What is your understanding of the phrase ‘mental health/wellbeing’?

For me that would be the state where life doesn’t feel like a struggle, where we feel generally able to cope with things that happen, and to treat ourselves relatively kindly. Often ‘mental health’ is seen as in a binary with ‘mental illness’: either we are mentally healthy, or we are mentally ill, and those are seen as relatively fixed states. For me it’s more of a continuum that all of us go up and down over the course of our lives.

What possessed you too create your zine ‘Staying with our Feelings’ and what reactions and feedback did you receive from consumers? (Ps. I love the layout and sketches!)

I’m so glad you liked it! As with most of my work it was inspired by my own struggles, and what I’ve found works for me, and for the people I work with. I was struck that lots of different approaches to mental health include this same idea that it’s useful to stay with our feelings. However, a lot of folks I talk with don’t really know what that means. So I decided to make a simple zine to explain it, and to give some suggestions about some of the different ways of doing it.

The feedback has been really positive! A lot of people say the zine is a lot more accessible to young people, or neurodiverse people, for example, than a book or even a written website. The mix of images and words can make it both more engaging and easier to understand.

Which emotion from your experience and understanding do you feel is becoming most prevalent in modern day society and why?

I would have to go with self-criticism – is that an emotion?! – anyway the whole set of shame type feelings where you feel bad about yourself and like you’re a terrible person, or there’s something wrong with you, or you’re nowhere near as good or worthwhile as everyone else. It’s very linked to the feeling of depression, as well as anxiety that people might ‘find you out’. This is highly prevalent in modern society because consumer culture is based on making us feel bad about things so that we’ll buy products which we’re sold on the basis that they will make us happier, more attractive, more successful, or whatever. Also it’s pretty handy for those in power if we’re all so busy worrying about ourselves that we don’t get politically involved, or act against the cultural messages or structural inequalities that hurt us.

You stated in your Ladybeard article ‘ Depression and Anxiety is a sane response to an insane world’ do you believe these illnesses are a modern day construct and what do you see for the future of our generations in terms of emotion?

I think this is even more clear now than when I wrote that article! With everything that is going on post-Brexit and post-Trump, depression and anxiety could be seen as a pretty sane response. However I would always say that our experiences are ‘biopsychosocial‘. It’s not that social conditions alone ’cause’ mental illness, but rather they weave together in a complex way with our bodies and brains (our biology) and our unique life experiences (our psychology) to result in our own particular patterns when it comes to our mood and how we tend to react to things.

My hope for the future – whether it is realistic or not – is that a key emotional state will be kindness, or compassion, because that’s what we desperately need in order to counter our self-criticism, and the tendency to judge others, or treat them as disposable.

Why do you think emotion and our mental health is such a taboo subject?

We’re taught to feel a lot of shame about mental health difficulties. Also, we’re taught that some emotions and ‘positive’ and others are ‘negative’ and we should really only feel the ‘positive’ ones, otherwise we’re a failure at life. The Pixar movie Inside Out is one of the most profound things I’ve seen about how actually we need all of our emotions in order to have good mental health. Trying to only feel joy, and no sadness, anger or fear, for example, is paradoxically one of the main things that tips us into depression.

I want to understand how we can learn to communicate our feelings more and cope with our mental health better. Therefore, can we use our physical strength to help our mental health. Do you feel there is a correlation between the two, if so, how and why?

Oh absolutely the two are connected. In the West we’ve separated the body and mind for a long time now, but actually they can’t be separated at all. We’re embodied beings. So one of the most helpful things we can do to stay with our feelings is to learn to locate them in our bodily sensations. Similarly, doing things where we feel that great sense of being in our bodies often has a profound impact on our mood. People often feel that when they are moving, listening to music, or being in nature, for example. Again the cultural message that our bodies are something to be ‘perfected’ and ‘beautified’ in order to fit some conventional ideal of what is attractive goes completely against this embodied approach!

From my research I have been focusing on ‘The Emotional Economy’, which discusses how we are feeling more feelings than ever before and trying to find new ways to express ourselves. I feel there is a revolution taking place around normalising mental health outside the medical arena and in the creative space, would you agree?

I think to some extent yes there is much more information and understanding about mental health than there was when I – or my parents – were growing up, for example. But the problem is that we still tend to ‘individualise’ mental health problems – seeing them as something that some people have because of their faulty brains, or faulty thinking – rather than recognising just how tied they are to the wider culture, and to material conditions like poverty, homelessness, and experiencing discrimination, for example.

Furthermore, through what form of creativity (for example art, performance, film) would you say this is most prominent?

Oo hard to say. I’m a big fan of comics, and I think that the large number of mental health web-comics and graphic memoirs has been hugely helpful in capturing diverse experiences of mental health struggles, and normalising them. I worked with Caroline Walters and Joseph de Lappe to make 4 issues of Asylum magazine about this if you’re interested in finding out more.

My big idea is encouraging Generation Y, also known as the IPOD generation (Insecure, Pressurised Over-taxed and Debt-ridden) to go outdoors and do something creative as a means to help express their mental-self more positively. Do you agree and do you see this working?

Absolutely I think both those things are incredibly helpful when it comes mental health – although I’d be wary of advocating them for everyone because different things work for different people, and at different times in their lives.

The IPOD thing is interesting because if those are the key problems (and I think they probably are) then I’d be focused on what we can do to give this generation more security, less pressure, less tax, and less debt. Hence the answer would be political and social reform rather than anything else. So yes get outdoors (on a march) and do something creative (write to your MP, make a placard)

I think Audre Lorde’s famous quote also comes in here ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’ Even if we locate the causes of much of our suffering in wider society, it’s still vital to do forms of self-care in order that we have the energy to resist and protest. For me getting outdoors and being creative are certainly two essential forms of self-care.

If you could describe your mind as a biscuit, what would it be and why?

A Florentine coz it’s pretty nutty

If you could describe your mind as a colour palette, what would it look like and why?

Going back to Inside Out I would hope it’d look like a rainbow, indicating that I was okay with being in all of the different emotional states. It’s probably a lifelong process to get there though.

Find out more

My zine on social mindfulness covers these ideas in more detail.

My other blog posts on mental health include:

• Mental health beyond binaries
• Mental health: Beyond the 1 in 4
• Mental health: Beyond a health focus
• Mental health interview 2
• Supporting each other through mental health crises
• Mental health and relationships

The post Mental health interview appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

I’ve experienced mental health struggles for most of my life. For me, like many of us, that means that I’ve had a high level of self-critical background noise a lot of the time: thoughts that I’ve done something terribly wrong, or that I will do, or that there’s something wrong with me. It often manifests as a low, heavy mood: a kind of grey fog over everything that makes it difficult to see things clearly, to make decisions, or to appreciate the beauty of the world around me. At its worst, it has tipped into extreme self-loathing and the urgent wish to eradicate the ‘bad’ parts of me in order to make myself acceptable.

Despite these experiences I’ve always been reluctant to label myself with the terms that might seem obvious when you read this description. I’ve probably ticked the boxes for several of the recognised ‘psychiatric disorders’ in my time, but I don’t feel comfortable identifying as a person with depression, as mentally ill, or as having a psychological problem. Equally I don’t feel comfortable identifying as sane, mentally well, or psychologically healthy. As with so much in life, I feel that the binary – in this case between ‘mad’ and ‘sane’ – is actually part of the problem.

The mad/sane binary

The mad/sane binary is present in all of the mainstream messages that we receive about mental health. For example, high profile campaigns to end mental health discrimination have often centred around one, apparently game-changing, statistic: 1 in 4 people have a mental health problem. Celebrities like Stephen Fry and Ruby Wax have used the figure to speak bravely and openly about their experience of mental ill health, but the danger of that statistic is that it suggests that 75% of the population do not experience any mental health problems at all. Rather than seeing mental health as a continuum which we might all move up and down over the course of our lives, we’re forced to stake our identity on one or other side of a strict dividing line:

‘Either … I have a mental health problem – I need help – it’s not my fault
Or … I don’t have a mental health problem – I don’t get help – it is my fault’

In this way we’re placed in a double bind, because accepting one side inevitably involves denying the other, and neither side promises a great outcome. If we’re seen as having a mental health problem we may well feel utterly disempowered, as if there’s nothing that we can do to improve our situation. If we’re seen as not having a mental health problem we might feel like we can’t admit to having any problems or get any support because we’re completely responsible for our own happiness and well being. The responsibility either rests entirely with other people, or entirely with ourselves, and either way that puts us in an untenable position.

Linked to this is the fact that both sides of the binary internalise suffering, seeing it as a purely individual thing, rather than a symptom of wider social issues. We are forced to view mental health problems as inborn, either caused by illness (perhaps a genetic vulnerability and/or brain chemistry issue) or by a personal deficiency (such as bad habits, faulty thinking, or lack of moral fibre). This can be very damaging because there’s strong evidence that all our human experiences are biopsychosocial: a complex interaction between the world around us, our personal experiences of it, and our bodies and brains, with all of those aspects influencing the others. We risk doing further damage to ourselves when we attempt to change our individual experience without recognising the role of social injustice or cultural messages in our suffering.

Social suffering

For example, it’s clear that structural oppression and social inequalities have a major role in mental health struggles because we see far higher rates of such difficulties in groups who are socially marginalised. One recent UK study found that women were 40% more likely to develop anxiety and depression than men, for example, another found that LGB people are twice as likely to be suicidal as straight people, and a further one that BAME people are six times more likely than white people to be admitted as in patients in mental health services. We need to recognise the role of intersecting marginalisations in mental health struggles, and the ways in which social experiences such as poverty, discrimination, and the experience of trauma are highly related to psychological distress.

We also live in a culture, which encourages the very kind of self-critical thinking that’s a feature of all the most common mental health problems. The French philosopher Michel Foucault famously used the analogy of the panopticon prison for our culture. In this prison there’s a single guard sitting at the top of a central tower in the middle who is able to see into all of the prison cells. Prisoners end up monitoring their own behaviour all of the time, just in case they might currently be being watched.

Foucault argued that our culture works in this way through all of the pressure we’re under to self-improve, and to present a positive, successful self to the world. We’re made to feel fear that we might be lacking or failing in some way, and we’re sold products which claim to help us to allay those fears. Makeover shows, self-help books, and beauty products are some of the more obvious examples. Social media also encourages us to maintain the illusion of perfection online, leading to endless rounds of self-evaluation and comparison.

In a world where so many of us are struggling with very real social problems, it’s vitally important to acknowledge the cultural context we’re in and to resist individualising our suffering. The mad/sane binary is very effective in preventing challenges to toxic policies and practices because people are not aware of the social context of their struggles, and because there is a fear that if you do speak out you will be dismissed as ‘insane’.

We can see this at play in the recent moves to regard unemployment as a psychological problem and the insistence that those claiming benefits undergo cognitive behavioural therapy. The responsibility is placed on the individual rather than on wider societal problems, and resources are focused on psychological change rather than addressing economic inequalities. There’s a high risk that people are left in the same damaging situation, but with an even greater tendency to blame themselves for it.

A sane response to a mad world?

The psychotherapist Winnicott famously said, of depression: “The capacity to become depressed […] is something that is not inborn nor is it an illness; it comes as an achievement of healthy emotional growth […] the fact is that life itself is difficult […] probably the greatest suffering in the human world is the suffering of normal or healthy or mature persons”. Perhaps we would do well to view the depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles that most of us grapple with at some point as a sane response to an insane world. This would shift the emphasis for change away from the individual and towards the wider societal structures and cultural messages around us.

I know that what has helped me the most in this area has been to recognise the social and cultural aspects of my struggles. It’s a huge relief to allow the weight of total responsibility to lift, and to recognise the role of internalised self-criticism and social power dynamics in my experiences. This acknowledgement also allows me to engage critically with the mad/sane binary: resisting the sense that I’m completely responsible for my difficulties and the sense that I have no capacity at all to help myself. In this way I can cultivate a kinder relationship with myself, on the one hand, and feel more of a sense of kinship with all of the others who are in the same cultural boat. Such connections enable the possibility for collective resistance and for social activism, which feel like a much better focus for my energy than continually trying to change myself.

Find out more

My zine on social mindfulness covers these ideas in more detail. My zines on Staying With Feelings, Self-Care, and Plural Selves are also relevant to mental health.

My other blog posts on mental health include:

• Mental health: Beyond the 1 in 4
• Mental health: Beyond a health focus
• Mental health interview 1
• Mental health interview 2
• Supporting each other through mental health crises
• Mental health and relationships

For more on LGBT and GSRD mental health,  check out:

• New Resource on Gender, Sexual & Relationship Diversity (GSRD) and Mental Health
• LGBT+ mental health video
• Bisexual mental health

The post Mental health beyond binaries appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In this new zine I discuss both why we get so shut off from our feelings in a wider culture which values some emotions far more highly than others, and how we can go about shifting our patterns of avoiding and fighting some feelings, and craving and grasping for others. It covers both therapeutic and spiritual practices for staying with our emotions.

You can download or read the zine here.

The post New Zine! Staying with feelings appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

When I saw that the main characters in Inside Out were a person’s emotions I knew that I absolutely had to go see it. I wasn’t disappointed. In fact several times I was moved to tears by how familiar the experiences were, and by this hugely important, complex, and rarely-expressed message being communicated so simply and profoundly in a ‘kid’s film’.

If you’d rather not be spoilered for the movie then please do go see it before reading the rest of this post. Also do be aware that it may well tap into lots of different emotions as you’re watching it – if you’re anything like me – not just the joyful ones. As we’ll go on to see that may not be a bad thing!

The rest of this post is divided into three sections:

• Experiencing all of our emotions
• Shutting down our emotions
• How to sit with our emotions: A practical guide

Experiencing all of our emotions

Inside Out follows an eleven-year-old, Riley, and her emotions – Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear – as her family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. Previously her inner world has been dominated by Joy. Joy has made it her business to ensure that Riley remains as happy as possible, building up a store of mostly joyful memories which have, in turn, shaped her personality. However, following the house-move, many of these memories become tainted by Sadness – who can’t seem to stop herself from touching them and turning them blue.

In her attempts to prevent Sadness from causing any more damage, Joy manages to get both of them ejected from the control room to the outer reaches of Riley’s inner world. This leaves Anger, Fear and Disgust in charge while Joy and Sadness try everything they can to get back before Riley runs away from her new home.

The message of the movie is that we require all of our emotions: not just the so-called positive ones. We soon realise that Joy’s tendency to ignore and suppress Sadness is actually getting in the way of them finding their way home. It seems like things work pretty badly when just one of the emotions takes charge, and much better when they all work together through being equally valued.

One of the most poignant moments in the movie is when Riley’s old imaginary friend is devastated to realise he’s lost his last chance ever to be with Riley. Joy’s attempts to cheer him up or force him to keep going fail. However, when Sadness sits with him and shows that she understands how hard it is for him, he’s able to experience his own sadness, to cry, and eventually he’s ready to move again.

The theory that kept coming back to me as I watched the movie was Emmy Van Deurzen’s compass of emotions. In this, Van Deurzen imagines the emotions on a wheel which we travel round all of the time, moving from ‘high’ feelings like joy and pride, through anger and fear to low feelings like sadness, and then up the other side through envy and hope, to joy again.

Critically, Van Deurzen argues that we need to be able to experience all of the emotions to go around the compass like this. If there are emotions which we shut down or avoid then we’re likely to get stuck in certain places. Paradoxically, as in Inside Out, if we disallow one emotion – like sadness – we’re likely to become stuck and find that we stop experiencing joy much too. If we lose the capacity to experience some of the emotions entirely – as when Sadness and Joy are lost in the film – we risk falling into depression and all of our emotions becoming shut off. This is rightly depicted as the darkest moment in Inside Out.

It may not be that we always move in the same direction on the compass, or that certain emotions always follow others. Indeed, as Inside Out shows, we can often experience seemingly opposing emotions at the same time (e.g. joy and sadness, anger and hope, fear and determination). Indeed, when the first memory comes in that reflects these kinds of mixed feelings we see that it is perhaps even more beautiful and valuable than some of the ones which reflected only one of the basic emotions on its own.

Shutting down our emotions

The problem is that, through our lives, most of us learn that certain emotions are not acceptable: either to express or – often – even to experience.

This is what moved me to tears several times during the film as I remembered moments in my own childhood and adolescence when – like Riley – I learnt that certain feelings were unacceptable. It made it even more powerful that – for me like Riley – a critical time was the sudden experience of starting a new school with strange and different rules. However, of course, these moments are different things for different people, they happen at different points in life, and they can be gradual, or sudden, or both.

The film underlines what a terrible impact such messages can have as elements of Riley’s personality – that we’ve previously enjoyed watching – turn grey and gradually disintegrate entirely when her emotions are lost. Most devastating for me was the moment when Goofball Island disappeared. Now that it wasn’t safe for Riley to experience all of her feelings there was no way that she could goof about in the way she used to as a child.

Where does this shutting down come from? We can see it on multiple levels like those I wrote about in the recent zine that I posted about here.

On the outer level our wider culture gives us strong messages about which emotions it’s okay to feel and which it isn’t. Generally in western cultures we’re encouraged to have happiness and ‘positive’ emotions and not ‘negative’ ones. The British ‘stiff upper lip’ also discourages expressions of fear. And messages also differ depending on our individual identities, with certain emotions being seen as more or less acceptable for people of certain genders, classes, ages, or nationalities, for example.

On the next level in, our communities and institutions also reinforce many of these messages. In the movie we see how, in her new school, it isn’t acceptable either for Riley either to show too much enthusiasm for the things she’s passionate about, or to show sadness about what she’s lost. The cool girls will judge her for it. It’s easy to find ourselves joining in this kind of tone-policing in our communities – of whatever kind – whereby certain emotions are deemed unacceptable to admit to or express – for certain people or across the board. It’s worth being mindful of this whenever we find ourselves judging how somebody ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ feel about something.

At the interpersonal level we learn a great deal about acceptable and unacceptable feelings from our close relationships, particularly from the family and friends who are around us growing up. In Inside Out Riley’s parents inadvertently give her the strong sense that they appreciate her being happy and strong during the house move. She takes this as a message that it isn’t okay to be struggling in any way about it. Riley is even described as their ‘happy girl’: fixing her in this way. We then see how Riley’s – and Joy’s – attempts to keep her joyful tragically have the opposite effect. By trying to sustain her joyful persona in the face of great pain she actually becomes angry, anxious and cut-off, and risks losing the love of her parents as they don’t recognise her any more. In another key moment Riley’s old friend doesn’t seem to realise how envious Riley will be of her new friendship. When envy doesn’t feel acceptable, Riley goes straight to anger, and ends the friendship.

How to sit with our emotions: A practical guide

Fortunately for Riley, Sadness and Joy are able to make it back to the control room – once Joy recognises the value of Sadness. Then Riley is able to take the risk and show her parents how sad and frightened she is. Even more fortunately, perhaps, her parents are able to accept her emotions, to share some of their own, and to let her see that they love her as much when she’s sad as they do when she’s happy.

Most of us are not so lucky. Our parents – and the other close people in our lives – live in the same wider culture as we do with all of its crappy messages about unacceptable feelings. They’re also part of institutions and communities that have done a number on them. And they’re in their own family systems wherein certain emotions have been deemed too dangerous or threatening. So they may well have responded to moments like Riley’s by giving us a clear message that our fear, sadness, anger, joy, disgust, or other feelings, were not something that they could be around, or even that they couldn’t love us if we expressed them.

We will have internalised this. Either we’ll have managed to find a way of shutting down those emotions entirely, or – perhaps – in trying to shut them down we’ll have managed to make them shout even more loudly so we’ve become defined by them. Or a bit of both. There are so many ways that this can go.

The urgent question is what we can do now. Here we are, as adults, with all these imbalances, exaggerations, and silences in our emotional states. What can we do about it?

The answer that many different therapies, meditation practices, and belief systems have come up with is the idea of ‘sitting with’ our emotions. I’ll briefly describe one of these practices – a person-centred therapy technique called focusing – here, but there are several similar practices in other therapeutic and spiritual approaches if this one doesn’t work for you.

Focusing reveals perhaps the main flaw which I found in Inside Out which is the fact that the emotions are located in Riley’s brain and not in her body. It’s good that Inside Out doesn’t buy into the popular idea that emotions and rationality are separate things. Instead it expresses the existential view that we’re always in emotion: propelled towards things or away from things by our feeling states. However, the film does buy into another ‘dualistic’ split: that of separating the mind and the body, and seeing the mind as the most important bit. Actually, this kind of focus on the mind can be part of how we lose touch with our emotions: We stop being able to tune into our bodily sensations and the important things we can learn from these about our feelings, and instead try to figure things out, or fix things, on a purely intellectual level.

In focusing practice the attention is right on these bodily states. It’s most basic form goes like this:

• Sit comfortably and quietly and bring your attention slowly to your body and how it’s feeling.
• Ask what wants your attention. Focus in on any sensation that you notice in your body (a tightness of the throat, a clenched stomach, or a sense of emptiness, for example).
• Say ‘hello’ to that sensation: welcome it warmly, like Sadness sitting down with Riley’s imaginary friend.
• Really listen to the sensation, try to find the best way to describe it (e.g. it’s like a dense ball stuck in my throat).
• Check back in with the sensation to see whether that description fits well enough, or whether you need to change it or add to it (e.g. it’s not just stuck, it’s like it’s rammed in there, like a cork in a bottle).
• Sit with the feeling, with interested curiosity, not trying to change it, or to force it to communicate: just being with it gently and curiously. Try to understand it from it’s point of view. Notice any words, images, or metaphors that come to mind. In focusing books and websites you can read about different questions that you could ask it at this point, if it feels okay to do so.
• When it feels ready to finish you can express gratitude to the feeling, and to your body, and reassure it that you’ll keep coming back to listen to it – and other feelings – in this friendly way.

Going back to Inside Out this is a lot like Riley actually giving kind attention to each of the emotions inside her whenever any of them want her attention, instead of putting one of them in charge, or trying to get rid of others. However, when we do this practice what we often find is that the feelings we become aware of are the ones that are preventing us from feeling other feelings (like Joy in the movie). You might start feeling a sensation of fear or sadness, for example, and then a strong feeling of anger or disgust at yourself for having that feeling. When we have these feelings-about-feelings the thing to do is to sit with them just as gently and curiously as with the original feeling. It can help to remind ourselves that – like Joy in Inside Out –  these feelings are trying to keep us safe, even if what they are actually doing is the opposite.

Of course, given how many years most of us have spent suppressing and avoiding certain emotions, it can take a while to open up this kind of line of communication. Practices like focusing can feel very unfamiliar at first and can take a while to get the hang of. There are ways of doing them with a friend, or with a therapist, if that feels easier and more supported than doing them alone.

However I am convinced of the power of these kinds of practices. Elsewhere I wrote about what happened last year when I sat and noticed a couple of feelings that usually felt too overwhelming, or too insignificant, to sit with.

Earlier this year I went to a focusing workshop. In the first practice I found it fascinating to see how my own throat tightness shifted and opened up when I finally gave it some gentle attention. In the second practice I used focusing to go back to a specific memory when I hadn’t treated myself very kindly. sitting with the memory I suddenly became aware of a side of myself that I hadn’t seen there before: A playful side of myself that wanted to do something silly and outrageous to cut through the situation. I got a strong image of Mr. Tickle from the Mr. Men books. So much so that I went out a bought myself a Mr. Tickle mug the following week. Perhaps my own Goofball Island hasn’t been completely destroyed after all!

Find out more

The ideas in the post are also presented in my Staying with Feelings zine.

You can find out more about the compass of emotions in this book and video by Emmy Van Deurzen.

A great book about the messages we receive about emotions is Transforming Emotion by Glenda Fredman.

If you want to find out more about focusing practising, The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell is an excellent introduction to it (and nowhere near as wacky as it looks from the cover!) There are also lots of resources on The Focusing Institute and British Focusing Association websites.

Note: Some of the images in this post are Copyright (c) 2015 The Walt Disney Company and Pixar Animation Studios, to whom I express my grateful thanks.

The post Inside Out: Getting in Touch with Our Emotions appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

I’ve come across different versions of this process in a number of places. It forms the basis of several therapeutic approaches (particularly many existential, humanistic and psychodynamic forms of therapy) and it’s also fundamental to the Buddhist mindful approach which I find so helpful, and to various other kinds of meditation. But I’ve also noticed that many friends and clients have developed something along these lines more spontaneously, without necessarily following a particular approach.

I would summarise the process something like this:

Noticing -> Understanding -> Engaging

The core idea is that before going on to attempt to understand a situation, or to engage with it, it is important to fully notice it. Another way of putting it is that any time you find yourself struggling, you just go back to noticing.

Why is noticing so important? One of my favourite authors, Pema Chödrön, uses the metaphor of a glass of dirty water. This one particularly connects with me because I often start my days watching the Thames, which is, as we know from The Kinks, a ‘dirty old river’! I imagine a glass of Thames water in front of me. It is murky and unclear because it’s all churned up with mud and silt and rubbish. We can’t see anything clearly when it’s like that, so what we have to do is to let it be still for a period of time. That allows the dirt to settle at the bottom of the glass and the water on top to become clear.

Pema suggests that part of why we often don’t want to allow this to happen is the fear that we have of what we might see once it all settles. I imagine that the bottom of the Thames is a pretty scary place with all the junk and slime and probably even skeletons that have accumulated there over the years. What might loom at you out of the murky gloom if you gave it the chance? But the point is that any kind of understanding of our own accumulated mess – and the things we’ve tried to bury in there – is only possible if we allow the water to settle.

Rushing past noticing

Generally when I’m struggling with something I don’t give things time to settle – quite the opposite. My habitual response is generally to rush to either the engaging or the understanding parts of the process.

I think that rushing to engage is probably the most common one for me. I start my day with something bothering me from the previous day, or just a general sense of anxiety, unease or irritation. Instead of giving that any time I get straight into my work. Or perhaps I’m at the end of the day and something that’s happened is troubling me but I just launch into watching TV or socialising. When I do that, often there is a sense of something under the surface which is getting bigger and more frightening the more I try to push it down under all the busy-ness and distractions. When I finally stop work or turn of the TV it can feel much more fearsome than it did at the start, and I often realise that I haven’t really been present to whatever I was working on, or enjoying what I was watching, because it is nagging away in the background.

Rushing to engage also often takes the form of trying to stop the feeling before it gets a hold by reacting immediately. This is what happens when I respond straight away to a difficult email, or I lash out at somebody who has upset me, or I make a snap decision about a tough situation. Often when that happens I’m aware that I haven’t dealt with the situation as well as I might have: I’ve passed the difficult feeling on to someone else in a crappy kind of domino effect, or I’ve exacerbated a problem rather than helping with it. The idea of refraining from acting until I’ve spent some time noticing is helpful to me in these situations.

The other alternative to rushing to engage is rushing to understand. This is something I often do when my emotions are particularly painful: feeling really low, panicky, or angry, for example. I’m very troubled by how tough it feels. It doesn’t seem to make any sense to feel this bad. I’m desperate to understand it because I think that will stop the feeling. What often happens is that I end up going round and round and round analysing it and trying to find an answer. It’s easy then to layer more and more difficult feelings on top of the original feeling. I’m worried about feeling down; and then I’m angry at myself for being worried about feeling down; and then I’m depressed at the fact I’m angry at myself for being worried about feeling down – and on and on and on.

The struggle to understand can easily land me in a place where I decide there must be something wrong with me for having this out-of-proportion reaction, or there must be something wrong with the external circumstances in my life (this job is bad, this relationship is wrong, it’s this other person’s fault). So I can tip into either depression or conflict with another person or situation.

What is noticing?

An alternative to rushing to either engage or to understand is to slow down and stay with the original feeling or situation, and just to focus on noticing it. Each time I feel drawn to trying to understand it, or to get up and do something, I can try to bring myself back to the original experience and just really notice what it is like.

When I have managed to do this there is a real sense of things beginning to clear like the water in the glass. A kind of understanding begins to emerge naturally from the process of noticing, in a very different way than when I’m attempting to force myself to understand what is going on. By the end of the process I can have a much clearer sense of how to engage, often becoming aware that there are many options and that nothing has to happen immediately.

It’s important to emphasise though that it is often extremely hard to stay with difficult emotions and experiences like this. There’s a reason why we rush to distract ourselves or try to force the feeling to go away. This noticing is such a radically different approach that it takes time to cultivate.

Pema suggests that noticing involves regarding difficult feelings as friendly and supportive rather than as fearsome and threatening. That is one of the hardest parts for me. In the last week I’ve tried to approach two of my least favourite emotions in this way: one I call ‘the plummet’ which feels like falling into a deep dark pit of despair and self-loathing with no warning and no time to catch hold of the sides. The other is a kind of gritty grainy feeling of being slightly bored and pissed off and bothered by everything. Neither of those states feels friendly to me. I do not want to look at them closely. I just want to find a way never to experience the plummet ever again, and to shake off the grainyness when it comes on.

But this week I tried to just be with the feelings and notice them, trying to describe their texture, temperature and colour; really experiencing the sensations that arose in my body; widening out to notice how they unfold in time (What happens immediately beforehand? What is the overall situation I’m in when they happen? How do they tend to play out?) I tried to assume that the feelings were sensible, helpful things to have happened, it was just that I didn’t know yet why they were sensible, and I needed to listen more carefully and kindly to them until they did make sense: however long that took.

I found that after some time of staying with them, and curiously noticing them in this way, lots of things started to occur to me that hadn’t before. It was like a process of joining the dots as all sorts of connections started to come to me. There was a feeling of weight lifting and being able to see things much more clearly and calmly for a while.

How could we build this into our lives?

I think there are two major challenges to building such noticing practices into our lives. The emotional challenge is that it is generally the very last thing that we actually feel like doing when we feel bad. The practical challenge is about when and how we actually do it.

Pema suggests that it can be good to start with emotions that are not too difficult rather than launching in with the really tough stuff. You can even start when you’re not actually in that emotional state, but rather when you’re feeling okay. Just remembering the last time you felt a bit bad and trying to notice what it was like. You can just do it for a few minutes at first, and then do the same thing for a positive emotion to balance it out a bit. In this way the process of noticing can be gradually built in in ways that don’t feel too threatening.

Another important thing is giving ourselves time for these processes. Often when a tough thing hits we’re not in a position to go off for an hour and sit with it. We might not even get that opportunity for several days. So what I’ve started to do is to ask other people in my life for time, and to give time to myself. So, for example, if a difficult issue comes up, I ask the other people concerned to let me slow down and think about it for a while, and I also schedule in some time for myself to do that. And if that isn’t enough I ask for more or give myself longer. I’ve got a list of decisions that I want to consider and conversations that I want to have with people and a rough idea of when I’m going to get to them (some this week, some next month, some next year!)

As for the question of when we do these practices, obviously it is tough to build noticing into busy lives, and I know that I’m extremely privileged to have a job which is more flexible than most and which actually involves thinking and writing about this kind of stuff regularly. Different things definitely work for different people, but I find it helpful to have some check-in time for noticing at the start of the day. I take a cup of coffee outside wherever I am and sit for however long I have available. I often find it helpful to read or listen to a helpful book for a while beforehand, often on the journey to wherever I’m going that day, to get me in the right state of mind.

Something that I’m sure would be helpful, but which I struggle to do, is to take a few minutes out for noticing whenever something difficult bubbles up during the day. People sometimes use such moments to go to the bathroom and have a couple of minutes breathing space alone. Similarly the end of the working day can be a good point to take ten minutes before embarking on the evening, and/or it can be good to take some time just before going to sleep. I should emphasise that I do none of these things regularly myself – it is not easy! Also I’ve avoided using the word ‘meditation’ here. That can be offputting because it sounds like a ‘special’ kind of practice and can come with a lot of baggage. Whilst I have found formal meditation to be a good place for noticing, the most helpful noticing I’ve had recently happened while I was sitting on a train looking out of the window and listening to music on my phone. Other people find that they do noticing on long walks, or while they’re cycling or driving, for example.

Noticing doesn’t have to be a completely internal thing. I’ve always found that writing helps me a lot with it. So I take an hour in a café once a week to write in a journal about all the things that are going on, trying to focus on describing them rather than attempting to figure them out. A combination of just sitting and reflecting for a while and then writing can help. Drawing or other forms of expression work better for other folks. And, of course, some people use therapy as a place to do this kind of noticing with another person to guide them through the process (finding the right person, who you have a good rapport with, and who helps you to create such a space, is the key here). Or you can set up times with friends where you’ll each take turns to help the other person to talk through what’s going on for them, with a focus on noticing rather than trying to explain or solve the problem.

Sometimes what you notice when you are noticing is that the thoughts and feelings you’re having just shift and change by themselves; other times the noticing leads to more of a sense of the water settling and seeing things more clearly; sometimes all you notice is just how hard noticing is, and how you spend the whole time drifting off, or trying to analyse it, or wanting to stop. And if those things happen then they, in themselves, become something to notice.

Find out more

There’s more about how to do these practices in my zines on Staying With Feelings and Plural Selves.

The post Dealing with the tough stuff: The value of noticing appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

At this time of year it is easy to embark on quests for self-improvement: planning how to make the next year perfect, and attempting to ensure the success and happiness which may have eluded us in the past. An alternative approach is to think critically about the pressures that we put on ourselves, and are put under, at the turn of the year.

Perhaps, instead, we could aim at a more mindful approach to 2014. We could commit to gently noticing what the year brings and how we respond to it, rather than insisting on only good things and positive feelings. We could recognise the impermanence of everything that happens – triumphs and tragedies – and the ways in which both can spin our lives in unanticipated directions.

We could take a little time alone each day to sit and breathe, appreciating this unique story that is unfolding through our year.

You can read the full article here, and more on new year resolutions from me here.

The post A very mindful New Year appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

My own position on mental health is that we all struggle, sometimes, with experiences of fear, sadness, anger, loss, shame, etc. which make life very difficult. Perhaps one of the most challenging times is when everyone in a relationship is struggling at the same time.  That is what I will mostly focus on here.

I went to a very interesting workshop on this topic at the weekend which helped me to think through some of these issues. The workshop highlighted the fact that many people had shared experiences and had developed similar, very helpful, strategies for dealing with them. Of course I won’t write anything here about specific examples given because the workshop was confidential, but I do want to thank the other people there for helping me to clarify my ideas as well as for giving me the confidence to write this post.

Pressure to seem fine

The backdrop to why struggling is hard in relationships is the pressure that we are under to prove that our relationship is ‘fine’ at all times. People are often very fearful that if they admit that they have any difficulties, friends and others will say that it is the relationship that is at fault. Given that relationships are inevitably challenging, this can reinforce concerns that most of us have that perhaps there is a problem with our relationship.

For people in less conventional relationships, this issue may be exacerbated because any acknowledgement that things are not perfect could be taken, by others, as proof of what they always suspected: that this kind of relationship can’t work.

Such fears often mean that, when we are struggling, we don’t let anybody else in besides our partners. This can put strain on the relationship in multiple ways. We might feel that we are entirely responsible for our partners’ struggles (and for making them better) and that they are entirely responsible for us in return. Also, if everybody is presenting a perfect relationship and a struggle-free self to the world, then we can feel very alone knowing that we don’t really fit that.

Wanting to stop partners from struggling

One result of all this is that we can end up constantly monitoring our partners for any sign that they are starting to struggle, and then – if they do show signs – trying to cheer them up or prove that they are being irrational. This, of course, is rarely helpful and often makes it more, rather than less, likely that they will feel anxious, self-critical, or hopeless.

Perhaps part of this aim to stop partners from stuggling is the fear that we too will be drawn down into the suffering that they are experiencing. If we have had really difficult times ourselves in the past then this fear makes a lot of sense, but unfortunately the reaction to it (trying to stop anyone from feeling bad ever) is pretty unhelpful!

Instead of trying to prevent ourselves, and our partners, from ever struggling, we can try to acknowledge that we will all go through easier and harder times, and that it is okay to be sad, anxious or angry. Paradoxically, accepting such feelings often makes them less debilitating than if we layer extra difficult emotions on top of them (feeling sad about feeling sad, fearful about feeling angry, etc.) In relationships, one great thing we can offer our partners is acceptance that however they are feeling is acceptable and sensible given the situation they find themselves in.

Another part of this is recognising that just because a partner is feeling something, doesn’t mean that we have to feel it too. We might feel guilty if we are having a great time in life, whilst a partner is going through a difficult period. However, we are often of more use to them, and to ourselves, if we can hold both those things simultaneously (rather than trying to make them feel as good as us, or sinking down because they are struggling).

Different things work for different people at different times

What about those times when everyone in a relationship is having a hard time at the same time? Perhaps the most important answer is that different things work for different people at different times. For some people, at some times, it may be better to separate off and/or get support elsewhere, whilst others, at other times, find it good to get together for some mutual kindness.

An important part of this is recognising that, even in relationships where people have a lot in common, they might need quite different things when they are having a tough time. For example, some people long for physical contact whilst others find any kind of touch difficult. Some need to talk it all through till they feel better and some find words difficult. Some really want to be alone, whilst others find isolation incredibly hard at such times. And some like others to try to fix things whilst others just want to feel understood. Mutually respectful conversations about what different people find useful when things are difficult can be extremely useful, especially because it can be very hard to articulate these things in the moment when we are suffering.

Here are just a few ideas which might be helpful, and it can also be helpful to remember that all these options are available.

Stepping up

A great example that came up in the workshop, which I’ve experienced myself, was of spider phobia. I used to be somewhat scared of spiders myself, always asking somebody else to get rid of them. But I noticed that when I was with a partner who was very scared of spiders, I became much braver and actually rather enjoyed being the one to wield the glass and postcard.

Something similar often happens when more than one person is struggling. One person somehow realises that they do have a bit more strength or energy than they thought, and steps up to do some looking after, supporting, or problem-solving (whatever is necessary). It can be empowering to realise how much more we often have than we think we have, even when we’ve had a rough day or things are hard and we thought that we had nothing left.

The important caveat to this is that it can become problematic if it is always one person who becomes the ‘stepper upper’ in such situations. Getting stuck in roles (such as the emotional one and the rational one, or the victim and the rescuer) often leads to problems. So it is worth, when you are not struggling, having a conversation about how you might ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Getting space

When more than one person is struggling and the struggles seem to be spiralling everyone into even worse places, it can be a very good idea to recognise this and get some time apart. This can happen, for example, when everyone feels that the difficulties they are having right now are much bigger than those that the other person/people are having, and keeps trying to show how much more desperate a place they are in. It can also happen when needs are very incompatible at that time (e.g. one person wanting silence and one wanting to talk).

Again, it can be useful to have agreed plans for what will happen at such times (how to ask for time out, where to go, how to know when to approach each other again, etc.)

Support from outside

It is wonderful if there are people in your lives who recognise that acknowledging difficulties doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with you or with the relationship (often quite the opposite). If we can cultivate friendships like this then it can often be good to go to those people at times when people in the relationship don’t have much to offer each other because they are struggling so much. Often an outside perspective can be a breath of fresh air, and taking the weight off a partner can allow them time to get to a stronger place.

Again, it can be helpful to lift our sense of responsibility that we should always be in a position to be able to help our partners, and to recognise that we can’t always offer that, and that sometimes being alone, or with other people, might be more useful.

Kindness and calmness

When we are weathering storms together with partners (whether the same storm, or different ones), it can often be helpful to focus on very calm, kind activities rather than trying – for example – to fix everything or to carry on with our plans as normal. For example, we might retreat to bed, cuddle up in front of the television, read each other stories, or go out for a walk together somewhere that feels safe. It’s good to acknowledge that we don’t have much to offer and to think what we have got available, and what activities might be helpful all round. Making sure that we get the basics (food, rest, and some physical activity) can also be very important at such times.

When we are being kind and calm to each other we can often stop the tough stuff from spiralling any deeper and create the right conditions for a gradual improvement. Instead of flailing around desperately trying to fix things immediately, we can find some safety and comfort where we are now, remembering that things will inevitably lift, and will be more likely to do so if we don’t force it.

I hope that some of these ideas will be helpful, and that Mental Health Day enables all of us to reflect on how we are all able to contribute to each others’ mental health: We can add to others’ sense of pressure and alienation, or we can ameliorate it by being open about our own struggles and by offering what we have available.

The post Mental health and relationships appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Certainly it is extremely important to make support available when people are struggling. However, these news reports seem to miss something by regarding this purely as a health issue, and by focusing only upon treatment once mental health difficulties are present rather than also considering measures which may prevent such problems or increase resilience.

The fact that so many people suffer with issues such as depression and anxiety has implications far beyond the health service, and the focus on targeting funds only at treatment for existing mental health problems seems somewhat blinkered.

As a starting point, here is a list of other arenas which could usefully attend to statistics on mental health and shift policy and practice accordingly. In all of these areas a broader biopsychosocial understanding of the experience of mental health problems would be of value:

Education

Many of the negative patterns of thinking about, and treating, ourselves when we are struggling are laid down in childhood and adolescence, and experiences such as bullying, alienation, abuse or neglect in youth certainly increase our vulnerability. For this reason we could put more resources into addressing problematic school cultures and into cultivating the kinds of emotional and social skills that we know to be helpful during the early years of life. It seems strange that we wait until people are really suffering before teaching them how to understand, and work with, painful emotions and difficult relationships.

The workplace and employment

Viewing mental health as a purely internal personal matter neglects the role that the world around us has on whether or not we find ourselves struggling. Situations of workplace bullying or harassment, and toxic cultures where everyone is expected to work long hours or where employees are not valued, are certainly implicated in suffering and could be usefully addressed by awareness raising and increased resources.

Additionally, the perception of mental health difficulties could be usefully addressed on an organisational level. Destigmatising mental health problems such that employees are able to say when they are struggling could help a great deal, as could allowing everyone a few ‘stitch’ days a year when they take time out to look after themselves (after the phrase ‘a stitch in time saves nine’).

Finally, many find that some kind of employment – whether of a more or less conventional type – acts as a buffer against mental health problems in various ways. It can provide an income, give a structure and routine to the day, enable some form of contact with others, and ideally provide a sense of meaning and purpose. As a culture we seem to have swung from a situation of encouraging those who are struggling not to work (in ways which often increases their isolation and sense of being unable to do so), to one of forcing people who have become used to not working back into work. Resources could be usefully put into finding a more balanced and supportive approach.

Media

There could be greater recognition of the role of media in encouraging a certain way of viewing and treating ourselves, which many authors have linked to problems like anxiety and depression. Research consistently links limited beauty ideals to body image anxiety, but it goes further than that. Advertising, and much other media such as magazines and self-help books, often rely on encouraging people to think that there is something wrong with them that needs fixing (in order that they will buy a product). Makeover shows, reality TV, and popular contests like X-factor promote a limited idea of what it is to be a successful person, and arguably exacerbate a sense of failure among those who don’t meet the standard. The sense that we need to monitor ourselves and compare ourselves against others is opposite to the kind of compassionate and kind treatment that many regard as the key way of avoiding/combating problems like depression.

Wider culture

News articles often neglect to report the differences in rates of diagnosis of mental health problems. All of these suggest that those in more marginalised groups are more prone to such difficulties. Again, this suggests that access to individual counselling and therapy should not be the only approach to dealing with this problem. Attending to societal inequalities and injustices is vital, not just from a human rights perspective, but also from a mental health perspective.

The post Mental health: beyond a health focus appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

I’m about to start writing a chapter for my mindfulness book on depression so I’ve been mulling over what the experience of being depressed Is like, and what things help and hinder when we’re in that place. At the same time I’m becoming fascinated and concerned by the processes of conflict between people which seem to inevitably happen in all the academic and activist groups I’m part of. I’m wondering what might be done to maintain some kind of useful dialogue, rather than people convincing themselves that the other side is wrong and bad while they are right and good, and thus ceasing all engagement. Even as I see the problems in this approach I recognise the same tendency in myself.

As these two lines of thoughts unfurled themselves yesterday I found that they began to weave together into a similar set of ideas, so I decided to write a little about the patterns that I see in how we experience depression and conflict, and in how the experience can shift. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised that these ideas have come together: I deliberately started my book on relationships with a chapter on the self because of the connections that there are between how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to others.

Depression: Tuning out, turning in

When I reflect on being depressed the experience is one of being simultaneously tuned out, but turned in. What I mean by tuned out is that when we’re depressed many of us become terribly concerned with other people and the outside world. We monitor ourselves closely through the imagined gaze of others and judge what we think they are seeing very harshly. We become anxious about what others will see in us, and frightened that we will get it wrong somehow and be exposed in all our uselessness. Decisions become very difficult because we are so tuned out – trying to be okay for everyone else – that it is almost impossible to tune in to what we want and need ourselves. We might find ourselves busily rushing around trying to please everyone and not letting on how much we are struggling, or we might withdraw from contact as much as possible for fear of what others might see if we let them in close.

At the same time as being tuned out, we are also turned in. While we are hugely concerned with what other people think of us or how we are being seen out in the world, we don’t really see or hear the people around us because we are so turned in and focused on our own struggles. We often spend a great deal of time in internal conversations with ourselves about whether something is wrong with us, what it is, and how we might fix it. We view other people in terms of their danger to us (‘they might see me as I really am!’), or the possibility that they might be able to help (‘maybe they have the answer’), but it is hard for us to make the shift that is necessary to understand how they are feeling and what is going on for them. Often we assume that we are the only person who is this bad and full of problems, and we are so fixated on not showing other people that this is the case, or apologising to them for our perceived wrong-doing, that there is no space available to turn towards their experience and let go of all of our own stuff for a moment.

Depression: Turning out, tuning in

When I think about the moments of relief when that heavy tangled weight of depression has lifted, they are often moments when I have managed to ‘turn out’ in spite of all this. Perhaps somebody else’s pain has pierced my bubble, or in professional mode (as a tutor or counsellor) I’ve had to put my stuff down and turn towards another person to hear about their struggles, or I have remembered how this worked and deliberately reached out to somebody else and asked how they are doing. Sometimes the relief just takes the form of sitting on a train or walking down the street and suddenly opening up to the fact that all the people that I see have their own fears and desires, tragedies and triumphs, which are just as precious and concerning to them as mine are to me.

This turning out works on several levels. On a very basic level listening to somebody else, or imagining their world, means that our mind is occupied with something else for a moment and we have a brief relief from the clatter of noisy and critical thoughts that has been exhausting us. Then there is the way that helping somebody else (anything from flashing a kindly smile through to giving them a supportive shoulder to lean on) can leave us feeling better about ourselves: we do have something to offer after all. Perhaps most fundamentally though is the sense of connection to others which is an antidote to the sense of isolation and alienation that is a major element of depression for so many of us. If people let us in through opening up to us, or just reveal their pain on their faces, we might realise that they struggle too, often in similar ways to ourselves. We realise that they are also scrutinising themselves constantly with a stream of critical comments running through their heads. We are no longer alone. In fact that pain is the very thing that links us to everybody else.

Related to this it is often the case that in finding compassion for another person we become able to find a little of the compassion that we need for ourselves. This is an important part of what I’m calling tuning in. Instead of only being attuned to what other people think of us (whether we are normal or abnormal in society’s view, whether or not this person approves of us, etc.) we can tune into our own feelings and experiences. By turning out and really seeing and hearing the other people around us we might realise that they aren’t really that concerned with us because they are so busy worrying about themselves. Or, if they are judging us and disapproving of us, we might realise that they are doing this out of their own pain and anxieties rather than because they are seeing any true flaw in us. For example, it might be that putting us down gives them a brief reassurance that they are okay, when they secretly fear that they are not. Even if there is an element of truth in any criticisms they are making of us, we can manage to hear it and bear it because we are no longer trying to present an unreal perfect image to the world. We are turned out enough to be able to appreciate our impact on other people, and tuned in enough to own up to such things without thinking that it means that we are a terrible person in total.

When we are depressed, or otherwise suffering, it doesn’t really matter whether we start by turning out or tuning in. Either one begins to make the other easier. So it might be that we deliberately try to empathise with other people or imagine what they are going through, and that gives us the space to find a bit more compassion for ourselves. Or we might start by tuning in to ourselves – sitting with however we are feeling without judging it or criticising it – and that might enable us to open up and see the other people around us.

Conflict: Tuning out, turning in

How are similar processes involved in conflict situations? It seems to me that often when a conflict bubbles up our reflex response is to tune out but turn in. We focus entirely upon the badness and wrongness of whatever has been done to us (tuning out), while our concern with the pain and suffering that the other person has caused in us means that we turn in on ourselves and find it almost impossible to hear where the other person is actually coming from (turning in).

This pattern is what leads to the escalation of conflict. Often both people or groups regard themselves as the wronged parties (tuned out) and both are so concerned with the suffering that this has caused to them that they can’t find any empathy for the others involved (turned in). Under those circumstances each thing that one person or group does is interpreted as a slight by the other, who then try to express their pain and anger at what has been done to them which is read as an overreaction and unreasonable response by the original person or group who then responds defensively. We are all prickly and hyper-aware of everything that the other person says and does (tuned out), at the same time as being defensive and protective of the sore spots in ourselves that the other person is (often inadvertently) bashing up against (turned in). This means that we tend to interpret what ‘they’ do in narrow and simple ways, often assuming that they are acting out of malice or personal defects while we are very aware of all of the complexities of the situation that have led us to act in the ways in which we have.

In some ways conflict is the opposite of depression because we are hard on the other person and see them in limited ways, while being much more understanding of ourselves (whereas in depression we are much more forgiving of others than we are of ourselves). However, these kinds of conflicts and depressions often have the same thing at their root: Our secret vulnerabilities and shames which we are afraid might be exposed. In both cases we are hyper aware of others who might be seeing these things (tuning out) and defending against the possibility that they will reveal something we fear is there (turned in). But in depression we defend by withdrawing and separating ourselves off, whereas in conflict we defend by lashing out and trying to make our pain all somebody else’s fault.

Conflict: Turning out, tuning in

It follows that we can also shift conflict situations in the same ways that we shift depression. We can attempt to turn out and/or to tune in. Again it doesn’t really matter which one we shift first, it will probably make shifting the other one easier as well.

For example, we might start by tuning in. Instead of allowing ourselves to react in a knee-jerk defensive way to the other person or group, we might sit down on our own for a while with the aim of listening compassionately to ourselves: Why it is that whatever is happening has hurt us so much? Each time we start trying to list whatever the other person did wrong and why they are so bad we can gently bring ourselves back to tuning into ourselves instead: What are we feeling? What does it remind us of from other times in our lives? Which of the vulnerabilities that we know that we have have been triggered by this situation?

Alternatively we might start by turning out. We might recognise how we are limiting the other person or group by imagining them as just stupid, bad, crazy or malicious, and start trying to open up to the fullness of what they are and really trying to listen to where they are coming from. We may remind ourselves of the complex and multiple reasons that have led to us responding in the way that we have, and try to assume that the same will be true of the other ‘side’ of the conflict. In Rewriting the Rules I suggest we might turn our common accusation ‘how could you do that!’ into a genuine and curious question ‘how could you do that?’ This might involve us on our own imagining all of the different reasons why the other person or group might have done what they did (given what we know about them if they are somebody we know, or just what we know about people). Alternatively, or after this, it might involve us sitting down with them with the intention of really listening to where they are coming from and trying to create a situation where they feel safer to tell us this.

The combination of turning out and tuning in will hopefully mean that during such conversations we can be more aware of what is triggered for us, so that we can respond to the situation itself rather than bringing in all our previous baggage. Tuning in also means treating ourselves kindly so we are less likely to take everything else somebody throws at us. If they are still in conflict mode then we can hear the pain behind their words, while not remaining in situations that are hurting us or taking on board criticisms that are unfair. This may involve, for example, insisting on more time apart before trying to communicate, or asking somebody else to mediate.

Conclusions

Of course every depression and conflict are unique to the people involved in various ways, and I will not have captured here all the different things that they can mean to different people at different times.

With depression there are aspects of the social situations which are involved that mean that another important element is turning out towards wider society and the ways in which it encourages that self-monitoring, critical, way of being with ourselves. I’ve written more about that here and here.

With conflict there are some important things to tease out about how we deal with very real power imbalances, oppressions, and privileges which are often in play. In my view the compassionate approach makes it more, rather than less, likely that people will be able to own up to these things and speak openly about their impact, but I also understand the fear that compassion and empathy for others could smooth over such things and lead to an acceptance of abusive and problematic situations. I write more about those tensions here and here.

I hope that the idea of shifting from tuning out and turning in to turning out and tuning in is a helpful one for thinking through your own experiences of depression and conflict, and I’d be very interested to hear other people’s reflections.

Find out more…

There’s more about how to tune in in my Staying with Feelings zine, and this post about noticing.

There’s more about depression and conflict in relationships here, here, and here.

You can find out more suggestions for practical ways of turning out and tuning in in the Rewriting the Rules chapters on self (in relation to depression) and conflict (in relation to conflict), and in my Social Mindfulness and Self-Care zines.

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The focus on lesbian, bisexual and queer women is appropriate because both women, and lesbian, bisexual and queer people, are particularly highly diagnosed with mental health problems such as depression and anxiety (when compared with men, on the one hand, and heterosexual people on the other). They also self-report higher levels of distress and lower levels of happiness and well-being than other groups.

My brief presentation at the event focused on the social aspects of such suffering. Women’s experiences of depression have been linked, for example, to the ways in which women are socially expected to demonstrate distress (sadness and fear, rather than anger), and to aspects of conventional femininity such as having identities which are strongly bound up with other people’s well-being and feeling a lack of agency over their own lives. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people have higher rates of such problems because of the challenges of living within a heteronormative world and related experiences of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. Recent research has found that rates of depression, self-harm and suicide are particularly high amongst bisexual and queer people, which is likely linked to their lack of visibility in wider culture. It is difficult indeed to have one’s identity questioned, ridiculed, and/or disregarded by heterosexual and lesbian and gay communities alike.

Suffering is often exacerbated when distress which has such a strong social component is regarded as being something which is internal to the individual themselves. Currently there is a powerful cultural tendency to see all distress as being internally caused. Many people believe that when they are depressed or anxious there are only two possible ways of understanding this: Either they are ill, and they need help, but at least this means that it is not their fault. Or they are not ill, and therefore don’t need help, but this means that they are to blame for their own suffering (the ‘pull your socks up’ attitude). Both of these understandings are internal: either there is something physically wrong, or there is some kind of personal deficiency on the part of the individual. Such understandings can prevent us from seeing – and addressing – any social element to our suffering. They also catch us in a double bind whereby we have to accept that there is something wrong with us or that we are blameworthy, neither of which is a great outcome. Also, either understanding continues to haunt the other even if we dismiss it. If we accept that we are ill we often worry that somebody will discover that we are not really ill and will be ‘found out’ for faking in some way. If we accept that it is up to us to deal with our problems we often fear that there might really be something wrong with us and that that will be exposed.

An alternative to this internal perspective is to see all forms of human distress as complexly biopsychosocial. Of course there are some physical vulnerabilities which we have to experience distress in certain ways, and social experiences like being the victim of prejudice write themselves on our psychology and biology in various ways (affecting brain chemistry, thought patterns, and the way neurons wire up, for example). However, our biology is intrinsically interwoven with the ways in which we experience the world, and the ways in which it treats us. The statistics on mental health problems in women and LGBT people alert us to just how important these social aspects can be, and may leave us asking whether ‘depression’ or ‘oppression’ is the more useful word to apply. Opening up the possible role of social forces also opens up potential for other ways of addressing struggles than the common individual modes of drugs or therapy. Both community involvement and activism because important possibilities to consider.

This finally leads us to the H-word and why I find it somewhat troubling. We hear a lot at the moment about the importance of individuals achieving happiness through positive psychology. However, there is a real danger that this throws us back into an internal understanding of such things: ‘Everyone should be happy and here are some techniques you can use to achieve it. If you can’t achieve it then there is something wrong with you’.

In her book, The Promise of Happiness, Sara Ahmed talks about the ways in which happiness may be more available to some rather than others (often those who can more easily conform to the ‘norm’). She suggests that we require ‘feminist killjoys’ and ‘unhappy queers’ if we are to reach a more equal society where pleasure isn’t always found at the expense of others or by conforming to problematic power hierarchies.

There is a related idea in the mindfulness approach which I find useful. Buddhists believe that it is actually the craving for happiness which is the cause of suffering. Our consumer culture constantly tells us what we need to be happy (more money, fame and success, the perfect partner, the ideal body, the product they are selling etc.). As Sara Ahmed points out, such things are more accessible to some than others, but even for those who can get them they are never enough. Mindfulness advocates an alternative approach of bringing our attention to the here-and-now, rather than constantly striving after whatever we think we need to be happy. It also advocates being with whatever emotions we’re experiencing rather than privileging one (happiness) over all others.

I was interested that the H-word event description talked about finding ‘happier, more meaningful lives’ as if these two things necessarily go together. From another perspective we might regard constantly grasping after happiness as the very thing which will prevent us from achieving it. It might be that in order to have a meaningful life we need to let go of the quest for happiness. If we turn our focus to welcoming all emotional states and what they have to tell us, and to compassionately seeking to improve society through mutual support, perhaps we may find that happiness sneaks up on us after all.

Find out more:

There are more blog posts by me on happiness here and here.

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