Mental health

What You Can Learn from 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom

Arguably the most important figure in Western psychology was Sigmund Freud, who developed his psychoanalytic theory of the mind about 130 years ago. And arguably the most important figure in Eastern psychology was a man we call the Buddha, who lived and taught in Northern India around 2,400 years before that. Let’s think about that for a moment. Over two millennia before Freud saw his first patient, the Buddha and his followers had created a rich, sophisticated theory of the mind and how it worked.

Long before Freud’s ideas about neuroses and how to cure them, Buddhist psychology gave us a step-by-step guide to freeing ourselves from dukkha, which is the Pali (the language of the Buddha) word for suffering. As the Buddha himself said: ‘I teach one thing and one thing only – dukkha and the end of dukkha.’

It’s important to note at this point that you don’t have to be a Buddhist to find these ideas helpful. In fact, you don’t need to have any interest in Buddhism at all! One of the reasons I am so enamoured with Buddhism is that it’s very different from religions like Judaism or Catholicism. For starters, the Buddha was just a human being, not a god. And although many Buddhists do believe in transcendent ideas like karma, heaven, hell and reincarnation, I don’t think that was the Buddha’s point, really. It was more that he existed in a time when these ideas were normal and universally accepted, like we believe in gravity, or the nutritional benefit of vitamins. They were the zeitgeist of his age.

As I have written before in these posts, if I had to name my particular brand of spirituality it would be to call myself a Buddhist atheist. I believe in Buddhism. I think it’s a wonderful theoretical framework for understanding the mind – and especially what can go wrong with it. I also believe that the Buddha was a real person, a great psychologist, teacher and healer, like Jesus. But I don’t believe in heaven and hell, or reincarnation, or any of the more mystical, religious stuff. If you do believe in those things, of course that’s absolutely fine – I’m not saying I am right, it’s just how I was raised and educated to perceive the world.

How Buddhist psychology can help you

Most of my readers are either struggling with mental-health problems, or trying to help people with these problems. And whether you are a client, therapist or concerned family member, there is so much in Buddhism you might find helpful. Let’s circle back to that idea of dukkha – like all Pali words, there is debate about the exact English translation, but suffering is close enough. In his Four Noble Truths, the Buddha taught (not wrote, as his was a time before books and paper) that to live a human life is inherently painful. Pain is unavoidable, for a whole host of reasons, but one of the simplest is that we are all mortal. We will all age, get sick and eventually die. This is, of course, the hardest truth we all have to face – but facing it is both important and healthy, as once we accept this idea we can get on with maximising our brief but wondrous existence on this planet.

So we can’t avoid pain. But the Buddha then explained that we can avoid suffering, because most suffering is human-made. He gave the famous example of twin arrows – the first arrow is something painful, like injuring your knee playing football. This just hurts – it’s called ‘the pain of pain’ – so there’s not much we can do about that except to rest it, use ice, see a physio, and so on. But what the human mind does is then create more pain by trying to avoid or push away the original pain. We think, ‘Why is this always happening to me? I’m so unlucky! God, I hate my life,’ or ‘I can’t stand this pain, it’s unbearable! These painkillers aren’t touching the sides, let me go back to the doctor and get some oxycontin, quick.’

In the first example, we now add feelings of frustration, anger and bitterness to the physical pain. In the second, we are desperately trying to avoid the pain at all costs, which can be a slippery slope to addiction – especially with opioids. In the Buddha’s teaching, it’s like we then shoot ourselves with a second arrow. And so physical pain becomes emotional suffering.

If not the arrow, then what?

Another wonderful thing about Buddhism is the emphasis on developing positive mental states, which anyone can do with enough persistence and determined effort. These include metta (loving-kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy) and upekkha (equanimity). These four ‘sublime states’ build on each other, offering a profound sense of peace, calm and protection from the inevitable pain of life. If you would like to know more, I strongly recommend the wonderful Sharon Salzberg’s classic book, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Sharon is a world-leading expert on metta and how to develop it – it’s her USP.

She explains that, instead of shooting ourselves with that second arrow whenever life hurts or disappoints us, we can learn to treat ourselves kindly, patiently and warmly. This is like a soothing balm for the first-arrow wound, which helps it heal. Of course, this is not easy! Take it from a long-term meditator and student of Buddhism. Developing these beneficial mental states is not a simple thing, or I wouldn’t have to meditate every day.

But it is possible. And this is another great gift from that remarkable teacher 2,500 years ago – he gave us concrete tools and strategies we could all use – monastic or lay Buddhist, Christian or atheist – to transform our mind. Two of the (deceptively) simplest of these tools are developing mindfulness and metta, so here are two of my Insight Timer practices for doing just that:

I hope you find them helpful – and wish you ever-increasing peace and happiness as you follow your own unique path to healing, whatever that may be. And this is my last post before Christmas, so wishing you all a wonderful holiday season. Rest, recuperate, recharge and I will be in touch in the new year.

Love,

Dan ❤️

 
 

Do You Struggle to Accept Kindness? How to Let it into Your Heart

What do you do when someone offers you a compliment? How are you with praise, appreciation and expressions of pride? I hope you are able to receive these offers of love and validation with grace, taking them into your heart so they nourish and replenish your spirit. But I suspect that, for many of you, it’s not so simple. You may feel a little embarrassed and bat them away: ‘Oh, that’s nice of you, but anyone could have done it.’

You may even squirm, finding praise deeply uncomfortable. I have some clients who actually wince when I say something nice to them! This confused me for a long time, until we addressed the problem directly and I began to understand why it’s so hard for some of us to take in the good. Here are two of the things my clients taught me about why compliments and praise can evoke such negative reactions.

It jars with a critical sense of self

Sadly, many of my clients have a highly negative sense of self. They think they are somehow defective, dislikeable or in some other way uniquely weird, different or lesser beings. This has been hard-wired into their brains through repetition, over many years. They have spent so long thinking critically and negatively about themselves that these ways of thinking have developed quick, direct neural pathways – this makes it habitual and all too easy to think they are stupid, weak or pathetic. Heartbreaking but true.

So when I tell them how proud I am of them for managing a tough homework task like standing up to their verbally abusive boss, or finally saying no to their boundary-disrespecting family, I am offering them what’s known as a ‘corrective emotional experience’ – something unfamiliar and the opposite of what they are used to. Because many of my clients were never praised or lifted up as children. They were attacked, shot down and invalidated, over and over again. So parts of them learned to believe these unkind, untrue messages, until those parts held beliefs that they were stupid, weak or pathetic.

For these people, my offer of love and respect has nowhere to land. It doesn’t compute in their brains. So I have to find more creative ways of offering it, perhaps titrating my level of warmth and validation so it is just enough, just the right amount and can sneak through their defences, allowing just a little warmth or the unfamiliar sense of being seen and accepted for who they are, which they so badly need but struggle to take in.

trauma makes them suspicious

People who experience a great deal of trauma in their childhoods develop protective parts of themselves which are hypervigilant, wary and mistrustful. They have good reason to be this way – caregivers hurt, abused and betrayed them, so it was highly adaptive to be mistrustful around these people. I always say that if you are growing up in a dangerous, hurtful, threatening environment, it’s a great idea to be mistrustful. Thank god for those protective parts, because they probably kept my clients as safe as they could have been, despite the verbal, emotional and sometimes physical grenades that were lobbed at them on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, these parts can also make my work tricky, because developing ‘earned secure attachment’ is a key healing ingredient in therapy. It’s also a fundamental part of the integrative trauma therapy approach I have developed, because all the research shows that the relationship between therapist and client is the most important part of any effective therapy. These protectors make connecting with my clients tricky, so a lot of patient, painstaking work is necessary to help them see that I have no intention of hurting or taking advantage of them, like their caregivers did.

The brilliant Dr Janina Fisher, a trailblazer in the trauma-therapy field, once said that if you have been profoundly hurt by those closest to you, all the things we therapists think are helpful – trust, connection, feeling either positive or negative emotions, focusing on your breath or becoming mindful of somatic symptoms – feel threatening and unsafe. So when I tell someone, ‘I know you worry that everyone finds you weird and annoying. But you seem like a really nice, kind person to me,’ those protectors scent danger and can get spiky, dismissive or shutdown in return. I’m trying to offer an – honest, heartfelt – corrective emotional experience and it makes them angry, passive-aggressive or dissociated and numb. Not ideal.

The practice: Taking in treasure

Another thing I learned from my clients is a practice I developed to help with this very problem. It’s called The Treasure Chest and you can listen to it on Insight Timer by clicking the button below. This offers a concrete strategy to help you stop pushing away praise, compliments or other good things that come your way. Because these are little pieces of treasure. A kind word or warm comment can be deeply healing, if you learn to take them in.

An accumulation of these small offerings of kindness will, in time, help those protective parts relax. And whether you are at the milder or more severe end of the trauma spectrum, learning to tell a different story about yourself is crucial. How does it serve you to tell that critical, self-denigrating narrative, over and over? Far better to make the story of you something kind, compassionate and understanding. And taking in these little pieces of treasure will help you do that, because other people – especially those who know and love you – see the real you. Flawed and messy, like all humans, but also unique and wonderful, in so many ways.

I hope the practice helps – my clients seem to love it, so I very much hope you do too.

Love,

Dan ❤️

 
 

How to Develop a Compassionate Mind

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 ❤️

 
 

Struggling with Upsetting News? A Sense of Perspective Will Help

I went to see Gladiator 2 at the weekend. It wasn’t exactly my cup of tea – a bit too much blood and gore for my taste – but I went with my son, Ben, so getting to hang out with him is always such a pleasure. And alongside all the sweaty torsos, sandals and swordplay, I found something strangely and unexpectedly comforting about the movie. It got me thinking about human history and all the tumultuous times we have been through, as a species. And how living in ancient Rome would have been much worse, scarier and harder for the vast majority of the population than being alive now.

If you, like me, are feeling a bit freaked out by the state of the world right now, we need all the help we can get. The seismic US election result, which made half the population happy but the other half – and much of the rest of the world – deeply anxious and uncertain about what comes next. War, that most pointless and awful of human creations, raging in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan and many other places not deemed worthy of the media’s attention. The rise of populist strongmen, around the world. Climate change, which is really scary. It’s already bad and will, I’m afraid, get worse over time.

I know many of you struggle with anxiety, so this post is not meant to make you more anxious! It’s just important to face reality, even if it’s scary and hard, as anxiety and avoidance are always intertwined – and avoiding scary things just makes them scarier, unfortunately. So, rather than hiding in a cupboard, here are three things that are helping me right now and will, I hope, help you feel a bit less bothered about the state of the world:

Develop a sense of perspective

One of the great gifts, but also curses, of our hi-tech age is that we can now access 24/7 news about anywhere in the world. This is very new, and very hard, for our hunter-gatherer-evolved brains to cope with. If there is a flood in Pakistan or train crash in Peru, we will know about it almost instantly. That means our highly threat-focused brains are in a constant state of alert, as if the threat might affect us or our loved ones. This is also, of course, how both mainstream and social media work – they scare, upset and outrage us so we keep reading, clicking and scrolling. This is built in to platforms like Facebook or Twitter. It’s not a bug. It is a deliberate and highly successful strategy.

I’m not going to offer advice about quitting social media, there is plenty of that available already. I’m just pointing out that, although we do face some very real and serious challenges right now, we are also made to feel as if everything is awful, all the time, and there is nothing much we can do about it except keep reading, clicking and scrolling. Instead, try to have a sense of perspective.

For example, something that often confuses me is when I hear people say we are ‘harming the planet’ with all our short-sighted human behaviour. That’s just not possible – the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and has experienced every kind of wild meterological and climactic change you can imagine – inconceivably vast volcanic eruptions that filled the atmosphere with noxious gases and dust, causing conditions that were deeply hostile to life; or Snowball Earth, when the whole planet was encased in a thick layer of ice on two occasions, the worst being around 600-700 million years ago. Scientists think this ice age lasted for millions of years. Somehow, life hung on – it has existed on this planet for four billion years and will exist long after humans do.

Of course, the fact that the planet has been through climate change before does not mean this, industry/human-powered cycle of change is not real. It very much is – and I am passionate about doing all we can to slow the course of climate change. And we can do this, the science tells us that, if we all stop eating so much meat, flying, driving polluting vehicles, pressure corporations and governments to act with more urgency, and all the other things we can to protect this miraculous, beautiful planet for ourselves, our children and grandchildren.

Enough with the doom-scrolling

In the run-up to the US election I was devouring everything I could find online about the race, as if somehow just knowing everything could magically influence the result. Since the result, which was not what I hoped for, I have taken a big step back from the news. I de-politicised my Instagram feed, for example, because I just don’t need a blow by blow of every scary thing that will be happening over the next four years. I also have stopped hopping from news site to news site, because it’s just too much for my frazzled brain right now.

That’s not to say we should just tune out or give up. Absolutely not. It’s vital to do all we can, about climate change and the natural world, social and racial justice, the welfare of immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ rights, abortion and women’s health, democracy – all the hard-won, precious things that are under threat right now. I have spoken often in these posts of taking compassionate action, when we feel anxious, upset or overwhelmed. That means marching, organising, writing to your elected officials, signing petitions, boycotting the worst corporations, and donating to charities/non-profits who are doing incredible things every day – you can donate to one of my favourites, the WWF, right now by clicking the button below.

Give love & Kindness in abundance

As the media becomes increasingly skilful at pushing the buttons of your evolutionarily ancient, threat-focused ‘subcortical’ brain regions – the structures in your brain that fire up during the fight-flight-freeze response, and are laser-focused on protecting your tribe and territory, not remotely rational or well-adapted for 21st-century life – my suggestion is that we do the exact opposite. The world does not need any more fear, hatred, hostility or division. It needs our love. Our compassion. Our prosocial goodness. Small example, but I was on the Tube, coming home from the movie with Ben, and saw one man tapping another man’s knee, pointing out the wallet he had dropped on the floor. The other man beamed with gratitude and it was just so sweet, so wholesome – the best of humanity on show in that small gesture.

There is a wise Buddhist teaching: ‘Every human mind contains the seeds of Jesus Christ and the seeds of Hitler’. Meaning, our old, subcortical brain can be fired up into fear, hatred, othering, blaming all our complex problems on immigrants, or trans people, or those with views and values we dislike. But our new, quintessentially human cortical brain has other capacities: love, warmth, kindness, compassion, trust, hope, finding joy in giving and helping others. I know which seeds I would like to help flourish in my brain and I’m sure you do too.

Love, randomly and abundantly. Help others, because it feels so good to you and those you help – like the men on the Tube. Spread ripples of kindness and goodness that start with your friends, family, community or a non-profit close to your heart. And our ripples will meet these scary waves of anger and fear and, bit by bit, dilute them into something better, more positive and hopeful for the future.

I will leave you with another profound, oft-quoted saying, from Martin Luther King: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’

Love,

Dan ❤️

 
 

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

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 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 ❤️

 
 

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 ❤️

 
 

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 ❤️

 
 

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

Image by Angello Pro

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 ❤️

 
 

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 ❤️

 
 

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?

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

 
 

Should You Quit Drinking for Your Mental Health?

Image by Pesce Huang

Giving up drinking was a slow, organic process for me. I had been drinking increasingly moderately for over a decade, mostly sober with a few glasses of wine at the weekend. But I increasingly felt that my body had just had enough. And the turning point came at a friend’s party, when I was still getting over a bout of Covid. I drank half a glass of prosecco and it tasted weird. I felt weird. And everything in me just said, ‘No!’

I literally felt like I was drinking poison – which, of course, I was. Research increasingly shows that any amount of alcohol, however small, is detrimental to your health. This all sounds a bit dramatic, but it just felt like an epiphany. I knew I had to make a change. At first I thought I would give it a month and see how I felt. ‘Never say never – I might have the odd drink,’ I would say, or ‘I’m just giving it up for a while and let’s see how that goes.’

But as time went on I realised that I was done. Enough. And that this was part of my spiritual journey, wanting to be calm, clear and mindful all the time. I try to live my life according to the five Buddhist precepts, one of which says, essentially, don’t drink or take drugs. And in recent years I have found that, even after one glass of wine, I just didn’t feel quite like me. I said things that felt a bit off, or clunky, or made jokes that didn’t land. And the next day I would wince at the memory, wishing I hadn’t said/done the things I had.

The rock ‘n’ roll years

A little context would be helpful. From the age of 17 I was pretty hedonistic. I grew up in north London and everyone I knew drank, partied and had a bit too much fun. And I kept being hedonistic for decades, sometimes really struggling with my drinking/excessive partying with friends, especially after traumatic events like bereavements and divorce. It was only when I retrained as a therapist, started meditating daily and met my lovely wife, Laura, that I was able put those hedonistic years (what I call the ‘rock ‘n’ roll years’) behind me.

And, although I now see all that madness through the lens of internal family systems – that the parts who drank and partied were just trying to numb my pain the only way they knew how – I still feel a deep sense of regret, even shame about it. Even though I managed to reduce my drinking to normal, moderate, middle-aged levels, something in me knew I just needed to quit.

Getting sober at 56 feels like an act of deep self-compassion. It’s been three months now and I feel great. I love being clear and fresh all the time, especially in the morning. I no longer berate myself for silly comments I made the night before. It just feels… calm. And right. I only wish I had given up sooner.

Should you quit too?

It’s important that I say here, I’m not putting pressure on anyone else to quit the booze. It’s a personal decision and we all have a different relationship with alcohol. You may drink moderately, enjoy a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, and that’s totally fine. Enjoy that Rioja!

But for people like me – with a history of childhood trauma and decades of working on my mental health – I do think sobriety is a powerful, healing choice. At 56 I’m just done with beating myself up. I have engaged in more than enough of that for one lifetime! My Critic can take a well-deserved rest too.

I still have parts which are very addictive, so have a compulsive relationship with other things – coffee, sugar, work, tech. I’m working on those, but I reckon one thing at a time. Let me bed in this newfound sober lifestyle first, because although it’s mostly easy, there are definitely wobbles and moments when it feels a bit tough. I’m off to Barcelona this weekend, which was always party central back in those crazy years, so let’s see how I manage that! I’m sure it will be fine, but it’s amazing how much context matters – being with the people you used to party with, or going to places that have somewhat hazy/regret-filled memories. It will be good to have fun and come back with brand-new, entirely clear, positive memories to replace them.

If you do struggle with addiction, to alcohol or anything else, I strongly recommend the IFS approach to treatment. It’s warm, kind and accepting – as well as offering a revolutionary way of thinking about and managing addiction of all kinds. My colleague and dear friend Claire van den Bosch is a brilliant therapist, thinker and teacher, as well as being a leading expert in this area, so do check out her site at www.atimetoheal.london

And whatever path you choose in healing your addictive processes, as they are called in IFS, I wish you love and strength on your journey,

Dan ❤️

 
 

What is the Point of Anxiety?

Image by Francesco

If you struggle with high levels of anxiety you may, understandably, wish you could never feel anxious again. If there was a big switch marked ‘Anxiety’, you would probably flick it to the OFF position and hope it stayed that way for the rest of your life. And no wonder – anxiety is a horrible feeling, especially when you experience it intensely and on a regular basis. No-one likes feeling anxious.

But when I am helping my clients with chronic anxiety, one of the first things I do is explain why humans experience anxiety, the function of this uncomfortable emotion both in terms of evolution and neurology – how it shows up in your nervous system, including your brain. The first thing to understand about anxiety is that it’s supposed to feel uncomfortable. That’s so you can’t just ignore it and carry on with your day.

To understand this properly, let’s jump into a time machine and journey back 10,000 years, to meet one of your ancestors living on the African savannah. She would be living with a small tribe of hunter-gatherers, in a village surrounded by a fence constructed from the spikiest branches they could find. Why? Because outside that fence would be very large, very hungry animals who wanted to eat them.

Anxiety is an alarm signal

Let’s say your ancestor left the village with two other women to forage for berries, roots, plants and whatever they could find to feed their families that day. As she walked across the savannah, she noticed the grass to her left start rustling. And she froze, as the threat system in her brain first detected the threat and then – in split seconds – decide how to respond. Thinking it might be one of the lions that often hunted near this spot, her brain cycled through the options of fight, flee or freeze and decided fleeing was her best chance of survival.

So her amygdala – a small structure in the brain whose primary job is mobilising the rest of the brain and body to deal with threats – gave her a massive jolt of anxiety to signal, Run! At the same time, the amygdala engaged with other parts of her brain to give your ancestor a shot of adrenaline and cortisol, quicken her breathing and heart rate to pump oxygenated blood to the major muscles in her arms and legs. And she ran, fast, until the potentially-a-lion threat was far behind her.

And this is what anxiety is for – to tell you that:

  1. There is a threat.

  2. And you should do something about it, urgently.

For your ancestor, this whole mind-body process might just have saved her life. And even in our 21st-century world, which is far safer than the one she lived in, anxiety will probably have saved your life, or the life of a loved one. This is why we should never try to get rid of anxiety completely, even if we could, because it can quite literally be a life-saver.

Calming your nervous system is key

I hope that gives you some idea of why you feel so anxious – and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is, for most of us, our anxiety is not triggered by lions in the grass, but by a nasty email from your boss, warning letter from the bank or critical comment from a family member. These are all threatening, hence the spike of anxiety they trigger, but not in the life-or-death way those rather primitive parts of your brain are designed to save you from.

So rather than trying to shut down your anxiety, or get rid of it, the key is first learning to accept this normal, healthy and in fact vital emotion. Then finding tools and techniques to bring your dysregulated nervous system back into balance, calming, soothing and reassuring parts of your brain like the amygdala that are yelling ‘lion!’ when there is none.

If you are really struggling with your anxiety, I would encourage you to find a skilled therapist to help heal whatever wounds from your past are making you feel so anxious right now. And this therapy, as well as any other healing tools you employ, should focus on helping calm and soothe your overheated nervous system. You can do that right now, using this Compassionate Breathing technique I recently blogged about.

I would also recommend anything that feels calming or soothing for you, like self-help books and podcasts from therapists/other healers you trust, yoga, tai chi, hugs from your beloved pet/partner/kids/close friends or family members, relaxing massage or soothing music/TV shows/movies. Really anything that helps you feel calmer, safer and more at peace will be good for your anxious brain. Over time, this will reduce the flow of stress hormones like cortisol into your bloodstream, while increasing pleasurable, calming hormones like oxytocin and endorphins.

If you would like to know more about anxiety and how to manage it you may also find my latest Insight Timer course, Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems, helpful – if so, just click the button below to find out more.

And my Insight Timer collection has a wide range of meditations, breathwork techniques, guided imagery, sleep stories and much more to help with problems like stress, anxiety and depression.

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

Dan

 
 

Feeling Anxious or Stressed? My Colour Breathing Practice Will Help

Colour Breathing is a highly effective technique to help when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, upset, angry or any other negative emotion. In this short video, I guide you through the practice, which will help you feel calmer, more relaxed and at peace. Used daily, Colour Breathing will help calm your mind, body and nervous system.

I hope that helps – for more techniques like this, including breathwork, self-compassion, IFS and mindfulness techniques, visit my Insight Timer collection by clicking on the button below.

Love ❤️

Dan

 
 

Why I Love Being a Meditation Teacher for Insight Timer

I am honoured to be a Featured Teacher on Insight Timer's home page for the upcoming week. I love this app and am so proud to be part of a global community of teachers, producing – mostly free – content for the 26 million meditators who use Insight Timer across the globe.

If you would like to try one of my breathwork practices, mindfulness, self-compassion or IFS meditations, or guided-imagery practices, check out my collection at: insighttimer.com/danrobertstherapy

Love ❤️

Dan

 
 

I am a meditation teacher for Insight Timer, where you will find a wealth of resources (mostly free/donation-based) including courses, breathing techniques, guided imagery, mindfulness and self-compassion practices and much more.