Chapter 10
When [difficult] feelings arise, you have to practice in order to use the energy of mindfulness to recognize them, embrace them, look deeply into them. It’s like a mother when the baby is crying. Your anxiety is your baby. You have to take care of it. You have to go back to yourself, recognize the suffering in you, embrace the suffering, and you get relief.
Zen Master, poet, activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh (2010)
Stress often leads to depression, anxiety, or anger. Depression, anxiety, or anger can quickly become overwhelming, getting in the way of living your life—perhaps even causing you to do things that hurt yourself or other people. Still, although such emotions can be uncomfortable and difficult, there are no “bad” emotions. In keeping with the quote above, you can think of your emotions as children. Just as there are no “bad” children, all emotions deserve to be treated with kindness and compassion. When you can stay with and even embrace difficult emotions with mindfulness, you will experience an incredible sense of freedom. You will no longer fear difficult emotions, because you will know that you have the power to handle them.
Joseph’s Story
Joseph, a college freshman, suffered from chronic stress and anxiety, mostly related to school. In our second mindfulness session together, he shared how he had been able to use guided meditation to handle stress since our first session: “I was feeling really stressed and panicky all day long. Sitting in class, trying to do my homework later—every time I felt panicky, I put on my headphones and listened to a guided meditation. It helped me chill out, stay in class, and get through my day.”
When you are feeling a strong emotion like anger, depression, or anxiety, that is a signal that your stress response is activated. Your lizard brain is interpreting everything as a threat and is trying to help you survive by fighting back or running away.
In that moment, you might feel as if you have to do something right away: Don’t just sit there, do something! your lizard brain urges. But when your lizard brain is activated, acting on that emotion is likely to make the situation worse, not better. Handling that moment with mindfulness means flipping the script. As Thich Nhat Hanh often says, “Don’t just do something, sit there!” Stop whatever it is that you were about to say or do, shift out of autopilot, and take a moment to just be aware of your emotion instead of acting on it (see “Mindfully STOPping and Informal Mindfulness” in chapter 7). In this way, you can tame your lizard brain and reengage your human brain. You will see the situation more clearly and be able to handle it more wisely.
When you’re experiencing a strong emotion, it might seem as if it will last forever. You might think, I’m so anxious right now I can’t stand it, or I’m always going to feel depressed. But emotions come and go, like waves in the ocean. We often try so hard to avoid strong emotions. But trying to run away from your emotions is exhausting and usually causes more stress. It’s like trying to fight the waves in the ocean. You might find a moment when you think you’ve escaped, but then you get knocked over by the next wave.
Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf” (1994, 29). Instead of trying to fight the waves of emotions, you can learn to ride those waves with mindfulness, skill, and compassion. Like a surfer on the ocean, you may experience some light waves, and some very intense ones. Some may even knock you down. But you can always get back up. Your “surfboard” is your mindful breathing, and it is always there for you. So, don’t try to push the waves away. Don’t try to hold on to them. Remember that whatever emotion you are experiencing won’t last forever. Know that just as you are more than your pain (see chapter 6) and more than your thoughts (see chapter 9), you are more than your difficult emotion in that moment. Even when things are difficult, you still have wisdom and resilience inside of you that can help you survive any wave. So just stay present, continue to breathe, and ride the waves as they come and go.
Any time you are anxious, depressed, or angry about something, you can easily get stuck “in your head” and lost in rumination, thinking about what made you upset and how bad you feel. Unfortunately, this usually just increases your stress.
Emotions affect not only your mind, but also your body. Think of common expressions like “I was so scared I pooped my pants,” “My heart is broken,” and “That made me feel sick to my stomach.” Where do your own emotions tend to have effects in your body? When you are angry, worried, or sad, how do you experience that in your body?
When you’re experiencing a strong emotion, the safest way to be with it is to get out of your head and focus on how you experience the emotion in your body. By becoming intimately aware of your breath and your body sensations, you can make wise use of the signals coming from your body.
The SOBER Breathing Space that you learned in chapter 7 can be great for handling difficult emotions like anger, worry, and sadness. The SOBER practice isn’t meant as an escape or a fix for difficult emotions. What the SOBER practice does is help you get out of your head and into your body, stepping out of the vicious cycle of rumination. This helps you avoid automatically reacting in lizard-brain mode and shift into mindful awareness. Your mindfulness can then open you up to new possibilities, and perhaps a more creative and compassionate response to a difficult situation.
Try This! The SOBER Coping Space
You can do this mindfulness practice (adapted with permission from Bowen, Chawla, and Marlatt 2011) using the instructions below or with the help of the recording (track 9) available at http://www.newharbinger.com/30802.
In this exercise, you will intentionally bring to mind a difficult situation, and then practice the SOBER Breathing Space (chapter 7) to help you handle any difficult emotion that arises as a result. Invite to mind some difficulty that’s happening in your life right now, one that isn’t too intense or overwhelming. For example, you may wish to think of a recent stressful homework assignment or a minor argument that you had with a friend. Once you have something in mind, notice what difficult emotion(s) is associated with this difficulty for you. Then, begin the SOBER practice:Check in with your body, just as it is, right now. How are you experiencing this emotion in your body and in your breath? Is there tightness in your chest? Is there a knot in your stomach? Is your breath rapid and shallow? Get to know your emotions through the window of your body. Trust the wisdom of your body, because it is telling you something that is worth listening to. Those sensations are your body’s way of telling you that you need some care and attention because you are stressed. Listen to your body with compassion, allowing yourself to experience whatever is happening within you.
Check in with your emotion. Recognize the emotion by its name, and offer it a friendly greeting. For example, Hello, sadness. I recognize you. I’m going to take care of you. It’s okay to feel whatever it is you are feeling. As best you can, allow it to be, just as it is.
Check in with your thinking. Are you trying to think your way out of this problem? Are you ruminating? If you are, simply notice that. Then, make a mindful choice to “not get on the train” and instead just ride the waves of your breath.
Notice what sensations are present in your body right now. Invite them into your awareness.
Observe what emotions are present right now. If calmness is present, notice that. If difficult emotions are still present, that’s okay too. Recognize that you are more than your difficult emotions. Your difficult emotions are present, and now your mindfulness is also present, to help you take care of those emotions.
Check in with your thoughts again. Where are they now? Are you still ruminating?
This time, because you are only imagining a difficult situation, simply end the exercise and see whether you can carry on with your day more mindfully. In the future, if you are practicing the SOBER Coping Space in response to a real-life difficult situation, see whether it has opened up some flexibility for you as you reenter the situation mindfully. Are you aware of new ways you might respond to the difficult situation? Do you have more clarity, more calmness in you, to handle the situation wisely and compassionately? Can you resume what you were doing—for example, can you get back to your homework, or finish taking your test, or talk to the person who stressed you out—infused with the mindful spirit?
If you are still feeling an intense emotion—if your lizard brain is still activated—you might instead choose to take a longer break from the situation. A wise response in that case might be to practice sitting meditation or go do something else that is nourishing or enjoyable. If you make this choice, it doesn’t mean that the SOBER practice didn’t work. In fact, it shows that you have enough awareness and self-compassion to make a mindful choice in a difficult situation. The most important thing is to take good care of yourself and to shift out of lizard-brain mode before trying to solve the problem.
Experiment with this practice the next time you’re under stress and experiencing a difficult emotion, like anger, fear, depression, or worry. See whether the SOBER Coping Space helps you handle the emotion and respond to the situation more mindfully.
Sometimes, the wisest thing to do first when you are really upset is move your body. It might be just too hard to sit still when you’re extremely upset, because your body is in fight, flight, or freeze mode. Instead of trying to force yourself to sit still, you can get out of your head and into your body. Vigorous movement and exercise can help you burn up excess adrenaline, helping your body move through (and out of) fight, flight, or freeze mode.
After moving your body, you can practice mindful belly breathing, in a practice that is inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh (2007, 189–90; 2009, 86–91) and Mother Nature. In this practice, you imagine that you are a tree in the midst of an intense storm. To survive the storm, you keep your primary attention on the strongest part of you, which is your trunk, or your belly. The practices of moving and belly breathing can help you regain the stability and strength that you need to take care of the difficult emotion.
Once you are stable and clear enough, you can embrace and soothe your difficult emotion with mindfulness. In chapter 6, you learned that Suffering = Pain x Resistance. You learned that you can handle pain in your body by letting go of resistance to pain and accepting the sensation just as it is, moment-to-moment. You can handle painful emotions the same way. Mindfulness and self-compassion can help you stop fighting, and stop running away from, difficult emotions. You can simply allow difficult emotions to be, just as they are. You can even turn toward your difficult emotions, holding those feelings with gentle care and awareness. In this way, you can befriend and make peace with your emotions and with yourself. This is an act of courage and an act of self-love.
Returning to the quote at the beginning of this chapter, Thich Nhat Hanh says that handling a strong emotion is a lot like taking care of a crying baby. When a baby is crying, what does a loving and skillful parent do? Does the parent blame the baby or get upset at the baby? Does the parent just ignore the baby’s cries? No—the baby might cry even more. Instead, a loving and skillful parent will pick up the crying baby. Just holding the baby will bring some relief to the parent as well as to the baby. Then, the parent will pay careful attention to the baby and try to understand what is going on for him or her. When the parent sees clearly what the baby wants or needs, the parent can respond appropriately—for example, by feeding the baby or changing his or her diaper.
You can hold your own difficult emotions the same way. With self-compassion, you can hold the pain within your own heart—looking at it tenderly, accepting it, and making peace with it. With beginner’s mind, you can examine your emotion with curiosity, to learn more about it and about yourself. You can smile to yourself, to help awaken your compassion and reengage your human brain. Then, you will be able to see the situation more clearly and respond more wisely.
Try This! Move, Belly Breathe, Embrace
Try this three-step practice the next time you feel a strong difficult emotion arising. You don’t have to do the three steps in order. In certain situations, you might choose to do just one or two of the steps instead of all three. Experiment with the practice until you learn from your own experience what is most helpful for you.
Before you begin, mindfully STOP (see chapter 7): Stop what you are doing. Take three mindful breaths. Observe and recognize that stress and strong emotion are present right now. Silently identify the emotion to yourself—for example, Anger is present, or Panic is present. Then, instead of automatically acting on that emotion, make an intentional choice to take care of yourself and your emotion.Step 1: Move Your Body
Go for a mindful walk for ten or twenty minutes. Or practice some mindful movement (see chapter 8). Or put on your headphones and dance, or go for a mindful run or bike ride. Do any kind of exercise that you prefer. As best you can, stay in the present moment. Every time your mind gets flooded with stressful thoughts, like This sucks! or I can’t stand this! just bring your full awareness back to each step, each movement, and each breath.Step 2: Belly Breathe
When you are ready to be still, find a place where you can sit or lie down quietly for a few minutes. If you decide to sit, hold yourself tall and stable, like a mountain. If you choose to lie down, lie on your back. Feel the floor or cushion underneath you, aware of the earth supporting you. Imagine that you are a tree. Your head is the top of the tree—all the branches and leaves. This is the most vulnerable part of the tree, the part that gets blown around wildly in the wind. Your belly or lower abdomen is the trunk of the tree. This is the strongest part of the tree, solidly rooted in the earth. Imagine that the emotion that threatens to overwhelm you is an approaching storm. As the storm begins to whip your leaves and branches (your thoughts) around, focus all your attention and awareness on your trunk. Mentally embrace the trunk of your tree—imagine this is the area just below your belly button. To start belly breathing, reconnect with your breath: Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out. In… Out… Then, place one hand gently on your lower belly, just below your belly button (this is the trunk of your tree). Place your other hand on your chest. Notice the difference between your chest moving and your belly moving. Do you feel your chest rising and falling with each breath? Do you feel your belly button moving in and out with each breath? Which one is moving more—your chest or your belly button? Continue to follow your breath, gradually bringing your breath down lower into your belly. Allow your belly to fill up with each breath, and let your chest become more still with each breath. As best you can, bring all of your awareness to the way the hand resting gently on your lower belly moves in and out with each breath. Your chest should barely move at all. You might want to also imagine that there is a large, round balloon in your belly, inflating slowly as you breathe in and deflating slowly as you breathe out. You could also experiment with counting One—two—three—four as you inflate your belly, and again as you deflate your belly. Ride the waves of emotion as you breathe in and out deeply in your belly. Remember that an emotion is just an emotion. You can survive any strong emotion that arises. Remind yourself that strong emotions, just like powerful storms, never last forever. Know that as long as you stay connected to this strongest part of yourself, you will be safe. Take shelter in your trunk, continue breathing deeply from your belly, and allow the storm to pass.Step 3: Embrace Your Emotion
As your emotional storm starts to subside, you can make a mindful choice to soothe and heal that emotion with compassionate awareness. As best you can, accept the emotion fully. Stay with it compassionately, for as long as you can. As best you can, keep your awareness on the emotion as a physical sensation, or on the way it expresses itself in your body. Try to embrace it with gentleness and kindness, like a loving mother holding a crying baby. Name the emotion, and smile to it with self-compassion. For example, Breathing in, I am aware of sadness. Breathing out, I smile to my sadness. Aware of sadness… Smiling… (Nhat Hanh 2009, 7). If you don’t know what to call the emotion, you can simply call it emotion or feeling. Give yourself permission to feel it, saying to yourself silently as you breathe, It’s okay—it’s already here (Segal, Williams, and Teasdale 2013, 278). Hold your difficult emotion with great care, breathing with it mindfully.The intent of this practice isn’t for you to force yourself to feel a certain way or to feel “better.” It is simply for you to be awake to yourself and your own experience, with self-compassion and an open heart. Observe how the difficult emotion changes over time—how it ebbs and flows, like the weather, or like waves in the ocean. Breathe with it for as long as you need to—five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, or more. When you feel ready, carry on with your day, staying as mindful as you can.
In the end, there is no avoiding difficult emotions. Sadness, anger, and anxiety will inevitably arise in your life. How you relate to them, however, is totally up to you. Mindfulness can help you discover your own power to handle difficult emotions. You don’t need to “get rid” of difficult emotions, but you can transform your relationship with them. You don’t need to be afraid of them. You don’t need to turn away from them. You can embrace your difficult emotions and handle them with awareness and self-compassion. When you do, you will free yourself from a tremendous amount of stress and discover your true resilience.