A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

I often say that there are two things in life that we can count on besides death and taxes and that’s stress and pain. With that said, it’s my pleasure to bring to you Christy Matta, MA. Christy has over 15 years experience in the mental health field, is author of the recently released book The Stress Response: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Free You from Needless Anxiety, Worry, Anger, and Other Symptoms of Stress, founder of the blog Dialectal Behavior Therapy Misunderstood and contributor for the Huffington Post and MentalHelp.Net.

Today, Christy talks to us about what Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is, how it can help with your stress right now and some advice for those of us who are struggling.

Elisha: Can you give us a brief synopsis of what Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT) is and how it relates to stress?

Christy: Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) grew out of the work of Marsha Linehan, Ph.D.  Linehan is a cognitive behavioral psychologist by training and developed the theory while working primarily with women who had extreme emotional reactions and who tended to be impulsive and engage in risky or harmful behaviors.

Over time DBT strategies evolved to focus on helping people identify and change problematic thoughts, understand their own emotional reactions and the difficulties inherent in the process of change and to teach practical strategies to deal with crisis, calm and center yourself, relate to others in a positive way that gets your needs met and reduce extreme and painful emotions. DBT’s effectiveness in helping people temper extreme emotions and reduce unhealthy and risky behaviors makes it an attractive treatment, especially for people who struggle with high levels of stress and overwhelming emotion.

Elisha: You mention in your book that there are costs and benefits to Radical Acceptance. Can you explain what that term means and some of the costs and benefits?

Christy: Radical Acceptance, a DBT skill, involves facing reality rather than rejecting and judging it. Some think that acceptance is a state that simply comes—with time, patience, or understanding. This misconception can leave you feeling out of control.

Radical Acceptance involves making a choice to accept yourself and the current situation, even if you wish you or the situation were different.  It may mean acknowledging a health problem that you’d like to avoid, accepting that an adult child has made life choices with which you disagree or admitting that you’re disappointed in yourself.  Acceptance doesn’t mean that you like the circumstances or even that they are okay.  It’s simply acknowledging to yourself the reality of the situation.

Stressful and painful situations happen to all of us. When we fight, avoid, procrastinate, or try to fix something that we have no control over, we usually do so because the situation is scary or it means we are losing something important.  The costs of acceptance are often that we have to experience painful emotions, such as disappointment, fear or shame.

However, by acknowledging our circumstances and accepting them and our own emotions and behaviors, we are able to deal with them as they are and find solutions.  Sometimes the process is painful, but acceptance allows us to get through difficult times, solve problems and move on.

Elisha: What are some key practices that readers can take away right now to start enhancing their Stress Response?

Christy: When you are stressed, it can be helpful to first get your body into a more calm and relaxed state, which will have a calming effect on your emotions and thoughts.  A focus on breathing is an important part of treatment for stress, panic, and anxiety.

One strategy I suggest is called Balloon Breath.  You begin by imagining your lungs as a balloon. Slowly inhale and as you do, imagine that your lungs are filling like a balloon. Then exhale slowly, keeping the image of the balloon in mind and try to push all the air out.  Continue for ten to twenty breaths (if you start feeling tired or dizzy while practicing, stop and return to normal breathing).

Sometimes symptoms of stress come from the energy that is released during an acute stress response.  If you’re sitting behind a desk or are in a car and feeling stressed, you may need to release some of that energy.  If you’re not able to get up and walk around or exercise, it can be helpful to tense and then release different muscles in the body.

For example, you might clench your fists as hard as you can for five to ten seconds and then release your fists and let the energy drain out of your forearms and hands.  Repeat that two or three times and your body will begin to feel less revved up.  As your body relaxes, you will likely find that your thoughts have also slowed and that your emotions have calmed a bit.

Elisha: If you were sitting across the table from someone suffering with anxiety, worry or other symptoms of stress, what thoughts might you have for them?

Christy:  Although you might feel overloaded and under constant strain, it is possible to recognize your own response to stressful circumstances, and, with increased knowledge, change the impact that stress has on your life.  There are strategies that can help you get through a crisis, lead a less chaotic life and feel less overwhelmed and better able to focus on the positive aspects of life.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Most of us have some kind of habit in our lives that we’re either trying to change or want to change. Throughout the days of our lives, most of us have experienced moments of clarity that for a moment, help us break free from these habitual cycles and also give us insight into what actually matters in that moment.

At first, we often hear the words of change as whispers. They come very lightly, causing us to pause for a second with a little information about what needs to change or how we need to change it. These whispers are not that sticky for the majority of us as our auto-pilot takes over and we fall back into our habits.

As time goes on, the whisper starts to get a little louder; maybe we get in trouble at work, a friend stops returning calls, we get a ticket for speeding, or maybe we gain eight pounds from eating cookies as Charles Duhigg did in The Power of Habit.

Then, if these aren’t heeded, the whispers turn into shouting where the wall comes down, we get fired, lose the friend, have a serious car accident or maybe develop heart disease.

Who’s whispering and how can we help ourselves more deeply listen to break free from the power of habit?

You can think of this in many ways, if you’re religious, you might think it is God whispering to you, if you’re not religious, you might think it is your higher self or intuition, that inner wisdom that knows what’s right for you. Either way, the messages get delivered.

In my experience, mindfulness is a tremendous way to start priming the mind to be more aware of these messages earlier. In mindfulness you are practicing attuning more to what is happening in the present moment where the whispers appear. You get more connected with your body that is constantly sending you signals of being balanced or imbalanced. You get better at not getting so caught up in the storms of the mind that can toss you into states of stress, anxiety, and depression.

Mindfulness teaches us to listen deeply to our lives and get some space from the triggers, cravings and urges associated with the habit. As Viktor Frankl said, “in that space lies our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I can’t think of anything more worthwhile to do. When we listen to our lives, we get connected to what really matters to us and open up to possibilities and opportunities to develop new healthier habits to take action with. This space of clarity and choice is The Now Effect.

But first we have to train ourselves to tap into the spaces of awareness and hear the whispers, why not start today?

Take a moment right now to practice mindfully checking in to your experience. Ask yourself, “Where am I starting from right now mentally, physically and emotionally?”

Or give yourself the gift of 10-minutes:

Stop, take a seat and indulge in this fundamental practice called The Body Scan. This can help your brain become more aware of the cues your body is sending when habits are starting to take action (There’s many more of these instructional videos woven throughout The Now Effect to give you direct access to the practice in your daily life):

Bring this practice into the moments of your life at home and at work where you notice the habits occurring. Allow it to widen the space of awareness and choose a different response. As you practice and repeat this over time, the habit is more likely to fall away as you move into more growth and freedom.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Blogs are great, obviously I’m a fan. It’s where seeds are planted to help us make change, but we have to remember it’s a seed and we need to bring the content into our daily lives to make it real.

In a popular past post Refusing to Forgive: 9 Steps to Break Free, Andrea commented, saying:

I feel that while the blogs may provide some little clue to addressing all our concerns. It is in no way enough. I am not saying that it is your job to address our individual griefs but clearly this is a difficult and big topic that cannot be address in 300 words or so. There is no one size fits all. There is a lot of pain up above. And i wish i could talk to all these women. I hope they are all getting someone to talk with. Even if its to take these questions and points further.

Andrea has made a very important point that is worth a blog in itself. Reading a blog post by itself as the sole means of healing the enormous wounding many of have suffered in life is not the answer. If you have are currently struggling from intense anxiety, depression, addiction, or trauma it is very important to seek support at the very least from a caring community, group therapy, or working with a skilled therapist and potentially a psychiatrist.

Blogs need to be taken with a grain of salt because they often only cover a piece of a topic. The length of the blog may not be quite as important as quotes or short poems can often have a greater impact than reading an entire book.

This Viktor Fankl quote that sets the undertone for The Now Effect has had an great impact on many people’s lives:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

This poem by Sufi poet Rumi speaks volumes about how our automatic drive to judge everything gets in our way of love:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language. Even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

It’s important to note that online communities and blogs have a wonderful ability to create daily insight to integrate into our lives and cultivate a sense of connection in community. Blogs are not just about the people writing them as the source of therapy, they are about the community. As people respond to the blogs and hear other’s stories and questions, the thought of not being alone in this world can be healing.

Blogs can be one source of support in a personal therapy practice toward health and well-being. The blog does not need to address an entire topic, but instead is meant to help us think or give us that little something to change the way we see things for a moment so that we can take it with us and apply at work and/or home.

In an effort to really reach out and support people in integrating mindfulness into daily life, I have started a free live monthly mindful event that people in the community can access to integrate more mindfulness into their lives. There is one Wednesday, April 10th at 9am PST, 12pm EST and every time zone in between. Allow this blog to be your entryway into greater mindfulness.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories, and questions below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to connect and grow from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Whether we’re in the midst of a storm of anxiety or depression or we’ve come out of the storm but are in fear of relapse, strong uncomfortable emotions can seem like the devil’s spawn that we try our best to ward off against.

For many of us there is a fear that these strong emotions will be overwhelming and lead us back into the great abyss of depression or another round of intense anxiety. However, it is in this very struggle of non-acceptance or non-acknowledgment of this feeling that our misery becomes compounded.

Although our minds believe they are doing the best thing for us, their acts are often driving the exact habitual mind traps we’re trying to neutralize.

What’s another way?

In the mindfulness circles the acronym R.A.I.N has floated around to support people in dealing with difficult emotions. It has been found in Tara Brach’s book Radical Acceptance, Jack Kornfield has said it, and you will find it in A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook that I co-authored a couple years ago with Bob Stahl, PhD.

If you’ve heard it before, just think of this as a good reminder. Here is a sneak peek:

“R” is to recognize when a strong emotion is present.

“A” is to allow or acknowledge that it is indeed there.

“I” is to investigate and bring self-inquiry to the body, feelings, and mind.

“N” is to non-identify with what’s there.   This non-identification is very useful in that it helps to deflate the story and cultivates wise understanding in the recognition that the emotion is just another passing mind state and not a definition of who you are.

Just like seeing a movie, standing back and watching the actors play out their dramas, by non-identifying with your story and seeing it as impermanent, this will help assist in loosening your own tight grip of identification.  Utilizing R.A.I.N. as a practice can help you bring space to be with things as they are and grow in deeper understanding of what drives, underlies or fuels our fears, anger, and sadness. This moment of clarity, of mindfulness is what is called The Now Effect. 

Turning into our emotions can feel a bit foreign since most of us live in such a pain denying culture.  Isn’t it time to begin acknowledging stress, anxiety or pain rather than suppressing, repressing, or all-too-quickly medicating it?  Can we learn to view these challenges as a rite of passage instead of running away from them?

In an earlier blog, a brave warrior on the path of life commented about her difficult experiencing feeling the pain enroute to healing. Indeed, often times growing up our love with our parents is wrought with other uncomfortable emotions such as fear, confusion, and sadness. So it is, often times we have to learn to approach and “be with” our pain in the service of a greater healing. This can cultivate more love and compassion for ourselves which is the elixir of healing.

Remember, this is called a practice because we’re going to be imperfect at it. It’s not a magic bullet, but something to be applied over time, with intention and heart.

May you find healing, be happy, be healthy, and be free from fear.

As always, please share your thoughts and questions below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

In the years that I’ve been working with people either directly in therapy or teaching mindfulness groups I have been fortunate enough to witness some wonderful transitions. However, most of us think that’s where therapy ends, and one of the secrets to not only maintaining mental health, but continuing to thrive is by giving back and helping others. This is what often gets forgotten, but Jeff Bell, author of many books, including Rewind Replay Repeat: A Memoir of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, has an answer that makes this opportunity easy to access.

Adversity 2 Advocacy (A2A) was created to help people find a path to not only get informed about mental health issues, but even more so to  help others share their stories and give back. The fact is, we are social animals and motivation and hope for many of us comes from connecting to others and hearing their stories.

For years I’ve been advising people to find a path to help others through their transformations because it’s well known in the mental health field and in all the world’s wisdom traditions that service to others in some way is a key component to feeling well.

Why?

Because when we give back to people it not only inspires hope in them, but inspires a sense of a common connection among us all. Mother Theresa once said,

“The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging.”

When we provide hope to others it can’t help but cultivate a sense of belonging which is at the core of feeling well. When we feel like we belong, we’re more resilient.

In a day and age where mental health continues to carry a stigma that feeds a sense of shame, in my mind what A2A is doing is creating a sense of belonging and hope and I can’t help but support that.

Right now you can choose to:

• Get Inspired by other’s stories
• Get Informed and read about the research behind altruism, compassion, and resiliency
• Get involved by sharing your stories of healing and hope.

My suggestion is to set any judgments aside and get involved as an experiment, without expectations and allow your experience of how you feel to be your teacher.

A wonderful resource to us all!

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com