You know what it’s like. You have something that worries you. It starts in your mind, usually as information or a thought or idea. Then, an emotion arises in response to the thought; fear, anxiety, anger or pain. Those things are felt in our bodies, and the feelings are unpleasant, so we try to get away from them. Very often, the way we try to escape is to do more thinking.
I am an expert at this; I’ve been practising and training for…oh about 45 years if not more! It’s a vicious and paralysing cycle: have a thought – feel bad – think more to try and escape the feeling – feel worse – think more and more – and it goes on and on. The thinking DOES NOT HELP. I’ve known this for a while but the problem is that you can’t think your way out of overthinking. In the West we are trained from a young age to live more and more in our heads, to solve problems by thinking, to make decisions by thinking, and to run our lives by thinking. Hmmm, could we be on the wrong track?
I’ve tried various things which all help to cut down on damaging thinking and I still do all of them. I meditate, most mornings, sometimes for only five or 10 minutes. I also try to take conscious breaths during the day which is like a mini meditation. And, last year, I learned EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique – lots of info on YouTube). This is a great way of rebalancing our energy and dissipating damaging emotions. All of these techniques have helped me to become more present and I also have a little practice to help me come into the here and now whenever I sense that I’m drifting away, especially when stressed.
But sometimes the thinking and the accompanying emotional pain are very persistent and perhaps won’t respond to our habitual practices. What can we do then? Well, a little while ago I was speaking with a friend and wonderful life coach, Bharti Kerai. We were discussing something that, on the face of it, had nothing to do with my Big Problem. She invited me to let go of the story and just connect with the feelings. The experience of doing this while talking to someone was really valuable, because I was able to follow “instructions” and notice how it felt. I found that it really is possible to drop my attention from my head and my thoughts to my body and my feelings. The key is: where is the focus of your attention? Once focussed on the feelings, breathe with them, really feel them, without analysing.
Quite soon after, I had the opportunity to try this out for myself. These days we can be contacted anywhere on smartphones, can’t we? You know the scenario: I was driving somewhere, stopped and parked on the way at the supermarket and thought I’d just check my email (because of course the world needs me to be fully engaged and keeping an eye on everything………..). Amongst the new mail was one concerning the Big Problem which was quite upsetting. I knew it would be inadvisable to respond straight away, but I then had the problem of the thoughts – feelings – more thoughts – worse feelings cycle to deal with as I drove to my next destination. Same old cycle I’ve been going through all my life.
Luckily, as I was driving along, it occurred to me to try Bharti’s trick of getting out of the story and just breathing with the feelings. I let my attention drop from my head/mind/brain into my middle which is where all the tension, anxiety and butterflies were. The more I concentrated on the feelings, the easier it was to let go of the thoughts. I breathed and told myself that the feelings wouldn’t hurt me; they are just feelings and they won’t get worse. In fact what started to happen as I concentrated on them was that they lessened. Within about 10 minutes, I was in a different place entirely. I’m good at focussing my thinking on something positive, so I did that while the painful feelings lingered, and became fainter. By the time I reached my destination I really did feel OK.
Since that evening, the process of getting out of the story and into the feelings has become an important priority for me. I actually don’t need to think about my Big Problem very much; only when discussing it with someone or dealing with the lawyers or other agencies. The rest of the time, I find I’m able to keep it far, far away, as if I am looking the wrong way through a spy hole in a hotel doorway. I know it’s there, but it’s not here. I tell myself things like “get out of the story, stay in the feelings, breathe with them, they won’t hurt you” and, funnily enough, it works!
