O'Grady Psychology Associates

Psychotherapy, Marriage Counseling, Neuropsychological Assessment

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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.

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The Elusive Muse: Reclaiming creativity and focus

NorthernLights
Photo by Marcelo Quinan, Unsplash

For three months, I’ve resisted writing. I sat at my desk or the kitchen table—my favorite place to write—to compose an essay, but distraction beckoned me at every turn. The muse, that slippery, elusive impulse to create words from experiences and observations, had gone missing. Each week I’d tell myself that I’d write over the weekend, and Sunday night would come with nothing to show.

Wonderful ideas came at moments in my psychotherapy work, or on a hike, or in conversations with friends. I had flashes of insight, but writing them down was the tricky part. I used apps like Evernote and Pocket to collect interesting, pertinent articles to reference. I’d write a few lines and a title, but not finish the post. In fact, my Mac desktop became so cluttered with ideas and open pages that I was overwhelmed with all the fragments of potential posts staring back at me, giving me a glimpse into the world of attention deficit disorder (ADD). The mindscape becomes so cluttered with snippets of thoughts and ideas that nothing sticks for long, and nothing gets finished.

When Ancient Greeks needed inspiration, they’d call upon the muses. The one I’ve been needing is Calliope, the goddess of epic poetry and eloquence. Socrates said that when a muse takes hold of us, we’re compelled to create.

It would be great if invoking the muse were all there was to it. But the muse alone is not enough. Focus and perseverance provide the steam, the energy that gets things going. As Victor Hugo said, “Persistence is necessary to accomplish most anything of value.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) offers a good example of persistence. He painted his garden at Giverny, France, with its beautiful water lilies, some 250 times over the last 30 years of his life. Some water-lily paintings were enormous murals, some were smaller canvases. “Know that I am absorbed by work,” he wrote in a 1908 letter, when he was 68. “These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It is beyond my power as an old man, and yet I want to arrive at rendering what I feel. I have destroyed some. . . . Some I recommence . . . and I hope that after so many efforts, something will come out” (quoted in Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self by Steven Z. Levine, p. 206).

Despite being displeased with his work, feeling that it failed to capture his intentions, and despite the cataracts that plagued him until a 1923 operation, Monet persisted. And he succeeded in creating some of the world’s most famous and best-loved art: his water-lily paintings hang in museums all over the world.

Monet found his work absorbing to the point of obsession even when he had to destroy canvases. Many people, though, find it hard to persist in tasks that are unrewarding.

In my three months of a writing slump, I did not persist. I gave up when the writing didn’t come easily. Sitting at the computer to write, I gave in to mind-numbing web browsing.

I had distractions besides the internet. Of course, I work nearly full-time as a psychologist, and have home and family obligations. The holidays took over a big portion of my attention, updating my software entailed much time-consuming tinkering, and my 24-year-old daughter told me she was leaving to work on an mhealth project in Darfur, Sudan, to help the 90,000 displaced people living in refugee camps. I learned a lot in the last month about that region’s history and its genocides. Letting young adults make their own choices is the right thing to do…but still, I kept searching for recent news from Sudan, and that was a big distraction from my own writing.

At one point, my friend Sarah told me, “Susan, I think you need to get back to your blogging—besides, we all miss your posts.” In Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (WaterBrook Press, 2001), Madeleine L’Engle quotes an unknown writer on the subject of discipline: “If I leave my work for a day, it leaves me for three,” going on to cite Arthur Rubinstein: ”If I don’t practice the piano for one day I know it. If I don’t practice it for two days my family knows it. If I don’t practice it for three days, my public knows it” (p. 196). By that formula, I will need a lot of catching up to do. But fortunately, I love to write, and I sense that the muse is not lost. She may have been taking a break, but she is near.

I have learned a few things over these last few months about how to make space for the muse to re-enter. Some ways to refocus:

  1. Tidy your computer’s home screen. Close all windows except the document you are working on; turn notifications off. Open a browser window only if it relates to your project. You can also try an app that blocks distractions.
  2. If you have a noisy environment, try headphones and/or closing the door to minimize distractions.
  3. Keep a regular schedule. As William Faulkner said, “I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.” Return to that schedule after vacations, holidays, or sickness.
  4. If you’re having trouble finding sustained time to write, try working in “chunks.” Break up your writing task into manageable pieces that you can accomplish in half an hour or 45 minutes. Then, knowing you have (say) half an hour before starting dinner, you can work on a half-hour chunk.
  5. Be mindful of self-care—get good sleep, eat well, exercise, and make time to relax.
  6. Don’t call your mother unless you’ve finished your writing task for the day.
  7. Cultivate will power and self-control.
  8. Write even when you don’t feel inspired.

One of the reasons that mindfulness has gained such traction is that most of us know we are only half awake. We use only a small part of our mental and physical resources. As William James wrote, being cut off from our creative resources leads to feeling as if a “sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our highest notch or clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding.” On Vital Reserves: The Energies of Men (The Perfect Library, 1833).

James observed, that in a single successful effort of will, such as saying ”no” to mindless temptation, we gain vitality and reanimate our energy for days and weeks, giving us a new range of power. Giving in to habitual avoidance behaviors, only provides temporary escape, and ultimately leads to fatigue and inertia. It is not what we do that causes fatigue, but what we don’t do.

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Facebook’s False Face: Comparing our insides to other people’s outsides

Social media often contributes to feeling left out, leading to depression and social comparison.

Guidelines for Kindness When Posting

We seldom deliberately present a bad face on social media. Selfie stick in hand, we depict ourselves smiling before an elaborate, expensive meal, in front of a landmark in an exotic land, or simply celebrating with friends (which all can see, including those not fortunate enough to be present in those moments).  Accumulating ubiquitous likes and thumbs-up is gratifying in the way that cotton candy is: briefly sweet,  but fading quickly as the posts scroll by. Posts may have sad news; they may be angry, ranting, or commented on by haters, but in constructing a public version of ourselves, we promote something: a lifestyle, an idea, or an image.

First generation Face bookers–the early adopters—now in their twenties, have mostly abandoned it for Twitter and Instagram where they look for news in their areas of interest.  Their parents, on the other hand, who may have started a Facebook page as a means to snoop on their kids, (and friends of their kids)—are more active than ever, but for themselves now, posting about their kid’s achievements. That’s understandable. The need to know that others care about us is normal.  Seeking attention in the right way, at the right time, is healthy: An actor needs interaction with her audience; a poet wants to hear audible sighs when reading their work. In conversation, we seek reciprocity. I speak while someone listens, then I listen attentively in turn. I can tell you now, having published a blog, that I want to know that people read my posts, and it is the best when someone comments.

 No one wants to be a Debbie Downer to their friends, and no one wants to read the sad, drab, boring parts of life. So what’s wrong with shaping a good-looking, successful persona for social media? One answer: it’s depressing. The theory of social comparison suggests that we evaluate and define ourselves in relation to others, and Facebook is no exception. But if we’re always comparing our lives, which we know to be full of difficulty (unrealized dreams, illness, money problems, strained relationships, etc.) to the carefully curated, only-the-highlights lives of others, it’s easy to feel envious and depressed at how you don’t measure up.

More than that, when we’re obsessing over social media, we’re not paying attention to our own present moment. Instead, we take a mini-time travel to a future moment, imagining other people witnessing our experience, or become lost in memories, wishes, and comparisons. We become exhibitionists and voyeurs, which detaches us from other people rather than bringing us closer together.

Chao-pien was a Chinese official of the Sung dynasty and lay disciple to a Zen master. He summarized a spiritual experience in a four-line poem:

 

Devoid of thought, I sat quietly by the desk in my official room,

With my fountain-mind undisturbed, as serene as water;

A sudden crash of thunder, the mind doors burst open,

And lo, there sits the old man in all his homeliness.

                                 T. Suzuki (Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series (1953; reprint, London: Rider, 1970)

 

Thomas Merton unpacks this metaphor in his book The Inner Experience:

Suddenly there is a clap of thunder and the “doors” of the inner consciousness fly open. The clap of thunder is just startling enough to create a sudden awareness, a self-realization in which the false, exterior self is caught in all its naked nothingness and immediately dispelled as an illusion. Not only does it vanish, but it is seen never to have been there at all—a pure fiction, a mere shadow of passionate attachment and of self-deception. Instead, the real self stands revealed in all his reality.

A serene mind, devoid of the constant stream of media, allows us to see ourselves as we are: homely and human. The irony for those of us hoping to portray perfection is that it takes seeing our homeliness—our unpolished, unedited life—to begin glimpsing our wholeness.

When we don’t see our homeliness because we are busily posting all the good stuff, we evade the difficult yet real feelings we have, and we evade real emotional contact with ourselves and others. Our rejected, unacknowledged feelings go underground—and will pop up again as symptoms of unease. In this way, social media becomes a defense mechanism, like denial or projection.

The vivid starkness of D. T. Suzuki ‘s excerpt speaks to what we must eventually encounter when we sit alone without our devices. We see the door burst open to our humanness, in all its homeliness and ordinariness. We are fine as we are, warts and all.

Over the years I have seen clients who obsessively look at social media; some create a complete alter ego. This keeps them from true and honest relationships, even with themselves. For tips on putting down the smartphone, try this link.

Consider the following these guidelines for kindness when posting.

  1. Be considerate of others when posting photos of exclusive activities, amazing holidays, or expensive vacations—especially ones your friends can’t afford, weren’t invited to, or couldn’t attend.
  2. Don’t overshare—no one wants to see your every activity, meal, and outfit.
  3. Check your privilege. Make sure you are not being insensitive in your posting.
  4. Be genuine; avoid arrogance.
  5. Make posts that are about other people and issues, not just yourself.
  6. Try taking a break from posting.
  7. People want to see your artwork, your successes, and accomplishments, but don’t upload every single thing.

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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.

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Accepting Life’s Turbulence: Fasten Your Seatbelt

Life brings ups and downs and finding a way through the stormy turbulence takes courage and grace.
Thunder Cloud from 37,000 ft

This dramatic cumulonimbus was captured at 37,000 feet over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Pilots know to avoid going near these thunderclouds, charting a course around them for the comfort of passengers and safety of the aircraft. Even coming close will cause turbulence—the jet trembles and shakes, often violently.

Pilots rate turbulence as mild, medium, or severe. Thankfully, excellent communication between pilots means that patches of bumpy air can be predicted well ahead of time and avoided by changing elevation or course. But sometimes turbulence is unavoidable. In that situation, fearful flyers grip armrests, pop benzodiazepines, and turn up the volume on their headsets. Eventually the air smooths out, and everyone releases their breath…and their grips.

Staying Steady During Turbulent Times

Jet travel is a great metaphor for life. Sometimes the bumpy moments are so extreme that there’s nothing you can do but sit with it and hope you don’t have to pee. But sitting with the rocky ups and downs of life isn’t always easy.

When a pilot acquaintance asked me how to survive the turbulence of his current marriage problems, I asked him what he tells his passengers to do when the flight encounters a rough patch.

He said, “I tell them to fasten their seat belts.” We have all heard the familiar words, “The captain has turned on the seat belt sign. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.” Now, I confess I sometimes use this moment to zip down the now suddenly empty aisle to use the lavatory (but only in mild turbulence.)  But basically, in bad weather you need to stay seated and wait it out.

I enjoy flying, but that wasn’t always true. I was a fearful flyer for about six years. I wasn’t phobic, I didn’t avoid flying or have panic attacks, but I was alert to every squeal of the engine, movement of the wing flaps, or ring of a cabin bell,. During euphemistically described moments of “bumpy air,” I would glance up at the flight attendants’ faces to see if they were showing signs of concern.

I wasn’t afraid of heights or of being in an enclosed space—my fear was simply of crashing. Kaput, end of life, and the imagined 60 seconds of sheer terror I expected to feel going headlong into death.

We have no control over death. Once I came to terms with accepting that I could die in a plane crash, I became less afraid. It wasn’t that I was convinced by statistics showing how rare such deaths are; fearful flyers are rarely comforted by the statistics. Acceptance, in contrast, goes a long way in dealing with the bumps we encounter in life.

I found out this week that I have a 50/50 chance of having the genetic mutation associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC). My family on both sides has had lots of cancer. But through advanced genetic testing, I now know that my family members have the BRCA2 mutation going back three generations. As I await the results of my blood test, I am again reminded of our lack of control. For me, it’s the toss of a coin: I either have it or I don’t. If I do, I have an 85% chance of developing breast cancer and lower risk of other cancers (ovarian, pancreatic, melanoma, and stomach). I am not comforted by those odds.

Flying has infinitely better odds. But after a week of emotional turbulence, I will meet my fate with HBOC with as much grace as I can muster. It hasn’t been an easy week, to be sure, veering between certainty of bad results and certainty of escape. So while I wait and hope that I end up on the happier side of the 50-50 split, I will fasten my seatbelt and try to steer as safe a course through the thunderstorm as I can, with all the support I’ve gathered over the years: family, friendship, work that I love, and resources (such as FORCE). Coping skills, like seat belts, keep us safe. While we generally don’t enjoy restraints, a seatbelt helps to contain our emotions so they are less likely to overwhelm.

I am reminded, once again, of a lesson taught by Thich Nhat Hanh: “When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing.” (Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, 1992, p. 38). Finding comfort in the face of difficulty is possible—by riding out the painful moments and trusting that the next moment contains a potential fullness, some simple pleasure waiting to be noticed. So when the seatbelt sign is again turned off,  you are free to move about the cabin. Add take a deep breath.