What is the Point of Anxiety?

Image by Francesco

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

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

Image by Milad Fakurian

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

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

The Buddha Taught Us How to Avoid Turning Pain into Suffering

Image by Abhijeet Gourav

I turn 56 in a couple of months and, although there are many things I like about growing older, there are some definite drawbacks. Wrinkles, back pain and various minor health ailments – none of these are much fun. But the biggest drawback for me is the change in my sleep pattern. And especially my brain’s newfound trick of waking me up at 5am every day, for no apparent reason.

I really need my sleep. Eight hours every night would be good, but nine is probably my sleep sweet spot. Six hours, which I got last night, really doesn’t do it for me. I’m currently on my fourth coffee of the day, which helps, but is no substitute for a good night’s sleep.

My eyes feel kind of scratchy, everything is a bit of a struggle and it’s hard to escape the feeling that you’re dragging yourself through the day, waiting for that glorious moment when you can go back to bed and hope for a better slumber tonight. This is all a bit painful, especially because I understand the increasingly persuasive science around the importance of sleep for our mental and physical health.

Turning pain into suffering

Luckily, I know enough about Buddhist psychology to understand how not to turn this pain into suffering. This was one of the Buddha’s many great insights – he taught that human life is inherently painful. We all get older, every day. There is nothing we can do about that, however much we might dislike it or slather on anti-ageing potions to hold on to our youthful looks. And with age often comes illness. Again, there is a lot we can do to prevent that, but some illnesses will inevitably come with advancing years.

The biggest, scariest truth we all have to face is that one day this will all come to an end. This is the hardest thing that any human has to grapple with – we are not immortal and so our time on this planet is finite.

All of this brings pain in the form of stress, worry, anxiety, sadness and other difficult emotions. And this pain is inevitable, to a greater or lesser extent – we can’t get rid of or avoid it completely, however hard we try. But the Buddha also taught that we then turn this inevitable pain into avoidable suffering through the way we respond to the initial discomfort.

He famously used the metaphor of a first and second arrow to explain this to his followers. When we feel pain, it’s as if we are hit by an arrow – this hurts, of course. But when, for example, we feel loneliness as our ‘first-arrow’ pain, but then start thinking, ‘I can’t stand feeling lonely, it’s the worst feeling in the world,’ or, ‘God, I’m so lonely – and I always will be. I just know I will never find someone to love,’ we add the second arrow of suffering.

Just feeling the pain is enough

Knowing this, I have become much more skilled at not turning my first-arrow pain of tiredness into second-arrow suffering. I used to think, ‘Oh man, I am so tired. I just hate this. I know I will feel terrible all day, it will affect my work and I won’t be 100% in my sessions today, which means I am letting my clients down…’ and on it would go, until I felt thoroughly depressed, on top of the tiredness.

Now – today, for example – I just think, ‘Oh well, I’m just tired. It’s not the worst thing in the world. Many people are suffering greatly right now, so this isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.’ And… I just feel tired. No depression. No unpleasant rumination. I just get on with the day, which seems to go much better.

Now I’m not saying this is easy, especially if the pain you feel is far greater than my relatively mild tired-and-scratchy feeling. Struggling with the impact of trauma, being highly anxious and panicky, or deeply depressed, are clearly much worse and harder to manage. But the same principles do apply – if you can just feel the pain, whatever it is, without piling on a whole load more mental and emotional suffering, you will feel less anxious, less panicky, less depressed.

And if you are feeling some kind of emotional pain right now, this practice I recorded for Insight Timer might help: Soothing Painful Emotions with the Breath.

I hope you do find it helpful – sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Why You May Have Experienced Trauma, Even if You Had a ‘Normal’ Childhood

Image by Jessica Voong

‘He didn’t see his childhood as unusual – it was the only one he had ever had.’ I read this line in a coffee shop earlier and it has really stayed with me. It was in a brilliant book, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains, by Louis Cozolino. It’s a bit dense, so probably more for the mental-health professionals reading this (or anyone else who enjoys dense psychology books!). But that line is so good – and speaks to something I see with my clients over and over again.

Because it doesn’t matter how bad your childhood was, what kinds of terrible things were happening – to you it’s normal, because that is all you know. Especially when you are young, before you have attended school, your house and family is your whole world. You might go to the park, or to other kids’ houses to play, but basically everything important that ever happens to you happens inside your family.

So even if your dad is drinking heavily, then shouting aggressively at your mum every night, that’s normal. Or if you grow up in poverty, feeling scared and hungry every day, that’s normal. If your parents clearly favour your sister over you and you know, in your bones, that they love her more than you, well that’s normal too.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that any of those things are OK, or right, or even normal by the standards of many other families. But it is normal for you, because that was all you knew then – and may still be normal for you now, until we work to reframe that story and help you realise it was neither good nor normal to grow up in that environment.

What children need to flourish

One of the central ideas in schema therapy is that of core needs. These are the developmental needs that all children have, whatever the culture or country they grow up in. These five needs are:

1. Love and a secure atachment

2. Safety and protection

3. Being valued as a unique human being

4. The ability to be spontaneous, play and express your emotions

5. Having boundaries and being taught right from wrong

It’s easy to see that the kids who are unlucky enough to grow up in traumatic, neglectful or abusive families are not getting these fundamental needs met. They probably don’t feel loved, safe or valued. Their emotions might be seen as ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’. And – a problem I see in many families today – they might have what we see as too much of a good thing. Meaning they are spoilt, allowed to say and do whatever they like without consequences. This is also a kind of neglect, because it produces unhappy children who will struggle to fit into society when they are older.

So, however ‘normal’ your childhood was, if these basic needs were not being met, it will have caused you problems as you became an adult. And it may well have been traumatic, even if it seemed normal on the outside, because being shouted at, bullied, devalued or ignored can all be traumatic for kids.

If any of this resonates for you, I’m very sorry you had a tough time growing up. But you may find this talk helpful, which I recorded for Insight Timer to help people tell a different, more compassionate story about their lives: The Story of You: How to Build Self-Compassion.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Why I am Moving My Therapy Practice Online

Image by Andrew Neel

After eight-and-a-half happy years, I have decided to move out of my office in north London and see all of my clients online. This decision has been a few years in the making, as after the pandemic I realised I could easily run my practice exclusively via Zoom. And the vast majority of my sessions are now online anyway, so it should be a smooth transition.

Of course, I didn’t start working online during the pandemic – I have offered online sessions for well over a decade. But during the lockdowns I realised that the kind of therapy I offer – integrating schema therapy, internal family systems and other trauma-informed models – worked really well online. I also have clients all over the UK and have worked with people across the globe, so switching fully to online work opens the world up even more, for me and my clients/supervisees.

I am also increasingly focusing on other areas of work, such as supervision (which has always been online), writing my blog and an upcoming self-help book, and being a meditation teacher for Insight Timer and elsewhere.

If you would like to see me for therapy, our sessions will be via Zoom, which works very well for most people. My only request is that you have a fast and stable wifi connection, as the only drawback to meeting online is when people don’t have good wifi and the Zoom video/audio keeps breaking up. This can usually be solved by sitting as close to your router as possible, but please do bear this in mind before getting in touch.

If you would like to see me for online therapy or supervision, email me at dan@danroberts.com or use my contact form to get in touch.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Warm, Loving, Calm… What Self-Energy Feels Like

Image by Zain Bhatti

Internal Family Systems therapy is definitely having a moment. If you have tried to find an IFS therapist or supervisor recently, you will know exactly what I mean. And if you want to train in IFS, you will actually need to enter a lottery, as the courses are so popular right now! So what is IFS – and why is it surging from a little-known, slightly out-there model to the mainstream of psychotherapy?

IFS was founded by Dr Richard Schwartz (who prefers to be called Dick) in the 80s. Dick says that he learned the model from his clients, because they kept saying ‘A part of me thinks this, but another part thinks that…’ or ‘One part wants me to binge on cake, but another part really doesn’t want me to and is berating me about it.’

As a systemic family therapist, Dick was trained to think systemically, because rather than working with an individual client his sessions featured their whole family. And he began to see these families existing not just in his clients’ external worlds but inside their heads, too. This, for me, is probably the biggest revolution to have occurred in the therapy world for decades – the idea that we are not just one, unified self (Dan) but we have a brain that creates what we think of as ‘us’ in a system of parts (the many parts of Dan).

What is the Self in IFS?

I won’t go into detail about these parts here, as I have explained them in many other posts, webinars and talks for Insight Timer. Instead, I would like to focus on what Dick calls, ‘Who you really are, deep down’. Because all of these parts, as lovable and well-intentioned as they are, often develop to help us deal with trauma or other painful incidents in our lives. So they are stuck in somewhat rigid roles, either holding painful memories or helping us cope with them. And the way they do that can, unintentionally, be deeply unhelpful – like the bingeing or berating in the example above.

One of the many lovely ideas in the IFS model is that there is another you, at your core, which isn’t a part. That you is warm, loving, kind, compassionate, strong, calm and deeply healing, if we can access its nourishing energy. And this is your Self.

Again, if this sounds a bit out there, just think about it from a biological perspective. Every second of every day of your life, your body is healing, repairing and replenishing itself. This happens on a cellular level constantly, without you having any awareness of it. We know this is true, because you’re alive to read this post!

If this constant cycle of repair was not happening, you wouldn’t be here. For example, if you broke your leg playing football, the doctors would set the bone and put a cast on your leg, but all the healing would come from within. Your body would heal itself.

The same is true of your mind, brain and nervous system – where all the wounds from childhood, or other painful parts of your life, need to be healed – and in IFS, it’s the Self that does that healing, especially for the wounded parts who live inside you. As a critical thinker, whose initial training was in evidence-based therapy models like CBT, this explanation helps me understand what Self is and why it is real. It’s just the psychological version of the same forces that heal your broken leg.

What does Self-energy feel like?

If you have never experienced IFS, this may still seem a bit weird or hard to grasp, which is fine. Dick says that until you experience this stuff, it’s all just words. But one metaphor that is often used for Self is that of the Sun. So if you imagine you are on that plane in the photo, when you took off and before you flew through the clouds, you would know the Sun was above them, intellectually, but you wouldn’t be able to feel it.

And then that magical moment would happen where you burst through the clouds and there, in all its glory, was the beautiful, life-giving Sun. You could see it, feel its warmth through the plane window – even if you shut your eyes its bright, powerful light would shine through your eyelids. There would be no doubting or questioning it, because you were experiencing this delicious energy, not just imagining it.

Here are some other times you may have felt Self-energy, without being aware of it:

• When you looked at your partner’s face, thought of all the years you had spent together, all the times they had helped you when you were sick, or down, or struggling and your heart just filled with love

• Sitting with a friend as they tearfully told you a sad story from their life and you just listened, calmly and patiently, before giving them a big hug and they collapsed in your arms, sobbing until the anguish left their body and they felt soothed and restored

• Holding your newborn baby in your arms for the first time and feeling the kind of overwhelming, all-consuming love you didn’t know until that moment was even possible

• Being in such a deep flow state while doing something utterly engrossing that time slipped away, your mind went quiet and all that existed was you, the moment and the task

• Holding your ground with a rude co-worker when they crossed a line and feeling completely calm, strong and sturdy – unshakeable in your conviction

• Seeing a photo of an impoverished child in your newspaper and feeling such sadness, such compassion for that little person that you immediately made a big donation to a charity working in their part of the world, which helped you feel hopeful and determined to relieve suffering in your human family

I hope that gives you a little taste of Self-energy, especially if you are struggling right now. Remember that, whatever you have been through in your life, it’s never too much and never too late to heal. And the magic ingredient in that healing is, of course, Self-energy.

And here is a practice I recorded for Insight Timer – Accessing Healing Self-Energy – which you might enjoy.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Could You Start a Ripple of Kindness Today?

Image by Vonecia Carswell

I think we can all agree that we need more kindness in the world. We live in an age when a small, noisy minority dominate both mainstream and social media, as well as our political systems. We see this with the ‘othering’ of refugees and asylum-seekers, portraying them as somehow less important and even less human than us. Instead of welcoming these poor, traumatised people with kindness and compassion, many news outlets and governments around the world treat them with suspicion and outright hostility.

But these actions are those of a tiny minority, who unfortunately are skilled at gaining positions of power and influence. It may surprise you, but study after study finds that most people don’t actually think like this. Most of us are socially liberal, kind, tolerant, altruistic and generous. One survey, published this week, found that Europeans have actually become more welcoming to people fleeing humanitarian crises, such as the heartbreaking one unfolding in Ukraine, in recent years. Happily, negative media stories don’t change the way that most people think, feel or act as much as you might expect.

Time and again research shows that most of us treat our fellow humans with love and respect. Please remember that, if the news is getting you down, humans can be selfish and cruel, but they can also be kind, warm, loving and open-hearted. It’s just that everyday stories of people being nice to each other don’t make the news, especially in today’s clickbait-driven media environment.

We are all inherently good

If you would like to know more about the goodness inherent in all of us, I strongly recommend reading Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. He makes a strong case that, despite all the tales of our ancestors’ warring and bad behaviour, throughout human history we have lived in ways that are far more prosocial, cooperative and altruistic than historians and anthropologists often depict.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that we are so much better, as a species, than the media makes out, it’s clear we are still facing some major challenges right now. As my last post argued, by far the biggest of these is climate change, which does require urgent and decisive action by every member of the human family, but especially those of us with the most power, both spending and political. We also face linked challenges of income inequality, with far too many people still living in poverty, lacking basic facilities like clean water and sanitation, the degradation of Nature and much more.

We also see increasingly polarised political and social debates in countries like the US, into us and them, right and wrong, liberals versus conservatives. And all these problems could be solved, or at least drastically improved, with a little more kindness. Drawing on newer, more highly evolved parts of the brain like the cortical layer – the uniquely human region of the brain involved in rational thought, science, mindfulness, compassion and other high-level cognitive abilities – we can learn to treat each other with kindness, civility and respect, even if we disagree.

Less us and them and more just us, because we are all human, many of us have trauma histories or other difficult experiences in our childhoods. We all want to be happy, for our loved ones to be safe, healthy and lead meaningful, flourishing lives.

Start a ripple of kindness

So, what can we all do to make the world a kinder place? I like to think about starting ripples of kindness as I move through the world. Of course, I try to do this in every therapy session I offer, every blog post I write, every webinar I teach or guided meditation I record. My guiding principles as a psychotherapist are to treat every person I meet or teach with love, kindness and compassion.

But I also try to do this in my daily life. Every time I hold the door open for someone, buy a homeless person a sandwich, or let another car out at a junction, I hope that this little moment of connection, of humanity, will make the other person feel as good as I do. And my hope is that they will pay this forward, holding doors or smiling at the next person they meet, and so on. And this creates ripples of kindness, of warmth, of mutually experienced pleasure at our shared humanity.

It may sound a bit far-fetched, but at worst it can’t do any harm, right? And the more we treat each other with kindness, the less division, antagonism and conflict we will have in our world. Plus research shows that being kind is good for your mental health, so it’s a win-win!

Here’s your homework for the week: think about how could you start a ripple of kindness today. Trust me, this is one piece of homework you will enjoy.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

How to Generate Feelings of Gratitude, Even When You’re Struggling

Image by Taylor Deas-Melesh

I must confess, I have a complicated relationship with social media. In some ways, I like platforms like Instagram and the newly-launched Threads because they offer an unparalleled way to communicate with millions of people, all over the world. If you’re someone like me, who combines trying to help people with having lots of ideas and wanting to share them, social media is great. I also like how powerful it has been at de-stigmatising mental-health issues like chronic anxiety and depression. That’s a wonderful thing.

But I don’t like how addictive it is. I struggle to manage my screen time and social media consumption – and of course, neither of those things is an accident. Read Johann Hari’s brilliant Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention if you want to understand the way Big Tech has knowingly and systematically made us all addicted to tech. Having given up my other vices, this is one I still struggle with, which is kind of frustrating given how much I know about addiction and how to overcome it.

I also don’t like being bombarded with well-meaning but saccharine messages all the time, especially on Instagram. When I see yet another post telling me to ‘Think positive!’ or ‘Smile! It’s another beautiful day!’ I think to myself, That’s all very well, but have you ever been depressed? Do you know how hard it is to stop ruminating, beating yourself up or seeing nothing but bad in the world when you’re down?

If you have ever been depressed, you will know exactly what I mean. It’s like your mind is stuck in an endless loop of negativity, hopelessness and gloom. Someone telling you to ‘Think positive!’ is like telling an angry person to ‘Just calm down.’ Neither helpful nor possible.

Why gratitude helps, even when it’s hard

But that doesn’t mean we should forget about trying to be grateful, even if those feelings are really hard to generate. Why? Because extensive research shows how helpful gratitude can be for a whole host of mental-health problems, including depression. And, as I often say in these posts, our newfound discoveries in Western psychology are not exactly new. Generating gratitude has been a cornerstone Buddhist practice for 2,500 years, along with fostering other positive mental states such as compassion, loving-kindness, equanimity and happiness.

Again, I am not underestimating how hard it can be to generate gratitude for your life, especially if you are struggling with depression. I have been there myself and know how tough that can be. But I also know how helpful gratitude is for me, day to day, especially if I’m feeling a bit low or struggling to find reasons for optimism.

To make this a bit more concrete, here are some simple steps you can try if you would like to generate some gratitude…

The practice: finding reasons to be grateful

1. Remember that nothing is too small. If we are struggling to generate gratitude, we may be trying too hard and thinking we have to grateful for big, shiny things like a gorgeous new girlfriend or landing our dream job. These things don’t happen to most of us, most of the time, so it’s better to focus on small, everyday things.

   Sometimes, when I’m walking to the office and feeling a bit down, I work on feeling grateful for the things we mostly take for granted. I am so grateful for having enough nutritious food to eat today, unlike billions of people in the world, I think. I feel gratitude for living in a country that is not at war. No bombs fell on my street in the night. My family is safe and can go about their lives in peace. I’m grateful to have a warm, dry place to live, clothes to wear, just being able to walk along this pavement and spend my day mostly healthy and free from pain.

   There is so much to be grateful for if we just stop, look around at our lives and notice all the small, wonderful things we mostly ignore.

2. Keep a gratitude journal. This is a key positive-psychology technique that research consistently finds to be helpful for our mental health and wellbeing. At the end of each day, write in your journal, finding up to five things to be grateful for from your day. It could be small things, like eating a delicious peach. Or big things, like getting good grades for an exam, having a family member recover from surgery, or watching your baby take their first steps. Big stuff gives us more of a dopamine hit, of course, but small things work just fine.

   Here’s a step-by-step guide from the excellent Greater Good Science Center.

3. Give voice to the good stuff too. How often do we end our day grumbling to our partner or family member about all the bad stuff that’s happened to us? (Guilty as charged – sorry Laura). And that’s fine, of course – we need to vent and get stuff off our chests, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that our version of the day can be skewed to the negative. Because our brains have an in-built negativity bias, we tend to be laser-focused on things that are hurtful, upsetting, scary or worrying. That’s just how your brain has evolved, to keep you safe by scanning for bad stuff all the time.

   Once you have vented, try to find five things you are grateful about, as in step 2. Tell your partner, friend, family member or therapist all about them. If you’re speaking to a partner, it’s extremely helpful if you can find at least one thing about them you are grateful for. This is an important tip from renowned relationship expert John Gottman, who says the magic ratio with your partner is five to one of positive/negative feelings and actions.

Give these steps a try for one month and I am confident they will have a beneficial impact on your mood, outlook and sense of wellbeing.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Why I Have Decided to Wind Up My Heal Your Trauma Project

I have made the difficult decision to wind up my Heal Your Trauma project this month. It’s very sad, but is something I have been thinking about for a long time, as it has become increasingly difficult to juggle all of my commitments. I loved running Heal Your Trauma – especially hearing from and meeting so many of you at my webinars and workshops. That was such a pleasure and I’m sure we will stay in touch.

When I started the project in May 2021, I wanted to help as many people as possible with their mental health – especially those who couldn’t afford private therapy or were on long waiting lists for NHS treatment. I hope all of the many resources we offered over the past two years helped you in some way. I am particularly passionate about helping people overcome the legacy of trauma and will keep doing that for the rest of my career.

Free resources for you

In some ways, not much will change. My website offers a great deal of free resources, especially my blog, which offers hundreds of posts about all aspects of mental health and wellbeing. Please sign up for my newsletter, using the form below, if you would like to be the first to read my new posts every week.

I will also keep recording new guided meditations, most of which are available for free on Insight Timer. I intend to design and teach courses for this excellent app in the future, so again, sign up below to get the latest news about that.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars are available on vimeo.com – you can purchase access for just £10, to download or stream whenever you like. Just click on the button below to watch them now.

Of course, I will keep helping people through my busy therapy practice and offering trauma-informed supervision to mental-health professionals. I also intend to write a self-help book in the next few years, so watch this space for news about that.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the wonderful people who have provided invaluable help and support these past two years: Laura Roberts; Sophie Akbar, Anna Rys, Claire van den Bosch, Gina Finegan and Farrah Whitsed.

And my special thanks to you if you have read my posts, come to our events or supported us in any way.

Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️

Dan

Are You a Perfectionist? Here’s Why That is Not Your Fault

Image by Mohamed Hassan

I read a lot of self-help books – and I mean, a lot of self-help books. I do this for various reasons. First, I enjoy them – I am fascinated by psychology and can’t get enough of new ideas, research and theories about why we all do what we do. Second, it’s my job – as a therapist, I am always looking for new and helpful techniques, innovative ways of thinking or changing entrenched habits. And third, I aim to write my own self-help book in the next few years, so I need a deep understanding of what has already been written, what is good about these books and what is not so good, as a reader.

If I’m honest, I stop reading most of these books halfway through, because often they have a great idea, tell you all about it in chapters one to three and then, well, repeat it in various ways until I get bored and give up. So the mark of a great book for me is that it holds my attention from first page to last. Not many books manage that, so I’m always delighted when I find one that does.

I am currently on page 211 of 253 of my latest book, so I’m pretty confident this wins the Hold Dan’s Attention award! It’s The Perfection Trap: The Power of Good Enough in a World That Always Wants More, by Thomas Curran, a professor of psychology at the prestigious London School of Economics. And it’s great – strongly recommended holiday reading, if you’re about to hit the beach.

Are you a perfectionist?

Let’s start here, because you may well think you’re not that perfectionistic. And you might not be, of course, or you might just not recognise this trait in yourself. Full disclosure time – until reading this book, I didn’t realise quite how perfectionistic I was! In fact, when I got annoyed with the book after a few chapters and said, huffily, ‘Why are so many of these damn books so bad?’ my long-suffering wife, Laura, laughed and said, ‘Oh my god. I can’t believe you’re being perfectionistic about a book on perfectionism!’

Crap, I thought, she’s right. My high standards for books (and music, movies, meditations, workshops, newspaper articles and much more) were always a badge of honour for me. I thought it meant I had good taste and high standards, not just accepting any old rubbish.

But I now see this is all part of my perfectionsim, what Curran calls Other-Oriented Perfectionism (this is one of three kinds, along with the Self-Oriented and Socially-Prescribed versions). My standards, it turns out, are way too high, both for myself and others. Sheepishly, I started reading again…

Where does perfectionism come from?

Another wake-up call in reading this book was just how much of my perfectionism – and yours, I’m guessing – comes from existing in a culture that intentionally creates it in us. Curran argues, convincingly, that the ‘supply-side’ economics of capitalism mean industrialised economies like those of the UK or US must continually grow to survive. And to keep growing, we all have to keep consuming – more TVs, iPhones, anti-ageing cream, high heels, washing machines, laptops and the rest – all the time.

What makes us buy all this stuff? A fiendishly clever advertising industry that makes us all feel insecure, on purpose, to then tell us, ‘What you need to feel happy is this holiday, or that new watch.’ With the advent of social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, this manufactured insecurity has reached new heights – which is why, says Curran, so many young people are so unhappy now. They are constantly told they are not thin, pretty, athletic, smart, muscular, popular or cool enough.

They feel a profound sense of not being good enough, so aspire to perfection to try and feel better. Work harder, hustle, grind your way through school, university and the increasingly insecure, gig-economy-dominated world of work and one day you will make it! Just not today – so go and buy yourself a £4 Frappuccino from Starbucks to make yourself feel better.

You are enough, just as you are

Something I am always telling my clients (and myself) is that you are enough, right now. Just as you are. You are beautiful whether you’re skinny or not, perma-tanned or not, short or tall, young or old, wealthy or broke. You are a glorious, miraculous living being, with a body that is made of stardust; and a brain that is the most complex object in the known universe.

You, I hope, have people you love and who love you. As I have written before in these posts, that is the most important thing about your life – the relationships that support and nurture you as you move through it. Not money. Not fancy degrees. Not living like some Instagram influencer. The real purpose of life is to love and be loved.

So please don’t waste your life in a frantic scramble for something that is not real and certainly not achievable. Take it from me – perfectionism is a sure road to unhappiness. Instead, go for a good enough life filled with joy, richness, meaning and, above all, love.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

You Need to Watch Dele Alli’s Powerful Interview About Trauma & Addiction

Following on from my last post, about men’s mental health, this is such a powerful interview. As a Spurs fan I have a lot of love for Dele – such a great player and obviously a guy with a very traumatic past. He was adopted and was in all sorts of trouble as a teenager, so this interview is about that and his recent struggles with addiction as the trauma resurfaced.

Please watch and share with any of your male clients/friends/family members who struggle to open up and keep their feelings locked away inside.

And big love to Dele. It took such courage to open up like this.

Dan

Why Men Are Struggling and Need Our Help

Image by Christian Erfurt

Let me start this post by saying that I am a proud, card-carrying feminist. I was raised a feminist by my fiercely intelligent and formidable mum – who was an unstinting champion for women’s rights in her decades of work as an academic and with the Labour Party. She taught me to respect women and women’s rights as a child and young man. And those values have stayed with me as part of my liberal, social-justice-loving, anti-discrimination outlook on life.

It’s clear that women still have a long way to go in their struggle to be treated with respect and as equals. To be paid fairly, feel/be safe both inside and outside their homes, as well as being represented as actual people in the media – not just idealised as skinny teenage girls and ignored/vilified once they turn 40. There has been a great deal of progress for women in some areas, but there is still a long way to go in others.

So this is in no way a pro-men/anti-women post, because that’s not who I am or what I believe. It is, though, a post that recognises a serious and under-reported problem: men are in big trouble too. As a psychotherapist, one of the biggest problems I see is that men are still much less likely to seek help when they are struggling than women. They are less likely to see their GP, for mental or physical health problems, and are reluctant to see someone like me if they feel stressed, anxious or depressed.

Just look at these sobering facts from the Mental Health Foundation, about men in the UK:

• Three times as many men as women die by suicide

• Men aged 40 to 49 have the highest suicide rates in the UK

• Men report lower levels of life satisfaction than women, according to the Government’s national wellbeing survey

• Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women: only 36 per cent of referrals to NHS talking therapies are for men

Why do men suffer in silence?

Having grown up in the 70s, I think I get this problem from the inside. When I was a boy and young man, talking about your feelings would have been labelled as ‘weak’ or ‘soft’, or even ‘gay’ (the ultimate insult in those rather homophobic days). I never did it. None of my friends did it. It just wasn’t a thing.

And none of us had even heard of anxiety or depression. You were either like most people (sane and ‘normal’) or you were mad and would end up in the loony bin. Madness was scary – something you saw in horror movies or read about in the tabloids. So that, for us, wasn’t a thing either.

But – and this is the crucial point – it wasn’t that we didn’t struggle with those problems, we just couldn’t talk about it. And probably wouldn’t have known what to say, even if we could. I and many of my friends had traumatic childhoods. One of my friends had a father who was a heroin addict, with all the ensuing chaos for him and his family you would imagine. And one of my classmates at secondary school was one of three brothers – his older brother was also a heroin addict and this guy clearly, with hindsight, suffered from depression as a teenager and eventually committed suicide.

So it’s not like mental-health problems have somehow emerged in the last decade, just because we are all talking about them on social media. I and my male friends struggled with exactly the same things as teenage boys do today, we just didn’t have the language to describe them or get any help from adults.

What can we do for men?

We live in a very different world today. Not only do we understand and talk about mental health so much more, we now have highly effective treatments for every kind of psychological problem, from chronic stress to complex trauma. So I think the most important thing we can all do is to encourage the men in our lives to talk openly about their struggles.

That includes feeling depressed and especially having suicidal thoughts and impulses, because the worst thing we can do is ignore it, with the misguided belief that we will make it worse or more likely to happen. Ask your brother, son, dad, grandpa, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend, colleague, boyfriend or husband how they’re doing today. If they say something like, ‘A bit down,’ or ‘Been better,’ know that this is man-speak for depressed. They are likely to underplay their symptoms for fear of seeming weak or moaning too much.

If you do think they are depressed, ask directly, ‘Are you having suicidal thoughts?’. Use the s-word, don’t feel like you’re treading on eggshells. And be persistent, especially if you’re concerned about them – one discussion is not enough, either to find out how they are or get them some help.

If you are worried about this boy or man in your life, get them to see their GP. And if it’s financially viable, encourage them to see a counsellor or therapist. Just talking about this stuff, with someone kind and skilled, can really help. If they are struggling with more serious problems – like PTSD after a traumatic incident – make sure they see a trauma-informed therapist offering schema therapy, trauma-focused CBT, sensorimotor psychotherapy, EMDR or another model proven to help.

Let’s all put our arms around the men in our lives, because they (we) are going through a tough time. And loving, kind, patient conversations are a great place to start.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

What Can Buddhism Teach Us About How to Live a Good Life?

Image by Jamie Street

Many of us in the West assume that Buddhism is mostly about mindfulness. That’s because, in the 1970s, mindfulness entered the Western medical mainstream as an eight-week programme: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). From there, interest in mindfulness snowballed until, today, we have mindfulness programmes in schools, prisons, hospitals, corporations – even the House of Commons!

And this is a wonderful thing – mindfulness has a host of benefits for our mental and physical health, so the more people incorporating it into their daily lives the better. It’s just that mindfulness, and meditation more widely, is just a tiny fraction of Buddhist teaching, practice and psychology. In fact, Buddhist teaching is mostly about how to live your life, rather than how to sit on a cushion.

As someone who has long been fascinated by Buddhism, I was intrigued by this idea – that there might be a set of guidelines about how to live a good life. And not just for monks and nuns – who have incredibly complex guidelines about how to live – but for a layperson like me.

I try to live my life according to these Buddhist ‘precepts’, which are very much guidelines, rather than strict rules. That speaks to me, because I don’t much like organised religion, the idea that this or that action is sinful and will be punished, or virtuous and will be rewarded by everlasting heavenly bliss.

Remember that the Buddha was primarily a teacher and psychologist, who offered his insights into how to free ourselves from suffering. And living by these precepts is a key part of that – so here they are…

The five precepts

1. To abstain from taking life

2. To abstain from taking what is not given

3. To abstain from sensuous misconduct

4. To abstain from false speech

5. To abstain from intoxicants as tending to cloud the mind

Let’s break these down, one by one. First, the Buddha taught that we should avoid taking life – in fact, we should not kill any ‘sentient’ being. This obviously means not killing any other human, but there is a great deal of debate about what sentient means and how far we should take it. Personally, this precept is a big part of my being vegetarian, because I don’t like to kill any other being – not cows, pigs, sheep or fish, but also ants, wasps and other pesky creatures. How you interpret this one is up to you, but given the climate emergency and ecological crisis, it certainly seems helpful to avoid harming living things wherever possible.

The second precept seems fairly simple – it basically means don’t steal. But it also means not cheating on your taxes, or exploiting other people’s generosity. If it’s not given to you freely, it’s best not to take it.

Precept three is all about sex – sensuous meaning sexual. So of course we should never assault, harass or harm anyone sexually. But I think this also speaks to not having affairs, using pornography, or otherwise letting your sexual desire lead you into taking unkind or un-compassionate action.

The fourth precept essentially means don’t lie. But this is more subtle, as it also means speaking the truth wherever possible – unless it means hurting another person. Sometimes it’s best to stay silent, or hold information back until someone is ready for it. So, as with all the precepts, it takes a bit of thought and is subtle and sophisticated, rather than a black-and-white ‘do this’ and ‘don’t do that’. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself.

Finally, precept five is all about drugs and alcohol – don’t misuse them, of course, but also don’t ingest anything that will make you mindless, as opposed to mindful. Remember that the Buddha taught we should aspire to being mindful all the time. When walking, eating, drinking, talking, thinking, using the toilet, working, watching a movie, and so on. All the time. So ingesting a substance that interferes with that ability is not helpful.

Advice for non-Buddhists

Let me be clear here – I’m not trying to convert you to Buddhism! These precepts are just as helpful for Christians, Muslims and atheists as they are for Buddhists. They are simply suggestions about how to live a good life, which causes you and other living beings as little suffering as possible. Feel free to follow all of them, or none. And if you do follow them, remember they are not strict rules, but guidelines that you can adapt to suit yourself and your situation.

For example, you may love meat as part of your diet. If so, perhaps you could reduce the amount of meat you eat and buy organic chicken, say, instead of battery-farmed chicken. That will cause a great deal less suffering to the chicken you’re about to stick in your oven!

You don’t need to be a monk, or live a perfect life. Just do as much good as you can and that will make a huge difference, to you and the rest of the world.

And I hope you find these ideas as helpful as I have.

May you be well

May you be happy

May you be free from suffering

Dan

Now Available: Download or Stream My Webinars on Vimeo

Image by Sara Kurfeb

If you missed any of my Heal Your Trauma webinars in 2022 or 2023, don’t worry – you can now stream or download them whenever suits you. All of my past webinars are now available on Vimeo – the world’s leading video-hosting site.

For just £10, you will get exclusive lifetime access to these powerful and highly informative 90-minute webinars, which are packed full of trauma-informed teaching and experiential exercises such as breathwork, guided meditations and imagery techniques.

We consistently get extremely positive feedback for our webinars, which you can read here.

Choose from the following highly popular webinars:

1. What is Trauma and Can it Be Healed?

2. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2022)

3. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion (2023)

4. Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

5. How to Manage Your Inner Critic

6. Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

Don’t miss out – gain lifetime access now, for just £10 per webinar, using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Missed My Recent Webinars? No Problem – Watch the Recordings Now

Image by Andres Ayrton

If you missed any of my recent webinars, you can now gain exclusive lifetime access to them for just £10. We record all of our webinars and upload them to YouTube – if you attend live, you will automatically get access to the private video, but we have also made these recordings available to anyone who might benefit from them.

All of my Heal Your Trauma webinars last 90 minutes and are packed with teaching about the latest theory, research and key take-home learning about each subject, as well as powerful and effective breathing techniques, guided imagery and a 15-minute Q&A, where participants get to ask me anything they want about trauma, mental health and wellbeing.

We get consistently positive feedback for all of our Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops – you can read it here.

Highlights from 2022-23, now available to watch, include:

• The Healing Power of Self-Compassion

• How to Manage Your Inner Critic

• Trauma Healing with Internal Family Systems

• Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful

• Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

Don’t miss out on this highly experiential and transformative teaching – gain lifetime access to each recording for just £10, using the button below.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Last Call for My Self-Compassion Webinar – Saturday 27th May

One of the Buddha’s great insights was that leading a human life is inevitably painful. We get sick, grow older and must face the existential reality that, someday, our life will end. The same goes for everyone we love. That alone is, of course, incredibly painful and hard to accept.

We also have to deal with stressful global events like war in Ukraine or Sudan, climate change, poverty and hunger. In the UK, the cost-of-living crisis affects millions, making day-to-day life incredibly tough. It’s clear that being human is no picnic.

But the Buddha’s other great insight was that this pain and stress alone is not what causes most of our suffering – that is caused by the way we react to these events and experiences. We can either do so with self-criticism, blame and frustration; or find a kinder, more compassionate way to deal with these daily challenges.

This message is especially important if you struggle with your mental health. If you suffer with low self-esteem, chronic stress or anxiety, low mood or depression, learning to be more self-compassionate could be life-changing. Why? Because there is now a huge body of evidence supporting the power and effectiveness of self-compassion in helping people lead calmer, happier, more resilient lives.

Kristin Neff, one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, states that, ‘Higher levels of self-compassion are linked to increased feelings of happiness, optimism, curiosity and connectedness, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, rumination and fear of failure.’

Learn the skill of self-compassion

That’s why my upcoming webinar will help you learn this key skill. The Healing Power of Self-Compassion takes place from 3-4.30pm on Saturday 27th May 2023 and is the latest in a series of Heal Your Trauma webinars and workshops throughout 2023.

This event offers half-price Reduced-Fee Tickets (£10), for those who need them, or please choose the Supporter Ticket option (£20) when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. Your support enables us to help as many people as possible with their mental health.

In this powerful, highly experiential webinar you will learn:

• The difference between empathy and compassion – and why one leads to burnout, while the other protects us from it

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

• Why, sadly, having a trauma history makes self-compassion difficult – but also why these obstacles can be overcome

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

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

• And, during a 15-minute Q&A, attendees put their questions to Dan Roberts, Founder of Heal Your Trauma and an expert on trauma healing and developing self-compassion

Don’t miss this chance to learn from a leading trauma therapist and expert on mental health. Book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Do You Struggle with Low Mood?

Image by Rifath

If you struggle with low mood or depression, it may be helpful to know that our understanding of this all-too-common psychological problem has evolved over the years. The idea that depression is solely caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain is now questioned, with an increasing body of research challenging this idea – here’s one such study, by eminent psychiatrist Dr Joanna Moncrieff.

So if depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance (long thought to be a lack of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood), what does cause it? Well, as so often in psychology, although we often seek simple answers, the answer is a bit more complex. In my opinion, there is no single cause of depression. Instead, both low mood and depression are caused by a whole host of factors, including:

• Living in poverty or poor housing

• Facing ongoing financial stress for any reason

• Misusing alcohol or drugs

• Issues with body image or eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia or binge-eating

• Loneliness or a lack of close and meaningful relationships

• Experiencing prejudice including racism, sexism or homophobia

• Childhood trauma, such as bullying at school, or growing up in an abusive/neglectful family environment

• Bereavement, especially ‘complicated grief’ or the life-altering loss of a partner or family member

• Persistent negative or obsessional thoughts such as rumination or harsh self-criticism

• Painful schemas, formed in childhood, including Defectiveness or Emotional Deprivation

• Physical illness such as long Covid, stroke or cardiovascular disease

In fact, there are so many reasons for us to become depressed that psychological Paul Gilbert says it’s more helpful to think of ‘depressions’ than depression. But whatever the cause, no-one would disagree that the experience of depression can be incredibly painful and debilitating.

And a key message that I always teach about depression, as well as any other mental-health problem, is: It’s never too much and never too late to heal. We have such a wide range of powerful and highly effective therapies for depression now, as well as a deep understanding of how to help you feel happier, more hopeful and optimistic, however long you may have been struggling.

That’s why I am presenting a 90-minute webinar on Saturday 3rd June – Overcoming Depression: How to Lift Your Mood & Feel Calmer, Happier & More Hopeful.

As with all my Heal Your Trauma webinars, this event offers a half-price, Reduced-Fee Ticket (£10) for those who need it, or please choose the Supporter Ticket (£20) option when booking if you are able to support the Heal Your Trauma project. All of the income we receive from these events, after covering expenses, is invested back into the project so we can help as many people as possible with their mental health.

All of our Heal Your Trauma webinars are recorded, so if you sign up you will also get exclusive free access to a recording of the event to watch whenever you want.

If you would like to book your place on one of our most popular webinars, you can do so using the button below. I hope to see you there!

Sending love and warm thoughts,

Dan

Are You Kind to Others But Mean to Yourself?

Image by Jeremy Perkins

I’ll bet you’re a kind person. I can say that with some confidence because you are reading this post, written by a psychotherapist, about mental-health issues. That means you either struggle with those issues yourself and/or help others who do. One of the silver linings about struggling in this way is that it means you are probably sensitive (perhaps highly so) and have deep empathy for the suffering of other people, because you know only too well what it’s like to suffer.

I would also wager that you are much kinder to others than you are to yourself. That’s because, again, if you do struggle with your mental health, you may have an especially loud, harsh and hurtful Inner Critic (known as a Punitive Critic in schema therapy) who calls you horrible things like stupid, pathetic, weak – or much worse.

These critical messages may have a different tone, sounding more motivational, pushy and determined (this would be a Demanding Critic, in schema-therapy language). I have one of these. He means well – as most Critics do – but pushes me so hard, all the time: ‘Work more, be a better therapist/person/father/husband/son/friend, write a (bestselling) book, do (brilliant) therapy in every session, supervise expertly, teach impactfully… More! Better! Never enough!’

It’s exhausting. And, despite my best efforts, sometimes these messages do get on top of me and I find myself stressed out and depleted, so have to make a conscious decision to do less, aim for good enough, forget about unrealistic notions of perfection, nourish and treat myself with kindness.

Different flavours of meanness

So, despite being kind, you may be mean to yourself in an obvious, punishing way, or it might be more subtle, with a constant pressure to achieve, succeed, aim for perfection. Either way you will end up feeling stressed, frazzled, under constant pressure. And because this pressure is internal, it operates 24/7, with a drip-drip effect that eventually overwhelms you until you crash, get sick or burn out.

Again, this is not some theoretical, hypothetical thing for me. I totally get it, because it’s a daily struggle not to do too much and try too hard. In fact, it’s this way for most therapists I know. That’s because the three most common therapist schemas are Defectiveness, Unrelenting Standards and Self-Sacrifice. Here’s why that’s a tricky triad:

• Defectiveness is perhaps the most common schema – almost all my clients have this one. It’s the ‘not good enough’ schema that makes you feel defective, unworthy, dislikable, a failure or less-than compared with others. So even if you’re doing well, deep down you feel in your gut that you are no good, an imposter, one mistake away from being found out. None of this is true, by the way – it just feels true because you have been telling yourself this negative, critical story for so long

• Unrelenting Standards often shows up as a compensatory schema for Defectiveness. So if we work super-hard, drive ourselves relentlessly on, make sure everything we do is perfect, then no-one will realise we are actually defective and crap. I see this one a lot in high-achievers, like CEOs, professors, partners at City law firms. People who are, in many ways, highly successful – but it doesn’t feel satisfying or good because they know this success is fragile and, if they make a mistake or have a bad day, it could all fall apart

• Self-Sacrifice is a big one for people in caring professions – teachers, nurses, therapists, counsellors, social workers. It comes from a good place – being kind, thoughtful, empathic and generous – but it’s way too much. If you have this schema, you might give and give, looking after everyone else while your battery drains away to 1%. So you sacrifice your own wants, needs and wellbeing to look after others

Self-compassion is key

What’s the answer to this all-too-common predicament? Well, as I often write in these posts, tell my clients and teach through my Heal Your Trauma project, self-compassion is a crucial skill to learn. It’s the antidote to the hurtful, destructive messages given by these schemas. It’s a way to respond to your Critic, whatever flavour they may be, by telling them you are doing great, thanks; that you and your work are more than good enough; that you don’t have to be perfect to be liked, loved or respected; that you are human, with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else, so you don’t have to get an A on every test life throws at you.

Learning to treat yourself with self-compassion is not easy. But the good news is that, if you are kind and compassionate to others, you have all the tools you need to turn that inward and treat yourself with the love and respect you so deserve.

If you would like to learn more about this topic – and specifically how to treat yourself with greater kindness and compassion – do come to my next webinar, The Healing Power of Self-Compassion, on Saturday 27th May. You can book your place using the button below – I hope to see you there!

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan

How a Mindful Pause Will Help You Make Better Decisions

Image by Jack Skinner

We have all done it. Made a quick, impulsive decision that we came to regret. It might be something small, like agreeing to go on a date with someone you know, deep down, is not right for you. Or buying something shiny and new that you can’t really afford and don’t really need. ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure,’ as the saying goes.

But, as I often say to my clients, there are times when acting hastily is a good thing. Imagine your toddler starts wandering towards a busy road. You have to act, now – rushing over and scooping them up before they get hurt. Or imagine that, as you are driving down a country road, you notice the car coming towards you weaving erratically. As the other driver gets close, they drift into your lane and come at you head-on – again, this calls for immediate, no-thinking action. Blasting your horn and swerving out of the way is, quite literally, a life-saving decision.

Your brain is very good at these quick, urgent, life-or-death decisions because millions of years of evolution have wired it to do this. These are what I call ‘escape the lion’ moments. Hard-wired by your ancestors’ many close shaves with predatory animals, or hostile tribes, the most powerful systems in your brain spring into action when needed. And this is, of course, a very good thing – you would not be reading this post without them.

When slow is better

But, unless we face a genuine life-or-death threat, this kind of urgent, reflexive action is often unhelpful. This is especially the case if we are feeling some kind of strong emotion, like anger, fear, hurt or jealousy. These emotions activate those evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain, while de-activating the prefrontal cortex – the rational, sensible, big-picture-seeing region of the brain that sits behind your forehead.

When we have a decision to make, we definitely want the prefrontal cortex making it for us, not the limbic or threat systems, which are highly emotional, reactive and urgent. So here is a simple practice I have developed, which is helpful if you have any kind of decision to make – what to say when your husband barks at you, or how to respond to a critical email from that colleague who drives you crazy. Use this technique any time you need to slow down, take a moment and act carefully, mindfully, rather than hastily.

The practice: Taking a mindful pause

• Start by finding a comfortable sitting posture on a straight-backed chair. Let your feet be flat and grounded on the floor

• Gently roll your shoulders back, feeling your chest open up. Imagine a golden thread pulling your head, neck and spine into alignment, so you are sitting in an upright but relaxed posture

• Close your eyes, if that feels comfortable for you, or soften and lower your gaze

• Now I want you to imagine you need to make a difficult decision, choosing between two options. The first option is what you always do in this type of situation, so it’s an easy and familiar path to take. Everything in you is pulling you in that direction – this is called acting on ‘automatic pilot’, in mindfulness-based therapies

• For example, you may be grappling with whether to eat a big slab of chocolate cake. It looks so enticing and delicious, your mouth starts salivating as you imagine all that sweet, gooey, chocolatey deliciousness in your mouth

• Just notice how that feels, in your body. There may be a feeling of urgency, or tension, perhaps a sense of being magnetically drawn towards the cake, your hand grabbing the fork and shovelling mouthfuls of cake before you even know what has happened

• There’s just one problem – that morning, you have been given a diagnosis of type-2 diabetes and been told by your doctor, in no uncertain terms, that you must reduce your intake of sweet, sugary foods or your health will be in serious trouble

• Suddenly the cake doesn’t seem so enticing, right?

• So, instead of grabbing that fork, let’s take a mindful pause. Start by taking a few slow, deep, breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Keep breathing

• And as you notice those breaths travel in and out, in and out, scan your body and see if the cake-choosing path involves a sense of urgency, of speeding up, perhaps energy rising and a slightly frazzled, tense feeling in your throat, chest, shoulders and belly

• Whatever you notice, just allow it to be there, it’s fine. Just keep breathing for a minute, allowing those feelings and body sensations to be there, without acting on them

• As you continue to breathe, you may notice those sensations start to ebb away, bit by bit, reducing in intensity like a wave breaking on the shore, then receding

• As the wave recedes, you now realise there is a second option, which is to pass on the cake, perhaps eating an apple instead. Not so fun, not so easy, but the right thing to do, given that scary diagnosis

• This is the second path that is always available to us, if we allow ourselves to pause, let the prefrontal cortex come online and make a slower, more measured decision

• Now slowly, consciously, in your mind’s eye reach for the apple and eat it, savouring every bite. It doesn’t pack the dopamine-inducing punch of chocolate cake, of course, but it’s still sweet and tasty

• Scan your body again and see if any positive feelings are generated by making this healthier, more conscious decision. You might notice some pride, satisfaction, or optimism. If so, even if those feelings are very subtle, focus on and enjoy them for a few seconds

• Then let go of this image and bring your attention back to the breath, travelling in and out… the weight of your body, resting on the chair… your feet on the floor… sounds reaching you from all around…

• Slowly open your eyes and try using this mindful pause throughout your day, whenever you have a tricky decision to make

• Do this over and over and it will become easier, with practice, helping the prefrontal cortex fire more easily and allowing you to make slow, sensible decisions whenever you need to

I hope that proves helpful for you – I will be recording this practice soon for my Insight Timer collection, so you can listen whenever you need it.

Sending you love and warm thoughts,

Dan