What is the Point of Anxiety?

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

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

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

Anxiety is an alarm signal

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

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

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

1. There is a threat.

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

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

Calming your nervous system is key

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan

Feeling Anxious or Stressed? My Colour Breathing Practice Will Help

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

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

Love ❤️

Dan

Why I Love Being a Meditation Teacher for Insight Timer

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

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

Love ❤️

Dan

Announcing My New Course: Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems

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I am pleased to announce the launch of my second Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Easing Worry & Anxiety with Internal Family Systems. If you sign up to this six-day course today you will learn why you feel so anxious, starting with the evolutionary and neurological roots of anxiety, explaining why it’s a crucial emotion for us all to feel, because it alerts us to threats and helps us react to them, quickly if need be.

Understanding why you feel so anxious is a key step in learning to accept it, because anxiety is something we all feel and is an important alarm signal when things need our attention. And then helping you ease it over time – this course will help you start to feel calmer, safer, and more at peace, step by step.

Over the six days you will also learn about internal family systems therapy, which is one of the fastest growing and most popular models of therapy in the world right now. As an Internal Family Systems Therapist, I use this warm, compassionate, and highly effective treatment approach with my clients and in my teaching, because it offers a revolutionary way of understanding problems like chronic anxiety.

Meeting your young, anxious part

You will learn that this anxiety comes from an anxious young part of you, holding painful thoughts, feelings, and memories of difficult experiences in your childhood. To ease your anxiety, you need to learn how to connect with, understand and soothe this anxious little boy or girl inside.

I will also teach you that worry comes from another part of you, called the Worrier. Again, you will learn how to accept and even value this protective part, because it’s just trying to help, even if the way it does so can be stressful and exhausting at times.

I hope you join me on this transformative six-day journey, which includes theories and techniques drawn from my many years of helping clients better manage their anxiety. As well as trauma-informed teaching about the mind-body source of problematic anxiety, I will lead you through powerful calming techniques including breathwork and guided-imagery exercises, drawn from IFS and other trauma-informed therapy models.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers. ⁠

Try it now by visiting my Insight Timer collection or clicking on the button below. ⁠

I hope you find it insightful and healing. ⁠

Love ❤️⁠

Dan

Feeling Stressed? My Compassionate Breathing Practice Will Help

Here is a video of my Compassionate Breathing practice. You can use this any time you're feeling stressed, anxious, upset, agitated or if you're dealing with any kind of difficult emotion.

I hope you find it helpful – you will find this practice, as well as many other breathing techniques, mindfulness, self-compassion and IFS meditations, as well as guided-imagery techniques, in my Insight Timer collection: insighttimer.com/danrobertstherapy

Love ❤️

Dan

Try this Powerful Exercise to Manage Difficult People in Your Life

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One of the frustrating aspects of being human can be dealing with other humans. Not the nice, kind, reasonable ones. But the annoying, rude, disrespectful ones – I’m sure you have a few of those in your life. And managing these tricky customers is not easy, especially if they are partners, family members, close friends or colleagues. If someone says or does something hurtful or annoying, you may respond in all sorts of unhelpful ways, like firing off an angry message, giving them the silent treatment, people-pleasing or suppressing your own needs, desires and opinions to keep the peace.

Viewed through the parts-based lens of internal family systems therapy, we can take a more compassionate view, as everyone (including me!) has tricky protective parts, who might get angry, judgemental or even hostile to protect your younger, more vulnerable parts from being hurt. This may be especially important for you if you were harshly criticised, bullied or shamed as a child – that’s when those protectors came online for you and why they will fire up with great speed and ferocity if they sense something similar happening to you now.

So when you are in conflict with someone, it’s like a war between their protectors and yours. Their angry protector fires up and says something hurtful or mean. So your angry protector gets activated and fires a verbal volley at them, which comes back at you and so it goes until somebody ‘wins’ or backs down. Entirely understandable, but not usually very productive, because one or both of you could get hurt, or you might damage a relationship that’s important to you. Many marriages end in divorce precisely for this reason.

There is another way

Happily, there is a more productive, kind and effective way to resolve conflict. In order to do that, you need to approach this difficult person from your Self, asking your protectors to relax and let you (strong, confident, adult you) handle the situation. I have written a few posts about Self, but as a refresher, in IFS Self is described as you who is not a part, or who you are deep down. This is the you who is calm, sturdy, robust and resilient. When you are in Self you also feel authentic, compassionate and kind. With this energy, you can approach conflict without out-of-control anger or hostility, but a firm, steady, assertive energy that both protects you and diffuses the situation.

If you would like to see the human embodiment of Self-energy, watch the wonderful Netflix documentary featuring the late Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Troubled Times. Both are wise, kind and deeply spiritual, in their own ways. There is a deep strength to them (one who successfully fought apartheid and the other continues to combat oppression by the Chinese government) coupled with huge-heartedness, warmth and a deep sense of playfulness and joy. Two remarkable leaders and qualities we can all aspire to, or develop, the more we live in Self and are less in thrall to well-meaning but unhelpful parts.

If you are struggling with a difficult person in your life, here is a guided-imagery practice – Fire Drill: IFS Meditation – I adapted from the classic IFS meditation, developed by the wonderful Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS. Click the button below to listen to the recording on Insight Timer.

Love ❤️

Dan

What Do Students Think About My New Course: Healing from Childhood Trauma?

Another satisfied student after taking my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. Over 800 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it consistently positive feedback like this.⁠

If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.⁠

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers. ⁠

Try it now by visiting my Insight Timer collection or clicking on the button below. ⁠

I hope you find it insightful and healing. ⁠

Love ❤️⁠

Dan

Are You an Orchid, Tulip or Dandelion? Why Your Temperament Matters

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There is a Swedish term, maskrosbarn, which means ‘dandelion child’. The Swedes have long believed that a proportion of kids were like dandelions – they were hardy, resilient and could grow anywhere. Just as dandelions can grow in lawns, parks or cracks in the pavement, so these unusually robust children can manage in any family, even if from the outside they look like tough environments in which to grow up.

Psychologists Bruce J Ellis and W Thomas Boyce, when studying genetics and child development, coined a new term in 2005: orkidebarn, meaning ‘orchid child’. Unlike their hardier counterparts, orchid children are – like the flower – highly sensitive, needing just the right environment to flourish. If the parenting/family dynamic is not what they need, orchids struggle mentally and physically, and can go on to suffer from long-term mental-health problems.

In new research, Dr Francesca Lionetti and colleagues identify a third category: tulips. These are medium-sensitivity children, somewhere between dandelions and orchids. The authors write that in their study of 901 healthy adults, 31 per cent were orchids, 29 per cent dandelions and 40 per cent tulips. These numbers vary from study to study, but what is clear is that some children are born with highly sensitive temperaments (also known as Highly Sensitive Persons), with less-sensitive children at the other end of the scale, and medium-sensitive in the middle. This temperamental sensitivity, or lack of it, stays with people into adulthood.

How temperament shapes your personality

Why does this matter? As I am always telling my clients, your temperament is crucial because it shapes you from the moment of your birth (and probably before that, in the womb). It is a combination of nature and nurture – the genetic inheritance you received from your parents combined with early parenting, attachment with your primary caregivers, family dynamics, and so on. If you were born a dandelion, you would have been pretty thick-skinned as a child, managing to cope even in high-conflict, volatile or otherwise less-than-ideal family environments.

But if you were an orchid, the same families would have been far too much for you, causing you persistent stress which would, in turn, have affected your developing brain. We know, for example, that high levels of the stress hormone cortisol negatively impact brain development, starting in the womb. This can harm a tiny baby’s growing brain, affecting its shape, size and connectivity.

Put simply: if you were an orchid in a stressful, chaotic or otherwise dysfunctional family, you would have suffered. And, very sadly, that suffering might have continued throughout your life – Dr Boyce writes that orchids account for a disproportionately high percentage of every society’s physical and mental-health problems. That’s because your highly sensitive temperament made you unusually vulnerable to things going wrong at every level of your mind-body system.

Why orchids can thrive

If you – like me and most of my clients – are an orchid, this may all seem a bit depressing. You were born with a highly sensitive temperament, your family wasn’t great, so then you suffer for life, right? Wrong. In fact, research also shows that, given the right care, orchid children thrive. They do better educationally, financially and in every other way than dandelions. Just like their horticultural namesakes, these kids can bloom into the most beautiful adults, they just need a little care, the right emotional nutrients, and some time.

There are two take-home points here. First, your temperament is key, whether you are an orchid, tulip or dandelion. It plays a huge part in making you, you. It is mostly inherited, but is profoundly affected by your environment.

Second, none of this is inherently good or bad. Sensitivity is an inherited neural – and neutral – trait. Just like being short or tall, having green eyes or brown, it’s something you are born with. But unlike your eye colour, it can change because of your environment and throughout your lifetime. And the problems that high sensitivity makes you vulnerable to can be mitigated by all the usual methods of healing and change – reading mental-health blogs like this one, self-help books, podcasts, therapy, meditation, yoga, loving relationships and all the other good stuff I am always writing about.

I hope you find these ideas eye-opening. If you would like to know more, try Dr Boyce’s book: The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Sensitive People Struggle and How All Can Thrive. It’s a great read and has helped shaped my thinking around temperament and child development.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Have You Tried My New Insight Timer Course Yet?

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Have you listened to my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer yet – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion? Over 600 students have already taken the course and found it powerful and healing, giving it five-star reviews and consistently positive feedback.

If you sign up today you will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.

Try it now by clicking on the button below. I hope you enjoy it!

Love ❤️

Dan

What is Avoidant Attachment? And How Does it Affect Your Relationships?

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Do you know which attachment style you have? This style, which describes the ways you think, feel and behave with current/potential romantic partners, is either secure or insecure – this is further divided into anxious or avoidant. Understanding your attachment style is profoundly important, for your mental health in general and particularly the way it impacts your closest relationships.

In a recent post, I described the impact of an Abandonment schema, which might give you a sensitivity to and fear of rejection or abandonment by your partner. This schema is often associated with an anxious attachment style, which means moving towards your partner by thinking about them all the time, messaging/calling them often, and worrying that they might be losing interest in you or having an affair. People with this attachment style can experience periods of intense worry and anxiety, until they get reassurance that everything is fine, their partner still loves them and nothing has changed.

In this post we will explore the other main type of ‘insecure attachment’, which is the avoidant attachment style. It’s thought that 25 percent of the adult population have this deeply rooted way of relating to others (with 50 percent secure, 20 percent anxious and five per cent anxious-avoidant). If you are one of them, you may find relationships – especially romantic ones – tricky in all sorts of ways.

What is avoidant attachment?

Essentially, avoidant attachment is the complete opposite of the anxious style, involving moving away from your partner, or potential partners. While anxiously attached folk constantly activate their attachment system, which helps them feel/be closer to their partner, avoidant people unconsciously suppress their attachment system all the time. They use deactivating strategies like criticising or finding fault with their partner, finding reasons not to spend time with them or have intimate conversations, avoiding physical contact and fantasising about the perfect partner – who might be just round the corner, if only they were free.

I recently read a brilliant book on attachment styles and how deeply they affect us throughout our lives – Attached: Are You Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the Science of Adult Attachment can Help You Find – and Keep – Love, by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. I highly recommend it if you are interested in psychology, or just need some help in finding/maintaining a loving, supportive relationship.

One of the things that struck me was the authors’ claim that, if you are avoidant, when you hit a crisis point in your life – like a painful divorce – your avoidance can melt away and you become anxiously attached. And this made so much sense to me, when viewed through a parts-based lens. It means that people with an avoidant style have an Avoidant Protector, who keeps intimacy and (especially) vulnerability at bay.

But hidden behind that protector is a young part who craves love, support, connection, warmth, intimacy – all the normal, healthy relationship needs that every child is born with. Sadly, that protector constantly blocks these relational nutrients, so avoidant folk often feel isolated and lonely. They too want love, they just don’t know how to let people in enough to give and receive it.

Healing your attachment system

As I am often saying in these posts, the good news is that none of this is fixed or set in your brain. Your attachment style can change over the course of your lifetime. How? Well, finding an attachment-based therapist using a model like schema therapy would be one route to healing. Another is finding a securely attached partner – we know that this is often profoundly healing and transformative for insecurely attached folk. This kind of person makes relationships easy, because they are calm, confident and consistent. They just love you, no matter what, which helps your protective parts calm down enough for your hurt little boy or girl to receive all the love they have long craved.

So don’t give up. There is always hope, even if you have always avoided or struggled with relationships. Perhaps give a bit more thought to the kinds of people you typically choose, taking it slow at first so you can get a sense of your partner’s way of relating before you plunge in. Of course, if you are avoidant you will never plunge in, but you can still think before embarking on a relationship to try and find a secure person to be with. It will make a big difference, trust me.

I hope that helps – and wishing you luck on your healing journey.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Be Careful What You Think: The Power of Mind Over Body

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I recently listened to a radio programme about the effectiveness of smart watches – the hi-tech gadgets many of us strap to our wrists to measure heart rate, step count, sleep quality and much more. According to the presenter, they vary wildly in accuracy, especially in measuring the depth, quality and stages of your sleep.

He also cited a study that intrigued me. In this research, participants had exactly the same amount of sleep, measured by highly accurate kit in a specialist sleep lap. But one group was shown the accurate data about their slumber, while the other was given deliberately false data, showing they had a terrible night’s sleep.

What was so fascinating was that these poor souls then felt exhausted, had poor cognitive functioning and reported feeling unpleasantly sleepy all day. Purely because they believed they had had a bad night’s sleep, so their body reacted accordingly.

Studies like this are intriguing, I think, because they illustrate the power of ‘mind-body symptoms’. These are powerful physical symptoms with no biological cause – they are created solely by our thoughts. And this may be hard to believe, but these symptoms can include full-body paralysis, blindness and seizures (known as ‘functional symptoms’, or ‘medically unexplained symptoms’).

It’s important to note a couple of things here: first, people with these conditions experience the exact same physical problems as those with biologically driven illnesses. They are really ill and need compassionate help, treatment and support. Second, no doctor thinks people with functional symptoms are making their illness up, faking it or that it’s all in their mind. This is to misunderstood the nature of our mind-body connection – and the power of your mind to influence your body.

What are Mind-body symptoms?

Let’s take a better-known case – the placebo effect. Study after study finds that patients taking sugar pills – with no medicinal content at all – experience significant benefits, including pain reduction for conditions like migraines. The exact amount is hotly debated, but most experts agree that placebo plays some part in the effectiveness of any medical treatment, including surgery!

That’s because if we receive medical treatment from someone in a white coat, who seems like an expert in their field, also caring and trustworthy, we believe that they will help us. And this makes the treatment more likely to succeed than not. The opposite of this, by the way, is called the ‘nocebo effect’ – we think something will make us ill and it does, which is also very powerful.

An example of mind-body symptoms from the realm of psychology is the research into mindfulness for management of chronic pain. Vidyamala Burch is a brilliant meditation teacher, long-term Buddhist and truly inspiring person, who sustained spinal injuries at 17 that required multiple surgeries and left her with a complex back condition, chronic pain and partial paralysis. She is now a wheelchair user.

Vidyamala is so inspiring because she learned to manage her pain through daily meditation – having experienced the power of mindfulness to help with chronic pain and illness, she developed the world’s first Mindfulness-Based Pain & Illness Management (MBPM) programme, which has helped over 100,000 people around the world. She is also one of the most positive, upbeat teachers I know! Here’s her story, if you’re interested – it really is heartwarming and inspiring.

Vidyamala (her given Buddhist name) explains that we experience primary and secondary pain. So if you cut your finger with a knife, the primary pain comes from damaged tissue, and these signals are sent to your brain via your nervous system. Your brain then interprets this data, taking into account your thoughts about it – so if you think, ‘Help! I’m a concert pianist and this could finish my career!’ your brain turns up the pain dial, making the symptoms more severe so you take action about this career-threatening problem. This is secondary pain – and it is largely due to your interpretation of the injury, not the physical damage.

The takeaway here is that your thoughts have a tremendous impact – on your emotions, your internal system of parts and the many biological systems in your body, such as your nervous system, hormonal system and musculoskeletal system. This is more proof that learning to think in a kind, helpful, compassionate way really can change your life. Just ask Vidyamala…

If you would like help in developing more positive thoughts and beliefs, try my Insight Timer practice – Taking in the Good: IFS Meditation, by clicking on the button below.

I hope you find it helpful – and if you are struggling with your health right now, for any reason, sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Announcing My New Course: Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS and Self-Compassion

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I am excited to announce the launch of my new Premium Audio Course for Insight Timer – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. If you struggle with your mental health, and especially if you had a difficult childhood, I hope you will find this course calming and insightful. 

You will be guided on a healing journey with eight days of teaching and experiential exercises such as journalling, guided imagery, breathwork and meditation. The eight lessons range in length from 15-20 minutes, so are easy to fit into your busy day.

I am really proud of this course – it synthesises many of the things I am most passionate about into one short, powerful week of teaching. You will learn about child development, temperament, core developmental needs, schemas and the IFS model of internal parts, how to work with your Inner Critic, what we mean by childhood trauma and neglect – as well as how to heal from these painful experiences using powerful techniques drawn from schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, mindful self-compassion and internal family systems.

The course is free if you become a Member Plus Supporter. This costs just $60 for 12 months of high-quality content like this on the Insight Timer app from me and thousands of other leading teachers.

Get started now by clicking on the button below. I hope you enjoy it!

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Is a Fear of Rejection Hurting Your Relationships?

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How are you with rejection? Some people seem fairly immune to it and manage to brush it off. Others are very much affected by it, whether real or imagined, imminent or on the distant horizon. Many of my clients are in the latter camp, fearing rejection or abandonment, especially in romantic relationships.

As we try to address this problem, it’s helpful to begin thinking about it from an evolutionary perspective. Remember how humans have lived for almost our entire evolutionary history. We evolved from apes, who live in groups. And then lived as hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, again in groups. We lived in villages with an extended network of family and others in our tribe.

These villages were well-protected, with strong fences surrounding them, because outside those fences were large, hungry animals who wanted to eat us. And neighbouring tribes, who could attack at any time. So it was very important – quite literally a matter of life and death – that you were inside that fence, especially as night fell.

And this meant that being rejected by the group in any way – shunned, banished, ejected from the village – would have been terrifying, because in that world (think the savannah, full of ravenous hyenas, lions and leopards; or forests, bristling with sharp-toothed bears, mountain lions and wolves) you would not make it for even a single day on your own.

Evolutionary psychologists think this is why the fear of rejection can be so intense, because somewhere deep in the more primitive recesses of your brain is the knowledge that rejection = death. It’s that stark.

Fear of abandonment

This is one reason why humans can be highly sensitive to the possibility of being abandoned in relationships. But there are many others, including having an Abandonment schema. This is a neural network in your brain holding ways of thinking, negative beliefs about yourself and others, powerful emotions and their resultant bodily sensations. When this schema gets triggered, you feel just awful – highly anxious and panicky, upset, angry or some other powerful emotion.

This would show up in your body as changes to your heart rate and breathing, becoming hot and sweaty, or tight, tense muscles. You might also believe things like, ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ or ‘Everybody I love will eventually leave me.’

I have been thinking about this schema a lot recently, as I am reading Love Me Don’t Leave Me: Overcoming fear of Abandonment & Building Lasting, Loving Relationships, by Michelle Skeen. It’s a classic self-help book, drawn from the schema therapy model, so much of it chimes with my way of thinking/working. Skeen reminds us that this schema can develop for many reasons, including being abandoned as a child – for example, if your father left the family to go and start a new relationship and you barely saw him after that.

The abandonment could also have been more subtle. In this case, perhaps nobody actually left the family, but they weren’t very attuned to you or your needs as a child. They might have been good at what I call ‘practical love’. Feeding you, keeping you clean, getting you to school on time, all the important logistical stuff of parenting.

But not so good at the warm, emotional side of being a mum or dad – soothing hugs, telling you that they loved you and making you feel cherished, valued as a unique little person. In this case, you might feel abandoned, because your needs were profoundly unmet. It’s like an emotional, rather than physical abandonment.

Whatever the cause of this schema in childhood, as an adult you may struggle with relationships in various ways. You might become anxious and clingy, texting or calling your partner multiple times a day if you feel them pulling away. Or you could do the opposite, pushing them away, picking fights or even leaving them before they get the chance to leave you. If you have this schema, you might even avoid relationships altogether, because they have been so heartbreakingly painful when they fell apart.

Healing your schema

If any of this resonates with you, I am sorry – it’s such a deep and painful schema and really can make life a struggle. But remember that none of this needs to be a lifelong problem. Schemas, like so many systems and structures in your brain, are not fixed or set in any way. I often write about the concept of neuroplasticity, because I find it such a hopeful and positive idea. It means that whatever kinds of painful experiences you have had, and however they have imprinted on to your brain, they can be changed. Schemas can weaken and fade in intensity. Your attachment style (which could be either anxious or avoidant, if you have the Abandonment schema) can become more secure.

It really is all up for grabs, because your brain is shaped and moulded by experience. Think differently, over and over, and you form brand-new neural pathways. So instead of ‘No-one could ever love the real me,’ you learn to think, ‘I may not be perfect, but I am loveable and likeable just as I am.’ Over and over, until that pathway becomes wired in and the old one withers away.

Try reading Michelle Skeen’s book, for starters, because it really is very helpful and good. If this is a highly sensitive issue for you, I would recommend seeking therapy, preferably with someone who understands problems related to rejection and abandonment and can offer you a thought-through, convincing roadmap to healing.

And eventually, after doing some work on this stuff, finding a loving, supportive partner will be the most healing thing you could do. That may seem daunting right now, or even impossible, but it’s always one of my treatment goals when I’m working with abandonment-phobic people. It is doable, if you get enough help and support to make the necessary changes, trust me on that.

You could also try one of my most popular Insight Timer practices, Calming Your Parts: IFS Meditation. This will help you calm and soothe the young, abandoned part of you that gets triggered in relationships.

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

Dan

Let Your Heart Relish the Return of Spring

Image by Aaron Burden

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

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

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

The rainbow of emotions

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

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

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

Enjoy your inner spring

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

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

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

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

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

Dan

Find Your Own Path: Choosing the Right Approach to Healing

Image by Lili Popper

Have you ever been in therapy? I’m guessing, as you are currently reading this post on a blog all about mental health, that the answer is yes. If so, did it help? I certainly hope so, but sadly many people try different therapists, as well as different flavours of therapy, and find them either minimally helpful or not much help at all.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all therapies are unhelpful. It’s just that, in my experience, people often choose therapists without really understanding the exact type of therapy they offer, why it’s better/worse than other approaches, or whether it’s the best approach for them.

Let me give you a concrete example. If you have experienced trauma in your life, you will probably need professional help to recover from that. And so you may find yourself a nice, friendly, caring counsellor, who says what you need is to talk through those traumatic events in great detail. But for many people just talking about what they have been through, in an unstructured way, will not only be unhelpful, but actually re-traumatising.

You would need a trauma-informed therapy like EMDR, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, trauma-informed stabilisation treatment, schema therapy or trauma-focused CBT. All of these approaches will help you process your traumatic memories in a safe, structured and focused way. Just talking about your experiences, in this case, is not the way to heal them.

Let me be clear – I’m not knocking counselling here. There are some wonderful counsellors out there and the work they do is invaluable. It’s especially helpful to get you through a tough time, like bereavement or divorce, when a kind, empathic, non-judgemental person is exactly what you need. But mainstream counselling is not designed to help with trauma, which is why it’s not the right choice if that’s the kind of help you need.

Finding your own path

The longer I do this work and the more therapy models I study, the more I believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing, whatever kind of psychological problem you are struggling with. I often think to myself, ‘What does this person need, at this moment, in this session?’ And I then draw from a wide range of theories, techniques and strategies in my mind to find just the right one for that person, in that moment.

You might also find that you need different therapies at different times in your life – where a highly focused, time-limited approach like CBT may be perfect for one phase of your life, a longer-term, less-structured modality like IFS may be right for another phase, or set of problems.

With that in mind, if you are considering therapy, here are some suggestions for finding your own path to healing, happiness and a flourishing life:

1. The relationship is everything. Whichever of the many wonderful therapies you choose, remember that the primary healing agent in any therapy is the relationship between you and your therapist. This is especially true in longer-term approaches, like schema therapy or psychodynamic therapy. But even in short-term models like CBT, feeling safe in the room (or online) with someone, that they get you, care about you, are warm and nurturing, is crucial. I often tell people to shop around – if you have an assessment with someone and it doesn’t feel right, trust your gut and find another person.

2. Trauma-informed therapies for trauma-processing work. As I mentioned earlier, it’s so important to find a trauma-informed therapy/therapist if you have experienced trauma in your life. The bigger and more impactful the trauma, the more important this is. So ask your prospective therapist about their model, experience and plans to help you heal. If their answers seem a little off, or unconvincing, keep shopping.

3. Therapy is just one piece of the pie. As well as integrating various therapy models in my work, I am also a holistic practitioner. I talk to my clients about many things, but top of the list is how much sleep they are getting and whether they exercise regularly. We are only beginning to understand the importance of sleep for mental and physical health (spoiler alert: it’s profoundly important).

   And getting regular exercise is right up there with good-quality therapy, in my opinion. We need to move our bodies, in ways we enjoy, as often as possible. I’m talking weight-training, HIIT, spin classes, walking, swimming, yoga, dancing, running, vigorous gardening, rock climbing… Every system in your brain and body is built to work optimally when you’re moving, your heart rate is up, blood is pumping, your breaths are deep and skin is warm.

   Extensive research shows that exercise is a powerful healing agent for stress, anxiety and depression – the three main types of psychological problem people struggle with. Meditation is also key, as are warm, loving relationships, a healthy (ideally Mediterranean) diet, moderate drinking, a healthy microbiome, mind-opening books and podcasts… Therapy is an important piece of the pie, but it’s certainly not the only one.

I hope you found that thought-provoking and helpful. I also hope you find the right person/approach for you, as that can be life-changing.

And if you are struggling right now, sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Being Grateful for the Little Things Will Transform Your Mood

Image by Rosie Kerr

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

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

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

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

How gratitude lifts your mood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dan

If You Struggle With Climate Anxiety, this Book Will Give You Hope

Image by Margot Richard

How do you feel about climate change? I’m guessing that, like most of us who take this problem seriously, you might find it worrying but try not to think about it too much. You do what you can – eat less meat, try not to fly, sign endless petitions – but try not to let it dominate your day-to-day life.

On a good day, this is how I deal with it too – doing what I can but trying not to get too freaked out. But I have to be honest, on bad days it really scares me. We are already seeing major impacts like melting glaciers, climate change-intensified hurricanes, forest fires, droughts and flooding. And unless humanity wakes up soon, we are in big trouble.

I think one of the less-reported aspects of climate change is its impact on our mental health, especially among the young. In a YouGov survey last year, one in three young people in Britain reported feeling scared (33%), sad (34%) or pessimistic (34%) about climate change, with 28% feeling ‘overwhelmed’. This breaks my heart for those young people, but it’s not surprising, because they will be most affected by climate change throughout the course of their lifetime. If you are a parent or grandparent, you may also be deeply worried about the kind of planet we will bequeath the next generation and the one after that – this is one reason why so many eco-activists are grandparents. They get it and feel compelled to act.

Reasons to be hopeful

So far, so gloomy. Which is why I am happy to tell you about the book I am currently reading, Not the End of the World: Why We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet, by Hannah Ritchie. She is a data scientist at Oxford University and tells the story of feeling so freaked out as a student studying Earth Sciences, that she almost changed career. The onslaught of anxiety-provoking lectures on her course – and especially the stories about climate disasters she obsessively read in the media – were just overwhelming.

But this is a profoundly hopeful and optimistic book, because Ritchie argues that when you look at the actual data and key trends in energy use, pollution reduction, and so on, the real story is very different from the one we see in the media.

Let me be clear: Ritchie is no climate denier. She is a scientist who understands and accepts the prevailing scientific view – that climate change is real, it’s happening now, is man-made and unless we act fast to limit rising temperatures, humanity and all life on Earth is in big trouble. It’s just that she makes a compelling case that we have already made huge strides, at unprecedented speed, for example in decarbonising our energy production. In many industrialised countries we have virtually phased out the most polluting/carbon-emitting coal-fired power stations and rapidly developed green energies like solar, wind, hydroelectric and (somewhat controversially) nuclear.

Clean energy is now cheaper than its fossil-fuel alternatives and this will accelerate the more we adopt it at scale. This change is inevitable – as is the switch to electric cars/buses/trucks. As the cost of these green energies and modes of transport plummets, there is literally no reason not to make the switch, despite the increasingly devious and desperate tactics of the fossil-fuel industry. Sorry folks, this change is inevitable, whether you want it to be or not.

We have solved global problems before

Another argument I found really powerful and persuasive is that the global community has overcome two major environmental challenges before: acid rain in the 1980s and the ozone hole in the 1990s. In both cases, these were serious problems that required the global community to work together, despite resistance from the polluting industries that were causing the problems. And what led to the changes? Intense pressure from the public.

This led politicians to act, global treaties to be signed, industry to grudgingly change its polluting behaviour and, in both cases, drastic reductions in the harm to our environment. Now, climate change is a much bigger and more complex problem, but Ritchie argues – and I strongly believe – that if we all put enough pressure on our politicians, as well as using our consumer power to boycott the most climate-wrecking corporations/energy sources, we can solve this problem.

So if you or someone you love is struggling with climate anxiety, I strongly recommend you buy this book. It’s also packed with suggestions about how we, as individuals and communities, can make changes in the way we eat, shop and travel that can make a big difference. I am feeling hopeful about this problem for the first time in years, so I hope it will help you feel the same way too.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Your Compassionate Self

Image by Vicky Sim

I have often envied people of faith – it’s clearly very comforting to have that belief and certainty about your life and what comes after it. But as well as being raised in a non-religious family, I was also taught from an early age to think critically. My family was highly political, liberal and motivated to make the world a better place. And part of that mindset was thinking critically about everything – what we read in the media, what politicians and others in power said and did.

I then studied Sociology at university and later, before retraining as a therapist, was a health journalist for over a decade. As a journalist I was taught to look for evidence-based treatments, for both mind and body, which was an excellent theoretical foundation for my move into psychotherapy. So, plenty more training in and encouragement of critical thinking there.

Since switching to psychotherapy later in life, I have retained this ability to think critically, question and try to understand the evidence, or at least the theory, behind every form of therapy I have studied. And this is why – somewhat frustratingly, I must admit! – I could never wholeheartedly sign up to any one therapy model. All of the many approaches I have trained in have their wisdom, their strengths and rich array of resources. But they also have weaknesses and things I can’t just blindly sign up to, because I don’t agree with them – that would require a kind of religious faith, which is not the way my mind works.

What is the compassionate self?

One of the things I have grappled with on my journey as a therapist is how to understand, name and work with the inner resource that is so crucial to therapeutic work, but has many names in different traditions. In Buddhism, this would be called your Buddha Nature; in Taoism, it would be your chi. In indigenous cultures, most of which practice some form of animism, this resource would be thought of as your spirit – within you, but also outside and all around you, in objects, places, and animals.

With the greatest respect to those who do, I don’t believe in souls, or spirits, so for me this inner resource must come from your brain – which is of course the most miraculous, exquisitely complex object in the known universe. And in the various forms of psychotherapy I integrate in my work with clients this brain-based resource would be called your Healthy Adult, in schema therapy. Internal family systems speaks of the Self. Family therapist Terry Real’s relational life therapy frames this as the Wise Adult. I like all of these ideas and think they each have their usefulness and innate wisdom. But I especially like the idea from compassion-focused therapy (CFT) of the Compassionate Self.

Let me explain why, before exploring how you can access this powerful, healing inner resource in your day-to-day life. First, I am really fond of the CFT model. Its founder, Professor Paul Gilbert, is a brilliant evolutionary/clinical psychologist – on his trainings in Derby I learned a great deal about the way our brains were shaped by millennia of adaptations, in some ways helpfully but in many ways not so much. He argues that most of our psychological problems come from an ‘old brain’ (subcortical) vs ‘new brain’ (cortical) conflict and also integrates traditional CBT with Eastern philosophy, especially ideas from Buddhism, which really resonate with my view of the world.

Like Professor Gilbert, I see compassion – for self and others – as the key healing ingredient for my clients. Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion has also been a big influence on me, so let’s add a dash of her wisdom and insight here. Which brings us to the Compassionate Self – how can you access it in your daily life?

You, at your best

The good news is that you don’t have to become someone different, or better, or more spiritually advanced, to embody your Compassionate Self. All the qualities this innate, inner core offers – strength, courage, wisdom, kindness, love, maturity, resilience, healing and, of course, compassion – are already inside you. You just need to do what the Buddha called ‘waking up’. Because he taught us that we all wander around in a dream, thinking we’re not good enough, or flawed, or broken in some way. And we think that if we only we had this thing, or that person, or this piece of wisdom, then we would be OK.

But… are you ready, because this is perhaps the most important thing you will hear today. None of those things is true. You are a walking miracle. And utterly unique – not one of the eight billion other humans on this planet is quite like you. You are perfect, with all your imperfections. You are lovable, with all your little quirks and eccentricities. You are beautiful, with all your flaws.

And you already embody this Compassionate Self in more ways than you know. It’s you when you spend 20 minutes chatting to an elderly neighbour, who recently lost his beloved wife, despite being frazzled after a long day. It’s you when you somehow manage to remain patient, at 3am, when your daughter had that bad dream again and needs a hug and reassurance that it was just a dream before going back to sleep. It’s you when your heart breaks as you read about refugees in some terrible situation, and donate to a charity that helps them, even though you can’t really afford it.

You embody your Compassionate Self when you make the effort to message that friend who recently got divorced and you know is especially lonely on Sundays. It’s you when you give your wife an especially long and tender hug, because you can see in her face she had a really tough day. It’s you when you organise a surprise party for your friend’s 40th birthday, even though it’s a huge job and you are already overwhelmed by your seemingly infinite to-do list.

So to embody your Compassionate Self, all you need to do is wake up from your dream of defectiveness and realise that this is you, already – it’s you, at your best.

If this has piqued your interest and you would like to meet this wise, compassionate version of you, try my Compassionate Friend Meditation on Insight Timer. People seem to really like this one – I hope you do too.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Do You Ever Feel Stuck or Blocked in Your Life? If so, Try This

Image by Travis Saylor

Do you ever feel stuck? Are you plagued by procrastination? Do you find yourself full of good intentions, plans and goals but struggle to achieve any of them? These questions feel especially relevant in this first week of the new year, when we are all encouraged to come up with noble-sounding, life-changing resolutions, which often end up dusty and discarded a few weeks later.

And they feel especially relevant to me, because I have felt a bit blocked this week. I came back from my holiday feeling pretty well rested and batteries recharged. This is a quiet week, therapy-wise, as many of my clients have kids who are not yet back at school. So I thought to myself, ‘Great! The perfect week to write lots of blog posts, social-media content and get started on that Insight Timer course I have planned…’

And I have done some of those things but, honestly, it’s been a struggle. I have procrastinated, a lot. I’m currently reading a brilliant book – Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently, by Steve Silberman – so that has filled many of my quieter hours. It’s fascinating, and of course hugely beneficial for my work and understanding of neurodiversity, but it’s also a handy excuse to not be writing myself.

When some parts say yes, others no

This stuckness and procrastination is very familiar to me. Because, as I have learned over the years, I have one part – who I call the Hard Worker – that is relentlessly focused on getting stuff done. And he is amazing, because he has helped me achieve so much in my career. Everything I have done, any success I have had, is all down to him and his drive, energy and determination.

But there is a downside to this highly-energised part – he doesn’t get that I am human. So he keeps driving me, taking on more and more projects, working harder and with greater intensity, until I am teetering on the edge of burnout and have to take a big step back.

There is another part – who I call the Shutdown Part – who has the exact opposite job inside. When the Hard Worker has me hurtling towards exhaustion, this one just shuts me down. Sometimes I get sick, either with a bug or just feeling nauseous and wiped out. Sometimes he makes me feel down, with low energy and motivation. Other times I just can’t come up with yet another idea for my blog, Instagram post or guided meditation. I’m done.

Why integration is key

So if you are feeling any of those things right now, don’t despair. It’s probably someone inside telling you that it’s too much. You need a break. Just because it’s a new year doesn’t mean we are all magically fizzing with energy and zest for life. The days are cold and dark and, really, we should all be hibernating, not rushing off to the gym/getting sober/losing 10lb/starting a new side-hustle.

Instead, the key is to integrate the wisdom of both sides of you – the pedal-to-the-metal side and the hide-under-the-duvet side. They both mean well and are trying to help, even if their method of helping isn’t always, well, very helpful. So integration is key, rather than lurching from one extreme to the other (as in yo-yo dieting, for example, or getting sober and then relapsing over and over again).

As I am often saying in these posts, parts-based therapy models like schema therapy or internal family systems teach us that rather than letting one part drive us, the key is to integrate them all, with you (calm, rational, loving, adult you – the Compassionate Self) in charge at all times.

So to put this more concretely, if your Compassionate Self is in charge, you might resolve to go to the gym twice a week, instead of every day. That is entirely doable and a resolution you can stick to. Or, instead of suddenly going from wolf-like carnivore to strict vegan, how about eating plant-based meals every other day? If you want to drink less, that’s a good idea – but moderation every week for the rest of the year is better than Dry January and then back to excessive boozing. These are all achievable and realistic goals, which means they are likely to last longer than February.

Integral to this kinder, gentler approach is learning to make more thoughtful, considered decisions. I notice that the decisions I make in haste are often not very helpful, in the long run, so it’s always best to slow down and choose more slowly and skilfully, when we can. In the mindfulness world this is called taking a ‘mindful pause’, which is why I developed this practice for Insight Timer – Learn How to Take a Mindful Pause.

I hope you enjoy it – and that you have a wonderful, mindful, fruitful year ahead.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

What Are Your 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows?

Image by Madison Oren

There is an oft-quoted Taoist saying that every human life contains 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Meaning, it’s human to suffer, to struggle with painful emotions like sadness, loneliness or anxiety. But it’s also inherently human to experience positive feelings like joy, pleasure, happiness, love and pride. A rich, well-lived human life involves experiencing – and allowing ourselves to truly feel – all of our feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant.

As this is my last post of 2023, I am in a reflective mood, looking back over the past year and digesting everything that has happened, both good and bad. I also spend a lot (too much, according to my loved ones!) of time thinking about my 56 years of life on this planet, all the things I have experienced, that shaped me, that made me, me. And this reflective process can be a double-edged sword, as when I’m feeling a bit down, it can easily turn into a self-critical rumination, my Inner Critic reminding me about all the things I have said or done that I feel bad about in some way. Not helpful.

But on more balanced days, I can also remember moments of great joy. I had lunch with a dear friend recently and she asked me what skydiving was like (I tried skydiving back in my journalist days, when I would go on crazy adventures and then write about them). I did a tandem skydive and remember it with crystal clarity – the sheer terror of jumping out of a plane at 12,000 feet, plummeting towards Earth at lunatic speed and every cell in my body screaming, ‘We’re going to die!’

And then, my instructor pulled the rip cord and all that plummeting terror instantly stopped as we floated slowly towards the ground, silently circling above the stunning Oxfordshire landscape of verdant hills, fields and woodland. It was the closest I have ever come to flying and it was… blissful. I can still taste the sheer joy (and relief at the knowledge I was not actually going to die!), the visceral sense of freedom and in-your-bones wonder and beauty of that experience. Magical.

The practice: Focus on your joys

So here’s a little assignment for you over the Christmas break – try journalling about the 10,000 joys and sorrows of your life. If you’re like me, and most people who struggle with their mental health at times, it’s a good idea to just bullet-point the sorrows, without going into too much depth. And definitely don’t try and think of 10,000! Just do a timeline of the big, tricky stuff in your life, with a sentence or two for each.

That’s because every human brain has a built-in negativity bias, so we focus on anything that could be threatening – painful memories, worries about the future, problems in our life – in great detail, while only giving fleeting attention to the good stuff that happens all the time. It comes and goes, without sticking in your mind and brain.

Then spend a lot more time on your 10,000 joys, even if it’s hard to think of many. As with all of the practices I recommend, there is no right or wrong way of doing this, just have a go and see what happens. And remember that the more we focus on good stuff – happy memories, moments of triumph or achievement, kind words or gestures from friends and loved ones, the birth of a child or first kiss with a beloved – the more we correct that negativity bias. We start to focus more on good, pleasant or enjoyable experiences, moment to moment and day to day, which over time rewires our brain to think about and feel those things more deeply.

And if you would like help with this rewiring process and focusing more on the joys, try my Hardwiring Happiness: Talk & Meditation practice on Insight Timer. It’s based on a brilliantly simple practice by Rick Hanson, from his book Hardwiring Happiness: How to Reshape Your Brain and Your Life. I love this practice and use it all the time with my clients, who seem to love it too. Just click on the button below to try it now.

I hope that helps. And I hope you have a wonderful, restful, restorative break over the festive season. Thank you so much for your support, connection, comments and kindness throughout 2023, in response to my teaching, to my Insight Timer practices, through my various social-media channels and via email – I am so grateful and deeply appreciate every one of you.

I have some exciting plans for 2024, including my first-ever 7-day course for Insight Timer, so stay tuned to these posts for more details about that and other upcoming events in the year ahead.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan