MountainGate Therapy

One core aspect of mindfulness is that, through its practice, our brain learns to relax, regulate and calm down. Developing skill in mindfulness helps us self-soothe so that, when things get dicey, we’re not reacting out of enflamed emotions and distorted thoughts but responding from a place of wisdom that supports valued living.

When we are in distress, the brain’s limbic system gets activated and emotions start to flow. In one sense, emotions are nature’s way of giving us information to act on. Emotions let us know whether to move toward something, back away from it or remain neutral.

Some say that the cerebral cortex, our thinking-mind, evolved to help regulate emotion. Its job is to anticipate problems before they arise, mapping past experiences and relating them to the present moment. It’s much better to be able to preempt fear of harm (running out of food) by knowing what can be done to avoid it (storing it for a hard-cold winter). So the thinking-mind is doing its job when it’s telling us stories about potential problems.

But when emotions are enflamed, it’s harder to make choices about which thoughts are helpful and which are not. Think of this as the brain having a limited amount of energy and that, when emotions are strong, all the energy is diverted to the limbic system and away from the cerebral cortex. Though our cerebral cortex’s job to help us think through the problem that is spiking our emotions, when in a panic, its thinking is often skewed.

This is because of how the mind maps the past and because of a mechanism called “bias confirmation.” Strong emotions about an event that reminds us (even unconsciously) of a past trauma, prevents us from seeing how the present moment is unique. Instead, we react instinctively in anticipation of the same old danger. Rather than seeing new possibilities for safety and growth, the thinking-mind, in collaboration with an enflamed limbic system, confirms that there is danger all around.

As an example, suppose John is feeling nervous about giving a presentation at work. This is a natural feeling. The emotion of anxiety, at moderate levels, can help compel him to prepare well and take the presentation seriously. (Moderate anxiety is, in truth, a signal that personal growth and change are taking place.)

But suppose that John was picked on a lot at school and that schoolyard bullies put down whatever he did and even beat him up while teasing him for mistakes.

Suppose too that John’s father was not supportive of him and that, when John went seeking love and acceptance for work he had done, his father offered sarcastic criticism and disdain.

With these past influences in place, John’s mind reads his anxiety not as a useful prod but as an internal signal of an external threat. His thinking-mind starts to anticipate hostility, sarcasm and danger coming from the audience. Even if the bias is not spoken or actively disbelieved, the body’s system holds out waiting for the next shoe to drop. Indeed, the internal voice that says, “Oh you’re just imagining it,” can be read  by the limbic system as just one more threat of  bullying or failed empathy,

If John doesn’t do something to interrupt this process, his anxiety will express itself as fear, dread and may even overwhelm him so much that he becomes incapacitated and depressed.

Mindfulness of thought and emotions offers a means by which to change this pattern. The first step in climbing out of the spiral described above is not necessarily to challenge the thinking but to turn directly to the limbic system and offer it soothing comfort. Self soothing is at the core of mindful living.

I will discuss this component of mindfulness in my next article.

Grief is too often regarded as something gone wrong, something to be gotten rid of, something that is too painful to bear up under and should either be avoided or processed through as quickly and thoroughly as possible– and preferably under an anesthetic!

 But in a life where everything is constantly changing and everything is bound to, at some point, go away, grief is inevitable.

 So we are left with the choice of either rejecting the truth of loss, engaging in thoughts and behaviors that help us avoid the feeling of loss or of accepting loss and honoring it for what it is telling us about ourselves and about life itself.

 People who choose to try to avoid grief usually do so unconsciously. They don’t want to hurt so they refuse talk or to even think about who or what has been lost. They will muffle their feelings with drugs or alcohol, compulsive sex, television, non-stop work, or any number of avoidant behaviors that, in turn, shut them off from life and those around them and cause all kinds of personal and interpersonal problems.

 Choosing to honor grief requires that we slow down, look inward, note the blockages inside ourselves, and mindfully untangle the knot of emotions surrounding a loss. It requires courage, patience, kindness and resolve.

 Most of all, however, it requires love.

 We do not grieve what we did not love.

 Indeed, when we deeply investigate the feeling of grief that sits inside us, inside our bodies, often in a well just below the heart, we learn that grief is bittersweet. At its core, is a love that knows no bounds and is wounded and maybe even outraged for having come against this irrevocable end.

 Grief, in a sense, is the full expression of being human, of knowing what it is to deeply love and to just as deeply know that everything is impermanent.

 Impermanence requires grief, and as life is impermanent, we cannot but grieve. However, while grief may hurt, it does not need to cause suffering if we are courageous enough to feel the love that is inside of the grief. (See  my post “Pain vs. Suffernig (+pain!))

 Mindfully, we watch our emotions, thoughts and behaviors. We notice sorrow, hurt, disappointment, longing … all part of the human experience that cannot be changed.

 Next we then turn to our thoughts. We notice our interpretations. We may be telling ourselves, “I’ll never be happy again.” “This is so wrong.” “Unfair!” “It shouldn’t have happened this way.” We ask ourselves if these thoughts increase or decrease our suffering. Consider encouraging thoughts that are less judgmental and more factual, such as, “I miss him.” “I’m so sad and lonely.” “I remember all the good times and I worry about the bad times.” More temperate thoughts will create more space for letting the grief flow.

 We then consider how we’re living our lives. We look at our behaviors. Are we engaged in wholesome activities that support our appreciation of life and love of others (the core of our grief, remember) or are we isolating and blaming others and looking to get even with the universe?

 What behaviors create more space? What behaviors support us most? If we are courageous, we can reach out to others for support. We talk it over, share our emotions, let ourselves cry, take a mental health day, and let grief process at its own pace.

 Just as Autumn can’t be rushed but every leaf turns at its time, so too grief will run its course according to its own need if left unhindered.

 In letting grief takes its own pace, we don’t get rid of it sooner, but we increase in capacity and are better able to be more fully engaged in life.

 A client once told me that, though her grief didn’t feel good, it felt real … and in feeling real, there was virtue.

 Finally, just as life is impermanent, so too is grief. I promise you that, though you may continue to feel pangs of grief over any particular loss for the rest of your life, you will not feel grief all the time. When left unhindered, grief comes and goes just like all things.

Pain is a fact of life. If I stub my toe, I feel pain. If I have not eaten in six hours, my stomach will express distress. If I sit for meditation for more than an hour, my knees will start to complain. My back hurts when I get up in the morning. I experience emotional pain when life’s inevitable disappointments greet me. When a loved one passes away, I feel grief and sorrow. Pain cannot be denied – not if we are to remain human.

Oftentimes, people seek out counseling or therapy in the hope of ending their pain. They have suffered mentally, emotionally and physically and want a way out. There is a belief that, if one thinks the right thoughts and says all the right things, pain and discomfort can be avoided. In relationships, people often believe that, with enough work, the partnership will settle into some safe harbor where no more conflict or disappointment will disrupt matters.

Sadly, these problems cannot be helped.

But while the fact of pain and discomfort in life cannot be avoided, what can be changed is how we relate to these problems. This is what the Buddha was talking about some 2500 when he distinguished pain from suffering. Pain is inevitable, he said. Suffering, is adding something extra to the pain. He related it to being shot by an arrow (which creates pain) and then taking the arrow shaft and driving it farther in (which is suffering).

We create suffering through attachment. We have ideas and old long-held beliefs that say that things are supposed to be a certain way. Discomfort means something is wrong, and experiencing pain means I’ve somehow failed. At its core, mindfulness asks us to clarify and help untie what is happening now, how I am judging what is happening and, based on my judgments, how I am reacting to what has happened that is increasing or decreasing my suffering.

Most of us react to pain with aversion. We want to get away from it. This is natural, and certainly, mindfulness does not subscribe to any notion that we should endure pain unduly. However, if when I stub my toe, I can pause and take note of how I get angry with myself for being clumsy or with whomever left a brick doorstop in the middle of the hall for being inconsiderate and I start to bemoan that this sort of thing is always happening to me, that this is just one more example of how a bad day is getting worse and that I might as well take this as an omen of more ill fortune to come so I’ll stay indoors, crawl back in bed and feel sorry for myself for the rest of the day, I can start to identify my suffering and start to do something about this unwieldy chain of events that has very little to do with the direct experience of pain.

Indeed, the direct sensation of a hurt toe has none of these judgments in it nor does it prescribe any of these reactions. (If anything, the pain is simply telling me to pay attention.)

When we become mindful, we can see how we create suffering for ourselves throughout the day. A good mindfulness exercise is to simply watch one’s thoughts and behaviors and label them as either increasing or decreasing suffering, helping one become acutely aware of the train of events that lead to suffering.

So if you are standing in line for your afternoon coffee and the barista is chatting up a customer for so long you are worried you may not get back to the office in time, ask yourself if your impatience, your opinions of the barista, your worry, the way you are tapping your foot and keep repeating “come on, come on, come on, come on,” is increasing your sense of dis-ease or decreasing it.

Then, as an experiment, see what happens if you stop doing the things that increase your suffering. Stop all judging and simply decide, what are my options and what is the next most skillful thing I can do?

You may not have less pain, but you will have more freedom.

In my next article, I will discuss how to work with and accept grief as an unavoidable, painful part of being alive.

The term co-dependency has become a catch phrase since it first entered the general lexicon in the 1980s. I often hear clients speaking of feeling co-dependent or not wanting to be co-dependent. There is a fear that if what happens to our partner matters to us or that if we experience an increase in emotion related to our partner’s experience, we are being co-dependent.

Of course, it’s important distinction must be made between co-dependency and compassion. It’s natural and normal that my emotional valence should vary in relation to those of people I care about. If a dear friend is experiencing grief, I would very likely and appropriately experience a drop in my own mood. Similarly, if my partner just won an award, my emotions would appropriately rise in sympathetic joy with hers.

This shared experience is part of being human and what Buddhists refer to as “interdependence” (a similar but differently nuanced term from “co-dependence.”)

Co-dependency goes beyond mere caring and sharing of feeling, however. In co-dependency we are unable to distinguish our feelings from our partners and therefore begin to act in ways that are meant to repair the feelings another person has, taking responsibility where, in truth, there is none.

Suppose I am meeting a friend for coffee, for instance, and I note that he is withdrawn and moody. The co-dependent response would be to immediately apologize for something I may or may not have done. This would be based on the thought (possibly not fully realized) that the mood was my fault. In other words, I would be acting from a place of poor boundary distinction, not recognizing that my friend has a life independent of mine with emotional waves that have nothing to do with me.

As another example, we often see parents whose intolerance of their children’s unhappiness leads to all sorts of self-denial and an unwillingness to set boundaries. These parents are often the one’s who say, “But I can’t make Johnny go to bed until he’s exhausted, he simply refuses!” They also often appear harried and exhausted and will equate Johnny’s happiness with good parenting.

In romantic relationships, co-dependency is often revealed when one partner finds himself going to extremes to avoid his partner’s emotions, whether they be anger, sadness or even sexual disinterest. In this case, we might spend hours trying to figure out what we are doing wrong to make our partner such-and-such a way when, in truth, our partner is simply experiencing life from inside her own boundary.

To live a life of co-dependency (also called enmeshment when speaking in terms of personal boundaries) leads to low self-esteem, poor decision making or inability to make clear decisions, emotional disregulation, mood swings, anxiety and depression.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CoDA), a 12-Step recovery program for people struggling with codependency has the following list of behavioral patterns used by those with co-dependency problems. You may recognize some of these patterns in yourself and in varying degrees. Please keep in mind that this list is not meant to diagnose but to help identify unhelpful patterns in your own life so that you can gain clarity on developing more skillful means of living a happy and healthful life.

Denial Patterns:

I have difficulty identifying what I am feeling.
I minimize, alter, or deny how I truly feel.
I perceive myself as completely unselfish and dedicated to the well-being of others.
I lack empathy for the feelings and needs of others.
I label others with my negative traits.
I can take care of myself without any help from others.
I mask my pain in various ways such as anger, humor, or isolation.
I express negativity or aggression in indirect and passive ways.
I do not recognize the unavailability of those people to whom I am attracted.

Low Self Esteem Patterns:

I have difficulty making decisions.
I judge what I think, say, or do harshly, as never good enough.
I am embarrassed to receive recognition, praise, or gifts.
I value others’ approval of my thinking, feelings, and behavior over my own.
I do not perceive myself as a lovable or worthwhile person.
I constantly seek recognition that I think I deserve.
I have difficulty admitting that I made a mistake.
I need to appear to be right in the eyes of others and will even lie to look good.
I am unable to ask others to meet my needs or desires.
I perceive myself as superior to others.
I look to others to provide my sense of safety.
I have difficulty getting started, meeting deadlines, and completing projects.
I have trouble setting healthy priorities.

Compliance Patterns:

I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long.
I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection or anger.
I put aside my own interests in order to do what others want.
I am hypervigilant regarding the feelings of others and take on those feelings.
I am afraid to express my beliefs, opinions, and feelings when they differ from those of others.
I accept sexual attention when I want love.
I make decisions without regard to the consequences.
I give up my truth to gain the approval of others or to avoid change.

Control Patterns:

I believe most people are incapable of taking care of themselves.
I attempt to convince others what to think, do, or feel.
I freely offer advice and direction to others without being asked.
I become resentful when others decline my help or reject my advice.
I lavish gifts and favors on those I want to influence.
I use sexual attention to gain approval and acceptance.
I have to be needed in order to have a relationship with others.
I demand that my needs be met by others.
I use charm and charisma to convince others of my capacity to be caring and compassionate.
I use blame and shame to emotionally exploit others.
I refuse to cooperate, compromise, or negotiate.
I adopt an attitude of indifference, helplessness, authority, or rage to manipulate outcomes.
I use terms of recovery in an attempt to control the behavior of others.
I pretend to agree with others to get what I want.

Avoidance Patterns:

I act in ways that invite others to reject, shame, or express anger toward me.
I judge harshly what others think, say, or do.
I avoid emotional, physical, or sexual intimacy as a means of maintaining distance.
I allow my addictions to people, places, and things to distract me from achieving intimacy in relationships.
I use indirect and evasive communication to avoid conflict or confrontation.
I diminish my capacity to have healthy relationships by declining to use all the tools of recovery.
I suppress my feelings or needs to avoid feeling vulnerable.
I pull people toward me, but when they get close, I push them away.
I refuse to give up my self-will to avoid surrendering to a power that is greater than myself.
I believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness.
I withhold expressions of appreciation.

To learn more about CoDA, go to their website at www.coda.org.

Imagine you’ve had a good day, completed several important tasks at work, had a gratifying lunch with an old friend and you come home feeling good and competent and like the world is fine. Imagine how that feels in your body and in your heart. You may notice a sense of solidness, clarity, direction and purpose. You may notice that you feel “centered” in that you feel your feet firmly beneath you, your center of gravity low.

Then imagine, that when you get home, your partner has had what he calls “the worst day” of his life. The car broke down. The kids were fussy and messy. The dog ran away, and he spent an hour on hold with the insurance company. You notice his posture is sunken, shoulders low, eyes tight, mouth pursed. There’s laundry left out, toys on the floor, children crying.

You suddenly feel a tightness crawl across your body, up your spine, into your neck. Your energy is rising, a shield goes up. Your first instinct is to back out, go back to the office where everything was calm and orderly and you knew who you were about and how to function.

You’re braced. Your muscles are tightened. Your stomach has dropped, and your energy has risen up into your chest and forehead. There’s an instant headache. You’re not sure if you’re ready to defend yourself or go on the attack. Your sense of confidence is gone. You soon mirror your partner, shoulder’s slumping, chest sunken. You feel defeated and hopeless just like him partner.

For you, in that moment, there’s no way to explain it except that your partner must be to blame. Life is great, except for at home. Everything would be fine if only he  had a different attitude, different emotions. If only he could figure it out, you wouldn’t have to feel these uncomfortable emotions.

(Please note that, in this example, your partner did not attack you, screaming how you have it easy while he struggles at home, about how he’s fatigued and the kids are now yours.  He is simply standing and emoting. There is no need to defend or attack for you are not being attacked, but some part of you feels what he is feeling and you want no part of it.)

This is a situation many of us are familiar with and it describes the loss of one’s boundaries, also known as fusion or enmeshment.

Of course, it’s normal to have a sense of what someone else is feeling. Mirroring neurons in the brain pick up cues that allow us to share emotions. Without this ability, it would be impossible to empathize. The difference between empathy and fusion, however, is empathy allows us to continue to experience our own feelings. In the example above, you could be empathic with your partner’s distress while continuing to feel confident and secure in yourself instead of bringing your partner’s emotions into yourself and identifying with them as your own, blaming your partner for making you feel a certain way.

Essentially, if you are in the presence of emotional heat and feel yourself unsteady, either falling back ready to cave or falling forward ready to attack, you have lost your boundary. Holding a good boundary, we can feel ourselves standing upright, feet firmly on the ground, energy in the belly, chest high, heart open with care and compassion. There’s no urge to fight off the feelings, because we know they are not our own. Instead we can act with skill and be of service either by pitching in or simply giving our partner the space she needs.

Of course, another form of boundary loss is when we over-function to try to get rid of our partners’ emotions. I’ll discuss this in my next article.

If everyone grew up with perfect parents and in a perfect world, we’d all have perfect boundaries. Unfortunately, we don’t. So work in understanding and improving personal boundaries is an important part in improving mental health, self-esteem and one’s sense of happiness in the world.

Poor boundaries exist when we expect someone else to do something that will make us feel better (more whole, respected, loveable, et al.) on the inside. Good boundaries exist when, no matter how others act, we continue to feel good about ourselves (whole, respectable, loveable, et al.)

None of us are ever perfect at holding boundaries, and even if we tend to do well with boundaries at work or in social situations, they often fall to pieces when we feel most vulnerable or our needs become more primary such as when we are at home, amongst family or in a spiritual community. While it’s not too hard for me to hold my center when an acquaintance feels distant or unavailable, when my romantic partner seems aloof and unresponsive, I may begin to feel ill at ease, unsafe or inconsequential.

These feelings are often the residue of poor family functioning during childhood that is being triggered in the present moment. It would be wrong to berate ourselves for letting these feelings arise in us. In truth, they have a long history and will arise no matter how mature or developed we believe we are. In the end, however, they are my responsibility and no one else’s.

This is not to say that I can’t ask others to treat me well or to help meet my needs. Taking care of my own boundaries does not mean that I have to subject myself to abuse or adopt a go it alone attitude. I can ask for what I need (attention, kindness, care), and if I have good boundaries, I can take care of myself when these needs are not met. With good boundaries, I am not dependent on others to hold my self-esteem.

In my next post, I will explain how, using mindfulness, we can better understand how good boundaries feel and what we experience when our boundaries are failing – and also what it feels like to be near someone who has bad boundaries.

Experiencing cravings are a normal part of recovering from any form of addiction – to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, sex … or even television. They’re uncomfortable and complain at us like a nagging child, and we quite naturally want them to end. The quickest way to end a craving is by giving in to it. The problem however is that by giving in to it, we reinforce the addiction.

Think of this like the five year old child begging for a cookie. If we say, “No… no … no …” and then, frustrated with the complaining and wanting it to stop, we give in and say, “All right, have the cookie!” we’ve just taught the five year old a very bad lesson: enough complaining and you’ll get what you want.

We even have to be careful of our thoughts. Thoughts such as “I’ll die if I don’t get it” or “This isn’t going to end” or “I’d love nothing more than to have a drink (or whatever your addiction might be),” only increase the craving. The thoughts may express what we’re feeling, but the trap is when we believe their true and start entertaining them, then we start imagining what it would be like to give in to the craving, and then we’ve only increase our suffering many times over.

We don’t want to teach our addictions that if they complain loud enough, they’ll will.

So what to do.

There are many things. We can distract, seek support, revisit our values, pray to a higher power, turn our attention to helping others or buckle down and white-knuckle it. All of these are useful and necessary tools in the struggle with addiction.

Another useful tool is mindfulness. With an absolute commitment not to give in to the craving, we can settle ourselves down, calm the mind and investigate exactly what the feeling of craving is all about. This investigation requires that we don’t judge the craving and we don’t feed it with thoughts about using. We simply notice the body sensations, the emotions, and let whatever thoughts arise, rise up and drift away.

We take a skeptical stance about what this craving is really saying to us, maintain doubt that feeding it is going to make our life easier, and then, by mindfully letting the craving flow through our body and mind without attachment, we learn that it loses its force. In fact, research shows that a craving will last less than a minute if we do not feed it with thoughts or actions. We then soon begin to learn that cravings are like after-shocks. They rumble for a little while, but if we don’t attach meaning to them, they’ll soon subside.

This is the true lesson our cravings need to learn, not that they won’t go away unless fed, but that discomfort arises and fades away and that this is part of our recovery from addiction.

 - Mark

When struggling with anxiety, depression, grief, relationship problems, or any of the numerous human ailments that afflict us all, we have a tendency to close down and cut off. We feel claustrophobic and trapped by our own negative emotions. Like a frightened child refusing input good or bad, we virtually close our eyes and swat away everything that comes at us, deflecting experience, whether good or bad or indifferent.

This shutting down keeps us stuck in old habit patterns, both external in the form of behaviors and internally in the form of life narratives. We run the same old feedback loops of failed efforts and old complaints that somehow confirm our feeling of being trapped, backed into a corner, hopeless, and without choice.

With mindfulness, our first task is to take note of what is. What are my narratives? What are my feelings? What am I doing? I accept that, in the present moment, I cannot change the fact that I am, for instance, lying on the couch with a heavy feeling in my chest that I call depression. Similarly, if my mind is racing and my heart is pounding with worry, I take note and realize that, in the present moment, racing thoughts and a pounding heart are a fact of my life.

In recognizing a certain powerlessness over how things are in this exact moment, I can become curious. I can pause and consider my depression, investigate it with a felt sense, try to locate it in my body, recognize how the feelings move, where they begin, where they seem to end. With anxiety, I can watch my racing thoughts. I can explore what racing thoughts feel like, what the sensations are.

I often encourage people to engage this component of mindfulness as if they were futuristic explorers suddenly in new bodies (much like in Avatar). Presume you have never felt what it feels like to be in this body. You have never heard the words depression or anxiety before. In so doing, we can support mindfulness without judgment, giving more room for feelings to evolve, relax, and do what it is they are supposed to do.

 This mindfulness process may not remove feelings such as sadness, grief or fear (which or often the seeds of depression and anxiety), but it does creates more space, and with more space, there is less suffering. Also, we begin to see that our problems do not engulf us but are merely one part of our broader experience. We begin to realize that, we are powerless over our current state, we have choices about what we are going to cultivate in our behaviors and our internal emotions that will lead to less suffering in the future. Elements of sadness or fear may persist, but we can acknowledge them and tend to them while not missing out on the opportunities in life that make living valuable.

- Mark