and passed her genes (as well as your father’s) on to you, as you grew from a collection of cells into a baby in her womb.

In evolutionary terms, to optimise your survival your gene expression (which of those inherited genes were switched on and off) would have prepared you for a stressful, hostile world. It’s like you were born ready to survive, prepared for a dangerous environment, not a calm, placid, happy one. And that is how trauma gets handed down genetically, because it shapes us to be hypervigilant, on alert, pre-stressed before we even encounter anything stressful. Your genes created a little human born ready for battle, not peace.

You can break the chain

Something I also tell my clients is that, although their trauma was passed down a long chain of ancestors, they have the power to break that chain. And you do too. Because if you get help from a skilled trauma therapist, you can heal the wounds of your childhood trauma, so you choose not to pass them on to your children and grandchildren. This is vitally important, because we can help the forces of light in our world flourish, bringing an end to senseless war, violence and cruelty, by healing the world’s trauma – starting with our own.

Like a ripple in a pond, your healing profoundly shapes your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and on through the generations, forging a chain of healing, not harm. We live in a time of such enormous challenges – escalating war, rampant inequality, climate change and more – that it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to promote peace, harmony and flourishing for every human on this planet.

Let’s all break that chain, starting today.

Love,

Dan ❤️

What Happens to Your Body When You Repress Emotions?

Image by Kira auf der Heide

I have never understood Western medicine’s separation of mind and body, as if they are two distinct entities. How can this make sense? Your mind is generated by your brain, an organ in your body. Your moods and emotions are regulated through the production of hormones. And you feel those emotions, where? In your body, usually in your chest and gut but also in the flushing of your skin, tensing of muscles or clenching of your jaw. In countless ways, both large and small, your mind and body are intertwined. In fact, it’s more helpful to think of mind-body symptoms and experiences, combining rather than artificially separating them.

Your mind, brain, nervous system, hormonal system, organs, musculoskeletal and many other systems all work together, every second of your life, to help you think, speak, move, digest food, sleep, breathe and countless other things beyond your conscious awareness. So you are a system, or rather a system of systems. All, ideally, working as one.

This helps explain the impact of your thoughts and emotions on your body, something which is explained with customary skill and clarity by Dr Gabor Maté, in his seminal book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. I am currently re-reading this book and finding it gripping, because Dr Maté makes such a strong case for the impact of both chronic stress and emotional repression on the body.

Why we repress emotion

I have explored the impact of chronic stress in numerous recent posts, so today let’s focus on the all-too-common problem of emotional repression. As with so many of the problems we experience as adults, this repression usually begins in childhood – and often as the result of trauma. If you’re told, again and again, that you are too emotional, too sensitive, naughty, or difficult when you get sad, scared, angry or hurt, over time you will learn not to show those emotions, especially to the person who is shaming and criticising you for having them. At the same time you might be praised and complimented for being rational, grown up, nice, sweet or caring, as long as you maintain a sunny, compliant, smiling disposition.

So you learn to swallow your emotions, bit by bit. For many of my clients the most common emotion to be repressed in this way is anger, which was deemed too much, too intense, and generally unwelcome in their family of origin. Over time, this emotional repression also serves to repress other systems in the body, especially your immune system (remember that these systems are interlinked – make changes in one and you inevitably affect the others). So your immune system becomes compromised, leading to a whole host of ailments, from vulnerability to viruses and infections, to skin complaints like eczema, migraines, digestive issues like IBS or acid reflux, and more serious autoimmune diseases such as MS, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

It’s important to be clear that, if you are suffering with any of these ailments or diseases, it’s not in any way your fault. I have a number of them myself, so I’m not blaming anyone – including myself – for their struggles with physical health. Also important is that there are a whole host of other reasons we become ill, from genetic inheritance to our diet, sleep, smoking, alcohol consumption, toxic chemicals in the air we breathe and water we drink. It’s just helpful to understand that chronic stress in general, and emotional repression in particular, clearly have an impact on your physical wellbeing and mine – so we should do all we can to address these problems.

The practice

Because so many of my clients struggle with their emotions, in a whole host of ways, I created this practice to explain, in a step-by-step way, the optimal way we should feel, process and release our emotions. It’s called The Four Fs and you can listen to my talk and practice in my Insight Timer collection.

Many clients have told me they found it useful in understanding how they were supposed to feel emotions, how to notice them in their body, release them and then find comfort, for example with a soothing hug. I hope you find it helpful too – and do check out Dr Maté’s book. He is a remarkable teacher, so if you haven’t soaked up his wisdom yet, I strongly recommend that you do.

Love ❤️

Dan

Are You in the Washing Machine of Confusion?

Image by Jeremy Sallee

So, I’m writing a book. Or, to be more accurate, I was writing a book and now have a whole host of options – a veritable library of potential books – whizzing through my mind. For reasons too complex to go into here, I started writing a self-help book, had a potential publishing deal on offer and had the book all mapped out from first chapter to last, but it didn’t work out. So now I have to figure out what to do next. Do I write that book? Some other version of it? Or one of the many other books I would love to write, some of which have been slowly gestating in my head for years now.

It’s confusing. And hard to choose the right path, as whichever book I eventually choose will take intense focus, a great deal of hard work and creativity – and probably a year of my life. It’s not a decision I want to take lightly. So for now, I am very much not writing a book. I am, as (my wife) Laura and I call it, in the Washing Machine of Confusion.

What’s that? Well, it’s a metaphor which viscerally describes the discombobulating, confusing and decidedly uncomfortable sensation of having to sit with not-knowing, not-deciding, not-being-certain about the road ahead. Definitely not fun, but sometimes it’s the best place to be.

Why humans hate uncertainty

The reason we both find the Washing Machine so uncomfortable is that, like most other humans, we don’t love uncertainty. I think, as with so much of what goes on in our brains, the reason for that goes back millions of years, when the architecture of the human brain was being shaped by evolution. And for most of that time, we lived in hard, hazardous environments, where other creatures/humans were trying to kill us, food was often scarce and even minor medical problems could be fatal.

So for our ancestors, being uncertain, unsure, feeling in some way out of control, all felt dangerous, because they were. If you didn’t know what lay around that bend in the path, it might be a hungry leopard. If you couldn’t tell whether that squiggle on the ground was a stick or a snake, you might tread too close and get bitten. And that would be the end of you.

Life was so hard, and so precarious, that you would want to be damn sure of as much in your environment as you possibly could. And so our fear of uncertainty was born. Which is why uncertainty makes you anxious, while being certain makes you feel safe. And feeling out of control can be horrible – especially if you’re prone to worry and anxiety – while being (or, rather, imagining that you are) 100% in control helps you feel calm and secure.

Why the washing machine is bad/good

The Buddha taught that this is how human brains operate – they seek certainty, try to be in control all the time, for the above reasons. But he also taught that this is how we create suffering, because you can’t be certain and in control all the time. It’s an illusion – like the idea of perfection. Doesn’t exist, except in the human mind. The more we try to chase after or cling on to it, or think that’s the only way we can feel calm and safe, the more anxious and stressed we become.

So with my book dilemma, a part of me wants to just make a decision. Now! Just start writing! But my wise, mature, big-picture-seeing Self knows that’s not a good idea – and has led to poor decisions in the past. Instead, I need to sit in the Washing Machine, tolerate the discomfort of not knowing, let my unconscious work away at the various book ideas until my path becomes clear.

If you struggle with this – and find yourself in the Washing Machine right now – you might find the idea of taking a mindful pause helpful in making better, more considered decisions. Here’s a practice I created for Insight Timer on that very subject: Learn How to Take a Mindful Pause. You can access it using the button below.

I hope it helps – and that you find your way out of the Washing Machine soon.

Love ❤️

Dan