by Russ Harris
Chapter 4
BACK TO THE PRESENT
Ali, an Iraqi refugee, had been horribly tortured under Saddam Hussein’s regime. Because he had dared to publicly criticise the government, he had been thrown into prison for several months, and during that time, his jailers had done the most horrific things to his body. Two years later, as he sat on the other side of my office, Ali kept having ‘flashbacks’ to those events. A flashback is a memory that is so vivid and incredibly real, it’s as if it is actually happening here and now. If you’ve never had one, you can scarcely imagine how terrifying it can be.
Whenever Ali tried to talk to me about his time in prison, a flashback would hijack him; his body would go rigid, his eyes would glaze over, and his face would go pale and sweaty. Dragged back into the past, he would relive the torture as if it were happening again. So my first task, before addressing any of his other serious problems, was to teach him how to get himself back to the present.
Now although Ali’s case is dramatic, it is similar in nature to the challenge we all face whenever a large reality gap opens. The mind has many different ways to hijack our attention. As with Ali, it may pull us back into the past, replaying the painful events that opened the gap, or it may push us into the future, conjuring up all manner of fearful scenarios. It may even drag us deep into the swamp of our current problems: bogging us down in our pain and our stress and our hardship. For example, in the first week after my son was diagnosed, I was consumed by a thick black smog of rage, despair and fear; totally lost in thoughts such as ‘It’s not fair’ and ‘Why me?’ and ‘If only’. I was furious with reality: how could it treat me this way? I ranted and raved about the unfairness of life: How could this happen? How come some parents, who are totally unfit for the role of parenthood, get healthy normal children that they don’t even want?
But while it’s perfectly normal for our minds to react this way, it is not particularly helpful. We can’t respond effectively to a reality gap while we’re lost inside a smog of painful thoughts. So the first thing we need to do is learn how to bring ourselves back into the present. And we do this by using a skill I call ‘connection’.
Connection
‘Connection’ is one of the three core skills involved in presence. (The other two are called ‘defusion’ and ‘expansion’, and we’ll get to them in the next few chapters.) Connection means engaging fully in your experience: paying full attention, with openness and curiosity, to what is happening in the here and now.
Think of life as an ever-changing stage show. On that stage are all your thoughts and feelings, and everything that you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Connection is like bringing up the lights on the stage in order to take in the details: at times, shining a spotlight on a particular performer, at other times illuminating the entire stage.
Connection is essential for effective action. If we want to do anything well, from dancing and skiing, to making love and conversation, to stacking dishes and playing cards, we need to keep our attention on the task at hand. The more we get entangled in our thoughts, the less attention we pay to what we are doing, and the more ineffectively we act. Our performance suffers; we make mistakes; we do things badly. We’ve all experienced this many times, in hundreds (if not thousands) of different activities.
And here’s the thing: no matter what sort of reality gap we face — a terminal illness, infidelity, obesity, bereavement, social isolation or unemployment — some sort of action is required. So, if we want to act effectively, we need to pull ourselves out of our thoughts and connect with the world around us. The following exercise shows you how to do this. I call it ‘Be Like A Tree’, and I like to do it at least two or three times a day. However, when I’m very stressed, I do it far more often.
Be Like A Tree
Think of a mighty tree: its long roots stretching deep into the ground below, its sturdy trunk rising upwards, and its branches stretching into the sky above. Use this image to inspire you as you follow the steps below.
STEP 1. ROOTS
Whether you are standing or sitting, plant your feet firmly on to the floor. Get a sense of the ground beneath you and gently press your feet downward. Notice the pressure of the ground against your soles and the gentle tension in your legs. Straighten your spine and let your shoulders slide down your back. Get a sense of gravity ‘flowing’ down your spine, into your legs and feet, and into the ground below. It’s as if you are taking root in the earth and ‘planting’ yourself firmly.
STEP 2. TRUNK
Slowly draw your attention upwards from the roots to the trunk (it is no coincidence that your abdomen and chest are called the ‘trunk’ of your body). Maintain some awareness of your feet against the floor, but focus mainly on your trunk. Sit up in your chair, or stand up straight, and notice the change in your posture. Breathe slowly and deeply, and notice the rise and fall of your rib cage. Note the gentle heaving of your shoulders and the rhythm and movement of your abdomen. Empty your lungs completely, then allow them to refill by themselves. Now expand your awareness: notice your whole trunk at the same time — your lungs, chest, shoulders and abdomen. Do this for at least ten breaths; if you have more time, do fifteen or twenty.
STEP 3. BRANCHES
Just as the branches of a tree reach into the sky, you now reach out into the world around you. Activate all five senses and extend them in all directions: notice, with curiosity, what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Maintain some awareness of your roots and trunk, and the background rhythm of your breathing, but focus your attention mainly on the environment. Get a sense of where you are and what you are doing. Smell and taste the air as you breathe it in. Notice five things you can feel against your skin, such as the air on your face, the shirt on your back or the watch on your wrist. Notice five things that you can see and pay attention to their size, shape, colour, luminosity and texture. Notice five things that you can hear: the various sounds of nature or civilisation. Now engage fully in whatever task you are doing, giving it all your attention.
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The ‘Be Like A Tree’ exercise takes anything from three to six minutes to complete, depending on how many breaths you take in Step 2. And, as a general rule of thumb, the greater your emotional pain, the longer you should do it. And, if you like, you can add in the ‘Compassionate Hand’ exercise as described in the previous chapter. If you wish to do this, then in Step 2 of the exercise above, you would place a hand gently on your body and ‘send yourself’ kindness and warmth. This helps to infuse the exercise with self-compassion.
Now you probably found that despite your best intentions your mind repeatedly pulled you out of that exercise; it hijacked you and bundled you off before you even realised it. (If that didn’t happen, you’re either lucky or you’re already good at this skill.) In the following chapters, we’ll look at how and why the mind does this and what we can do about it.
In the meantime, practise this exercise every day, ideally two or three times. And even if at first it seems to make little differ -ence, persist. Over time, it will pay great dividends. And if your mind gets impatient for results, then remember these words, which come from the great Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson:
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds that you plant.
Chapter 5
HIS MASTER’S VOICE
Can you hear it? That voice inside your head? The one that virtually never shuts up? There’s a popular misconception that folks who ‘hear voices’ are abnormal in some way, but we all have at least one voice inside our head, and most of us have quite a few! For example, most of us have at times been embroiled in an inner mental debate between the ‘voice of reason and logic’ and the ‘voice of doom and gloom’, or the ‘voice of revenge’ and the ‘voice of forgiveness’. And we’re all familiar with that self-judgemental voice that is often called the ‘inner critic’. (I once asked a client, ‘Have you heard of the “inner critic”?’ ‘Yes’, she
said, ‘I’ve got an inner committee!’)
Obviously the ability to think is incredibly valuable, and it adds enormously to our quality of life. Without the ability to think, we could neither create nor appreciate books, movies, music or art; nor could we enjoy blissful daydreams, or plan for the future, or share our feelings with loved ones. However, a lot of our thoughts are not particularly useful. Suppose I plug into your mind, record all your thoughts for the next twenty-four hours and transcribe them on to paper. Then I ask you to read through the transcript and highlight any thoughts that had been truly helpful for you to respond effectively to the reality gap. What percentage of the thoughts on that paper do you think you would highlight?
For most of us, the percentage would be pretty small. It’s almost as if the mind has a mind of its own; it seems to talk all day long about whatever it pleases, with little regard as to whether this helps us or not. In particular, it seems to be very fond of dwelling on pain from the past or worrying about the future or obsessing about the reality gap in the present. And yet, even though what it has to say is often unhelpful, somehow it almost always manages to absorb us in its stories.
Now before we go any further, let me clarify what I mean by ‘stories’ because from time to time, when I use this word with my clients, somebody gets offended. ‘They’re not stories,’ this person is likely to protest, ‘they’re facts!’ To which I reply, ‘I’m sorry if you are in any way offended, but what I mean by “story” is a sequence of words or pictures that conveys information. I could use the more common term “thoughts”, or the technical term “cognitions”, but calling them “stories” helps us to handle them more effectively. You see, our mind tells us all sorts of stories all day long. If they are “true stories” we call them “facts”, but facts make up only a tiny percentage of our thoughts. Our thoughts include all sorts of ideas, opinions, judgements, theories, goals, assumptions, day -dreams, fantasies, predictions and beliefs that can hardly be called “facts”. So, the word “story” doesn’t imply that the thoughts are false or inaccurate or invalid — it’s simply a way of describing what thoughts are: words or pictures that convey information.’
I will be using the term ‘story’ frequently throughout this book, but if you don’t like it, replace it in your head with the technical term ‘cognition’ or the everyday term ‘thought’.
Now consider this: how often does your mind keep you awake at night or consume huge chunks of your day with stories that induce guilt, fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, disappointment or despair? How often does it pull you into stories of blame, resentment, worry or regret? How often does it get you stressed out, wound up, angry or anxious, in a manner that makes your situation even harder?
If your answer to the last three questions is ‘very often’, then that shows you have a normal human mind. Yes, I did say ‘normal’. That’s what normal human minds naturally do. Eastern philosophers have known this for thousands of years but, somehow, in the West, we have bought into the idea that when the mind operates this way it is abnormal. This is very unfortunate because it sets us up to struggle with our minds (which is futile) or to judge ourselves harshly for the way we think (which is also futile). So I encourage you to take a different perspective. Let’s think of our minds as master storytellers that don’t care if their stories are helpful or not; their main aim is to capture our attention.
Have you ever seen the famous painting that formed the logo for His Master’s Voice — a once-renowned record label? The image shows a small white dog (his name was Nipper) listening with great fascination to an old wind-up gramophone as he hears a recording of his deceased master’s voice. Nipper is so intrigued by that voice he is virtually sticking his head down the funnel of the gramophone. We are a bit like that dog; our mind speaks and we give it all our attention. The difference between us and that dog is that the dog will soon lose interest in the voice; he will realise it has nothing to offer him and he will go off and do something more interesting. But when it comes to our minds, we generally don’t lose interest. Even if we’ve heard this recording ten thousand times, and all it does is make us miserable, we still readily become fixated by it.
A Smoky Haze
We have many ways of talking about this human tendency to get ‘absorbed’ or ‘caught up’ in our thoughts. We may use colourful metaphors such as ‘He’s a million miles away’, or ‘Her head’s in the clouds’ or ‘He’s lost in thought’, or we may talk of worrying, ruminating, rehashing the past, stressing out, going over and over it, or being preoccupied.
Basically, this incredibly valuable, uniquely human ability to generate thoughts can leave us wandering around in a smoky haze, absorbed in our thoughts and missing out on life.
Of course, to be in a smoky haze is not necessarily bad. The smoky haze of incense sticks can be soothing and relaxing. The smoky haze of a bonfire can be exhilarating and fun. But what happens when the smoke gets too thick? You start to cough, your nose runs and your eyes water. And over time, if you keep on breathing in all that smoke, you will eventually damage your lungs.
Similarly, there’s a time and place where being absorbed in our thoughts is life-enhancing: daydreaming on a beach, mentally rehearsing an important speech, creating new ideas for a project. But most of us get the balance wrong; we spend way too much time inside our minds, and we wander through our days in a thick cloud of ‘psychological smog’.
And there’s nothing that thickens the smog like a large reality gap. The greater the discrepancy between what we’ve got and what we want, the more our minds protest. They generate a ceaseless torrent of unhelpful thoughts and may go into denial: ‘This can’t be happening’; get angry: ‘This shouldn’t have happened!’; go into despair: ‘I can’t cope. I’ll never get over this’; agonise over the unfairness of it all; compare our life to others and find it wanting; or conjure up all the possible worst-case scenarios. And as I’ve said before, these patterns of thinking are all very normal, but they’re not of much help to us.
But before we go any further, let’s make one thing clear: our thoughts are not the problem. Our thoughts do not create the psychological smog. It is the way we respond to our thoughts that creates the smog.
Our thoughts are simply pictures and words in our heads. Don’t take my word for this; check it out for yourself. Stop reading, and for one minute, close your eyes and notice your thoughts. Notice where they seem to be located, whether they are moving or still, and whether they are more like pictures, words or sounds. (Sometimes your mind goes shy when you attempt this; your thoughts disappear and refuse to come out. If this happens, just notice the empty space and the silence inside your head and wait patiently. Sooner or later your mind will start up again, even if only to say, ‘I haven’t got any thoughts!’)
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What did you notice? If your mind went blank at first, then you would have noticed an empty space and silence, but eventually some thoughts showed up, and presumably they were words or pictures or both. (If you noticed a sensation or a feeling in your body, then that’s exactly what it is: a ‘sensation’ or ‘feeling’. Don’t confuse these things with ‘thoughts’.)
When we allow these words and pictures to come and go freely, to flit through our awareness like birds in the sky, they create no problems. But when we clutch them tightly and refuse to let them go — that is when they turn into smog; that is when they pull us out of our life.
When we’re lost in that smoky haze, all the details are obscured and all the richness is lost. We can’t taste the sweetness for the smoke. There could be the love of our life on the other side of that smog, there could be the greatest show on earth, but we wouldn’t know it.
If you’ve ever spent time with someone who was severely depressed (perhaps yourself, at some point in your life), you know how impenetrable that cloud can be. In our society, the depressed person is typically surrounded by all sorts of opportunities to enhance and enrich their life, but they are completely unable to see it, chok
ing in the smog of despair. (This is not always true, of course, but often it is.)
I’ll give you a personal example. One evening, about two weeks after my son was first diagnosed, I drove down to the beach to clear my head. While driving to the beach, I started to imagine my little boy’s future. My mind conjured up all sorts of dreadful scenarios: mental retardation, rejection, teasing, bullying, victimisation, isolation, becoming one of society’s forgotten people. By the time I set foot on the sand, I was living a nightmare. And as I walked along the beach, it grew worse and worse. Well, after about half an hour of this nightmare, I suddenly gasped. I stopped in my tracks and fell silent, gazing in awe at one of the most magnificent sunsets I have ever seen. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon and the sky had erupted like a volcano: furious clouds of crimson, scarlet, gold and orange. I just stood there and watched for several minutes, without saying a word, unable to believe I had missed this transformation.
There are many different types of smoky haze. When we’re in the thick of one, not only are we missing out, we’re also fumbling; the thicker the haze, the more difficult it becomes to navigate our course, negotiate the obstacles and rise to our chal lenges. In ACT we have a technical name for this state — ‘fusion’. Just as sheets of molten metal fuse together, so we become fused with our thoughts. And in this state of fusion our thoughts have an enormous impact on us: they may seem to be the absolute truth, or commands we must obey, or threats we must eliminate, or something we have to give all our attention to.