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February 7, 2017 By Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

Working with Emotions: How mindfulness and awareness help

hiding from emotions is never a good strategy
Hiding from emotions is never a good strategy

Bringing the hidden to light is an important part of psychotherapy, sometimes achieved through focus on intellectual reflections. But in recent years, mindfulness-based therapies emphasize awareness of how feelings and physical sensations are related. It is enlightening to notice what happens in the body when we feel strong emotions.

As an example of how lack of mindfulness can hurt, I would sometimes react with anger at my husband when he disagreed or corrected me. But rather than seeing my point of view, he only experienced my anger as defensiveness, while I experienced him as overbearing. The result was that I felt worse.

This pattern continued until I learned to slow down my automatic reaction of anger, by becoming aware of the physical sensations that accompanied my feelings. This allowed me to become aware of the small, fleeting, and easily overlooked span of time between my internal commentary about his comment and my emotional reaction.

What was surprisingly helpful in doing this was to become aware of physical sensations; in mindfulness practices, we call this “mindfulness of the body.” Sleuthing out my emotions when corrected by my husband, I could actually feel my hackles go up. It was subtle but unmistakable.

Sensing our Hackles Before a Fight

When a dog’s hackles go up, the hair between their shoulder blades becomes erect as an automatic reaction to feeling threatened. As Adrienne Janet Farricell, a certified dog trainer explains, special muscles attached to hair follicles “are innervated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system and are therefore not under conscious control. The function allows the dog to appear larger, taller and therefore more intimidating than it is. This is a ‘fight or flight’ response triggered by adrenaline.”

Paying attention to my physical response after my husband criticized me, I began to sense that distinct feeling of my hackles going up. But what surprised me even more was what followed:  I felt myself contract, my shoulders dropping and my chest becoming slightly concave. I submitted instead of fighting, just as a dog lies submissively on the ground. In the animal world, cowering is a useful and self-protective signaling “I am not a threat to you, so you don’t need to attack me.“ But when we humans do that, we lose some of our power.

Paying attention to this small and subtle sequence of physical sensation help us notice the physical reactions that often precede the ultimate expression of strong emotion. Without being aware of how we succumb to our initial reactions we are unable to address the problem that’s making us react.

Making the automatic conscious is liberating on many levels. First, we gain some control over our automatic responses—something dogs cannot easily do. Second, greater physical and emotional awareness lets us link direct relationship to felt experiences. Being able to name an experience or find an image for it, as I did with the hackles example, opens our understanding, bringing meaning to what on the surface looks like plain old anger.

It is important to know that an angry outburst is not always a bad thing. Anger is a reaction that often stands in for other feelings that are less available to us. Let’s imagine a typical couple’s situation of the sort I see in my practice.  When Jill got angry at Sam, she didn’t always stop to feel what that anger signified. Their arguments escalated as they each get more flooded with emotions. But when Jill reflected on her anger, her felt-sense was of being small, childlike, and without a voice of her own. Childlike? Sure enough, just as she’d felt in her family growing up with three older brothers, she experienced Sam as being dismissive of her opinions and dominating her in a situation where she was powerless.

Sam, meanwhile, had no idea she was feeling this way, because all he saw was her childish, to him, outburst. He tagged Jill as being easily out of control, making him feel all the more self-righteous toward her, which further reinforced Jill—and Sam–feeling like Jill was the problem in the relationship. Sam was off the hook, and did not have to look at his role.

Pausing Before Reacting

As this example shows, our reactions and feelings may mean more than we consciously know. In some traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism, mindfulness translates as “to remember.” This process of witnessing our emotions and our physical sensations requires remembering to push the pause button before our automatic reactions take hold. In a disagreement between couples, this may mean agreeing to a time-out, or the pause may be as subtle as one breath—a period between two sentences. Pausing gives us the space to be aware without becoming stuck in automatic reactions, attacking back, or inwardly growing smaller and losing the essence of our feelings, which are usually quite valid.

This pause also gives us time to consolidate our understanding of our self. Jill recognized an old memory: that of being discounted, unheard, or dismissed. She also understood that when anger dominates, the more important issues get lost.

Being Alert to Underlying Emotions

Of course, staying calm while having hard conversations can be challenging. It helps to recognize the early and subtle signs that you are becoming flooded. Once flooded, meaningful conversations come to a grinding halt or turn into a yelling match. Be alert for automatic reactions. Remembering to pause before automatically reacting allows us to tune into the deeper, less conscious feeling: what emotions and what physical sensations are triggered?

At this point, we have a choice. We can either use our awareness to ask directly for a bit of time to get back in emotional balance before continuing. Or, we can use the pause to go deeper into what may be coming up from within. This doesn’t have to be a lengthy process; with practice, that pause can take mere seconds for insight to come.

And in that pause, when we bring awareness to physical sensations like raised hackles or a churning gut, we can use these as signals to look more deeply into our role in what is getting triggered. Too often our automatic response is to assume fault lies outside us, not within. As Cassius says, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

While taking responsibility for what is arising in us, we also need to be aware of its impact on others. When we do this, hackles go down and the back and shoulders lengthen, bringing real power, liberating the Self to be more fully alive and present. Our defense mechanism was only masquerading as power, and that briefly.

What is Your Role?

Taking responsibility does not result in guilty self-recrimination but liberation and power. Once we take ownership of our contribution to conflict, we can more readily bring insight and thus control over our automatic reactions. It may reveal qualities within us that are active and useful in opening us up to be freer, more whole in ways we‘ve barely glimpsed.

Being aware of our default defense mechanisms can help us deal more effectively with difficulty. While many defenses help us cope—psychologists call this defense in service of the ego—they can backfire and hurt us. Because defenses are unconscious, it’s difficult to be aware when they emerge. The best clue that our defenses are lurking is when we react with strong emotions or behaviors, such as rage or sharp criticism.

Some of the most common defenses are projection and denial. They are related in that both mechanisms protect a person’s sense of self by attributing to another (projection) or rejecting (denial) their own unacceptable impulses or feelings, which are made unconscious. Let’s see how that worked with Amie and Jon, who were locked in a cycle of blame when they came to counseling. Amie saw Jon as extremely self-centered, and Jon felt Amie was too emotional, always criticizing him and trying to control him; meanwhile, each felt innocent of playing a role in this cycle.

With therapy, both Jon and Amie could see how they projected unacknowledged parts of themselves onto the other. Amie never gave herself permission to ask for time to be with her friends or to play. She then criticized Jon for taking time for himself instead of spending time with the family. Further examination revealed that Amie’s mother was a martyr and never let anyone in the family forget it. Amie grew up feeling that taking time for herself was selfish. She denied feelings of wanting to take time for herself and projected her anxiety about selfishness onto Jon. Meanwhile, Jon disowned his own anger by projecting it all onto Amie.

This dynamic created misunderstanding and distance. Once both Amie and Jon saw their role, they not only reduced conflict but had more access to dormant passions. Replacing anger with understanding brought new ways of relating. Sex reentered the marriage, along with play and a deeper acceptance of each other.

When your hackles go up–whenever you have a strong emotional reaction–you have an opportunity to learn something new. By pausing and paying close attention to your bodily sensations and your thoughts, you can discover something unexpected, something that ultimately empowers you.

Filed Under: Couples & Marriage & Family, Depression & Anxiety, Dr. Susan O'Grady's Blog, Mindfulness & Meditation, Psychotherapy, Relationships, Stress, Uncategorized, Well-being & Growth Tagged With: Conflict in Marriage, Couples, Couples Communication, Dealing with Conflict in Marriage, Flooding, Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

February 23, 2016 By Susan O'Grady 4 Comments

Waking up on the Grumpy Side of the Bed: Coping with difficult moods

Coping with depression and difficult emotions.“Yesterday all day a small gardenia was a great consolation.”

Thomas Merton

A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals

Some days are harder than others. It’s tempting to find something or someone to blame, even if it’s just the wrong side of the bed. Yesterday, I woke up grumpy, but instead of fault-finding, I announced to my family that I was grumpy and not to take anything that happens between us too personally.

My bad mood persisted through breakfast. In fact, I kind of enjoyed feeling grumpy. Especially because there was no apparent reason and I didn’t care to find one. I felt defiant.

I took my hike as I usually do, on this sunny morning. I begrudgingly admitted it was a stunning day. Yet my mood persisted—and became worse as a large group of hikers, some meet-up group or club, began to pass me on the narrow trail. As I walked in the opposite direction up the hill while they clomped down, one by one, they each said good morning, smiling as if the day was something really special. In my sour mood I thought, ”How many more are there? Don’t they realize that, as one person going against the tide of walkers, I would already have been greeted numerous times? And how many more good mornings and fake smiles do I have to return?”

Many, many more, it turned out, because the group numbered more than 80. And every single person smiled at me and said “Good morning,” or a variant of it. By about the 40th person, something happened without any volition on my part: I began to smile back with genuine happiness. At first, it was in amusement at my grumpy predicament of sharing a trail with 80 very happy hikers, but as the group moved past me, I felt a stirring of good will toward these cheerful strangers, who had unknowingly softened my mood.

Sometimes moods are like that: inexplicable and unpredictable. As a psychotherapist, I help people articulate their feelings. More expansive and more integrated awareness of emotions, achieved through therapy and mindfulness practice, helps people respond more healthily and flexibly in the moment and day by day. By doing so, we can change the quality of our lives.

It can feel as though we’re overpowered by emotions. We can become so absorbed in them that we become identified with what we feel and lose the ability to witness them. A simple misunderstanding with a friend can become an all-consuming and unbearable wound. In such cases, we risk getting stuck in a contracted state that can lead to depression or avoidance behaviors such as overeating, drinking, shopping, or sleeping, which provide a temporary illusion of feeling good. But as we know, those actions backfire, leading to more guilt and less overall effectiveness.

Noting and naming emotions, in contrast, gives us a path past denial or avoidance into acceptance, letting go, and even gratitude.

Sometimes our moods are not just difficult, but serious mood disorders, such as major depression. If feelings of sadness last longer than two weeks, and interfere with daily activities, it is important to get help from a psychotherapist to determine if psychotherapy and medication would benefit. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is often a good treatment for depression.

The solution is not to ignore our difficult moods, but to acknowledge them as they arise. In some situations we will be able to trace what we feel to a particular event that we can bring insight to. For other moods, like my waking up grumpy for no apparent reason, we accept them and watch what happens next, much as we do with the weather. Eighty happy hikers eventually made me smile and my bad mood passed as they passed by. That was essentially effortless, but it is often quite effortful to cope with hard emotions.

When we cultivate a disposition that witnesses and accepts passing experiences, we become more stable. In mindfulness meditation or contemplative prayer, we accept thoughts and feelings without judgment and with open and spacious awareness. Emotions arise and pass without interference. I acknowledged my grumpiness and warned my family not to mind me. In doing so, I took responsibility rather than looking for someone or something to blame. This allowed me not only to be open to my bad mood, but also to become open to the good mood that emerged later on.

Sometimes, of course, bad moods can arise for good reasons, not just something that inexplicably overtakes us. In his journal, Thomas Merton describes waking up with heart palpitations and shortness of breath, surely cause for concern. But instead of dwelling on his fear, he starts his page by recognizing the small gardenia as a consolation. He describes walking out into the woods and gazing at the tall straight oaks, closing his journal entry for that day with the lines:

“Sweet afternoon! Cool breezes and a clear sky! This day will not come again. The bulls lie under the tree in the corner of their field. Quiet afternoon! The blue hills, the daylilies in the wind. This day will not come again.”

That is more than acceptance; it’s real gratitude. It starts with accepting all our moods, the grumpy and the grateful. Without that, we can only approximate gratitude in a kind of pretending. With my softened mood, I continued on my way, grateful to the hikers, and happy to be spending my morning in the hills.

 

Filed Under: Depression & Anxiety, Dr. Susan O'Grady's Blog, Mindfulness & Meditation, Psychotherapy, Well-being & Growth Tagged With: Depression, Mindfulnees-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, psychotherapy

September 9, 2015 By Susan O'Grady 9 Comments

Implacable Grandeur: Mindfulness and Change

Learning to appreciate what you have.

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.                 Albert Camus

Much of the human experience is determined by chance—factors completely outside our control.

My father, who died of prostate cancer at the age of fifty-six, had two copies of the BRCA2 gene, one healthy and one defective. The defective BRCA2 gene greatly increases the chances of developing hereditary breast, ovarian, or prostate cancer (HBOC). My brother and I each had a 50/50 chance of getting that mutated gene. As it turns out, my brother got the broken gene, and I got the healthy one.  I was lucky; I don’t have to face that increased cancer risk, and neither do my two daughters. But my brother is now fighting HBOC prostate cancer.

Surgery and treatments will hopefully keep the cancer from spreading beyond where it has already taken up residence in his body. My brother and I talked for a long time after we got the genetic news. I felt something akin to survivor guilt—why did I escape hereditary cancer while my brother was saddled with it?

Like many siblings, we had been competitive in our younger years; I worried that he would feel envy, but in fact, he congratulated me. My brother was genuinely happy for me. For anyone in that position, being able to feel glad for another in the face of your own difficult outcome takes maturity, wisdom, and a generous spirit.

Finding out that I do not carry the genetic alteration BRCA2 was a great relief. I’d had such an outpouring of kind thoughts from so many people while waiting for the results that I almost feel guilty for not having the mutation. I had this crazy thought that those who expressed love and support would think “Why was she such a drama queen bothering us with this when she only had a 50% chance?”

Some might wonder why I chose to be so transparent, especially when psychotherapists normally aren’t self-disclosing. On further reflection, I believe that transparency facilitates integration. That means that you’re working toward a more unified sense of self, rather than compartmentalizing or walling off different facets of your personality.

I use my own personal experiences, as well as the insights from my work, as a foundation for growth and self-discovery leading to greater authenticity. As we get older, we learn that being authentic feels better. I’m glad that despite my self-doubt, I opened up about that threat. By doing so, and by being present to either outcome, I learned a lot.

What I learned is the stuff of aphorisms, platitudes, teaching stories, parables, and fairy tales from all faith traditions: How to appreciate your life before you see it vanish, how to find meaning in daily challenges, and beauty in the smallest things. My wish now is to savor my sense of gratitude and good fortune and relish my current good health.

I was lucky. But the truth is, no one gets to a certain point and then lives happily ever after. Most of life is a matter of contending with problems, hardships, and unexpected turn of events. Periods of placid security are the exception rather than the rule.

Life is change. It’s our nature to want to hold onto things, always grasping to make things safe and predictable. But the wisdom of the Buddha teaches us that we will never succeed: Because life is constant change, attachment causes suffering. The only way to achieve true peace is through accepting that life is dynamic, not static. As Epictetus wrote, “It is not events that disturb the minds of men, but the view they take of them.”

But this doesn’t require superhuman serenity. I believe that we all have an instinct for wholeness at the core of our being. One way of looking at this yearning is as an archetypal urge of the Self, an archaic memory that may have been present in the lives and generations before us.

Growing with difficulties and changes.The Next Blade of Grass

“As a caterpillar, having come to the end of one blade of grass, draws itself together and reaches out for the next, so the Self, having come to the end of one life and dispelled all ignorance, gathers in his faculties and reaches out from the old body to a new.”  [IV.4.3] (Easwaran, Eknath. The Upanishads. Nilgiri Press, iBooks, 2007.)

Like the caterpillar, we draw ourselves together when one phase of life ends and stretch to reach for our next landing place—a new way of being in life, despite the inevitable changes that chance throws in our path.

We all possess that ability to draw ourselves together, collecting what we have learned from our experiences (a difficult situation, an insight during mediation, inner work in psychotherapy) and stretching out for the next blade of grass, the next place of sustenance. In this way, we grow, progressing slowly and deliberately from one place to the next.

Filed Under: Depression & Anxiety, Dr. Susan O'Grady's Blog, Health Psychology, Mindfulness & Meditation, Uncategorized, Well-being & Growth, Yoga Tagged With: Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, psychotherapy

June 3, 2015 By Susan O'Grady 5 Comments

Learning to Notice What is Already There: The Rose Itself

Being aware of pleasant events is an important skill in mindfulness and Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.Behavior therapists have long used a technique to distract clients from their difficult thoughts. The client wears a rubber band around their wrist; when they have an upsetting thought, they snap the rubber band so that the sting wakes them up and interrupts the thought. This always seemed silly to me. And when I tried it myself, it didn’t work very well. The reasoning behind the rubber band is that distraction from a difficult thought will interrupt, not just the thought itself, but also the chain reaction that painful thoughts set in motion.

Distraction works for children quite well. If a child is crying about a lost toy, we show them another toy and they forget what they were crying about. But as we get older, emotions become more complex. The typical pattern is that when something difficult happens, we make a negative appraisal about it. Then we start thinking about the difficulty, which brings up negative feelings, sending us down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry. For example, a co-worker points out an error you made. Your thoughts might go, “Oh no, a mistake. I shouldn’t make mistakes. I’m a fraud and my co-worker knows it. I’m going to lose my job. Everything always goes wrong for me.” Our often-silent judgment triggers mental elaboration of what could have been simple awareness of a thought or feeling in the moment: “I made a mistake. It feels bad to get things wrong.”

We often go through the day thinking of what’s next. We plan dinner and dread the grocery store even as we’re walking around our home or office, long before we actually get to the store. Being 20 steps ahead of where we actually are misses opportunities that exist in the moment. But what if some of those moments aren’t very good? Wouldn’t avoiding them just make sense? The problem is that avoiding thoughts and feelings that evoke sadness or anxiety usually just postpones problems while they get bigger. There are endless ways to distract ourselves from even benign feelings such as boredom, or the effortful focus needed to complete a project. Constant phone checking may keep us from feeling bored or focusing on what we should be doing in the moment.

I did 6 Google searches for ‘North Coast silver cuff raven steals the light’ –to find information about a bracelet I purchased at a thrift store over the weekend. Do I feel better for putting off writing this post? No I don’t feel better after my  search, but I tell myself, “Ok, that wasn’t a great use of time, but now I am back to it.” I don’t need to chastise myself, but I don’t need to continue to distract myself either.

Being able to experience our thoughts and feelings without judging them opens up the possibility for experiencing the richness of the moment. It may be as simple as feeling engaged with what we are doing, or acknowledging our humanness and bringing forgiveness to the moment.

In practices like mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), therapists have people keep track of pleasant and unpleasant moments in their day. This doesn’t have to be a tiresome homework assignment; it’s just jotting down, at the end of each day, something you noticed that was pleasant, or the opposite. By doing so, you can more easily increase awareness of the experiences when they are happening.

The most important component of mindfulness is attention to the moment. This awareness helps us notice what triggers ruminative thoughts. Rather than mechanically snapping a rubber band, we notice the thought and where our minds want to take it next. We don’t need to add to the thoughts, take them further, or elaborate on them. We also don’t need to classify or analyze them. Being attentive but nonjudgmental in this way helps us not only to let go of negative thoughts, but to notice pleasant things that may escape our awareness because we so often rush around, either literally or in our heads. As a result of paying attention to small bursts of pleasure, happiness grows.

In a commencement address to Colorado College, the poet Billy Collins described the power of mindfulness as being like an atom smasher:

Matter is composed of atoms and subatomic particles. Through the use of a particle accelerator it is possible to make these tiny bits collide which releases energy. Time, on the other hand, is composed of moments. And by arresting one of those moments, by concentrating fully on it, by smashing it under the intensity of your gaze, an energy will be released.

Poetry, Collins says, can help you slow down and pay attention, but you don’t need to be a poet. What do you notice right now? Are you aware of something pleasant—the shape and feel of your coffee cup and the color of your coffee, the song of a bird, or the light coming in the window?

In the same talk, Billy Collins says that gratitude “for simply being alive” goes along with mindfulness:

The taking of breath, the beating of the heart. Gratitude for the natural world around us—the massing clouds, the white ibis by the shore. In Barcelona a poetry competition is held every year. There are three prizes: The third prize is a rose made of silver, the second prize is a golden rose, and the first prize: a rose. A real rose. The flower itself.

Though we spend so much time worrying about the future or the past, it’s what’s real and present in the moment that is “the flower itself. “ To tell it another way, there’s an old Zen koan (teaching story) that illustrates these concepts.

 

Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around the bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

“Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?”

The whole way back to the temple, Ekido missed the birdsong, the breeze, and the fragrance of the cherry-blossom trees—and thereby deprived himself of the pleasure around him, just so he could fume and ruminate about what someone else did.

To increase mindfulness, try printing the chart below and filling it in each day. Make a point of remembering to notice just one thing each day that you find pleasant. If, like Ekido, you are still carrying unpleasant feelings, notice how far you take them, and see if you can find something in the moment that is even briefly pleasant.

Awareness of Pleasant Experiences

Instructions: For one week, be aware each day of one pleasant experience or occurrence while it is happening. At the end of the day, on this calendar or in your journal, record in detail what it was and your experience of it. (Click on image for a larger view.)

Keeping track of pleasant experiences during the day is a core component of MBCT and MBST.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Depression & Anxiety, Dr. Susan O'Grady's Blog, Mindfulness & Meditation, Uncategorized, Well-being & Growth Tagged With: Anxiety, Mindfulnees-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, stress-reduction

January 12, 2015 By Susan O'Grady 3 Comments

The New Year, Rebirth, and Obstacles

Photo credit: Bahman Ferzad
Photo credit: Bahman Ferzad

By the third or fourth week of January, many of us are reevaluating our lives. We’ve either made resolutions (and perhaps already broken them) or we are resisting this ancient practice with awareness of the years of collapsed intentions when previous New Year’s hopes didn’t pan out.

Yet we continue to be drawn to the symbolic cycle of each New Year because we crave growth and change. Like the snake, the symbol of healing (seen in the Rod of Asclepius), we long to shed our skin and emerge from the constraints that hold us back.

Stories of rebirth offer hope that change is possible, and that we can be made new again. The parts of ourselves that we’ve outgrown—the aspects of our personality and our life that keep us stuck, can be discarded, making room for new growth. With each new year, we imagine ourselves in new light—and set intentions to change.

Images of rebirth in faith traditions, in myths, and in nature symbolize the cycle of death, liberation, and ultimately rebirth. The Phoenix, for example, is a mythical bird that was said to live 500 years, burst into flame, and then arise from its own ashes after three days. This image represents the recurring cycle of resurrection, immortality, and the indestructible nature of the spirit, as well as the pain and destruction necessary to this cycle.

In the Gospel of John, Lazarus is raised from the dead after being buried four days in a dark tomb. Jesus tells Lazarus—still wrapped in the cloth that bound him—to get up and come to the entrance of his tomb. He commands Martha and Mary, Lazarus’s sisters, to unbind their poor brother so that he can be free to live life with fullness. Imagine that you can unbind yourself from whatever darkness holds you.

The lotus flower is another symbol of rebirth.  The Sanskrit word for lotus, pankaja, means “mud-born.” Although rooted in mire and nourished by decomposed matter, the lotus rises each day and opens radiantly into the light. Throughout the day the flowers turn to face the sun as it moves across the southern sky. After sunset the petals close into a tight bud before the lotus descends into the murky soil of the pond or river. We are not separate from the earth. We grow from it and each day is a new beginning. All arises and passes away.

We must be willing to let go of parts of ourselves that do not serve us well. That might mean something as seemingly small as forgoing coffee in the afternoon so we sleep better at night, or as large as leaving a job or relationship that no longer fits who we are becoming. Growing into our fullness requires that we accept the mud from which we come.

Photo credit: Bahman Ferzad
Photo credit: Bahman Ferzad

The butterfly is a ubiquitous symbol of transition, growth, and rebirth because of how the crawling caterpillar enters its cocoon and is transformed into the delicate and graceful winged butterfly. But this process needs effort to work, as Paulo Coelho describes in his Dec. 2007 blog entry “Lesson of the Butterfly.” A man watches “a butterfly struggling to emerge” and decides to help it by cutting open the cocoon, but the butterfly never flies, never even opens its wings, remaining shrunken and shriveled:

What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Psychotherapy is not painless. People wanting to change must face fundamental aspects of themselves that no longer (or never did) serve them. The obstacles we confront help us to be whole; avoiding them never does.

It’s popular in social media to present lists of “5 ways to cure” this or that. Such lists simplify and distort what is often difficult inner work. Some psychotherapy sessions are smooth and feel-good, but if every session is like that, the work may not be deep enough—for surely change involves difficulty.

We can be born anew each day, and in every moment. Many traditions teach lessons about renewal. Mindfulness meditation, when done regularly, can provide the foundation to live each moment and then let go of it as the next moment comes.

What are the important images in your life, and what do they say about you? Find the images that form inside you, as you listen to stories, poetry, or in the silence of the meditations. Your image could be a butterfly, a lotus flower, even a humble loaf of bread (which can’t be made without punching and kneading). Allow images to form in your awareness, and then bring insight and understanding to what they might symbolize.

Think of a story that was central to you and your development. For me, the tortoise and the hare was important, and one I have returned to many times in my dreams and as I face challenges.

You cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is.

~ J. Krishnamurti

We need stories to grow.

Habits are hard to change. There are ways to help you keep realistic resolutions. This NY Times article summaries several studies that show ways to make good habits stick.

Filed Under: Dr. Susan O'Grady's Blog, Mindfulness & Meditation, Psychotherapy, Uncategorized, Well-being & Growth Tagged With: Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, psychotherapy

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