How to Be Alive Now

June 3, 2024 by

Humans need connection and protection to thrive but, given either or both may be unavailable, I hypothesize that the central adult human task is to gain the perspective, approach, and skills to be able to, within oneself – with self-kindness, without self-judgment, and without the external support of others or from one’s environment – feel all, think all, experience all, function, assess, pause or initiate, all at once, no matter how many burdens one has, how small or large they may be, or how fast new ones keep coming, no matter how vulnerable, uncertain, impaired, hurt, or threatened one is or feels, no matter who is present or missing, no matter what is happening, no matter what has happened, no matter what is to come.

Awareness

In sum, the end in mind is to gain enough awareness and skill to be able to care for the self as fully as possible through handling reality realistically.

This is no easy task.

What do my reviews of research literature and my education, training, and professional and personal experience suggest can support acquiring and deepening one’s skill with becoming and staying aware?

Self-kindness. Self-care. Beginning with the end in mind. A schedule. Practicing skills during slow times so they are readily available during challenging times.  Acknowledging intensity. Easing or elevating one’s inner state to a stable range. If not in danger, pausing. Differentiating between possibilities (a range of equally likely outcomes) and probabilities (the likelihood of this outcome occurring over that one). Becoming aware of, and jettisoning, legacy beliefs that no longer serve. Acknowledging that opposites can both be true. Adjusting. Appreciating. Catching judgment and replacing it with compassion. Looking at money. Learning a new skill. Creating something. Gaining basic knowledge of how the human heart, mind, and brain work. Gaining knowledge of effective relating with self and others. Self-kindness.

The human brain can be counted on to help. It has evolved to recover stability – to be resilient – and to be altruistic. Extrapolating from there, restoration through self-kindness is likely.

I think these times call for nearly heroic bravery, awareness, attention, determination, and inventiveness.

“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.”
– Rumi
(Scottish Poetry Library translation from the original Persian and Arabic.)

Of possible interest:

Illustration by Derek Zheng for Chapter 7 of Twig: 枝丫 by Anne Giles.

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Filed Under: Guide

Freeing Oneself from the Just-World Hypothesis

June 2, 2024 by

According to the just-world hypothesis, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. This thinking implies that people get what they deserve. If good things happen, people are acknowledged for their efforts. If bad things happen, people are to blame for incorrect or inadequate efforts.

Restoring a sense of inner stability through soothing sensory experience

Challenges arise when good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. When reality interferes with a belief, people have to change their thinking to fit reality or tell a story about reality to fit the belief. The human brain has evolved to perceive reality the best that it can. When stories don’t fit reality, distress results.

People who have experienced hardship, adversity, and trauma can be troubled by the just-world hypothesis. In general, humans do the best they can at the time with what they know. When something terrible happens and the person was doing the best they could, the just-world hypothesis mandates that the person must conclude that what happened is in some way their fault, they deserve it, and are to blame for it.

About the future, people can start feeling helpless, powerless, and hopeless. If their best efforts resulted in that occurrence, what else might happen?! Both trying to control the future and giving up on trying to control the future are logical when one believes one causes what happens.

The just-world hypothesis can also lead to thoughts such as, “This can’t be happening,” “This shouldn’t be happening,” “Things shouldn’t be this way,” ”People shouldn’t be that way,” “I shouldn’t have to experience this,” and “I shouldn’t be this way.” To try to feel better from righting “wrongs,” people can strive to change the unchangeable, i.e. people and things as they are, and reality as it is.

On the one hand, believing one causes what happens gives one a sense of power, control, predictability, order, and hope.

“I can fix this! If I just think hard enough and figure out what to do and work hard enough, I can make this better!” Or, “If I just withdraw and hold still and don’t go out, I can protect myself from anything else bad happening!”

If one’s own efforts help in some way, this is reinforced and the person persists effortfully, even though they are likely to experience diminishing returns because people, situations, and reality as a whole are complex and one person has little chance of affecting any of it.

Self-criticism, self-judgment, self-reprimand, while painful, still result from holding on to the just-world hypothesis. If I hold onto the belief that I can have an impact on what happened to me, in the meantime, I must also hold onto the belief that I am to blame.

Under siege from self-blame, on high alert to execute plans and/or stay protected, and to sense signs of new threats. a state of alarm reigns. In this state of fiery activation and sensitivity, new hurts – smaller in magnitude than the older, harder hits – feel like the beginning of a wildfire in which everyone and everything will be lost.

People can tolerate the pain of carrying the just-world hypothesis only so long. I hypothesize that one of the signature, diagnostic traits of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – avoidance – is mercy. People might drink alcohol, smoke pot or eat gummies, binge watch TV, play video games, watch porn, shop online, eat, do anything, anything to mercifully give themselves a break from the fire or the threat of it.

On the other hand, the data is in. A person’s best efforts didn’t protect themselves or loved ones from harm. No amount of goodness or retreat can keep reality from happening.

I think one of the most excruciating, sorrowful moments in adulthood is realizing that we are not causal. Freedom from the hegemony of the just-world hypothesis is bittersweet.  If we didn’t make bad things happen, we can’t make good things happen, either. Both are true.

It can feel heartbreaking to release the illusion that one’s birthright, one’s family’s standing, one’s morals, ethics, efforts, and achievements, all have such little power. The existential world view change required by this realization is massive.

Therapeutically, what might be helpful?

– With gentle self-kindness and the deepest compassion and humanity, see reality as it is.

– Become aware of feelings, thoughts, and sensory experience, data the human brain has evolved to assess in order to survive and thrive.

– Ask, “What are the facts?” and derive next steps based on facts.

– Restore one’s inner system to stability. Discover what individually and internally eases one’s inner system and do those. Meticulously find ways that are not avoidance strategies. Distraction is the opposite of attention. Attention is consciously chosen and given. Avoidance strategies may not have to be jettisoned, but they need to be absent from the inner system restoration effort.

– Acknowledge the human condition. Individual humans are subject to the human condition. This includes birth, death, and the vastness of possibilities in between.

Important. Thinking, “It could have been worse,” is based on a cognitive distortion. How? The human brain has not evolved to predict the future. What happened might have been worse, it might have been better, and it might have been no different. We can’t know. Believing one can know returns a person to self-causality, self-blame, and an incorrect assessment of the complexity of reality.

Further, in the universe of one person’s interiority, there is nothing worse than what happened. The person’s experience is true. Saying “It could have been worse” to people who have experienced hardship minimizes and invalidates their feelings, thoughts, and experiences and, in my view, is cruel.

– Gently acknowledge the context of the human condition. Try to find words for being part of the whole. Perhaps some version of this acknowledgement might fit one’s heart, mind, experiences, and perspective:

“In the 300,000 years of human history, among the 100 billion people estimated to have ever lived, what happened to me – or some form of it – happened to someone else. How excruciating, terrifying, and horrifying! How anguishing! How profoundly unfortunate this happened to me! And to others! How hard the human condition is! How brutal people and the world can be! And yet. I did not uniquely cause what happened to me. I was not singled out by the universe. My story is part of the human story. How my heart weeps for me and for all of us!”

– Know that the human brain is at its highest state of evolution. This is the best human brain that has ever been.

– Count on resilience and altruism. The concepts of “goodness” and “hope” are beliefs, not facts. However, although the human brain is incomprehensibly complex and diverse and difficult about which to make generalizations, current research reports that, in general, two things can be counted on in the human brain: a) to recover stability – to be resilient – and b) to be altruistic. Those sound pretty close to “hope” and “goodness” to me.

– Become aware of your values and priorities.

– Become aware of what you perceive is within your power to do.

– Do what you can.

In sum, with self-kindness and inner ease, powered by your values, directed by your priorities, with your resilient, altruistic brain, do what you can.

. . . . .

This post is informed by cognitive processing therapy, an evidence-based, therapy protocol for post-traumatic stress disorder, and by the brave, heroic people who have shared their stories of hardship with me.

I also want to acknowledge the bravery of the founders of cognitive processing therapy. In the second edition of Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD: A Comprehensive Therapist Manual, released April 23, 2024, in Handout 11.1b, page 176, the authors address loss and trauma from mass shootings.

Holding the just-world hypothesis can result in self-blame, victim-blaming, and other-blame. For further exploration, consider these articles from Verywell Mind, Psychology Today, and Wikipedia.

The just-work hypothesis is considered a logical fallacy or a cognitive distortion. Of possible further interest:

Illustration by Derek Zheng for Chapter 3 of Twig: 枝丫 by Anne Giles.

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Filed Under: Guide, Trauma

Reality Is Complex

November 20, 2023 by

Reality is complex.

Reality is complex.

The reality of a person’s interiority – feelings, thoughts, sensations, personal history, culture and more – is also complex.

In the image accompanying this post – inspired by work by Ben Farrell – I imagine the spheres as factors of varying degrees of magnitude, operating multi-directionally and dynamically in space, influencing the entire system.

More specifically:

  1. Large spheres can be used to envision the magnitude of the impact of some factors on the entire system.
  2. Small spheres can be used to envision the impact of one small, conscious effort – or unconscious action – on the entire system.
  3. The size of spheres can be changed.
  4. Lines may represent many concepts. They are bidirectional.
  5. Use of any one factor may be necessary – but may not be sufficient –  to change the system. Engaging with multiple factors at varying magnitudes may be needed to change the quality of one’s inner experience and impact one’s outward actions.

For mental health purposes, spheres in the image might be visualized as:

Strengths. A person’s strengths, values, and priorities have power to impact the entire system in small and profound ways.

Skills. Three of the most powerful awareness skills people can use to assist themselves with mental health challenges are self-care, emotion regulation, and attention control. Skills can be used anywhere within a complex system to influence how it works.

Challenges.  Three of the top reasons people seek counseling are for help with feelings or states of anxiety and/or depression, task completion, and problematic behaviors. Acknowledging the existence of challenges within a system offers opportunities to derive strategies to address them.

Situations. People seek counseling for help with myriad situations, from relationship challenges, family conflicts, and work and school issues, to traumatic experiences and loss of loved ones. Seeing the situation as occurring within a complex system can be helpful on many levels.

Thoughts. The beautiful human brain is a thought-generating machine. Unless a person is experiencing genuine threat, most feelings result from thoughts. Central to a sense of well-being is the ability to decide which thoughts that arise will receive one’s attention. The most powerfully helpful and unhelpful thoughts can be identified within the system and addressed skillfully.

Application

I hypothesize that people can gain awareness of the complexity of reality as it is – to the best of their ability to perceive it – then use “awareness skills” to, nearly on-demand, engage in emotion regulation, attention direction, and thought management. In turn, they can engage in life based on their values and priorities, recover from hardships inherent to the human condition, and ameliorate problematic patterns of feeling, thinking, behaving, working, and relating.

Image inspired by, and adapted from, work by Ben Farrell.

Thinking inspired by the systems thinking of my father, Robert H. Giles, Jr.

Last updated 2/25/2024

This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical or professional advice. Consult a qualified health care professional for personalized medical and professional advice.

Filed Under: Guide

Begin and End with Self-Kindness

November 5, 2023 by

I hypothesize that the extent to which people can gain awareness skills – with “awareness skills” defined as the ability to, nearly on-demand, engage in emotion regulation, attention direction, and thought management – is the extent to which they can engage in life based on their values and priorities, recover from hardships inherent to the human condition, and gain mastery of problematic patterns of feeling, thinking, behaving, working, and relating.

Although avoidance and distraction logically may provide a short-term break from uncertainty, boredom, or distress, the reality of one’s interiority and the reality of the outside world are present and require addressing. With awareness, addressing reality can be done humanely and strategically.

Self-kindness

What do my reviews of research literature and my education, training, and professional and personal experience suggest can support acquiring and deepening awareness skills?

Self-kindness. Self-care. Beginning with the end in mind. A schedule. Practicing skills during slow times so they are readily available during challenging times.  Acknowledging intensity. If not in danger, pausing. Differentiating between possibilities (a range of equally likely outcomes) and probabilities (the likelihood of this outcome occurring over that one). Acknowledging that opposites can both be true. Adjusting. Appreciating. Catching judgment and replacing it with compassion. Learning a new skill. Gaining basic knowledge of how the human heart, mind, and brain work. Gaining knowledge of effective relating with self and others. Self-kindness.

I will add that, in my nearly 65 years on the planet, I have not experienced a time that called for a greater measure of a trait currently difficult to measure by science: courage.

Beginning in childhood, I was keenly aware of my great-grandparents’, grandparents’, and parents’ thinking about life and how to live it well. Of this list of eight events considered by a panel of historians to be the most stressful in U.S. history, my family members or I lived through six of them. I was a history major as an undergraduate. I have studied all national and word events mentioned in the article. I deem my views informed.

I think these times call for nearly heroic bravery, attention, determination, and inventiveness. I would have wished stable times for all of us to explore our strengths and create along the way. Written languages, themselves, were created during stable times! Certainly, possibilities still exist. But I posit that, today, cultivating a quiet, inner fortitude – perhaps unnoticed and unappreciated by others – may need to be the ultimate act of self-kindness.

. . . . .

“Self-care in this sense is an exceedingly radical idea.”
– Daniel Schreiber, Alone: Reflections on Solitary Living (p. 101). August 1, 2023. Reaktion Books. Kindle Edition.

Image: Stolk, iStock

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Filed Under: Guide

Revisiting Mindfulness in Challenging Times

August 15, 2023 by

In 2017, I watched in horror as my father began to suffer from dementia. To attempt to ease my way, I turned to Headspace.  The app had limited content at the time and I completed most of the programs by 2018.

A home pull-up bar failed on August 6, 2022, and my head struck a tile floor. Months later, continuing to experience post-concussion symptoms, I began to work my way through evidence-informed protocols that might provide relief. Mindfulness meditation is one of the recommendations so I returned to use of Headspace.

 

Caveat #1: Some forms of mindfulness meditation, because they are assigned or prolonged or other factors, may be experienced as force, invoke a sense of helplessness, reactivate or exacerbate trauma symptoms, or have other negative effects. Consult a qualified health care professional before engaging in meditation, mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness practices.

Caveat #2: There is no right way to meditate or to practice mindfulness. Awareness can occur in any place, with arms, legs, or body in any position, whether eyes are closed, half-opened, or wide open. One may be seated in an upright position or hanging from a professionally-installed, outdoor pull-up bar. Discovering what helps a person become aware is, in itself, a part of becoming gently, openly aware of one’s own interiority.

I have no affiliations with Headspace or other resources mentioned on this page. These are my disclosures.

Why Headspace?

Logistics

  1. Emotion dysregulation is a primary mechanism by which much human suffering occurs. Mindfulness skills directly offer the opportunity to regulate alarm, distress, and stress and to ease one’s inner experience and physical discomfort. With one set of skills, a person may be able to address multiple challenges.
  2. Unless under real duress, troubling feelings – such as feeling depressed or anxious – are usually caused by dire thoughts. Becoming aware of one’s thoughts offers the opportunity to gently help oneself with them.
  3. Mindfulness-informed interventions are increasingly showing improved health outcomes for people experiencing physical and mental challenges.*
  4. Use of Headspace is empirically supported. Headspace is currently the most researched** meditation and mindfulness app. Fourteen clinical trials support its efficacy.
  5. The content is sound. I have meticulously schooled myself in research-backed therapy protocols. Although Headspace’s current library of content is vast and I have not listened to all of it, what I hear a) is in accord with cognitive theory-based protocols that have proven track records to improve mental health outcomes, b) offers spacious options rather than “you should” directives, c) is kind.
  6. When I need support, encouragement, and guidance at times when others aren’t available, the Headspace app is open 24-7. (Mobile apps for mental health is an idea I have been working on since 2013.)

Helpfulness

The primary reason people seek counseling is to feel better and do better. The primary mechanism by which people can feel better and do better is to become aware of what they’re feeling and thinking, what and how they’re thinking about what’s happening – reality as it is – and to help themselves with that. For initiating and practicing this process, Headspace offers guidance, support, and reinforcement.

Given current levels of despair, the large percentage of Americans who report feeling lonely on a regular basis, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression, and my own challenges, I began with these Headspace courses: Basics, Grief, and Managing Anxiety.

Why not other apps?

Popularity does not ensure safety or effectiveness. Marketing, influencer testimonials, or word-of-mouth referrals do not equal rigorous testing to determine if a method works for most people, most of the time, better than other things, and better than nothing at all. Do no harm to self or others is the prime directive with self-administered or other-administered care.  Quackery exists and can be popularized, even by people with the best of intentions. I wish for top tier, research-backed, gold standard care for my one precious life. On all aspects of my health, I do literature reviews of research and consult credentialed, authoritative experts.

Recommended use of Headspace for clients

I recommend beginning with these courses, in order:

Basics > Basics 2 > Basics 3 > Managing Anxiety

Each course is 10 sessions. Each session is 11 minutes and 30 seconds long. In Basics 3, approximately session 5, individual awareness skills taught in the first sessions start weaving together in a way that reveals possibilities for the method’s broad use.

Daily completion of  the sequence of Basics, Basics 2, and Basics 3 will result in a 30-day streak. If you need documentation of this streak, I recommend taking a screenshot of this data from your profile page.

The navigation to find courses is:

Dashboard > Explore > Meditate > Courses and Singles > Courses A-Z > Scroll through the list of alphabetized content to find Basics, Managing Anxiety, and other courses.

Favoriting courses with a heart icon makes the selected list available by clicking the empty heart icon on the dashboard.

After completing the daily course, you are invited to explore other content. Using the search feature with words describing feelings, thoughts, and situations can reveal options. Using the search term “expert guidance” reveals a list of 1-minute instructional videos that are very helpful.

I recommend listening to Andy Puddicombe read The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness. Puddicombe did a wonderful 10-minute TED Talk in 2012: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes.

. . . . .

I have existential awareness of the complexity of the human condition. I have had my share of hardships. I neither minimize nor maximize my experiences, nor compare my experiences to those of others. I do, however, wish for a full, on-going sense of well-being.

This is part of the reason I have returned to using Headspace as part of my daily, self-care practices. My thoughts can be drawn longingly to what’s gone, what can’t be changed. or what might be ahead. This activates the emotion centers of my brain, often flooding my inner experience with alarm, distress, or the blues. Headspace helps coach me, then helps me practice shifting my attention from specific thoughts to spacious, broad consciousness. This returns me to use of, in synergy, my beautiful human brain’s emotion and cognitive centers. I can use my inner wisdom, skills, and creativity to help myself.

To gather case study data about my experience, I took several assessments prior to beginning use of Headspace, including the Flourishing Measure. I experienced positive change in all measures.

My experience with Headspace corroborates research findings: I feel better and do better.

. . . . .

*This is a brilliant definition of, and overview of, the research on mindfulness up to 2017. It expresses and summarizes beautifully my thinking on mindfulness – first exposure and experience in 2000. It offers sections of plain language for the layperson and more in-depth clinical exploration.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), is an evidence-based protocol backed by decades of research, including brain imaging studies (2021), to assist with “Acting with awareness, Non-judgment, and Non-reactivity” (2022), improvements in stress, self-compassion, and social connectedness (2020), anxiety disorders (2023), post-traumatic stress disorder (2018), reduction in levels of anxiety, depression and stress (2022) – although results for depression are mixed (2022) – high-stress jobs such as nursing (2021) and teaching (2021), improving sleep quality in nurses (2021) and cancer survivors (2021), and with physical conditions such as boosting innate immunocompetence (2022), type 2 diabetes (2022), asthma (2022), cholesterol levels (2022), and hypertension (2021).

Loving-kindness meditation may be helpful with post-traumatic stress symptoms, including depression (2021).

**Excerpts from selected research articles that test Headspace, from earliest to latest:

“This trial suggests that short guided mindfulness meditations delivered via smartphone and practiced multiple times per week can improve outcomes related to work stress and well-being, with potentially lasting effects.”
– Bostock S, Crosswell AD, Prather AA, Steptoe A. Mindfulness on-the-go: Effects of a mindfulness meditation app on work stress and well-being. J Occup Health Psychol. 2019 Feb;24(1):127-138. doi: 10.1037/ocp0000118. Epub 2018 May 3. PMID: 29723001; PMCID: PMC6215525.

“Mindfulness meditation uniformly and independently improved the participants’ overall mental health.”
– Zollars I, Poirier TI, Pailden J. Effects of mindfulness meditation on mindfulness, mental well-being, and perceived stress. Curr Pharm Teach Learn. 2019 Oct;11(10):1022-1028. doi: 10.1016/j.cptl.2019.06.005. Epub 2019 Aug 7. PMID: 31685171.

“Results showed significant reductions (P<.01) in depression (Z=-3.36), anxiety (Z=-3.07), and stress (Z=-3.46) scores, representing reductions of 32%, 32%, and 47%.”
– Foley T, Lanzillotta-Rangeley J. Stress Reduction Through Mindfulness Meditation in Student Registered Nurse Anesthetists. AANA J. 2021 Aug;89(4):284-289. PMID: 34342565.

Of possible interest

Revisiting Values and Priorities in Challenging Times

Image: iStock

Last updated 11/16/2023

All content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Consult a qualified professional for personalized medical, health care, and professional advice.

Filed Under: Guide, Self-Care
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