Developing an Attitude of Gratitude

By default we are designed to operate using a ‘management by exception’ approach to living.  We expect things to go right and just stay alert to when they are going wrong. 

This is our automatic survival mechanism at work.  In the short term it is easier on our brains if we do not pay constant re-attention to what is already present and happening routinely.  In the long-term, however, it can be harmful to us.

Neurobiologists tell us that when our automated expectations are not met we can take a strong emotionally negative ‘hit’ in the form of different types of chemicals released into the brain and body.  We become angry due to a sense of bruised entitlement whenever things we take for granted are taken away. 

This default negative-attention setting can cause us to be overwhelmed by runaway automated negativity.  We become self-critical, wondering why everything appears so bleak all the time. 

Others reinforce the situation by labelling us ‘negative’ and we make the additional mistake of identifying ourselves as ‘that kind of person’, rather than taking responsibility for reversing the pattern.

We can become resentful towards the very things and people that help us most; driving them further away and reinforcing the pattern even as we complain about the affects of their absence.

You may have been on the receiving end of such treatment?

The antidote is to practice deliberate gratitude for things already present in your life.

There is a reason why expressing gratitude is standard practice during prayer or meditation: it makes you feel good. 

Deliberately focusing on and appreciating those helpful things and those helpful people already present in your life produces medium, manageable levels of feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters. 

The feelings these chemicals induce allow us to feel better connected and safe within the lives we currently have and then reverse the affects of negative emotional responses.

If we have health, enough nutrition and a roof over our heads the only thing we need to give ourselves next in order to feel good is permission to practice gratitude

The best ‘attitude of gratitude’ coach I have come across is Wes Hopper.  You can sign up for Wes’s free e-book and short daily newsletter here: http://www.dailygratitude.com/

Regards

Carl

Remove Potential Panic Attacks by Moving into the Internal Territory Immediately

You feel a spark of fear; a spark of emotional discomfort inside – and you move straight into it.  You put yourself right in the centre of it as soon and fully as possible.

You do not look for distractions in the outside world.  You do not try telling yourself positive things.  You do not attempt to forcefully relax.  All of these are denial strategies that will lead, paradoxically, to the very thing you do not want to happen.

No.  What you do is move straight into the middle of the feeling and stay there for as long as the feeling persists.  If you do this it will disappear of its own accord.  It will flow through and out of you.

When your Unconscious sees you do this repeatedly it loses the fear of fear that causes panic attacks and it learns to accept the flow of the different types of energy that come with being alive.  There is no search for the cause of an alleged major internal thinking problem.  There is no need to find out why you suffer while others do not.

Our brain and body are mapping systems.  Their job is to map the external world and tell us where we are safe or not and move towards the safe and away from the dangerous in the outside world.

Frozen anxiety responses, emotional responses we trap within our bodies, are intense – so intense they cause our mapping systems to map them as if they were dangerous external territory albeit they are inside of us – as if they were real world events.

Once our own internal emotional responses are mapped in this way we make it our business to avoid these internal parts of ourselves; we act and dislike these parts of ourselves just as we would a dangerous external land.

If you have an emotional disorder of any kind you will be aware of a ‘place inside’ you do not like.  People who have never had an emotional disorder may have difficulty in understanding this concept.  When you approach emotional energy trapped inside you may notice it is ‘located’ in  a specific place.

This could be an illusion created by your accessing different parts of your brain, but I suspect it is also due to the fact certain types of energy are stored in certain places in and around the body.

Overcoming a well-embedded panic attack reaction is hard work; but the question for ex-sufferers is how do they stop it coming on again?  Here is the answer once again:

• move straight into the fear and stay there immediately.

This stops the internal maps of avoidance being built; gives your brain and body the right to do what they are naturally designed to do: feel it out.  I once suffered with panic attacks; I no longer do.  Neither will you if you teach yourself to habitually do this as soon as fear shows up.

Regards – Carl

Translating Emotional Information through Journaling

Your entire body and brain, every cell, is a cyclical information exchange system.

Thoughts in your brain make judgements regarding life experiences and convert these judgements into pictures which then sometimes attach to and release intense feelings throughout the body (particularly when your deeper value systems feel threatened). 

These feelings compel your brain and body to focus on the triggering experience and then you either take physical action in the external world to resolve an external problem or simply willingly feel, without taking action, in order to release the initial triggering life experience by converting the feelings back into pictures then into thoughts and then into powerless memories. 

I say ‘willingly’ because if, as you begin to convert the feelings back into thought, you make a negative judgement about the conversion process itself, such as resenting the time needed to manage the process; or you judge a certain type of feeling wrong; or you intellectually fight the imagery as being unacceptable in your thinking – you will continue to block the information and energy transfer process.

During reverse conversion you should pay attention to any negative judgements that come to light in regards to the experience and change these judgements to positive and accepting.  There is no such thing as an abnormal emotional experience; we are designed to react the way we do and emotional disorders are a result of believing otherwise.

Pain as a physical warning system is a good thing; without it we would have no mechanism telling us when our bodies are being physically injured.  We need to have the same attitude towards our negative emotional responses.

Once you have gained insights into the thinking that triggered the blocking disorder and you change your thinking the disorder disappears of its own accord.  You are now able to free it from conscious attention and move on.

When you block emotional release the information contained within your feelings, waiting for conversion back into thoughts, keeps knocking on the door of your Conscious attention.

If you have an emotional disorder of any kind the knocking is loud but the urge to keep the door closed is strong because during conversion of such an intense response normal conscious thinking is closed down. 

Our Unconscious mind sees this as our being ‘swallowed up’ by a predator.  During full, effective, emotional release you are only able to focus on the central triggering imagery and nothing else – even if it is in relation to an imagined scenario. 

To gradually open the door and go into the release and conversion experience we can gain leverage from a number of external tools.  One such tool is journaling but, due to the fact the logical mind is mostly shut down during intense emotional release, it is unlikely to be a tool you can use when first going in.

The most helpful release tool at this point is a good professional counsellor – with their help you begin converting trapped emotional information back into thought information and this begins to normalise the inner journey for your resistant, unaccepting mind.

Initially, while being overwhelmed by the experience, you may only be able to draw pictures or use single words and short sentences to create a spider diagram – these kinds of things are useful as a basis for discussion when you see your counsellor and to provide clear guidance to a currently confused mind. 

However, once the initial emotional energy intensity level starts to lower, and especially after you have healed, you will need to think about how you deliberately bring your emotional energy conversion system under direct control in the future.

You have little control over what unpleasant and unfair things may happen to you in life but you do have control of your emotional reactions to them - if you take responsibility for the process early enough.  I have found journaling (that is, writing life experiences out onto paper or computer in a private setting without early self-judgement) a really useful method of maintaining emotional happiness and also in preparation for dealing with fresh difficult external circumstances.

We often see, and are told to regard, our emotional responses as blunt instruments of destruction but they are nothing of the kind.  Emotional responses are full of information regarding opportunities, threats, strengths and weakness both in our large external environments and also in regards to our thinking about who we are at our core.

By paying closer, rather than less, attention to ‘what ails us’ we open ourselves up to accessing all kinds of life-improving resources.  Through journaling we can prepare for the worst while working for the best; transfer and remove the energy attached to worrying; acknowledge, accept and deliberately deal with the emotional process so returning ourselves to a peaceful inner state, confident we are prepared for what may come next.

The most useful journaling technique for me, which I used even before taking an interest in journaling itself, has been the unsent letter technique. 

We respond to a negative life experience by writing a letter to the source of the experience, or to the people involved, deliberately leaving the decision as to whether or not we will send these letters out to a future debate.

Such letters may be written to ourselves; to our current internal way of thinking.  For example, if you have taken responsibility for a situation over which you have no true right of control you may need to ‘have a word with yourself’, challenging your current guilt trips and setting the internal record straight.

Your intention when writing an unsent letter is to move from the subjective viewpoint– acting as though you are trapped within the situation – to an objective viewpoint – viewing the situation from without, so forming a properly informed opinion. 

You will gain insights, views within, both in terms of your own attitudes and behaviours and those of others.  You may find a single situation produces several unsent letters.  But having got your letters ready for all aspects of the situation, past, present and the potential future, you can now let go.

Some of these unsent letters may act as prompt notes for future discussions – others become letters you do actually send.

The external world may not want to hear a lot of what you have to tell it; but you should never copy that model in regards to whether or not you take the time to listen to, and transfer the information stored, within yourself. 

I suggest you positively fester on such things through journaling – works wonders.

At the moment I am using a software called Lifejournal which includes the ‘unsent letter’ and several other journaling techniques, and I am also reading Journal to the Self, one of the resources listed below.

Please leave comments on this or any other journaling techniques and resources you find personally useful.

Regards

Carl