Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?
A practical guide to mental health and self-care that offers evidence-based tools and insights for managing common psychological challenges.
The thing about the human brain is that, when you believe something, the brain will scan the environment for any signs that the belief is true. Information that challenges our beliefs about ourselves and the world is psychologically threatening.
Bring to mind someone you love unconditionally. Now imagine they were speaking about themselves the way that you speak to yourself. How would you respond to them? What would you want them to have the courage to see in themselves? How would you want them to speak to themselves instead? This task is one way to help us access that deep sense of compassion that we often show to others but neglect to show for ourselves.
I think one of the reasons that some of my clients say they feel so much more motivated after an appointment is because they have spent time reconnecting with their goals. If that thing we are working on is not fresh in our minds we can quickly lose momentum.
The physiology of self-control is optimal when stress is low and heart-rate variability is high. Heart-rate variability is a measure of the variation in time between each heartbeat. So it tells us how much your heart rate changes throughout the day. You might notice that when you get out of bed in the morning your heart speeds up, or when you run for the bus. Then it gradually comes back down again. This means your body gears you up for action when needed and calms the body back down to rest and recover. But when we are under lots of stress, heart rate may remain high throughout the day (reduced variability).
Albert Einstein reportedly once said, ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend fifty-five minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.’
Emotions are real and valid, but they are not facts. They are a guess. A perspective that we try on for size. An emotion is the brain’s attempt to make sense of the world so that you can meet your needs and survive. Given that what you feel is not a factual statement, neither are thoughts.
When we treat our current thoughts and emotions as facts, we allow them to determine our thoughts and actions of the future. Then life becomes a series of emotional reactions rather than informed choices.
Increasing your emotional vocabulary so that you can distinguish finely between different emotions helps you to regulate those emotions and choose the most helpful responses in social situations (Kashdan et al., 2015).
the Feeling Wheel (Willcox, 1982) is a great resource that is often used in therapy for exactly this purpose. You can keep a copy in the cover of your journal and use it to find more specific words.