Change your mindset, change your life

People regularly seek therapy to get rid of, stop, or eliminate something in their lives: intrusive thoughts, challenging emotions, and habits/behaviors. Or, they’ve been avoiding acknowledging these disruptions, but have come to realize they need to do something to stop the pain.

I get it. When we perceive something is getting in our way from wholehearted living, we want it gone. But if we set out to fight what is there, to banish it, or combat it we activate the same brain circuitry that causes the dis-ease in the first place.  

Consider this recent example: a client came to counseling with the goal, “I want to get rid of anxiety.” Throughout our first session he kept making comments such as, “I need to learn how to fight the anxiety,,” and “I hate feeling anxious. I want it to stop for good.” Essentially, he identified anxiety as the root of all his problems. No wonder he wanted to banish anxiety from his life.

Yet this mindset of eliminating, stopping, and fighting anxiety, or whatever challenge arises, keeps us stuck. Why? It is a reactive stance at risk of activating the sympathetic nervous system’s fight or flight network or the parasympathetic system’s freeze or faint circuitry. The same stress response that leads to the anxiety or other disruption in the first place.

The truth is anxiety, or any strong emotion, is a signal shared between the brain and body that reaches our minds seeking our skillful attention. If we try to shut down the brain’s system for alerting us to imbalance by dismissing, deny, or distracting ourselves from the emotions, we risk cutting ourselves off from receiving the important information carried within our emotional landscape. Instead, we want to give that system a tune up, so it isn’t overly reactive while also learning how to respond to the information it gives us from a more evolved part of the nervous system.

Pause here and reflect upon what this means to you.

Instead of reacting, I show clients how to use attuned awareness to respond by recognizing and relating to the signals from within us, around us, and between us, not trying to shut them down or avoid them. By activating the brain’s social engagement system, we can become open and receptive to what arises from a place of non-judgment, loving-kindness, and compassion for self and others. A non-combative stance. I teach clients this practice of attending and befriending to help them respond, not react, to life’s challenges.

I know, this sounds counter intuitive. Stay with me.

Emotions, recurring thoughts, and bodily sensations serve as signals that something is either going well, or that something is missing or wrong. Instead of attempting to shut down those signals, I teach clients how to R.S.V.P to the invitations from the body/mind/brain continuum with the attuned engagement of attending and befriending.

How does one attend and befriend when challenges arise? Start by cultivating what Daniel Siegel calls a C.O.A.L state of mind: curious, open, accepting and loving. Not combative.

You apply this C.O.A.L mindset toward yourself first: your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, images, and behaviors. They are there to teach you something. They are not an enemy to combat. It starts with this shift in understanding that attending to the information from within you, around you, and between yourself and others with openness allows you to befriend challenges with attuned awareness.

The goal is to be in-relationship with whatever arises by learning how to identify, understand, express, and eventually manage intrusive or repetitive thoughts, strong emotions, uncomfortable bodily sensations, intense images, and challenging or unhealthy behaviors.

For the client I mentioned with anxiety, instead of perseverating on a partner’s words,  a coworker’s actions, a friend’s inattentiveness, or some other external trigger, I helped him notice these triggers, then turn inward with openness and receptivity to explore his state of mind and brain. To attend with intrapersonal attunement:

I showed him how to befriend the answers he received to these and other reflective questions by offering himself non-judgment, loving-kindness, and compassion starting with:

A C.O.A.L mindset is linked to a responsive setting in the brain. It helps us remain in  the ventral vagal, or social engagement, system of the brain, rather than the reactive settings of the sympathetic (fight/flight) or dorsal vagal parasympathetic (freeze, faint) nervous system. From this responsive place, you can then use your mind to choose the tools to help you manage, not combat/eliminate/stop/get rid of, your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, images, and behaviors. Over time, this C.O.A.L state of mind leads to traits of being a curious, open, accepting, and loving person with a brain wired to respond to challenges from a place of balance rather than reactivity.

Attend and befriend to cultivate lasting change.

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