Would You Like Help With Your Worry and Anxiety?

Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been cancelled. If you were interested in attending, do book the online version of this workshop, which will run on 10th December 2022. Bookings for that workshop open in November. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

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Coping with Anxiety: How to Worry Less, Feel Calmer and More at Peace features teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and the chance to put your questions to Dan Roberts, a leading expert on trauma and mental health.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• Why high levels of anxiety are a common problem for people with a trauma history – and how that’s linked to a ‘dysregulated’ nervous system, as well as elevated levels of ‘stress hormones’ like adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream

• How anxiety is the brain’s ‘alarm’ emotion, warning you that something bad is about to happen and that you should do something, immediately, to keep yourself safe

• Why anxiety is linked to the fight-flight-freeze self-protection responses – useful for escaping from a hungry lion, but not if you’re sitting at your desk in a quiet, safe office

• Simple, evidence-based strategies to calm your anxious inner child, quickly and effectively

• Why anxiety (an emotion) and worry (a thinking process) are inextricably linked – and how to reduce both overwhelming emotions and unhelpful thinking

• Key experiential exercises – such as Compassionate Breathing and 4-7-8 Breathing, guided meditations and imagery – you will learn to help you cope with your anxiety, reduce unhelpful worry and feel calmer and more in control

• And throughout the day, you will get the chance to put your questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and managing anxiety

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health and wellbeing – watch the video for more information and book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

If You’re Struggling, Try Finding Moments of Beauty in Your Day

Image by Juliandra Durkin

Anyone who has ever been depressed knows that it’s a terrible thing. At its worst, depression can completely knock the stuffing out of you, making it impossible to leave the house, or even your bed. You might feel completely exhausted, finding the smallest task utterly daunting.

You may well struggle with sleeping, either lying awake for hours, with dark thoughts swirling round your head; or go to the other extreme, sleeping for long periods (and no wonder – I often tell my clients who sleep a lot that nothing helps us avoid painful thoughts and feelings better than sleep). And eating can go the same way, either completely losing your appetite and struggling to eat a mouthful, or comfort-eating junk food all day.

When depressed, your thoughts will probably be extremely negative and hopeless. People tell you that what you’re going through will end, or you will get better, but you probably don’t believe them. And rumination is a central feature of ‘depressogenic’ thinking, which is those thoughts that go round and round your head like, ‘I am so pathetic. What’s wrong with me?’ or ‘My life is a complete mess. How did it get this bad? And why did I make all those stupid mistakes?’

Asking these kinds of negative, existential questions is rarely a good idea, as there are no good answers, are there? And sadly, the more you ruminate, the more depressed you feel, which makes you ruminate more, which makes you more depressed…

More right with you than wrong

Sorry if this is all getting a bit gloomy, especially if you’re struggling with depression or low mood right now. It’s important to recognise just how awful depression can be, but let’s think about it a bit more positively, starting with this wonderful quote from a towering figure in the treatment of depression and other psychological problems:

‘As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel’

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dr Kabat-Zinn developed the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme in the 1970s. He later inspired a group of psychologists to develop mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which has helped millions of people both recover from and prevent future episodes of depression. And a key idea of both MBSR and MBCT is that where you place your attention – especially what you think about at any given moment – has a powerful impact on determining your mood.

As we saw with rumination, if you spend hours each day going over and over what’s wrong with you, your life, your choices, and so on, your mood will inevitably sink. It’s just common sense. So, rather than obsessively chew over all the negative stuff you perceive in your life, learning that you can choose where you place your attention and what you think about is a simple but potentially life-changing insight.

Finding moments of beauty

I should say here that I struggled with depression for many years, so I don’t say any of these things lightly. I know how awful it is. I understand only too well how hard it can be to shift your attention from the gloomiest subjects, the darkest thoughts, the seemingly hopeless future. Trust me, I have been there, many times.

But I’m also glad to say that I don’t get depressed any more. My mood can be low, from time to time, but that’s only human – and is a world away from the prolonged bouts of depression that used to floor me for days and even weeks at a time.

And one of the key parts of my recovery (apart from a lot of therapy) was taking the MBCT course myself. That course was so profound for me. It helped me start meditating and continue that daily practice for over 12 years now. It deepened my love of Buddhism, which is a wonderfully rich, compassionate and insightful system of philosophy and psychology.

MBCT also taught me to look for moments of beauty throughout the day, even when I’m struggling. One example: it makes my heart so happy to see little kids walking up the road, hand in hand with their parents. Because (and check this out for yourself) little kids never just walk! They do little skips and jumps, or dance, or sing a silly song. They weave along the pavement, skirting imaginary obstacles (crocodiles, lava, icy crevasses). It never fails to put a smile on my face, because they are so full of joy and completely un-self-conscious.

You are a walking miracle

Another example: do you ever stop and think, just for a moment, what a miracle it is that you’re actually alive? Think about the mind-boggling fact that you are, quite literally, made of stardust (every atom in your body originated from some star, billions of years ago, exploding and sending raw materials like carbon streaming out into the universe). Without those stars you, I and every other living creature on our planet would not exist.

How about the fact that your ancestor (and mine) was a single-celled amoeba, floating around in the primordial soup of Earth’s newly formed oceans, around four billion years ago. From a simple amoeba to the magnificent complexity of you, purely through the wonder of evolution and a trillion tiny moments of chance and good fortune that enabled you to exist.

Or all of the millions of life-preserving processes happening in your body, right now, allowing your heart to beat and lungs to breathe and blood to flow and food to digest… And we just walk about, eating sandwiches and playing Candy Crush, completely oblivious. The daily miracle of life, which we all take for granted.

And don’t get me started on cherry blossom, or sun shining through fresh spring leaves, or puppies, or the light of a full moon, or hugs, or the first juicy bite of a nectarine, or your football team scoring a 90th-minute winning goal… So much joy, beauty and wonder, if we just let ourselves see/feel/taste it.

Again, I know that none of this is easy, especially when you’re down. (And if you’re struggling with depression – especially if you are having suicidal thoughts – please do contact your GP or a mental health professional right away.) But it will help, I promise, if you can just shift the spotlight of your attention from all of the bad stuff (real and imagined) in your life to those moments of beauty, or everyday miracles, which are right under your nose.

I hope that’s helpful. And sending you love, strength and hope, whatever you may be struggling with right now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Come to My New Heal Your Trauma Workshop – Coping with Anxiety

Image by Ravi Pinisetti

My first one-day Heal Your Trauma workshop will take place from 10.30am-4.30pm on Saturday 10th September 2022, at the Gestalt Centre, near King’s Cross in Central London. Our first workshop will be Coping with Anxiety: How to Worry Less, Feel Calmer and More at Peace with Dan Roberts, Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist, Trainer & Supervisor and Founder of Heal Your Trauma.

This event, which will be both highly informative and experiential, costs just £99 for the full day, including refreshments. There are also a limited number of reduced-fee places available.

Coping with Anxiety: How to Worry Less, Feel Calmer and More at Peace features five hours of teaching and powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed. You will also get to ask questions throughout the day to Dan Roberts, a leading expert on trauma, mental health and working with anxiety.

In this powerful, highly experiential workshop you will learn:

• Why high levels of anxiety are a common problem for people with a trauma history – and how that’s linked to a ‘dysregulated’ nervous system, as well as elevated levels of ‘stress hormones’ like adrenaline and cortisol in your bloodstream

• How anxiety is the brain’s ‘alarm’ emotion, warning you that something bad is about to happen and that you should do something, immediately, to keep yourself safe

• Why anxiety is linked to the fight-flight-freeze self-protection responses – useful for escaping from a hungry lion, but not if you’re sitting at your desk in a quiet, safe office

• Simple, evidence-based strategies to calm your anxious inner child, quickly and effectively

• Why anxiety (an emotion) and worry (a thinking process) are inextricably linked – and how to reduce both overwhelming emotions and unhelpful thinking

• Key experiential exercises – such as Compassionate Breathing and 4-7-8 Breathing, guided meditations and imagery – you will learn to help you cope with your anxiety, reduce unhelpful worry and feel calmer and more in control

• And you will get the chance to put your questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and managing anxiety

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health and wellbeing. Book your place now using the button below for just £99 – a limited number of places are also available for those on a low income (email info@danroberts.com for details).

Warm wishes,

Dan

How to Comfort and Reassure the Anxious Child Inside You

Image by Joseph Gonzalez

Whenever my clients tell me they are feeling anxious, after validating their feelings, my favourite question is, ‘Which I is feeling that way?’ Sometimes (especially if they are new) they look at me with a baffled expression, so I clarify by saying, ‘I’m wondering which part of you is feeling anxious? I know it’s not your Healthy Adult, because she just stood up to your boss when he was shouting at you. So who is it?’

And then they get it, so they say, ‘Oh right, it’s little me who’s scared.’

This may seem a bit pedantic, but it’s so important. When we say, ‘I’m scared/worried/stressed/panicky/lonely/overwhelmed’ we are saying that every part of us feels that way. Problem one: this isn’t true. And problem two: it means we are ignoring or missing the part of us that is not feeling any of that stuff, or perhaps just mild discomfort rather than huge and overwhelming feelings. In schema therapy we call this part the Healthy Adult. Freud called it the ego. In internal family systems it’s the Self, compassion-focused therapists would name this part the Compassionate Self, Buddhists speak of Buddha Nature, and so on.

In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter, as long as we are aware that we are not just one homogenous blob of a personality – just Dan, or David, or Daisy. Research by neuroscientists has proved beyond doubt that there are many parts of us – it’s just how your brain forms your personality, starting from birth.

And we also need to grasp the idea that there is a rich, powerful, healing resource, somewhere inside, that we can develop over our lifetime to heal from trauma or any other painful experiences in childhood – and that this inner resource can calm, soothe and comfort the anxious, hurt, depressed or angry young parts of us.

What is your vulnerable child?

The idea that there is an inner child somewhere inside us is not a new one. But Dr Jeffrey Young, the founder of schema therapy, took this idea and developed it with great wisdom and skill. Dr Young saw this part (or ‘mode’, in schema therapy language) in all of his clients, especially those with a history of complex trauma, whose young part was incredibly sensitive, easily triggered and highly emotional.

You have a Vulnerable Child inside you, as do I. And schema therapists like me call that part Little X, so I have a Little Dan inside me. This part of me is small, young, emotional, vulnerable and highly sensitive. He also holds all the painful thoughts, beliefs, memories and emotions from my childhood, which was not always easy. So he holds memories of me being bullied when I was 11, with all the painful thoughts and feelings associated with that extremely hard time in my life.

If you’re feeling anxious right now, it’s little you feeling that anxiety. He or she is probably scared that something bad is about to happen – perhaps that you will be criticised, shouted at, hurt, rejected or abandoned by someone important to you. Or you feel threatened about something you have to do, or somewhere you have to go (anxiety is always threat-focused, because the function of this emotion is to warn us about bad stuff that’s about to happen).

The practice

Comforting your anxious child

Next time you’re feeling anxious or are worrying about something, try this simple practice, which should help you feel calmer and more at peace.

1. Start by switching your phone to silent, so you won’t be disturbed. Then sit on a comfortable chair, with your feet grounded on the floor, gently roll your shoulders back and lengthen your spine.

   Close your eyes and take some slow, deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth, roughly four seconds in and four seconds out. Just breathe for at least a minute, allowing yourself to settle.

2. Now locate the anxious feeling in your body. Anxiety often shows up in the stomach, or it might be your chest, especially around the solar plexus (between and just below your pectoral muscles). You might notice butterflies, tension or a knot in your stomach, a feeling of nervous energy, or tightness/tension in your chest.

3. Now send some breaths into this part of your body. Don’t try and switch off or get rid of the feelings and sensations, just breathe into them. Keep sending warm, friendly, compassionate breath into your throat, shoulders, chest or belly.

   Sit with that for a minute – and see if you notice those parts of your body soften, just a little.

4. Place a hand on your body wherever you feel the uncomfortable sensations of anxiety in a warm, soft, supportive manner – like you would place your hand on the shoulder of a friend who was upset. Feel the warmth from your hand begin to spread into the skin and muscles. Send that warmth, along with the breath, into the tense, anxious places in your body.

5. Now I want you to visualise yourself as a child. It can help to have a photo of yourself, especially at a young age and one you feel warmly towards (it’s common for us to have complicated feelings towards our Vulnerable Child, especially if we experienced trauma in our childhood).

   If you struggle to feel warmth or compassion towards little you, imagine your own child, niece, nephew or friend’s child you are fond of. Just imagine that they are feeling scared and think about how you would respond to them. What words would you use? What would your tone of voice be? You would probably speak a bit more slowly and use a warm, friendly, reassuring voice tone. That’s the tone you need to comfort the child inside you.

6. Now come back to the photo of little you, or just an image of yourself in your mind’s eye. Speak to them from your (warm, wise, compassionate) Healthy Adult. You can do this out loud, or just think the messages to them inside. Let them know you get that they are scared right now. Tell them that is perfectly natural – there is a lot to be scared about in the world, especially at the moment.

   But you can also reassure them, not in a fake ‘everything’s fine!’ way, but rationally and authentically, telling them that, for example, it’s OK if your spouse is angry with you, because adult you can handle a little conflict. Or you might say it’s normal to worry about problems with your health, but adult you will visit the doctor to make sure everything’s fine and most symptoms we experience are perfectly safe and benign.

7. Keep soothing and reassuring them in this calm, friendly, rational way. Then – don’t try and force this, just do what feels natural – let them know you care about or even love them. Sit with that for a few seconds, feeling that internal connection between your Healthy Adult and little you.

8. Finally, see if there are any good feelings inside – you might feel a bit calmer, more relaxed, lighter in your body, or a sense of warmth. If so, just enjoy those feelings for a while. Let them soak into your body for at least 30 seconds.

9. Then take a deep breath and open your eyes.

Try this often, whenever you feel anxious. Once a day is good, five times a day is better. Like all new skills, it will be tricky at first, but get easier with time and especially practice.

I very much hope that helps – sending you love and strength on your healing journey.

Warm wishes,

Dan

You Are More Than Good Enough, Just as You Are

Image by Daniel Hering

I’m going to tell you a secret. You are completely, 100% likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are. Who you are, right now. Not next year, when you’ve had therapy and lost 10lb and met the love of your life and bought a big house. Exactly as you are today – with all your strengths and weaknesses, things you’re proud of and things you’re not, successes and failures... Perfect, with all your many imperfections.

Don’t believe me? I thought not. And here’s why – because most of us don’t believe that we are good enough, deep down. We think we’re not clever, thin, pretty, successful, popular, strong, resilient, academic – or whatever our personal sore point might be – enough. And that’s because many of us have a schema, called Defectiveness.

When I take a new client on for schema therapy, I identify which of the 18 schemas they have (we all have at least some of them, including the person who’s writing this). And most people score highly for Defectiveness. It’s so common, I call it the ‘common cold’ of schemas. And like all schemas, it’s a neural network in the brain made up of thoughts, memories, beliefs, emotional and physical responses. These networks develop when we’re young to help us cope with repeated stressful experiences. They are like a template for how to respond when we encounter similarly stressful experiences in our lives.

And Defectiveness often develops when someone tells us we are stupid, or lazy, or weak, or some other hurtful thing, over and over. Not just once, but day after day, week after week, year after year, throughout our childhoods. And so, of course, we start to believe it. We think, ‘Maybe I am stupid.’

Sometimes it’s not what we’re told, but what we intuit from a situation. So if we have a sister and our dad clearly loves her more than us, we might start to think, ‘What’s wrong with me? Why does he dote on her and treat me like a waste of space? Oh, maybe it’s because I’m not as smart as her. Or perhaps I’m just not as lovable as she is.’

So that schema starts forming, slowly at first, but getting more and more wired in as we struggle through a painful childhood. And then you find yourself, at 30 or 40 years old, feeling deep in your bones that you are stupid, rubbish, weak or a failure. I must stress at this point, that none of this is true. It’s just a story you have told yourself for so long that it seems like a 100% accurate description of reality.

Schemas can be healed

Another crucial point is that, just because schemas are strongly wired in to your brain (because you have been thinking those self-critical thoughts and telling yourself that negative story for so long), they are not set or fixed in any way. If you often read my posts, you will know how much I like the idea of neuroplasticity, which basically tells us that our brains are malleable and can be rewired at any moment in our lives.

For example, if you travel to a new city, in a new country, there is a huge amount of new information to absorb – new language, new food, new transport system, new city layout, new customs, new currency, and so on. And when you engage that miraculous supercomputer in your cranium to learn all this stuff, you create new neural architecture to hold all that information. That’s what we mean by rewiring the brain – creating new synaptic connections between the neurons to hold brand-new and important information.

This is how schemas are formed, in your young, fast-growing brain. And this is how schemas can be weakened (or healed, in schema therapy language) when you’re older. Schema healing is always possible, for any of us, at any time in our lives. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, of course – but it is always possible.

The practice

Tell yourself a different story

One of the ways you can start healing your schemas, right now, is by rewriting the story you have been telling yourself since you were, probably, around five years old. And one of the ways to do that is using a technique I learned from the brilliant psychologist Dr Paul Gilbert, founder of compassion-focused therapy. To paraphrase Dr Gilbert, his story goes something like this.

‘When you were about to be born, imagine you could have looked down on the Earth and seen all the potential families you could be born into. Some of those families were warm, loving, kind and stable; and others were full of conflict, unhappiness, anger and criticism. Would you have picked the unhappy one? No, of course not.

‘Did you choose your tricky brain, with its highly developed threat system that made you vulnerable to feeling stressed, anxious and unsafe? Of course you didn’t.

‘Did you choose to have painful schemas, or a harsh inner critic, or negative and self-loathing beliefs? Of course not.

‘Did you choose to have debilitating anxiety and worry, depression, or overwhelming feelings of shame and a lack of self-worth? Nobody would.

‘So, as you didn’t choose any of those things, the thoughts, feelings and moods you struggle with on a day-to-day basis can’t be your fault.

‘But, as an adult, it is your responsibility to do everything you can to try and heal from your painful childhood. Read self-help books and blogs like this one. Go to workshops and webinars held by teachers and healers you respect. Listen to podcasts. Get some therapy. Choose a partner who is kind and supportive. Exercise, sleep, eat nourishing food – all of those things are within your power and you can start doing them right this moment.’

I love this idea, because fault is entirely negative and self-blaming, whereas responsibility is positive, hopeful and leads to proactive problem-solving. If you would like to put this into practice, why not try journaling about your own life – telling yourself a different story about all the things that were out of your control, so you clearly didn’t choose and cannot have been your fault.

Think about the way that all those things, when put together, made you the person you are today. And hopefully this compassionate, non-blaming story will help you feel better about yourself and your life, however much of a struggle it may be for you.

I hope you find that helpful – and that you can tell yourself a different story, starting today. Remember: You are likable, lovable and more than good enough, just as you are.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Feeling Anxious or Stressed? Try 4-7-8 Breathing to Feel Calmer, Quickly

Image by Joshua Earle

Sometimes, we have to acknowledge that modern psychology doesn’t have all the answers. With great humility, we also have to realise that some of the most powerful, deeply healing techniques have been around for thousands of years. Take mindfulness, which only entered the Western medical mainstream in the 1970s. Mindfulness techniques were developed and taught by the Buddha 2,500 years ago, so it took us a while to catch up!

Another set of powerful techniques that have increasingly become mainstream are deep-breathing techniques, which can be incredibly helpful for any ‘hyperaroused’ (high-energy) state such as stress, anxiety, anger or agitation. Many of these techniques are part of the yogic tradition, which has been around for thousands of years (it’s hard to know exactly how long, but 5,000 years is an oft-quoted figure – let’s just say a long time).

These pranayama breathing techniques involve a whole host of practices, but this post will focus on 4-7-8 Breathing, which is incredibly powerful – what I call a ‘break the glass in case of emergency’ breathing technique, as opposed to the gentler Compassionate Breathing, which is also a key part of my therapy toolkit.

When should you use 4-7-8 breathing?

The first thing to say is that this isn’t one of those deep-breathing techniques you can surreptitiously use on the Tube, or in a meeting. It’s kind of loud and pretty funky, so it’s one for a quiet room, alone (or with your therapist, partner or a trusted friend/family member). As with Compassionate Breathing and Box Breathing (another ‘emergency’ technique I often teach people), this 4-7-8 Breathing involves abdominal/diaphragmatic breathing to help you move from a stress response to a relaxation response.

First, a little science (feel free to skip this bit if you want to go straight to the practice, below). Your heart, lungs, digestion and various other systems in your body are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. And this is divided into two branches, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The sympathetic branch is all about action and is a key part of the fight-flight response (fight being linked to the emotion of anger, flight to anxiety).

Put simply, this branch of the nervous system helps you mobilise for action to escape or fight off a life-or-death threat. So it’s pretty handy. But not so useful if you’re on a bus, or in a parent-teacher meeting, and are flooded with panic and anxiety. And sadly, if you’re a trauma survivor, you will probably have way too much SNS activation and not enough PNS in your life, so we need to fire up that parasympathetic system, which is involved in the rest-and-digest response and feelings of calm, relaxation, peacefulness and safety. The good stuff that we all want more of, but which can be elusive, especially if you’re chronically stressed or anxious.

The good news is that just a few minutes of 4-7-8 Breathing can quickly and powerfully activate the PNS, helping you move from stressed to more relaxed. Here’s how it works…

The practice

I would recommend trying this on your own in a quiet room. Switch your phone off and make sure you won’t be disturbed – take a few minutes out of your busy day, just for yourself. You can just count the breaths, slowly, in your head.

When you’re first learning, try to practice at least twice a day, but you can do it as often as you want. Only do it for four cycles in a row in the beginning. After you get used to it, you can work up to eight cycles in a row, throughout the day.

1. Start by adjusting your posture – gently roll your shoulders back and lengthen your spine, so you’re sitting in an upright but relaxed posture. You can close your eyes, or leave them open if you prefer.

2. Place your tongue against the back of your top teeth and keep it there.

3. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whooshing sound (this might feel a bit silly at first, but give it a go). Try to get every molecule of air out of your lungs.

4. Close your mouth and inhale through your nose for a count of four.

5. Now hold your breath for a count of seven.

6. Exhale completely through your mouth, with added whooshing, for a count of eight. Get all that stale air out of your lungs…

7. This completes one cycle. Repeat for three more cycles.

Remember that, like any new technique, this might feel a bit weird, clunky or challenging at first. Try not to get discouraged – remember that practice makes perfect. Give it a go, for at least a few days.

If you really struggle (and some people do find this practice challenging, especially that long hold), switch to Box Breathing, Compassionate Breathing or just plain old deep breathing instead. As long as you breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth, and your belly is rising and falling with each breath, it should definitely help.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Watch Dan's Interview About Trauma Healing for AntiLoneliness

Image by Jonathan Velasquez

I was recently honoured to be invited for an interview with Vassia Sarantopoulou, Founder and Head Psychologist of AntiLoneliness (antiloneliness.com).

In the course of our highly engaging, one-hour interview we discussed many issues related to trauma, including:

• Can we heal from trauma?

• What is the difference between trauma and complex trauma?

• How has this pandemic been a traumatic experience for many?

• What's a holistic approach to healing?

• How do our everyday habits add to trauma?

• Breathing and meditation: how they help with healing

Do watch the interview below, or by visiting the AntiLoneliness YouTube channel – if you have a trauma history, I very much hope you find it helpful.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try this Step-by-Step Practice to Manage Your Painful Feelings

Image by whoislimos

As the REM song reminds us, everybody hurts sometimes. To lead a human life – with all its sorrows, as well as its joys – is to be faced with painful feelings on a daily basis. On any given day, we might feel stress, anxiety, hurt, upset, loneliness, low confidence or self-esteem, disconnection, rejection, anger, frustration, depression and boredom. Nobody likes these feelings. No-one wants to feel them. But whether we like it or not, as members of the human species we must inevitably feel them.

As I often tell my clients, if you never feel painful emotions you’re either a robot or you’re dead. And neither option is very attractive!

Another way of thinking about this is that, to live a full, rich human life, we need to feel a rainbow of emotions. Everybody likes the light-coloured ones, like joy, love, excitement, pride, pleasure and satisfaction. And no-one likes the dark ones: fear, pain, anger, sadness or loneliness. But maintaining robust mental health and wellbeing involves experiencing the full range of emotions, from light to dark.

Do you avoid feelings altogether?

Something I often notice with my clients, especially when they have a trauma history, is that they struggle with painful feelings in a variety of ways. Some people don’t feel them at all – they experience so much internal detachment and dissociation that they feel totally numb, shutdown or empty inside. And in some ways, this works well as an emotional-management strategy, because they are able to function well enough day to day, without being buffeted by unpleasant thoughts and feelings 24/7.

But the downside is that they often feel so disconnected, from themselves and other people, that life is extremely lonely. These people feel isolated and alone, even in a roomful of people. They might also struggle to feel the pleasant emotions, like happiness and love, because this internal shutdown squashes all emotions, light and dark.

Or are you overwhelmed by them?

At the other extreme, many people I work with find their feelings completely overwhelming. In schema therapy terms, their Healthy Adult part gets swamped by the intense, overpowering emotions of their Vulnerable Child part – the young, emotional, hurt child we all carry inside.

Again, if there is trauma in your background, your nervous system might be highly sensitive and easily engulfed by threat-focused emotions like anger, fear or hurt. That is not your fault, it’s just how your brain, nervous system and body were shaped by painful experiences in your childhood.

The practice

The four Fs: Find it, feel it, let it flow, find comfort

Either way, whether you feel too much or too little, you need help in managing your painful feelings. Here’s a step-by-step practice I have developed over the years, which might help.

1. Find it. If you’re experiencing any overwhelming feeling right now, first locate it in your body. For example, if you feel anxious or panicky, you will probably feel that in your gut – perhaps butterflies, a knot in your stomach or deep, sinking feeling of dread in your lower torso. If you feel angry, you might notice your muscles tensing up – especially around your upper back, arms, fists, shoulders and jaw – and a surge of heat and energy in your chest, throat and face.

   It also helps to name the emotion (research shows that just naming an emotion helps reduce its intensity) so, ‘I feel anxious/sad/upset/angry/stressed/irritable/frustrated/lonely/hurt.’

   If you tend to detach and don’t know what you’re feeling, just focus on the physical sensations in your body, however faint they may be (butterflies in your stomach, a heavy/slumpy feeling in your shoulders and upper body, and so on).

2. Feel it. It’s counterintuitive, but one reason people get so overwhelmed with emotions is because they swing between detaching, distracting or soothing (with alcohol, cigarettes, comfort-eating, prescription/non-prescription drugs, gaming, gambling or a whole host of other substances and activities) and overwhelm.

   If you just want to understand how we’re supposed to feel emotions, look at a toddler. They have no problem feeling their emotions! If they are angry, they shout, stomp their foot, scream, have a tantrum. If they are hurt or sad, they cry. If they’re scared, they run to mum for a hug. The emotions flow through them like water.

   And once they have felt and released the emotions, it’s amazing how quickly they move into a different emotional state – happy, excited, chattering, chasing a butterfly… For toddlers, emotions don’t get stuck. They feel them intensely, release them and then are perfectly fine again. It’s miraculous to see.

   Remember that feelings can’t hurt you – they are just feelings, which all humans feel and in fact let us know we are alive – so allow yourself to feel them, bit by bit.

3. Let the emotion Flow. Many of us, especially (though not exclusively) men, have trouble in expressing our emotions. We feel incredibly sad, but we don’t cry. We boil with anger, but say nothing, clamping our jaw shut, balling our fists, but carrying on as if we’re fine.

   Emotions – especially big emotions like anger or intense sadness and hurt – are designed to be released. That’s why we cry when we’re sad, so we release a mixture of emotion and stress hormones. And when we have cried enough, we feel a sense of relief.

   If you’re angry, find some safe, non-destructive methods for releasing anger and letting it Flow out of your body (here’s a recent post I wrote about that). Learn to communicate assertively. Write angry letters you never send. Find ways that work for you of healthily releasing your anger, so it flows out and doesn’t fester inside, because that’s not good for your physical or mental health.

4. Find Comfort. Think about that toddler again. When he was scared, he ran to mum for a big hug. If his sister fell over and banged her knee, she would run to mum, or dad, or a grandparent for a big hug, soothing/reassuring words and perhaps some milk and cookies. This is the Find Comfort part of the practice. Once you have allowed yourself to Find and Feel it, then let the emotion Flow, Find Comfort either from someone else or yourself.

   Because unlike toddlers, adults can self-soothe – we can give ourselves a hug, by placing a hand over our heart and thinking kind, comforting, reassuring thoughts. This might be tough for you. But it’s a skill that needs to be learned, perhaps with the help of a mental-health professional. And you can learn it, so you then have the option of seeking comfort from a partner, family member, friend or therapist, or of giving it to yourself.

I very much hope you find that helpful – remember that, like all practices, it takes practice. That’s why it’s called a practice! Because you need to do it, repeatedly, for it to become more effective. And watch this space for more emotion-focused practices you can add to your mental-health toolkit in future.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Receiving Kindness and Compassion From Others – How to Let it in

Image by Berkay Gumustekin

Most of us know that kindness and compassion are helpful qualities to develop. And if you are trying to improve your mental health and wellbeing, you will have received that message loud and clear from all the books, blogs, podcasts and social media posts you consume. It’s good to be kind and compassionate to others. It’s good to be kind and compassionate to yourself. It’s good to spend your time with people who are kind and compassionate to you. We all know this to be true.

But – and this is a big but – for many of us, none of this stuff is easy. In my last post, I explained why self-compassion is so powerful and healing. But I have also written a great deal about why it can be a struggle to generate self-compassionate thoughts and feelings, especially if you have a trauma history. Many of my clients, colleagues, friends and family members are kind, compassionate people – but have a tough time treating themselves with a similar level of warmth and benevolence.

Something we think less about, but which is equally important, is whether we are able to receive compliments, kind words and compassionate gestures from other people. Surprisingly, this can be just as tough as generating self-compassion.

Taking in good stuff – why it’s hard

With many of my clients, I have noticed over the years that when they are given a compliment, they bat it away. ‘Oh, anyone could have done it,’ they say, or ‘It really wasn’t that great.’

The same thing happens with kind words, offers of help and support, expressions of love and affection – all are deflected, batted away, subtly rejected. When I have said something warm and complimentary, telling them how big-hearted they are, or how much I like them, some of my clients actually flinch, as if I have said something cruel and hurtful.

And this is such a shame, because I am offering them a chance to feel good about themselves, to counter the often harsh, negative and unpleasant messages they have received from family members their whole lives.

But this is precisely the problem. If, as a small child, you are on the receiving end of a barrage of hurtful attacks, whether verbal or physical, you quickly learn to create some kind of armour to protect yourself. This armour may take the form of a part that helps you detach and shut down inside (called the Detached Protector in schema therapy), so you feel numb, rather than sensitive and vulnerable to being hurt.

It may look like avoiding difficult people or situations at all costs. The armour might be behavioural, like distracting yourself with your phone, or using substances to help you feel numb or disconnected from your emotions, because they hurt too much.

And all these forms of armour make sure you never feel open, vulnerable, exposing your soft belly to the world. Because you have learned that if you do so, you will be attacked, rejected or hurt in some other way.

So no wonder you push away compliments or kind words! Because to receive them you need to be vulnerable, to trust, to be open – and these can all feel threatening, especially if you have a big trauma history.

The practice

I developed this practice, which I call the Treasure Chest, to help one of my clients struggling to take in kindness and compassion from others – you might find it helpful too.

1. First, I want you to imagine that somewhere inside – your heart, maybe – you have a treasure chest. And this chest is yours and yours alone. Nobody else gets to use it. Nobody else can access it – just you.

2. Close your eyes and take a moment to really imagine this chest – what’s it like? What shape is it? What is it made of? What colour is it? Is it light, or heavy? Does it have any decorations or patterns on the outside? The more vivid this detail, the more real it will seem to your brain when you need to use it.

3. Now, here’s the hard bit. Next time somebody offers you a kind word, or compliment, instead of reflexively shrugging it off or batting it away, I want you to imagine taking this lovely thing and storing it in your treasure chest. Remember, nobody knows it’s there. No-one can access it. It’s just for you.

4. You could visualise the kindness as a piece of treasure, like a gold coin or beautiful, light-filled jewel. And as you store it in your secret chest, see if you can allow yourself to feel it, even a tiny bit, too. So if someone says, ‘I love the way you’re always so wise and know exactly what to say when I’m feeling down,’ if you let yourself, you might feel just a bit proud. There may be a small ripple of warmth in your belly, chest and throat. You might even feel yourself walking a few inches taller, that your chest has expanded a little, or shoulders relaxed and dropped.

5. It can also be helpful to start a journal, writing these gifts down there, too. If you get a lovely email, you could store it in a special folder (mine is called Hardwiring Happiness and I keep all sorts of heartwarming messages there). Write it, draw it, keep it in some concrete form – this will help make your treasure more real and make sure you don’t lose it.

6. If you keep doing this, bit by bit, slowly your treasure chest fills up. And you learn to accept those kindnesses and compassionate gestures, rather than pushing them away. Then, over time, that starts to change the way you feel – about yourself, about other people, about the world and your future. Nothing radical or dramatic, just slow, steady, incremental change. Until one day, you feel a bit happier, a little better about yourself, a tiny bit more confident and self-valuing. And that has to be a good thing, right?

I really hope that helps. And if you would like to experience me teaching this and lots of other helpful techniques live, come along to my next webinar: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, which takes place from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 28th May 2022.

I hope to see you there – and am sending you love and strength, whatever you might be struggling with right now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Responding to Your Pain with Self-Compassion

Image by Julien Tromeur

Have you ever had a bad back? I’m guessing that, as you are human, have a spine and do all the things that 21st-century humans do (sitting too much, being overly stressed, being hunched over a computer screen all day) the answer is yes. And if you are a fellow bad-back sufferer, you will know that when your back pain flares up, it’s not much fun.

As I write this, I am a few days into a flare-up. Despite doing everything possible to manage it – first ice, then heat; help from a brilliant osteopath; frequent yoga, stretching and mobilisation; anti-inflammatory gel, and so on – I’m in a fair amount of pain.

And when you are suffering from pain, your natural reaction might be to get frustrated and impatient. ‘Why me?’ you ask, stooped over and clutching your lower back. ‘It’s so unfair!’ Or, ‘I hate being in pain so much!’ Or, ‘I’m sick to death of this – I just cannot stand it.’

Trust me, these thoughts – accompanied by various expletives – have passed through my mind and out of my mouth in the last few days. Chronic pain is a real struggle. It just grinds you down and makes it hard to be positive, upbeat or optimistic that the episode will ever end.

Why negative thinking makes pain worse

But I am lucky enough to work in a profession that has helped me understand a great deal about pain, both physical and emotional, and how best to deal with it. When my back was really bad, a couple of years ago, I read a life-changing book by Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman: Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Wellbeing. The authors explain that there are two types of physical pain: primary and secondary. Primary pain comprises the signals from your nerves at the site of the injury or illness in your body – like a broken leg or gash on your knee.

This information travels up the nerves until it reaches your brain. At which point, your brain interprets the information from your nervous system, as well as the thoughts you are having about the pain, to decide whether it’s serious/threatening or not. If your brain thinks it’s serious – that broken leg, for example – it then turns up the ‘pain volume’, making the pain worse.

This is secondary pain, which is often far worse and more distressing for us than the primary version. It’s important to stress that both forms of pain are real – it’s not ‘all in your mind’. We are talking about actual, physical pain and discomfort here.

But the fascinating – and revolutionary, for me – discovery here is that we can control the level of our pain by adjusting our response to it. And the key to reducing your pain, whether it’s physical or emotional, is responding with self-compassion.

The miracle of self-compassion

Let’s circle back to those (totally understandable) responses to being in pain. In Buddhism, these are known as ‘second darts’ – the first dart is the pain itself. But the second dart is the anger, frustration, stress and upset we feel when we respond to that pain with negative, blaming, hostile thoughts and words. Instead, the Buddha taught us to respond with acceptance, kindness and compassion, however alien or difficult that might seem at moments of discomfort and distress.

What helps me respond to my pain, and tight back muscles, with compassion is that I know from experience that this will both reduce my pain and accelerate the healing process. I do my level best to say/think things like, ‘Oh man, this is hard. But I know it won’t last forever and I will get better soon.’ Or, ‘Poor back. I know you’re really suffering right now. But it’s OK, nothing is wrong, you can just relax.’ Or, ‘Dan, I know you’re in a lot of pain right now and that is hard to bear. But remember that you’re not alone. I’m here for you, I care about you, and we will get through this together.’

If I keep responding in this way, my pain is significantly less. My back gets better much more quickly, as I’m not bracing and tensing up, which keeps the muscles tight and in spasm. And I spare myself a great deal of unhappiness, because accepting that I’m going through a tough time helps reduce the frustration, irritation and upset that those negative responses cause.

Of course, everything you’re reading here applies just as much to psychological and emotional pain, as it does physical, somatic pain. And that’s why my next Heal Your Trauma webinar – The Healing Power of Self-Compassion – will teach you all about being kind and compassionate, rather than unkind or harsh with yourself.

I will teach you some simple, powerful self-compassion practices that you can use right away. And the webinar will feature a 15-minute Q&A, allowing you to ask me anything you want about how to manage your pain, mental health and wellbeing.

This 90-minute Zoom webinar takes place at 3pm on Saturday 28th May 2022 – and costs just £39, including exclusive access to a recording of the event.

I look forward to seeing you there – find out more about this event by watching the video and book your place now using the button below.

And sending you love and healing thoughts, whatever you might be struggling with right now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Don't Miss My Next Webinar: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

Image by Taisiia Stupak

As part of my Heal Your Trauma project, I am offering a series of Zoom webinars throughout 2022. My second webinar – The Healing Power of Self-Compassion – will be held from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 28th May 2022.

One of the core values of this project is that everything is free, or priced affordably. So this 90-minute webinar costs just £29 to attend live, as well as gaining exclusive access to a video of the event, to watch whenever you like.

The Healing Power of Self-Compassion features 90 minutes of teaching, powerful exercises that will help you feel calmer and more relaxed, and a 15-minute Q&A with me.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• The key role that self-compassion plays in healing from any psychological problem, but especially trauma

• Key experiential exercises – such as breathing, guided meditations, journaling and imagery – you will learn to help you develop your self-compassion skills

• How self-compassion is crucial to help you deal with stress, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, being overly self-critical, eating disorders, substance abuse and most other psychological problems

• And, during a 15-minute Q&A, you will get the chance to put your questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and developing self-compassion

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health and wellbeing. Watch the video for more information and book your place now – for just £29 – using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Difference Between Empathy and Compassion – and Why it Matters

Image by Aarón Blanco Tejedor

Are you an empathic person? As you are visiting my website and reading this post right now, I’m guessing you are. But there are some common misconceptions about what empathy actually is – and how it differs from compassion. These differences might seem a bit pedantic, or only of interest to psychology nerds like me, but it’s actually of crucial importance to you, especially if you struggle with mental-health problems.

Before we get on to empathy and compassion, let’s start with sympathy. If I feel sympathy for you, it means I feel sorry for you. So if I were walking down a street in central London and saw a homeless person begging, I might think, ‘Poor guy – he looks really miserable,’ and feel sorry for the homeless person.

Empathy is different – and actually involves a much more complex and sophisticated psychological response than sympathy. If I felt empathy for the same homeless guy, I would take time to imagine what it felt like to be him – I would try to put myself in his shoes and really work at getting what it felt like to sit there, day after day, on a cold pavement (and it’s making me sad just writing that sentence, because I think being homeless must be a terrible existence).

Empathy is a good thing, but…

So you can see that feeling empathy is harder for us than mere sympathy. It takes intentional effort, especially in a city like London where, very sadly, we can walk past hundreds of homeless people a day. It can also be uncomfortable, because I am imagining what the guy might be thinking (probably not very happy thoughts) and feeling (probably sad, crushed and hopeless, if he’s like most homeless people I have spoken to).

This is one reason many people lack empathy, because it can be painful to put yourself in the mind of another. And especially if you live in a busy, crowded metropolis like London, where you have to shut yourself down a bit not to get overwhelmed by it all.

It’s also why people make the mistake of speaking about ‘compassion fatigue’, when what they really mean is ‘empathy fatigue’. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by too much empathy – especially in our world, with heartbreaking wars raging in Ukraine, Yemen and Ethiopia, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, famine… If you really allow yourself to feel the pain of the whole world you would just implode.

Moving into compassion

That’s why compassion is a much healthier state, but also requires another step in terms of psychological flexibility. When I feel compassion, I first have an empathic response to the homeless man, putting myself in his shoes. But I then take compassionate action – meaning I am determined to do something to relieve his suffering. And that makes all the difference, because now I am protected from burnout or fatigue.

So I might ask to buy him a sandwich or cup of tea. If he looked down or upset, as a therapist I could sit and listen to him and do what I could to help. And you don’t need to be a trained therapist to take a moment to sit next to someone and make a simple human-to-human connection. In my experience, homeless people always love this and find it deeply moving, because it means we are seeing them as a fellow human being, not just an annoying obstacle to step over or rush past as quickly as possible.

It’s clear that the world needs more compassion right now. Taking compassionate action would help us solve the many challenges facing humanity, such as those terrible wars raging, climate change, income inequality, poverty, hunger, racism and other destructive forms of discrimination, violence against women, abuse of all kinds… Every single problem we face as a global human family could be solved with a little more empathy and compassionate action.

Want to know more?

If you would like to know more about compassion and how helpful it can be – especially if you have a trauma history/are struggling with any kind of mental-health problem – do book your place on my next Zoom webinar: The Healing Power of Self-Compassion. This 90-minute webinar costs just £29, including access to a recording of the event, to watch whenever you like.

You can find out more about the event on this page, or book your place using the button below.

I hope to see you there!

Warm wishes,

Dan

Guided Imagery: Building the Healthy Adult Mode

Image by Sharon McCutcheon

One of the key aims of schema therapy is to build your Healthy Adult part (or ‘mode’ in ST language). This is the part of you that is calm, compassionate, strong, rational and resilient. For most of us, this process is not easy – especially if you have a trauma history and so struggle to feel or access these inner resources. But it is doable, for anyone, if you get the right help and support.

That’s why my latest recording for Insight Timer is a guided imagery that will help you do just that. Just click on the button below to listen to the recording, Imagine a Happier Future – Guided Imagery.

I record these meditations, guided imagery, talks and breathing techniques for my clients and as part of my Heal Your Trauma project. They are free for anyone to listen to – with an optional donation, if you would like to support the project.

I hope you find the imagery helpful – and do feel free to try any of my other recordings on Insight Timer, which I will keep adding to over time.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Humans Can Be Cruel – But Also Kind, Compassionate and Altruistic

Image by Tim Mossholder

It’s hard to live in this world sometimes. Of course, the crisis in Ukraine is dominating the news right now – as it should – and is utterly heartbreaking on a daily basis. But let’s not forget there are many other, less-well-covered, conflicts around the world right now. War is currently raging in Yemen and Ethiopia, to name but two, with many other places – like Syria and Afghanistan – experiencing shocking strife and instability.

Sometimes, as we view the world through the media’s negative, catastrophising prism, it can seem as if humans are terribly heartless and cruel. And in some ways, this is true – our species does have the capacity for great cruelty, aggression and barbarism. A quick glance at the history books will prove that to be true.

But we are also capable of wonderful things – acts of kindness, compassion, selfless generosity and altruism. Around the world, billions of tiny, good things happen every day, but go unreported by the media, because they are too small, too unexciting to make the headlines, rolling-news cycle or your social media feed, which can be dominated by scary and upsetting stories.

This is not an accident by the way – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube’s algorithm’s are designed to grab and hold your attention in any way they can. And, sadly, stories that scare or outrage people get more attention than sweet, simple, kind stories, so you get bombarded by the former and then think this is ‘the truth’, when it’s only a tiny fraction of most people’s daily experiences.

Are you a chimp or a bonobo?

As a psychotherapist, I am fascinated by the human mind and the capacity we all have for light and dark, good and evil, aggression and altruism. I’m also intrigued by evolutionary psychology, which seeks to explain where these capacities came from, in terms of our evolutionary history. I recently watched a Netflix documentary, Animal, which shed some surprising light on this.

One episode featured the great apes – a group of which humans are, of course, a member. And it compared the lives and behaviour of two closely related apes in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We first saw a ‘community’ of chimps, who could be tender and loving, but also shockingly violent. In this patriarchal group, males compete, fight and kill each other in a constantly evolving struggle for dominance. Chimps also kill members of local communities, as they seek to expand their territory.

The documentary then switched to a ‘party’ of bonobos, living just across the River Congo from their chimp cousins. Bonobos look a lot like chimps, but they are smaller and live in matriarchal groups, where women rule. And the difference is remarkable. They might squabble, but they live highly peaceful, pro-social lives. Bonobos don’t kill each other, or their neighbours. If young males get a bit over-excited, the women soon put them in their place. The contrast with über-violent chimps is stark.

Much has been written about this in the evolutionary-psychology literature, but as I watched this documentary I couldn’t help but think about some of our autocratic leaders: Putin, Assad, Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Orban – they are all basically chimps, no? Violent, macho, aggressive, lacking human empathy or compassion for the millions of people they hurt and even kill.

And then our (mostly female) bonobo-like leaders: Jacinda Ardern, Sanna Marin, Angela Merkel, Joe Biden, Barack Obama. Not perfect, of course, but still kind, compassionate, empathic, pro-social. They really seem to care about other people and do their utmost to help them. Again, the contrast with the chimp-adjacent autocrats is stark.

Humans are basically good

So, even at a time like this, when it can be so upsetting and depressing just to glance at the headlines every day, remember that the vast majority of people are basically good, kind and decent. Just look at the response to the Ukrainian refugees, which (apart, I’m ashamed to say, from the UK) has been wonderfully warm and generous. Neighbouring countries like Poland and Romania have take in millions of displaced people, with ordinary citizens giving up their homes, money, food, medicine, clothes, hotel rooms, rental cars – even driving refugees hundreds of kilometers to be reunited with their families.

It fills my heart with joy to see these generous, benevolent acts. And reminds me that as a species, we might be closely related to chimps – but we are just as intimately connected to bonobos (research shows that bonobos share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans—about the same amount that chimps share with us.) So please remember that, if the world seems rather dark and scary right now. Inside your heart and mind are wondrous capacities for kindness, decency, selflessness and other beautiful qualities. Putin can never destroy that, however hard he might try.

And if you would like to do something to help, please donate to Unicef using the button below, which is working on the ground in Ukraine to help children affected by the war.

Sending you love and warm thoughts, wherever you are in the world,

Dan

Try This Hardwiring Happiness Meditation to Boost Your Mood

Image by Lesly Juarez

This short practice is adapted from Rick Hanson’s wonderful book, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence. He reminds us that the human brain is overwhelmingly focused on protecting you from threats. Let’s think about why that might be. For millions of years, our ancestors evolved to live in the wilderness. They formed small bands of hunter-gatherers, living in caves or fortified villages surrounded by hungry, poisonous and dangerous animals, as well as other bands they mostly lived alongside peaceably, but who could attack at any moment. This was a dangerous time to be human.

So your brain evolved to live in this world – not the 21st-century world we live in now, which for most of us involves an urban existence, in peaceful democracies and with far fewer life-or-death threats than your brain evolved to deal with.

But your threat-focused brain still operates as if you were living in the forest, or out on the savannah. And this is why all human brains have an in-built negativity bias, meaning you are laser-focused on bad stuff – threats, worries, painful memories, financial difficulties, relationship troubles… You think about that a lot and pour huge amounts of mental energy into ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

When good stuff happens, you enjoy it for a moment, then it’s gone. And you move quickly to hungrily searching for the next thing to worry about. This is not your fault – it’s just what brains do.

As Rick Hanson says, your brain is like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good. So we need to build our mental muscles to help us pay as much attention to good stuff as we do bad.

The practice

Here’s a short, powerful, neuroscience-derived practice I use with all my clients, as it’s so helpful for correcting that negativity bias, helping you focus on and enjoy pleasant experiences and stop obsessing about unpleasant ones.

1. Start by finding a comfortable position, either sitting or lying down and closing your eyes. Take some deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth, counting four seconds in and four seconds out. Keep breathing, letting the breath be calming and nourishing for you. Let your abdomen rise and fall with each in-breath and out-breath.

2. Now think about something good that happened to you recently. This could be something from a whole spectrum of pleasant experiences, from tiny moments of joy, like eating a delicious piece of fruit, seeing pink blossom framed by blue sky, or reading a book you found deeply enjoyable; right up to powerful, profound experiences like asking someone to marry you, winning an award for your work, the birth of your first child, or someone you love deeply recovering from a scary illness.

3. Visualise that experience in as much detail as possible – really imagine that you are there and it’s happening to you in the present moment. Where are you? What do you see around you? Are you alone or with someone? How does this experience unfold – is it a conversation, phone call or email exchange? Or is it just something you see, hear, smell or taste? Focus on the sensory details of your experience as vividly as possible – the more vivid this is the better.

4. Now focus on how you are feeling during this experience. What emotions do you notice in your body? Do you feel calm, happy, joyful, excited, proud, satisfied, relieved, inspired, moved, awestruck… Or something else entirely?

5. Really focus on the visceral experience of the emotions in your body. For example, you might feel an inner warmth, or a lightness in your body, or perhaps a pleasurable upsurge of energy. Whatever you are feeling, just focus on it, enjoy it and let it soak into your body for around 60 seconds. Then take a deep breath and open your eyes.

6. So, here’s the miraculous bit – you just hard-wired that experience and the positive feelings linked to it into your brain. It only takes 10 seconds to do this, but the longer you allow for this process the better. Plus, you are simply enjoying pleasant experiences fully and completely, so the longer you do that the more enjoyable it will be for you.

7. Try to get into the habit of doing this whenever something good or enjoyable happens. If you build this practice into your daily life, over time you will start to tilt the scales of negativity and positivity in your brain. Eventually, you will find yourself ruminating and worrying less about bad stuff; and feeling calmer, happier and more content.

8. Now continue with your day, looking out for positive experiences to hardwire.

I very much hope you enjoy this practice – I have recorded it as a Hardwiring Happiness Talk and Meditation for Insight Timer. You can listen to the recording, plus my collection of meditations, breathing techniques and guided imagery using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

The Story of You: What You Needed and (Probably) Didn’t Get as a Child

Image by Kelly Sikkema

So, you were born. And like all babies, you were beautiful, innocent and pure. You were like a little seed, packed full of energy, primed to flourish and grow. But to do that you needed certain nutrients like food, water, air and warmth, of course, but also things like love and safety, to feel cherished and valued for the little miracle that you were.

As well as all the basic ingredients you needed to nourish you day to day, what little you needed most was to be loved, held, whispered and sung to, told stories of who you were and how you came to be here. You needed to feel your mother’s skin on yours, your father’s strong arms as he rocked you back to sleep.

We call experiences like this attachment and it is so deep, so powerful, hard-wired into every human brain. You needed a safe, secure, reliable attachment first to mum – who carried you in her body for nine months, gave you life, fed and cared for you at your tiniest and most vulnerable – and then dad, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, school friends and so on, out and out for the rest of your life.

Our first and deepest attachment

But for most of us this starts with mum, our first and most important caregiver, who should love us fiercely, viscerally, as if we were part of her, because we once were. And when this goes as it should, it feels wonderful – so good in fact that we call it ‘attachment bliss’ – being held and stroked and fed and soothed and cherished. And this creates, in us, a powerful feeling, in our bones, that we are good, lovable, worthy of kindness and respect.

So that’s how it should be – and for some lucky people, that’s how it is. But for many of us, it doesn’t work like this. Something goes wrong, somewhere – either very mildly wrong, or more seriously. And if it’s mild, and we have enough love, enough safety, enough nutrients to feed our growing brain and body, then we come out of it fairly intact. We may be anxious, or get depressed from time to time, but mostly we’re OK, able to do all the normal stuff of everyday life and be happy, enough, most of the time.

And for some of us – in fact, far too many of us – the things that went wrong were much worse than this. And they happened not just once, but over and over, throughout childhood, one bad thing or lots of bad things, one after another. And if this is you, you might know what these things were, or just have a vague inkling that all was not well. Either way, what I’m saying resonates somewhere inside and you’re thinking, ‘Yes, that’s how it was for me.’

If that’s the case, I am truly sorry, because I know that you will be left with wounds. And one of the deepest of those wounds is that you will think you deserved it in some way, that you were a bad person, or somehow dislikable or unlovable. Because that’s what children do – they make it about them, because it’s too scary and threatening to think that the people who were supposed to love and protect you, were in fact the ones who hurt you. That’s too much for a child’s brain to comprehend, so they go, ‘Well it can’t have been their fault, so it must have been mine. I’m bad. I’m naughty. I made all the bad things happen and deserved them.’

None of this is your fault

And here’s where I really need you to concentrate. Take in these words, because they may be the most important thing anyone has ever said to you. And that’s this: none of those bad things that happened were your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just that sweet, innocent, pure little baby who was born into a bad situation.

See you think you’re a bad person, but you’re not. You are a good person that bad things happened to.

That’s so important I’m going to say it again. You think you’re a bad person, but you’re not. You are a good person that bad things happened to.

And somewhere inside you is that sweet, innocent, lovable little boy or girl. They still live in your mind and body and nervous system, whether you know they are there or not. And they are the part of you that needs to hear this the most, because they hold all the memories of bad stuff and how it felt, and what they thought, and all the other stuff that goes with that.

‘I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.’

Carl Jung

So let them know that they are not bad, or wrong, or naughty, or anything other than a beautiful little child, who deserves to be loved and cherished, and held, and made to feel good about themselves. Because that’s what we all want – it’s what we’re born for, really, to feel that from other people and to give it back to them. It’s why we’re all here.

I hope this helps you think a little differently about your life, about yourself, about why you struggle as you do. As ever, also know that these wounds can be healed, with enough time, work and loving, compassionate support.

And I will be here, every step of the way, giving you every ounce of knowledge, wisdom, guidance and support I possess.

Warm wishes,

Dan

PS I have recorded this as a talk for my InsightTimer Collection – click on the button below if you would like to listen (for free) now.

Hatred is a Poison – Don't Let it into Your Heart

Image by Nathan Lindahl

Watching events unfold in Ukraine, our natural empathic response as humans is to feel shocked, upset and overwhelmed at the images we see and stories we read about this terrible war. These are normal, natural emotional responses, so allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling right now. I feel those things too.

It’s also completely natural and understandable to feel angry about what’s happening. And that anger can be a kind of healthy energy that fires us up to help in any way we can, whether that’s donating money, clothes, food or time; signing petitions and writing to our leaders, urging them to act on our behalf; welcoming refugees to our shores in any way we can; or sharing messages of support for the Ukrainian people on social and mainstream media.

Anger is like rocket fuel at times like this, as we refuse to be frightened or cowed and stand up to brutality and injustice – as our parents and grandparents did in the Second World War.

Why hatred doesn’t help

But there is one emotion that, although easy to feel at times like these, is not helpful – and that’s hatred. It can be easy to hate Putin, his inner circle, or the oligarchs who have made vast riches by stealing from the Russian people. We can find ourselves hating the soldiers who drop bombs on helpless civilians. You may find yourself hating people on social media, who express pro-Putin or pro-war sentiments.

It’s easy to do. But, however seductive hatred may be, it won’t help anyone or anything. The Buddha taught us this vital message 2,500 years ago. He called hatred a ‘poison of the mind’, because although it’s easy to feel and can be addictive at times of conflict or strife, it’s also toxic, corrosive and highly destructive to both the hater and hated.

Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Think about a time recently when you hated someone – really hated them, deep down in your guts. If it helps, you can close your eyes and imagine you are right there, living through that experience again. Play it out, moment by moment, reliving everything that went through your mind – all the angry, vengeful or even violent thoughts you had about this hated person.

As you do, see if you can feel what it’s like to hate, in your body. You might feel a great upsurge in energy, a burning sensation in your gut or chest, or a bitter taste in your mouth. Your muscles will be hard and tense, ready for action. Your jaw might be clenched and fists tight. Millions of years of evolution are preparing you to fight, possibly even kill, this person you hate so much.

(I know – or at least very much hope – you have no intention of acting on these feelings, but it’s helpful to remember that this is why we feel them, in evolutionary terms. Hatred is inextricably linked to the fight part of your fight-flight-freeze response.)

The cost of hatred

Doesn’t feel so good, does it? This is what the Buddha meant by hostility and hatred poisoning our minds, because they feel so awful when we experience them. They really do feel poisonous in your mind, heart and body. And when we hate it also distorts everything, focusing all of your energies on the hated person’s negative traits, words or actions, forgetting that they are human too, with a mother and father, friends, perhaps a partner and children. They love and are loved. They’re not evil, or a monster, or some kind of subhuman creature. Even Putin. Even Hitler, Stalin or Mao.

Deeply damaged and so damaging of others? Of course. People who need to be stopped, with every non-violent tool we have at our disposal? Absolutely – we need to stand up to Putin, or he will do even more damage. Personally, I would like to see him tried for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, as well as every other tyrant causing suffering around the world.

Anger? Yes. hatred? No

But I refuse to hate him for what he’s doing in Ukraine, because if I do, he has won. The Dalai Lama teaches that we should never let another person’s behaviour disturb our inner peace. And I am trying to be guided by that wisdom, doing everything in my power to help the Ukraininan people, feeling anger, upset, outrage – but never hatred.

I feel so strongly about this that I long ago made a commitment to stop using the word ‘hate’ in my thoughts or speech (around the time I started learning about Buddhism, by the way).

I won’t let Putin or anyone else make me feel that, or break the commitment I made to myself. I refuse to let my mind be poisoned.

Instead, I am sending deep love, compassion, and a heartfelt hope for peace and an end to their suffering to the people of Ukraine.

And my warmest wishes to you, wherever you may be in the world,

Dan

Please donate to Unicef, who are helping children in Ukraine and those fleeing from the conflict in their country

A Compassionate Response to the Crisis in Ukraine

Image by Mathias PR Reding

It’s heartbreaking to watch the crisis in Ukraine unfold, as innocent people are attacked by Russia’s fearsome military machine. This situation is also deeply disturbing for the majority of Russians, who are baffled and ashamed about their country invading a neighbour. Like the rest of the world, they understand that this aggression stems from the top, where their authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin – who seems extremely unwell, psychologically – has dragged his country into one needless conflict after another. He is obsessed with re-establishing Russia as a global superpower, whatever the human cost.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by this war – the Ukrainian citizens, who are experiencing unimaginable suffering as their homes and families are attacked; those fighting and dying on both sides – they are all human and have people who love them, whether Ukrainian or Russian; and the refugees pouring out of Ukraine every day, desperately seeking safety for themselves and their children.

One of the hardest things at a time like this is the sense of helplessness, as we watch on from afar. It can seem as though we are completely powerless and that there is nothing we can do to help. But that’s not true. There is plenty we can do – and taking action is so important right now, because it will help you feel less helpless and overwhelmed.

Two types of compassion

In her book, Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive, Kristin Neff distinguishes between two forms of self-compassion: tender and fierce. Tender self-compassion is the more familiar version, involving treating yourself with the kindness and care you would offer to a beloved partner, friend, family member or child. And we call need to offer ourselves this form of self-compassion right now, as after two years of Covid-related stress and anxiety, we don’t have much resilience or the psychological resources to handle this horrible conflict, with all the scary and upsetting media coverage we digest about it every day.

I think we can also extend this tender compassion outward, to people we know who are struggling with the news about Ukraine, comforting them or offering a hug when they are stressed or upset; donating money to some of the many charities that are helping people on the ground in Ukraine, or working with refugees pouring out of the country (I recommend UNICEF, which is helping Ukrainian children traumatised by this conflict – please donate to them using the button below); and helping refugees settle in our countries. Refugee Action and Global Giving are both excellent choices for your charitable donations.

Fierce compassion

This situation also calls for the other form of compassion: fierce compassion. As Kristin Neff explains, fierce compassion (whether for self or others) helps us say no, set limits and boundaries, use our anger to fight for what’s right, combat injustice and protect the vulnerable. We are all looking for our leaders to act with fierce compassion right now, with severe economic sanctions as long as Putin is in charge, supporting the people of Ukraine in every possible way to defend themselves and their democracy.

I also think we should all put as much pressure as we can on our leaders, through social media, petitions, contacting your MP and the Government as much as you can, so they are crystal clear about the anguish and outrage we all feel about this awful situation. If you’re in the UK and are not sure who your MP is or how to contact them, you can do so here.

Look after yourself too

Finally, make sure you take care of yourself. This crisis is incredibly stressful, of course primarily for people in Ukraine and their loved ones – it’s hard to imagine how much they are suffering right now. But it’s also stressful for all of us in Europe, watching on with anxiety about what this disturbed individual will do next.

So go easy on the news – we can stay informed about what’s going on without watching every awful video or reading all the details about what’s happening, day by day. This is especially true if you have a trauma history, because you may find this situation highly triggering, in many ways.

Sending love, solidarity and prayers for peace to the Ukrainian people.

And sending you warm thoughts, wherever you are in the world,

Dan

Why You Should Forgive Yourself for Past Mistakes

Image by Dawid Zawila

‘To err is human; to forgive, divine,’ as Alexander Pope’s famous quote goes. Meaning: we all make mistakes. Everyone does things they regret, feel bad about or wish had never happened. That’s just part of living a beautiful, complicated, messy human life.

But for many of us, the problem comes with forgiving ourselves. If we make a mistake, instead of accepting that’s normal, we beat ourselves up, treating tiny errors like life-changing, unforgivable transgressions. And with that beating up come painful emotions like guilt, regret, anxiety or even shame – the most painful emotion anyone can feel.

So here’s a thought – why not just forgive yourself?

Why it’s so hard to forgive

I know this is easier said than done. And if it was easy, you would do it, right? So let’s break down the reasons so many of us struggle to forgive ourselves, even if we know, rationally, it’s a good idea.

The first reason for being unforgiving with yourself is that you probably feel you don’t deserve it, for some reason. You may have been raised in a family environment that was harsh, critical or that emphasised mental toughness over self-compassion and care. There might have been family rules about ‘pushing through’ or ‘toughing things out’, that made you think it was normal to be harsh with yourself, especially if you made a mistake.

Another reason for being tough on yourself is having a harsh inner Critic, who beats you up for every tiny failing, real or imagined. This Critic is a key focus for treatment in schema therapy, because it’s often a driver of your unhappiness, in various ways. This part is probably not the monster you imagine it to be, because it is trying to motivate you (using the stick, not the carrot) and protect you, by making sure you don’t say or do things that might get you attacked, rejected or hurt. Hard to believe, I know, but it’s true.

In therapy, as we work on this Critic, we also work on helping you be kinder to yourself and more self-compassionate. This will be the topic for our next Heal Your Trauma webinar, so do come along on Saturday 28th May if being compassionate is a struggle for you. Keep an eye on this blog for news about our next event and how to book your place.

Benefits of forgiveness

Even if forgiving yourself is a struggle, it’s important to understand exactly why you shouldn’t give up. I know, both from all of the research and over a decade of practising as a psychotherapist, that when people finally learn to forgive themselves, they can feel deep waves of calm, peacefulness and healing. This can be truly transformative and life-changing, so it’s worth persisting, even if you find it hard right now.

As I always say to my clients, what’s the point of beating yourself up for things that have already happened? You can’t change them, or take them back. You can only learn lessons from them to make sure you don’t make the same mistakes in future.

Another quote for you, from the Dalai Lama, to end with: ‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.’

Warm wishes,

Dan

Why Your Temperament Shapes Who You Are

Image by Treddy Chen

Temperament may be the most important idea you have never heard about. I say that because so many of my clients have never heard about it, or have a minimal understanding at best. And it’s so important, because the kind of temperament you have really does shape who you are. So, what is it? How does it develop? And can it be changed?

The first thing to understand about temperament is that we all have one – it’s essentially your character, who you are as a person. You are born with a certain kind of temperament – it’s probably mostly genetic – and it stays fairly constant throughout your life.

It’s possible too that early life experiences help shape your temperament, because we know how powerful and formative they are for us as people, but we’re really not sure. What we do know is how to measure it.

If you had your temperament measured by a psychologist, he or she would use around 20 measures, such as passive/aggressive, sensitive/robust, emotional/rational and introvert/extrovert (they would use more complicated jargon for these terms, but this is what they would mean). And where you scored on these 20 items would determine your temperament.

The Highly Sensitive Person

Most of my clients (and most therapists I know) are what psychologist Elaine Aron calls Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs). Around 20% of the population are HSPs, which means they are temperamentally more sensitive than most people. This is crucial, because it determines how much you are affected by everything that happens to you throughout your life, but especially in childhood.

So if (like me) you are an HSP, even fairly mild negative experiences in childhood will really affect you. That’s not your fault, it’s just how you’re wired, in your brain and the rest of your nervous system. You might be more sensitive to sensory inputs like bright lights, loud noises, strong smells or crowds of people. You may find it harder to ‘shrug off’ hurtful, critical comments. You will certainly find it very difficult to ‘stop being so sensitive’ or ‘toughen up’, however often people tell you to do those things.

Can temperament change?

Of course, it’s not just sensitive people who experience traumatic things in their lives. And you don’t need to be highly sensitive to be hurt by things like family dysfunction, being yelled at as a kid, or bullied in school (as I wrote about in a recent post). These experiences are painful for everyone, to a greater or lesser degree.

So can your temperament change? If you are very sensitive, can you become less so? Or the other way round? Well, yes and no. I think your basic temperament does stay fairly consistent throughout your lifetime. A sensitive guy like me is not going to become highly insensitive overnight. But we know that so much about you can change, with the acquisition of knowledge, from blogs like this one, self-help books, therapy sessions, podcasts, and so on.

And, if you have a trauma history, we know that the wounds this causes can be healed, with the right help and support. So I think the answer is, yes, your temperament can change, in some ways – even if your fundamental personality probably won’t.

If you would like to know more about temperament and how it shapes us, especially in the context of trauma, do come along to my webinar on Saturday 26th February: What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed? Just click the button below if you would like to attend – I hope to see you there.

Warm wishes,

Dan