How to Develop a Compassionate Mind

Image by Hari Nandakumar/Unsplash

How do you feel about the person you see in the mirror? Do you like them, love them – or loathe them? Are you kind and compassionate to yourself, on a consistent basis, or do you treat yourself harshly, jumping on every perceived flaw and failing? If you’re like most of my clients, very sadly you are probably more prone to harshness than healthy self-appreciation. And if that’s true, how do you go about changing it? Is it even possible to develop a kinder, more compassionate way of relating to yourself?

These thoughts have been uppermost in my mind recently, as I research the chapter on self-compassion in my new book. As well as bringing in all the techniques and ways of thinking I have used with hundreds of clients, I am re-reading some brilliant psychology books and drawing on the wisdom and richness of leading figures in the field. As part of this highly enjoyable research I just re-read The Compassionate Mind, by Professor Paul Gilbert. It’s a brilliant book and I strongly recommend reading it, if you haven’t already.

Prof Gilbert is the founder of compassion-focused therapy, a warm, wise approach that combines the best of Western psychology with the 2,500-year-old healing methods of Buddhism, especially the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan school. In Buddhism, compassion is just one of a number of positive mental states that can be generated, along with metta (loving-kindness) and equanimity (having a sense of resilience and balance). This idea, that these are skills which can be learned and then developed over time, is such a positive, hopeful one. It helps us all remember that compassion – for yourself and others – is always accessible, if you learn to mine the rich seams of your heart and mind.

Old brain vs new brain

Prof Gilbert draws on evolutionary psychology to explain that one reason we end up so self-critical, depressed or anxious is because we all struggle with an old vs new brain battle inside our skulls. Your old brain is ‘subcortical’ – structures that are not dissimilar from a lizard’s, or cat’s brain. The new brain is your cortical layer, which is uniquely well-developed in humans. As I wrote about in my last post, much of the world’s current volatility can be explained by what Prof Gilbert calls old-brain emotions and drives being implemented by new-brain capabilities.

For example, if you feel jealous rage at some guy speaking to your girlfriend, that’s old-brain stuff – powerful, territorial, protect-what’s-mine emotions and drives. If you then go on Facebook, find out the guy has a small business and leave a bunch of one-star Google reviews, that’s your complex new-brain capabilities doing the old brain’s dirty work!

But we can also use all the wonderful skills and capabilities of your new brain to do what Prof Gilbert calls ‘compassionate mind training’. Because your miraculous, sophisticated, high-powered cortical brain also has seeds of kindness, altruism, love, prosocial behaviour and compassion, which can be nurtured so they grow and become ways of thinking and feeling you can use all the time, especially when you need them most.

Compassion in action

Let’s take another example. Let’s say you get some bad news, like hearing a beloved old friend has a life-threatening illness. It comes out of the blue and is a real shock – this is a young, healthy guy so you feel like a rug has been pulled out from under you. And you’re feeling some mixture of sad, upset, shocked and anxious about his chances of getting well again. If you have been developing a compassionate mind, you might pause and do some deep, calming breathing. You could mindfully scan your body and notice what you’re feeling.

You could then gently place a hand over your heart, feeling the soothing, supportive touch. And then think kind, compassionate thoughts like, ‘I really feel your suffering right now – this is hard, isn’t it? And that’s totally understandable, you really love your friend and are worried about him, of course. Just let yourself feel whatever you are feeling right now, that’s OK – but know that you’re not alone. I’m here, I care about you – and I’ll help you get through this.’

And using the power of your compassionate mind, you may just notice yourself feeling a little calmer, a bit steadier and more grounded. Those painful, contracted feelings may soften a little. Soothing brain chemicals like endorphins and oxytocin might start flowing into your bloodstream. Tight muscles may start to relax. These are all science-backed benefits of practising self-compassion in this way. And then, of course, you would be much better resourced to call your friend and offer him love and support in his hour of need. Compassion for you leads to greater compassion for him.

I hope you find that helpful. Self-compassion is such a wonderful, healing skill that it’s a key strand of my integrative trauma therapy approach. And I have developed many self-compassion practices for my Insight Timer collection, which will help you develop it. The Compassionate Friend Meditation is one of my favourites, so do click the button below if you’d like to practice now.

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 ❤️

Let Your Heart Relish the Return of Spring

Image by Aaron Burden

Looking out of my study window, it’s a beautiful sunny morning. Birds sing. A few fluffy white clouds drift across the piercing blue sky. It’s still mid-February and I know we’re not quite there yet, but you can feel spring in your bones on a day like this. After a long, chilly winter, I think we’re all ready for the warm, light, hopeful days that are just around the corner.

It feels especially poignant for me, emerging from the fog of Covid after a grim couple of weeks. I feel, mostly, human again and am relishing the small, taken-for-granted pleasures of life. A whole night without coughing. Enjoying my morning coffee without it irritating my throat, leading to, you guessed it, more coughing. A short, gentle workout. So simple, yet blissful. Like my inner spring after two long weeks of winter.

Something I often work on with my clients is how to notice and appreciate the many joys of life, as well as the tough times. My recent post on gratitude offered some evidence-based ways to do that, but this one is about balance, allowing yourself to feel and experience whatever may be true for you, moment to moment. Good and bad, light and shade, winter and spring. It’s all part of the natural flow of your life.

The rainbow of emotions

One of my favourite metaphors for this experience of mindfulness, of aliveness, is the rainbow of emotions. So think of your emotions like a rainbow, ranging from dark colours on one side (sadness, hurt, fear, anger, grief, loneliness, shame) to light on the other (joy, love, excitement, pleasure, pride, satisfaction). In order to live a rich, meaningful human life we need to feel the full rainbow, from the dark stuff that no-one likes to the lighter shades we all prefer.

And what I notice in almost everyone I work with (as well as myself) is that the experience of trauma in childhood makes us overly focused on those dark shades. We may not like these painful emotions, but we spend a disproportionate amount of time feeling them, worrying and ruminating about painful experiences, laser-focused on everything that’s bad, problematic, hurtful or threatening in some way.

And this is normal, because trauma skews our thoughts, perceptions and emotional states. It dysregulates our nervous system, making us highly prone/sensitive to threat-focused emotions like anger and anxiety. It affects our memory systems, making it much easier to remember painful, destructive experiences and harder to recall – or feel – the many good things in our lives. And a central task of healing from trauma is to be more balanced – feeling, processing and healing from the bad stuff, of course, but also enjoying, thinking about and becoming more receptive to the good.

Enjoy your inner spring

To make this concrete, I have two tasks for you. First, please start a journal, if you don’t write one already. And in your journal I want you to note every sign of spring, wherever you are in the world (if you’re in the Southern hemisphere, this won’t work so well for you, so skip this one and go for the meditation practice, below). This could be species of birds returning to your garden or local green space. It might be dear little snowdrops peeking out of the frosty soil, crocuses, daffodils and other hardy souls braving the chilly mornings.

Notice the sun rising a little earlier each day, and setting a few minutes later. Feel the increasing warmth of sunlight on your skin, as the sun regains its life-giving power. One of the most joyful sights for those in the country is the arrival of lambs, bouncing and frolicking across the fields. If that’s you, drink in every delicious, life-affirming moment.

And as you notice and focus on every sign of spring, see if you can also notice a gradual uplift in your mood. Remember that, despite our increasingly high-tech, urban lives we are still animals, creatures of this Earth, responding to subtle changes in the seasons as much as the migrating birds or dormice emerging sleepily from their winter nests. Just as our mood naturally dips in winter, so it lifts in spring. Notice, maximise and enjoy that, as much as possible.

Task two is to try my Insight Timer practice – Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation. It’s all about gradually changing a negative mindset, choosing a positive self-belief, feeling and quality to embody and bring into your life.

I hope you enjoy it – sending you hopeful love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Being Grateful for the Little Things Will Transform Your Mood

Image by Rosie Kerr

I thought I was one of the lucky ones. Since the start of the pandemic, I had never had Covid – not once. My wife and I had a certain smug glow, telling people, ‘Well we have never had it. Aren’t we lucky!’ And then, finally, those ingenious little microbes found a way in. We both got it, my wife a couple of days before me. And it hit us hard – last week was a write-off.

But this is not a post about Covid, or sickness. It’s about what comes next. Because as we emerge from a week of feverish coughing and spluttering, it’s like waking up after a long, dark night. And realising there was all this beauty, this wonder, right outside the whole time, we just couldn’t see it.

This skewed view of things is fundamental to being human. The Buddha taught that we walk around in a dream, seeing things not as they are, but as we imagine them to be. We think we are defective, not good enough, less than others, but none of this is true. We may think that other people are mean, or selfish, or untrustworthy, but most people are kind, decent and good.

And we may believe that the most important things in life are material – money, fancy car, big house – but none of those matter overly much, once we have enough to be comfortable. What matters is love, warm relationships, a life filled with meaning and purpose. None of those things can be bought.

How gratitude lifts your mood

Yesterday, I finally left the house and went for a walk through our neighbourhood. It was a cold, grey, windy February day. In another mood, I might have looked around and thought, ‘God, this is a grim day. Winter is just miserable – I cannot wait for spring.’ And (no-brainer question of the day) what would have happened to my mood? Of course, it would have worsened. The wonderful Aaron Beck, founder of cognitive therapy, taught us this back in the 60s – that thoughts trigger emotions, positive or negative.

But because I was emerging, blinking, from my forced confinement, instead I looked around and thought, ‘My God, how wonderful to see the world again!’ What a joy it was just to walk, putting one foot in front of the other, taking in all the sights and sounds of my beloved neighbourhood. And then to walk to my favourite coffee shop, where my brain fog had lifted sufficiently to let me read a book. And to drink coffee! My heart sang.

Again, it’s kind of obvious that where we place our attention, as well as the meaning we make of our experience, has a profound effect on our mood. The Buddha knew that. Beck knew it. Plato knew it. He said, ‘Reality is created by the mind. We can change our reality by changing our mind’.

Positive psychologists like Martin Seligman know it – which is why he taught the mood-enhancing power of using techniques like the Gratitude Letter. This doesn’t mean that you should adopt some kind of Pollyanna-ish, good-vibes-only positivity, pretending everything is fine all the time. Because it isn’t – the Buddha also taught that to live a human life is to experience inevitable pain like sickness, ageing and the loss of loved ones. But he explained that we turn pain into suffering through our thoughts, our interpretation of the world.

Instead, we need to turn towards and accept painful things (like a week-long struggle with Covid, for example!). But we can still be grateful for so much. Life is full of light, beauty, wonder, awe and delight, as much as it is sadness, pain, hurt and disappointment. Light and shade. Day and night. Joy and pain.

So do check out Seligman’s gratitude exercises. You can also try my Hardwiring Happiness Talk & Meditation on Insight Timer, which is designed to help you notice, feel and maximise positive experiences throughout your day.

I hope you enjoy it – and sending grateful love from London ❤️

Dan

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

Image by Taylor Deas-Melesh

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

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

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

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

Why gratitude helps, even when it’s hard

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

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

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

The practice: finding reasons to be grateful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Do You Struggle with Low Mood?

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

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

• Living in poverty or poor housing

• Facing ongoing financial stress for any reason

• Misusing alcohol or drugs

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

• Loneliness or a lack of close and meaningful relationships

• Experiencing prejudice including racism, sexism or homophobia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sending love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Why Exercise is a Vital Ingredient of Good Mental Health

Image by Anupam Mahapatra

What are you doing, right now? I am fairly confident that you are sitting – and that you spend most of your day in that position, either at your desk, on the sofa, in a car or public transport, while eating your meals... I’m confident about that because in largely urban, hi-tech, 21st-century societies, it’s what most of us do, most of the time.

It’s what I am doing, as I write this. I will be sitting for the next four hours, as I work with people on Zoom or in my office. It’s also what I will do when I get home – in fact, I spend far too much time in a position that is completely unnatural for my body, which is a big reason for my ongoing musculoskeletal issues.

My body is not designed for this sedentary lifestyle. It’s designed for action, then complete rest, then more action, then more rest. Yours too. This was brought home to me as I watched the excellent new Netflix series, Chimp Empire. One thing that struck me as I watched the fascinating stories of everyday chimp life in the jungles of Uganda, was that they never really sat down, in the way we do – these chimps squatted or lolled about on their backs. And that’s what they do, most of the time.

When they are not resting they move, sometimes slowly but often explosively: running, fighting, climbing, competing for status. Chimps are either on – when they are completely on, powerful bodies springing into action – or off, when they are 100% off. Relaxed, sleepy, still, at peace.

Why sitting is bad for body and brain

Of course, chimps are our closest animal relative. We share a common ancestor, which lived about five to eight million years ago. From that ancestor one branch evolved into gorillas and chimps, the other into early hominids, from whom our species, homo sapiens, developed.

But our human ancestors lived much as chimps do – in small, tight-knit groups in jungles or on the savannah. And, like chimps, they were remarkably strong and athletic. In his seminal book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari points out that hunter-gatherers were as fit, strong and powerful as Olympic athletes.

They had to be, because they would spend days at a time tracking animals, running ultra-marathons each day as they followed their prey over vast distances. And when they got back to the cave, or stockade, with an antelope slung over their shoulder, they would rest – completely rest. Again, modern humans (including this one) do far too little of this – we are always on, over-caffeinated brains focusing obsessively on one screen after the next, hunting not for antelopes but information.

We know all this unnatural behaviour is not good for our bodies – it’s one reason for the recent explosion of diabetes and obesity in industrialised nations. But it’s also bad for your brain. That’s because every part of your body, from your brain, nervous and hormonal systems, to your muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones, your blood, organs and skin, is designed for one thing: to move.

Take stress as one example. If your stress response fires up – just as it did for our hunter-gatherer ancestors on a regular basis – everything in you gets ready for action. Your pupils dilate to focus on the threat, breathing gets fast and shallow to take in more oxygen, heart rate speeds up so blood can be pumped to the large muscles in your arms and legs, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood your body to give you strength, speed and stamina.

But we get stressed and we… sit. Everything in you says run, or fight, but you sit, which is not good for your body or brain. And that stress – designed to be a short-term, emergency response to life-or-death threats – becomes a chronic, low-level malaise that lasts for hours, or days, or even years. Not good.

The solution?

Happily, the solution for this complex set of problems is simple – just move. Walk, run, swim, cycle, ride a scooter, dance, garden, play sports, lift weights, do yoga, play with your kids, build things… Just move, however you are able and whatever you enjoy.

If you follow me on Instagram, you will often see photos of me in the gym, which is my favourite kind of moving. I love walking, too, which is slower and more mindful, but equally enjoyable. Many friends and colleagues have caught the cold-water swimming bug, which I completely respect but have so far resisted. Maybe one day…

Just find something you like and do that, preferably every day. You will feel fitter, stronger and more energised. Every aspect of your exquisitely complex mind-body system will work better. After you exercise you always feel good – about yourself too, with a sense of pride and accomplishment that’s hard to find from staring at a screen.

I have given you enough science for one post, but trust me that there is a vast research literature on the beneficial impact of exercise on chronic stress, anxiety, depression and any other psychological problem you may be struggling with.

I hope that helps – sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Are Magic Mushrooms a Magic Cure for Depression?

Image by Tania Malréchauffé

Depression is incredibly common – the World Health Organization estimates that around 280 million people suffer from it globally. In the UK, Mind says three in 100 people have depression in any given week, with eight in 100 suffering from mixed anxiety and depression (the most common form of mental-health problem in my country).

But, although we now have a range of effective treatments, many people experience repeated episodes throughout their lifetime. Why? I would argue that the reason depression often comes back is because of its most common cause. One study found that 75 per cent of the chronically depressed patients involved reported histories of childhood trauma.

As I often explain in these posts and my teaching, childhood trauma is incredibly widespread and, very sadly, makes us vulnerable to a wide range of physical and mental-health problems as adults, including repeated episodes of depression.

As someone who has a lived experience of depression and is passionate about helping people recover from it, I am always seeking the newest and most effective treatments available. That’s why I have trained in CBT, schema therapy, internal family systems and other evidence-based, trauma-informed models. I want as many tools at my disposal as possible, so I can best help the people who come to see me, often in great distress.

The psychedelic revolution

All of this explains my fascination with the recent research into psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. In fact, calling it recent is not entirely accurate. In the 1950s and 60s there was a vast amount of research done on the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs like LSD and mescaline for problems including alcoholism, before the US Government made this and other drugs illegal (it was President Nixon who, among his more famous errors of judgement, first launched the ill-informed and disastrous ‘war on drugs’).

Happily, this research began again in the 1990s and is now carried out at prestigious universities around the world. Australia recently became the first country to decriminalise MDMA and magic mushrooms for medicinal use – and an increasing number of US states, such as Oregon, have followed a similar path.

Why the renewed interest? Let’s take just one study as an example. In 2016, researchers from Imperial College London gave 12 people psilocybin, the active component in magic mushrooms. The people who took part had been depressed, on average, for 17.8 years. None of them had responded to standard antidepressant medication.

One week after taking the mushrooms, all patients experienced a marked improvement in their symptoms. Three months on, five patients were in complete remission. This is a truly remarkable result. These people, who had been suffering for well over a decade and had tried various medications, took a single dose of magic mushrooms and all of them felt better a week later – with almost half having no symptoms of depression three months after that.

Watch for yourself on Netflix

If you would like to know more, do watch Michael Pollan’s brilliant documentary series, How to Change Your Mind, on Netflix. Each episode explores a different drug – LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline – that is currently providing highly promising results for depression, as well as chronic anxiety, OCD, PTSD, addiction and more.

It’s important to be clear that I am not suggesting you just go and have a trip on LSD or magic mushrooms! That is definitely not a good idea – and could, potentially, make you feel a great deal worse.

We are talking about highly controlled medicinal use, where the drug is taken as part of a course of therapy, led by skilled mental-health professionals (when you take the drug skilled therapists stay with you throughout, guiding you through the experience and making sure you are OK). In this setting, though, the healing potential of these drugs is huge.

It’s not inconceivable that, in future, this may form part of every psychotherapy treatment. Some of my clients have already tried psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy and all had powerful and positive experiences. I intend to both try and train in it myself, at some point.

I hope you found that interesting, helpful and especially hopeful – because hope is a crucial element of recovering from depression.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Don't Miss My Overcoming Depression Workshop: 1st April in North London

Seek Out Moments of Beauty in Your Day

Image by Arno Smit

It may be freezing cold in London today, but spring is finally here. I know this, despite still wearing my winter-coat-hat-scarf-gloves combo, because of the blossom. Every afternoon, when I have a break between sessions, I take a long walk around my neighbourhood – and today everywhere I looked, glorious, vibrant, soul-nourishing blossom was popping and fizzing into life.

This is my favourite time of year because after a long, cold, gloomy winter, spring brings a surge of life, hope and positivity. ‘We made it,’ I always think to myself. Another tough winter navigated, as well as possible, and now the reward is all this colour and life. Plants, birds, insects, squirrels – everything roaring back into life after winter’s semi-hibernation.

When it’s hard to see in colour

And the best time to find ways of draining every drop of joy from all this life is actually when it’s hardest – when you are struggling with low mood or even a full-blown depression. Because when you’re low, it can be hard even to see the colours around you, let alone enjoy them. So you have to train yourself, bit by bit, to seek out and savour moments of beauty in your day.

Of course, another word to describe this would be mindfulness – and ‘experiencing your experience’, as Buddhist teachers say, rather than living entirely in your head, is a key element of mindfulness practice and courses like MBSR or MBCT.

Here are some of these moments, from an average Wednesday in my little north London suburb:

• I just watched a video, on social media, about a boy who has suffered far too much for such a small person. When he was rushed into hospital with sepsis and pneumonia, they discovered a brain tumour, which they removed through surgery and radiotherapy. As he was getting treatment, his father died suddenly (I am not ashamed to say that my eyes were welling up at this point)

  But this kid – a passionate, lifelong Everton fan – was on a tour of the ground when he ‘accidentally’ bumped into the whole team, including his hero, the Everton/England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford. He was overwhelmed with emotion – as was I! But he soon recovered and was kicking a ball about with his heroes. Oh lord, just a beautiful thing – he will remember that day for the rest of his life

• Outside a shop near my office, I saw two small girls hugging tightly on their way home from school, not wanting to say goodbye – despite their parents’ sleeve-tugging encouragement. They just loved each other so much! The next school day was an eternity away, so they kept hugging, pressing their little cheeks together. I shared a smile with one of the parents. And it was quietly lovely

• I moved on to another shop, a little further along the road, where we buy our fruit and veg. It’s called Tony’s Continental and is a family-run place that’s at the heart of our little community – if you are ever in East Finchley I strongly recommend it! I haven’t been there for a while, for various reasons, but when I said hello to one of the owners, he greeted me with such warmth and friendliness

  We talked about football, as men do, but football was just a conduit for conversation and connection. We were saying, ‘It’s great to see you and hang out,’ in that safe, male kind of way that sports-talk provides. So simple. So nice

• And, of course, blossom! So many trees just starting to flower, smatterings of pink and white lining the street. Cherry, plum, blackthorn, forsythia, daffodils bobbing their little yellow heads… These pops of colour and reminders that Nature finds a way, even in the urban environment where I live and work, really make my heart sing

Not easy, but important

I know that if you are feeling down, moments like this may seem elusive – or even impossible to find right now. It’s not easy, I’m painfully aware of that from personal experience. But I also know that making an effort to seek out these moments of colour, of humanity, of beauty in your day is a powerful antidote to depression. 

It reminds us that we are alive. That there is always hope, if we allow it into our minds and hearts. That even if today is rough, tomorrow might be better.

I hope that helps, a little – and if you are struggling, sending you love and warm thoughts, wherever you are in the world,

Dan

Do You Struggle With Low Mood? Come to My Overcoming Depression Workshop

If you struggle with depression, or care about someone who does, book your place on this one-day workshop with Dan Roberts, Psychotherapist and Founder of Heal Your Trauma. Overcoming Depression – How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful takes place on Saturday 1st April 2023, from 10.30am-4.30pm and is part of a series of regular webinars and workshops presented by Dan throughout 2023.

This event will be held at Terapia, a specialist therapy centre in the grounds of Stephens House, a listed house and gardens offering an oasis of peace and calm in the busy heart of North London. Terapia is a 10-minute walk from Finchley Central Northern Line station, with free parking outside. Stephens House offers an excellent cafe as well as beautiful landscaped grounds, which you can enjoy on your breaks.

This workshop has a limited number of free places available if you need them – or please choose the Reduced-Fee Ticket or Supporter Ticket options when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. All the income we receive from these events, after covering expenses, is invested back into the project so we can help as many people as possible with their mental health.

Overcoming Depression – How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful features a full day of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and regular opportunities throughout the day to put your questions to Dan Roberts, a leading expert on trauma, mental health and depression.

In this powerful, highly experiential workshop you will learn:

• What causes depression – and why it’s more helpful to think about ‘depressions’, because there are many possible reasons to get depressed

• The key role of core developmental needs – and why, if these were not met for you as a child, you will be vulnerable to depression as an adult

• How painful neural networks in the brain, ‘schemas’, play a fundamental role in both causing and maintaining depression

• The fact that, however bad it is and however long you have struggled, depression is not a life sentence – we now have a number of highly effective, trauma-informed therapy models that can help you

• Why research shows that self-compassion is a key part of the healing process for depression – Dan will teach you some key self-compassion skills in this workshop

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

Warm wishes,

Dan

If You're Feeling Down, Gratitude Might Help

Image by Marcos Paulo Prado

If you’re feeling depressed right now, let me start by sending you warm thoughts, because depression can be truly awful – as I know only too well, having struggled with deep, dark periods for many years. Thankfully, after a lot of therapy, a long-term meditation practice and many other forms of healing, I don’t really get depressed these days – or if I do get down, it’s only for a day or two, not the awful week after week of darkness that used to dominate my life.

So, again, if you are struggling with depression right now, please do seek help – especially if you’re feeling suicidal. See your doctor. Get help from a mental-health professional like me. You may also need antidepressants, which can be a lifesaver for many people dealing with depression. And tell your loved ones that you’re struggling, because trying to hide depression is never a good idea – and will 100% make it worse as it becomes a shameful secret squirming away inside you. Humans are verbal, storytelling creatures, which is why it feels good to talk about what’s troubling us.

As well as – crucially, not instead of – seeking help, there are a number of things you can to help yourself if you’re feeling down or depressed right now. That’s a key theme of my blog posts and teaching and why I founded my Heal Your Trauma project, because there is so much we can all do to improve our mental and physical health – much of which is free and available to you right now, if you feel able to take a small step towards lifting your mood.

What are you grateful for?

When my mood is a bit low (it does still get low sometimes, because I’m both highly sensitive and human), one of my go-to practices is changing my negative thought patterns by focusing on all the things I am grateful for in that moment. This helps change the messages playing on a loop in my head (‘God, I’m so tired/stressed/pissed off! Why is it still winter? So grey! And so damn cold! Life sucks’), which as I’m sure you know, can be overly negative, hopeless and disheartening when our mood is low.

I actually used this practice this morning, so here’s a sample of the things I found to be grateful for on a cold, grey, somewhat gloomy February morning:

• Unlike millions of people in this country struggling with the cost-of-living crisis, I had a nutritious breakfast this morning. I am so fortunate to be able to eat what I want and not worry about how to feed myself or my family

• I’m walking to work from my warm, dry home and will soon arrive in my warm, dry office. I didn’t have to sleep out in the freezing cold last night – I am so lucky not to be homeless, to have a job and an income

• I heard on the news this morning that yet another Russian missile has killed innocent people in Ukraine. It made me well up and my heart goes out to them and their families, but it also makes me realise how lucky I am to live in a peaceful, fairly stable country

• Everybody I love is healthy and safe right now

• I actually have people to love and who love me

• My health isn’t perfect, but my body is strong and I have no pain at this moment. Having lived with chronic back pain for years, that is such a blessing

• I have a wonderful wife, who is my life partner and rock

• My son is a remarkable, kind, huge-hearted young man – and I am so proud to see the person he is growing up to be

• Although I lost my father at a young age (which triggered all those years of depression), I have a loving, supportive mum who has been there for me through so many tough times in my life

You get the idea. This list is not meant to be boastful, or say how wonderful my life is, just to recognise that there is always something we can find to be thankful for, even when our mood has dipped and it’s a cold, grey winter’s day.

Building your gratitude muscles

Being mindful, grateful and appreciative of what we have is a foundational practice in many traditions, from the 2,500-year-old wisdom of Buddhist psychology, to newer psychological approaches like CBT and Positive Psychology. If you would like to bring a little more gratitude into your daily life, here is an excellent step-by-step guide to writing a Gratitude Journal from the wonderful Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

It’s important to note that being grateful for what you have is not about forcing a fake-positive, everything’s great! mindset. There are many reasons for us to struggle with depression, including a history of trauma, medical/hormonal/biological issues such as the menopause, being a refugee, living in a war zone, in poverty or suffering domestic abuse. We can’t just think our way out of these problems.

But whatever the cause of your low mood, it’s still important to do everything you can to help yourself. And increasing your gratitude is an evidence-based approach that might help, even a little. It’s free and you could start today, so why not?

I hope that helps.

If you are feeling depressed right now, I am with you. I have been there and know how awful it can be – but also know from personal experience that we can recover and emerge from the darkness of depression into a lighter, happier, more fulfilling life.

I will teach much more about depression and how to recover from it in my next workshop: Overcoming Depression – How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful, which takes place on Saturday 1st April 2023, from 10.30am-4.30pm. This event will be held at Terapia, a specialist therapy centre in the grounds of Stephens House, a listed house and gardens offering an oasis of peace and calm in the busy heart of North London. Terapia is a 10-minute walk from Finchley Central Northern Line station, with free parking outside – book your place now using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

You Are a Living, Breathing Miracle

Image by Gerd Altmann

If you are struggling with mental or physical health problems, it’s easy to think you are somehow ‘broken’, or that healing is not possible for you. My clients tell me things like that all the time, for very understandable reasons. Let’s say you have been struggling with depression, on and off, for 30 years now. It’s entirely reasonable – logical, even – to think that you will have depression for the rest of your life.

You might also feel this way if you struggle with chronic pain, musculoskeletal issues, addiction, low self-esteem or any of the myriad mind-body problems that humans are vulnerable to developing. Again, I see this as eminently reasonable, because to believe otherwise requires a great deal of optimism and hope – both of which are in short supply if we have been in mental or physical pain for a long time.

But, as I often say to my clients struggling with depression, let me hold the hope. Because I am full of hope, confidence and optimism that you can heal, whatever you are dealing with right now. Why? Because I have spent many years working with people who are suffering and have seen them change, grow and heal in ways which surprised us both.

I have also studied many different therapy models and – in my previous life as a health journalist – interviewed some of the world’s leading scientists, researchers and medical professionals about all aspects of health, including illnesses like diabetes, cancer and heart disease, as well as cutting-edge treatments and strategies to optimise human health. All of this has left me brimming with hope, for the following reasons.

The miracle of being you

It is truly a miracle that you are even alive as you read this. For you to be you required four billion years of evolutionary twists and turns, any one of which could have gone slightly differently to mean there would be no you existing on this planet. (We could take that back even further, for the 13.8 billion years of deep time since the Big Bang, but I don’t want to make your head hurt too much!).

And for you to be exactly you meant that just one out of millions of your father’s sperm had to meet exactly the right egg in your mother’s womb. And you had to grow, from that miraculous moment on, cells multiplying as you went from the simplest possible organism to the person who can read blog posts, and drive cars, and walk in the park, and see the achingly beautiful world in which we all live.

And how can you read this post or drive that car? Because, in your skull, is the most complex object in the known universe. A brain. And your brain is made up of around 86 billion neurons (nerve cells), with each neuron connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, meaning there are 1,000 trillion synapses (connections between cells) in your brain.

And for you to think, or see, or just be alive, day to day, information must flow between those billions of neurons in the form of electrical impulses, which get fired from one neuron to another via neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine. All of this happens, completely outside your control or conscious awareness, every second of every minute of every day of your life.

Tell me that isn’t a miracle.

How the brain and body heal

Enough science, already, I hear you clamour (I love this stuff but it drives my wife nuts when I go on about it over breakfast, so I know I’m a bit of a health/science nerd! Apologies). OK, what does all of this mean for you. Well, all that remarkable neural architecture is not only what makes you, you – it’s also why we can heal from trauma, or neglect, or 30 years of depression.

Because the way those cells are wired up is in no way fixed or set. Your brain is not like a lump of marble, sculpted and fixed forever in the same shape and configuration. It’s more like wet clay, which can be moulded and shaped by experience – which it is, every second of your life. This rewireable ability is called ‘neuroplasticity’, which I have often written and taught about, because it’s such a wonderful thing.

It means your brain can change and heal, whatever painful experiences you have had and painful memories it therefore holds. You can think, feel and behave differently – this is not just hopeful or wishful thinking, it is a science fact backed up by decades of neuroscientific research.

So whenever you are feeling down, or stuck, or hopeless, try to hold these ideas in your mind. Because there is always hope. And I will do everything in my power – with posts like these, my webinars, workshops and guided meditations – to help you on your healing journey.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Winter Getting You Down? Here's How to Lift Your Mood

Image by Andy Holmes

I am writing this on a mid-January morning at my office in north London. Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, the sun rose at around 8am and will set at about 4pm. That’s eight hours of daylight and 16 hours of darkness. And this absence of daylight is one of the many reasons we find winter tough – especially the dregs-of-winter months of January and February, when it can be hard to believe it will ever be light and warm again.

No wonder many of us (estimated to be 10% of the US population, for example) experience Seasonal Affective Disorder, which has the appropriate acronym of SAD. Unusually for depression, which has so many possible causes, SAD has a clear triggering factor: not getting enough daylight, which begins in late autumn and remains an issue until those glorious first days of spring.

Even if you don’t experience depression in winter, it is natural for your mood to dip a little at this time of year. It’s easy to forget – as I type away at my computer, in a warm, dry office, on a suburban street in a city of nine million people – that we are seasonal animals, as much as hibernating bears or migratory swifts and swallows. We feel the changing seasons in our bones, powering down into a mental hibernation in winter and waking up when spring offers up its delicious colour and vibrancy in April.

Fighting against evolution

Although most of us live in urban environments, surrounded by buildings, roads, cars and the hubbub of tightly-packed humanity, we did not evolve to live this way. For millions of years of human evolution our ancestors lived in the wilderness, with daily lives and body clocks governed by the day and night, dawn and dusk, as well as seasonal changes throughout the year.

No amount of artificial light and heat can change this deeply entrenched knowing of light, dark, day, night that is in our DNA. So winter comes and our bodies know it’s time to change our behaviour, slowing down, conserving energy, sleeping more, spending time inside where it’s warm, light and safe (from all those hungry animals that would have been marauding outside the stockade at night).

As well as all the many other complex and subtle reasons to experience low mood in winter, this is a major and often unrecognised one – it’s just natural for your mood to dip with the darkening days, so try not to worry if you are feeling a bit lower than usual right now.

If that low mood tips into depression, especially if it lasts for more than a few days, please do seek help from your doctor or a mental-health professional. Medication and talking therapy can both be helpful, but there are a number of things you can also do to help yourself. Here are a few that I find helpful for my own mental health and my clients tell me have lifted their mood on a gloomy day…

1. Move your body. This is a no-brainer for most of us, as we are constantly told that exercise is good for our health, both mental and physical. The tough bit, of course, is actually doing it, especially if you’re feeling low in mood and energy, demotivated and glued to the sofa.

   It might help to know that, in a number of high-quality studies, regular cardiovascular exercise (jogging, swimming, dancing, cycling, brisk walking) was found to be just as effective as antidepressants for mild-to-moderate depression. Let that sink in. Something that is free, easily accessible, with no nasty side effects and good for you in so many ways, is just as effective at boosting your mood as the most powerful psychiatric drugs Western medicine has developed.

   If it still seems daunting, start small. Get up and go for a walk (there’s robust evidence that walking helps with many aspects of mind-body health too). Kick a ball about in the park with your kids. Get off the bus a stop early on your morning commute and walk a bit further before work. Just try it – I promise you will thank me later.

2. Go easy on the booze. You might be mid-way through Dry January, in which case I salute you. Not long to go now… But if you’re still drinking, cut back as much as you can, reducing both the amount you drink each day and building at least a couple of sober days (more if possible) into your week. Why? Well, alcohol is a depressant, so although that glass or two of wine takes the edge off after a rough day, it will lower your mood the next morning.

   Also, you need to know about dopamine and the ‘reward system’ in your brain. I have been reading an excellent book about this recently – Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, by Dr Anna Lembke – which explains how the neurotransmitter dopamine both affects mood and drives the astronomical rates of addiction we now see in wealthy, industrialised nations like the US and UK.

   Dr Lembke teaches us that a wide range of substances (alcohol, cocaine, MDMA, nicotine, sugar, cannabis) and activities (social-media consumption, TV-watching, gambling, sex, pornography, shopping) induce the release of dopamine in your brain, which makes you feel good. But what goes up must come down, so if we drink too much and get lots of lovely dopamine as a reward, the brain automatically resets your ‘dopamine base level’, which lowers your mood, energy and motivation levels.

3. Take compassionate action. More research, sorry – a large and ever-growing number of studies show that compassion is good for your mental and physical health. As I often say when I’m teaching, it doesn’t matter how that compassion is generated, it’s all good. So you could generate it yourself (self-compassion), receive it from someone else (taking in compassion) or give it to other people (taking compassionate action). Any of these activities will light up the same brain regions and will be an excellent antidote to low mood and depression.

   We also know from positive psychology that being altruistic, by helping others, is extremely good for your mental health. So this winter, as so many people in my country and around the world struggle with the cost of living, why not take compassionate action to help someone in your community?

   You could volunteer at a food bank, or a charity that’s close to your heart. If you are an animal-lover, why not foster some kittens or a guide dog? You could mentor a troubled teenager, even litter-pick at your beloved local park or woods. The options are endless, but know that this is a win-win – it will benefit others and also boost your mood.

I will teach much more about depression and how to recover from it in my next workshop: Overcoming Depression – How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful, which takes place on Saturday 1st April 2023, from 10.30am-4.30pm. This event will be held at Terapia, a specialist therapy centre in the grounds of Stephens House, a listed house and gardens offering an oasis of peace and calm in the busy heart of North London. Terapia is a 10-minute walk from Finchley Central Northern Line station, with free parking outside – book your place now using the button below.

And if you are struggling right now, I would like to send you love, hope and strength – remember that spring will be here soon, so hope, light and rebirth are just around the corner…

Warm wishes,

Dan