Using Mindfulness to Deal With Anguish
Question:
Roger, I suffer from chronic depression. I’m not sure what triggers it – it can happen anywhere. All I know is it usually happens when I’m among crowds of people. When it happens I become clumsy, my breath shortens, and if someone speaks to me, I’m hard pressed to respond without seeming like an idiot. I’ve tried everything to change this – affirmations, ‘reframing’ – but nothing works.
I brought your book and I’ve started meditating but I’m not sure how that will fix what’s wrong. I understand mindfulness and the distinction you make between meditation and mindfulness – but I’m wondering if you know of any handy strategies that would help me with this condition when it arises. Something that doesn’t entail me suddenly sitting down and meditating in the middle of a crowd (joke).
My reply:
It’s an interesting question, which also applies more generally to all these instances when we get caught in an emotional storm that we’re struggling to find a way out of. Whether it’s the aftermath of a relationship break-up, depression, anger, fear, grief, jealousy or any painful emotional hole we get stuck in – it can all be grouped beneath an umbrella term of ‘anguish’ – because the way to deal with anguish in all its forms is much the same, to different degrees.
So let’s talk about anguish, and how to quell its fires.
Any anguished state involves both mind and body in a reactive loop, in which each is stimulating the other.
The initial spark for anguish arises from an ‘initiating event’. Our mind registers a threat, or hurt of some kind and our body instantly reacts with a flood of hormones specifically designed to energize us to take action.
From then the reactive loop begins to spin – our energized body stimulates and affirms what’s happening in our mind, reinforcing all the reasons we should take action – and the mind further provokes the body to act, to resolve whatever is causing the anguish. And if we don’t take action, this loop of mind-pushing-body-pushing mind gets ever more frantic, and we experience it as anguish.
Now, if we were any other creature on the planet, the solution would be easy. Let’s take the example of anger, or fear – in the instant the initiating event occurs, an animal will obey the hormonal rush in its body, instantly attacking or attempting to escape. In that sudden shift to explosive action, the charge of cortisol and adrenalin is instantly used, such that when the action is complete, the animal’s metabolism easily reverts to a relaxation response, and everything goes back to normal.
We humans don’t do this.
In most cases, we don’t take overt action. We’re more likely to struggle with how we feel – trying to rationalize our way out of it. We do this because we’re civilized, and very aware that there is a social cost to acting out how we feel.
This same struggle occurs when we experience most kinds of anguish – whether of rage, fear, grief, jealousy, humiliation, whatever. As such, we rarely get the benefit of a resolving action that will process the hormonal charge in our body. Result being, we get stuck with our energized body and mind in a reactive loop – thoughts of blame, self-justification, vengeance, whatever – and a body that’s raring to go, but the brakes are on.
For sure it’s more complex than this, but I’m being a brief as I can.
In the human culture we live in, there are a lot of situations where we feel like this – where we cannot take action – especially in the work-place, or in a relationship. Or when we’re being messed about by a more powerful entity like a bully, or a government body or corporation. Result being, we do the next best thing – we suppress how we feel. We deny it and try to live past it. Forget it.
And that’s okay for a one-off event. Eventually we calm down.
But if the event is ongoing, like a bad relationship of some kind, or a toxic workplace, that’s when anguish turns toxic. With the metabolic energy of an anguished reaction being continuously triggered but not processed, it eventually morphs into what I call a ‘grey state’. It becomes depression, or chronic anxiety, or an illness of some kind. I call them grey states because, as painful as they are, when they’ve been going on for so long they lose their emotional identity – the mental part of the loop – the ‘story’ of it – whether because of denial, trauma or suppression, has receded into the unconscious. As such, though we feel the anguish in our body, we have no ‘story’ to apply to it because our conscious mind has forgotten it. As such, we have no ability to take action. So we remain paralyzed and in pain.
Depression is a typical grey state. It’s an overt emotional artifact in our body whose story has been lost in the unconscious – yet remains able to be triggered by anything resembling its original cause – even though we have no idea what that cause is.
So that’s the problem. Now – how to deal with it.
Most people, when they’re caught in an anguished state, whether of anger, fear or depression, will struggle to calm their mental reaction. They do this in any number of ways – by denying they’re angry, or they get paralyzed by a storm of self-justification, negative thoughts and blame. Or they try to re-frame by focusing on something positive. Put simply, they try to quell how they feel by battling it out in their mind, while their body rages on.
And it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work, because the actual source of how we feel is the body – not the mind. That’s where the hormones are raging through our blood. So, if we want to change the situation, it’s to the body we must go.
A while ago I wrote a post titled ‘It’s the Body, Stupid’, in which I quoted a teacher I practiced under, Acharn Tippakorn, who once told me:
‘Beneath all thinking are feelings. Feelings create thinking. If we did not have feelings, we would not think. Sometimes the feelings are subtle, so the thoughts are also subtle. But if the feelings are very strong, then the thoughts will also be strong, and very hard to let go of … so look past the thinking into your heart and into your body … in this way, you go to the cause, not the effect. Look for the feelings that are causing the thoughts, then work with those feelings.’
What he prescribed is the way to deal with any anguished state.
Regardless of how it happened, when our body is charged and aflame with an emotion and we feel overwhelmed, whether it’s with grief, anger, anxiety, depression or some other anguished state, we must go to the body – and only the body.
Though the mind may be making a compelling story reinforcing the anguish, if our body is aflame with anguish of one kind or another, you can be sure that whatever the mind is telling us is wrong. It’s been hijacked by how we feel, with its perception of reality distorted by the lens of the hormonal charge in our body. As such, listening to the mind, or trying to argue with it, or struggle to rationalize with it is pointless.
We need to go to how we feel – not how we think.
Ignore the thoughts and go to the body.
And what do we find?
We find simplicity. We find a physical pain – which, as uncomfortable as it might be, is definitely more able to be worked with than what’s happening in the mind. And the pain arises from different configurations of muscular tensions in the body.
So if we can focus your attention on those tensions, and patiently work at unwinding them, we’re doing two things:
- We’re removing your attention from the story that’s raging in the mind, which weakens the coherence of everything it’s telling us.
- We’re deconstructing the feeling at its source – because at this point, it’s our body that’s sustaining the storm of thinking in the mind.
I’ll give you an example – when I am angered, there is a noticeable configuration of sensations in my body – things which, in combination, I am cognizing as ‘anger’.
My breath shortens, I feel tightness in my belly, my shoulders and neck, as well as my cheeks and behind my eyes. So, if I find myself in this state, I immediately disengage from whatever is causing the anger, and try to ignore the thoughts it’s creating (though for sure, they rage on).
Then I consciously pay attention to the anger as it’s appearing in my body – working to unwind the tensions that are there. Removing the walls that have appeared around my breath. Relaxing my shoulders and neck, and my face, and cheeks and eyes.
It usually takes about ten to twenty minutes to process an emotion in this way.
With depression, it’s a similar process. It just takes a bit longer.
What you’ll find is, initially, the mind will scream louder, and the body with feel horrible. You’ll think it’s getting worse but it’s just the first effect of letting go. As you keep paying attention to what’s happening in your body and your breath, unwinding the tensions you find, gradually the pain will fade, and the thoughts will become softer.
You will know when the anguish is passing away – you’ll begin sighing, and sometimes tears will come. The breath will slow and become deeper, and you’ll feel better.
Try it out. For sure, like meditation and mindfulness, it takes practice, but you’ve got to start somewhere.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’ is available now. Just click on the links below:
AUDIOBOOK (including ebook & MP3 exercises) – AUD $25.00
…………………………………………………………………………………
