Mind full or Mindful: Which One Are You?

It's easy to tell who's happiest in this graphic - human being or dog - and just as easy also to tell the reason why.

Whilst the human being is preoccupied with a hundred different day-to-day problems the dog is enjoying the simple pleasures of nature - trees, a clear blue sky and sunshine. One is caught up in the clutter of their own thoughts and the other is fully present in the world.

This simple graphic conveys well the torment which we inflict upon ourselves when we allow our minds to become overloaded with day-to-day worries and concerns.. It contrasts this with the sense of freedom, spaciousness and clarity which can come from living more fully in the moment.

Overthinking is a problem that troubles many of our clients, particularly those who are experiencing stress and anxiety. Somehow we feel we have to hold on to all those preoccupations in order to remain in charge and stop our world spinning out of control.

But by overloading our brains we risk losing our sense of perspective and our capacity to take pleasure in life. We become vulnerable to stress, low-mood and increased feelings of anxiety.

Learning to be more mindful, rather than always having a mind that is full, is not as easy as it looks. It requires practice, self-discipline and effort. It's also about self-care, which some of us are not very good at.

But the benefits are there to be seen in the graphic, without the need of all these words to explain them!

The Power of Facing Up to Difficult Emotions

Experiencing and addressing difficult emotions can be very challenging, but consistently ignoring our emotions or distracting ourselves from them is not good for our well-being.

Our in-built survival mechanism ensures that sometimes very traumatic experiences are buried away without us even knowing it. This can be necessary just in order to make life tolerable and to allow us to go on functioning on a day-to-day basis.

Often though we avoid addressing unpleasant feelings and emotions with some degree of awareness of what we doing. We think that we are keeping our life on an even-keel by denying their importance

There usually comes a point, however, when the psychological effort of holding those emotions at bay becomes too much, creating inner conflict and forcing them to emerge in unexpected ways - in the form of a sudden panic attack for example.

Pushing down or repressing challenging emotions such as grief, sadness, anger or resentment, doesn’t make them disappear - it is very common for people to experience intense anxiety, low mood and emotional overwhelm as a result.

Even those emotions which were repressed for survival purposes, maybe when we were very young, are best addressed at some point in our lives if we are to find inner peace rather than live in a constant state of half suppressed fear and anxiety.

Much of the work we do as counsellors involves helping people to acknowledge and safely connect with these emotions and to work them through. This allows the emotional residue left by difficult or traumatic experiences to be processed in a safe way, helping people to achieve a greater sense of equilibrium and self-acceptance.

Not Feeling Excited about the Easing of Lockdown? You're Not Alone

If you're not feeling as excited by the prospect of lockdown ending as you think you should be, then you're not alone. There’s a tendency to assume that everyone is unequivocally upbeat about the easing of social restrictions. But this is not necessarily the case.

Some people are worried and anxious. Maybe lockdown has allowed them to put a hold on some of the problems they were facing in life prior to the rise of the epidemic. Perhaps the prospect of a return to the workplace is prompting feelings of fear and apprehension.

The restrictions may have provided an opportunity to make welcome changes to working habits, or have served as a reason not to make a difficult decision. Some people will now find themselves having to confront challenging situations or relationships.

Above all we should not forget those people who are grieving from a loss suffered during the epidemic. The pain and sense of unfairness they may be experiencing will endure for long after the memories of lockdown have faded.

We've written previously about the ways in which different personality types have responded to the social restrictions, and while complete isolation is not a good thing, the opportunity to spend more time in solitary pastimes or with immediate family will have been an unexpected bonus for some. For while some of us thrive on the cut-and-thrust of social interaction, the freedom from social pressures will have been a welcome release for others.

Many of our clients are facing dilemmas like these as restrictions ease - so please be mindful of your own responses and kind to yourself if you’re not feeling what you think you’re ‘supposed’ to be feeling.