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

What Are Trailheads in Internal Family Systems Therapy?

Image by Ethan Unzicker

Jargon can be a real turn-off, don’t you think? And the world of psychotherapy is full of it. You can’t move for initials like CBT, DBT, ACT or MBCT and daunting-sounding words like countertransference, metacognitive or subcortical. It’s a pain, I know.

So I start this post with an apology – I have one more piece of jargon for you, but it’s a useful one, so bear with me... In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, there is a useful concept known as a trailhead. What the heck is that? Well, a trailhead is a thought, feeling, body sensation, memory, image or any other experience that we think is a communication from one of your parts. I won’t explain parts here because I have written about them extensively in recent posts, but here’s a useful guide to them and the IFS model in general.

So the trailhead is a starting point, a clue, an indication that something’s up and we need to investigate further. Let me give you an example. If you struggle with worry and anxiety, you will experience a number of somatic (more jargon, sorry! Just means you experience it in your body) sensations like tense muscles, racing heart rate, feeling hot or sweaty, butterflies or a knot in your stomach, tension in your neck and shoulders… Any or all of these could be a trailhead, because in IFS we think the anxiety comes from a scared, young part.

Following the trail

Understanding your mind, brain, nervous system and body in this way is, I think, incredibly helpful. Because if you just think ‘I’m so anxious’, or ‘I’m really panicky right now,’ it’s as if all of you is anxious, vulnerable and feeling powerless to calm yourself down. As soon as we say, ‘A part of me is so anxious,’ or ‘A part of me is really panicky right now,’ everything changes. Because you now have a scared young part who needs calming and comforting – and a you who isn’t that part, who has the resources to be calming and comforting.

This is a crucial step. I see this in my consulting room (and in myself) every single day – this simple shift can be so freeing and powerful, because many of my clients have felt paralysed and gripped by their anxiety, depression, substance abuse or whatever they were struggling with for years, as if they had no power, agency or control over these painful symptoms or behaviours.

But you are not powerless, not a victim, not helpless. There is a resource in you we call your Self, which is calm, compassionate, loving, wise and healing. And this resource can help you overcome any obstacle, however daunting. How do I know this? Because you are a walking miracle, with a billion miscroscopic processes happening inside you every single day.

Healing inner resources

You have flu, you recover. You break your leg, the bone knits together and heals. You drink the socially acceptable poison known as alcohol and your poor liver processes the toxins and helps flush them out of your body. Cells die, cells are born. Food and drink are digested and excreted. All of this happening, all the time, without any conscious input from you.

And so it is with your wounded little parts, who desperately need help – and the other parts who protect those little ones, with whatever means they have available. All of these parts need healing. And your Self can do just that, if we help you access these wonderful, rich, healing resources inside.

Not easy, but doable – for me and you, however impossible that might seem right now. Whatever you have experienced in your life. However long you have been trying, struggling, falling down. It could happen today, with the right help and support.

If you would like to experience IFS, try my Insight Timer practice, How to Comfort Your Inner Child: IFS Meditation. You can listen now by clicking on the button below.

Love,

Dan ❤️

How Chronic Pain and Illness Affect Your Mood

Image by Toa Heftiba

As I sit writing this, I am in a moderate amount of pain. Like millions of people around the world, I suffer from chronic musculoskeletal (back and hip) problems, so most days come with either a small or large dose of pain, depending on how well I am looking after myself, how stressed I am, how much sitting I do that day, and various other factors.

Having been in some degree of daily pain for almost two years now, I have learned a few things about the relationship between physical pain and mental suffering:

• It's important to distinguish between 'primary' and 'secondary' pain. I learned this from Vidyamala Burch, founder of the excellent Breathworks. This organisation provides the Mindfulness-Based Pain Management programme, which has a strong research base behind it and helps many people in the UK and beyond deal with chronic pain and illness.

• Burch also co-wrote Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing with Danny Penman. In this superb book the authors explain that primary pain is the actual raw data caused by, say, a gash in your leg. Intriguingly, the majority of the pain you end up experiencing is secondary – the pain created by your brain as it amplifies that raw data, depending on the way you think about and respond to your primary pain.

• This only became clear to me recently when I visited my osteopath during a bad patch physically, feeling down and hopeless about resolving my problems. He reminded me that the pain was significantly better now than when I first came to see him; and that it was crucial to remain as positive as possible, because my negative thoughts ('I will never get over this'; 'Nothing will help'; 'I can't stand the pain any more') were undoubtedly making the pain worse (this is essentially what the Buddha taught – that human life inevitably involves pain, but we create suffering by our response to that pain. But that's a topic for another day).

Managing the pain

I think it's important to note here just how hard it is to maintain a positive, optimistic mood in the face of chronic pain or illness. As anyone with a long-term condition knows, it grinds you down, especially when it flares up or your symptoms get worse for whatever reason. Please don't think I underestimate the impact of physical ailments on your mood – it is a struggle and gets everyone down from time to time, as well as causing stress and worry/anxiety about the future.

I couldn't understand that vicious cycle any better. But once you understand the relationship between pain sensations in the body and the way that your brain either amplifies or minimises those sensations, it seems crucial to me that you do all you can to use your brain/mind to help your body.

 When I first hurt my back and was really struggling, Vidyamala Burch's guided meditations really helped pull me through. Visit her website (www.vidyamala-burch.com) to find out more. And if you are dealing with chronic pain or illness, my thoughts and well wishes go out to you – I hope you get the medical help you need and manage to overcome your problem soon.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Difference Between Pressure and Stress

Image by Kiefer Likens

People often tell me that they 'thrive on stress'. I respond that they might be confusing pressure – which can be energising and motivating, if we respond to it well – and stress, which always has a negative impact on us. Let me give you two examples:

James is a 30-year-old entrepreneur, who has recently launched a startup website selling his own brand of clothing. James is passionate about his new business and thrives on the pressure he puts himself under to make it successful.

He works long hours, but knows this is necessary to get a new business up and running. James thoroughly enjoys every minute of his working day, so never feels stressed or overwhelmed – the fact that his business is doing well helps him stay positive and optimistic about the future. 

So for James, it's clear that the – self-imposed – pressure is a positive thing; it gives him the energy and drive he needs to make his new business a success.

Emma is a 26-year-old nurse working in a busy hospital in inner London. Over the last year, she has seen wave after wave of cuts in the number of nurses and support staff working on her ward. She and her colleagues work very long hours with no breaks – Emma wolfs a sandwich during her daily meeting with the other nurses. Sometimes she goes hours without even a drink of water or toilet break, as she is swamped with constant crises and demands from her patients.

Emma's nerves are stretched and jangling, she feels exhausted and irritable all the time – recently she snapped at a difficult patient, which shocked and upset her. Emma is so stressed that she doesn't know how much longer she can take it and is seriously considering quitting nursing before she becomes seriously ill.

The impact of chronic stress

It's clear that Emma is suffering from chronic, debilitating stress, which is affecting her physically and psychologically. Like many people suffering from stress, she feels overwhelmed, under-supported and out of control of her working life. If she doesn't do something soon, she may will burn out or develop a more serious illness, as all the research shows that long-term stress is harmful to the body and mind.

In schema therapy terms, this kind of stress is generally caused by a demanding part, which drives us on to work harder and harder, never feeling that what we do is good enough. This part can also make us feel under pressure – but it's not the kind of positive, motivating pressure James thrives on. This pressure is unpleasant, debilitating and overwhelmingly negative.

James's enjoyable pressure is probably coming from his Healthy Adult, which encourages and motivates us, rather than being critical or undermining of our best efforts.

If you are struggling with short-term stress, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) will be extremely helpful. If becoming stressed is a pattern for you, or it's affecting every area of your life, schema therapy may be more suitable.

Warm wishes,

Dan