Mental Health Game Changer TOOL #1: Orienting
The Problem
Most people who come to therapy are stuck in anxiety or avoidance (intense enough avoidance is called depression). These are not choices they’ve made or flaws. Instead they are automated reactions that have been learned and are attempting to solve for an emotional they are feeling. Emotions tell us how we are doing in terms of surviving and thriving and what we need to do to adapt to the moment. Anxiety (a product of fear) alerts us to a perceived threat. But is the threat from the inside (other feelings you’re trying not to feel) or is it from the outside (something in your world that isn’t good for you: a toxic relationship, a negative situation, a demand that’s not sustainable or doable, etc.) or both (often an event triggers memories of a past event, even only slightly related, and we are flooded with the feelings of the past which cloud the present)? Wherever the problem is the current solution of over thinking and vigilance is not solving the problem (ie it’s not taking away the emotions). Instead the anxiety is only adding suffering on top of the emotions.
When that happens people naturally try to get away from the suffering of the extended anxiety with avoidance. They distract themselves. We use all kinds of things to do this. Some of them happen with a level of consciousness (although probably not with mindfulness) and some happen much more automatically: smoking, rage (or other emotions that mask the feelings being avoided), drinking, drugs, shopping, watching TV and movies, pornography, food, focusing more on others than ourselves, hobbies, sex, exercise, cleaning the house, playing on our phone, blaming others, becoming judgmental, getting paranoid (unconsciously putting the problem outside of us making others the threat so we don’t feel the emotions we have on the inside), becoming black and white in our thinking, causing a scene, becoming obsessive or compulsive, attributing our feelings to other people (saying they are the ones feeling this way instead of us), etc. These distractions help for a bit but don’t solve the emotional problem we have so when the distraction is over the anxiety returns (and sometimes if what we used to distract also caused problems or went against our personal morals we can feel ashamed or guilty on top of anxious which is already on top of the original emotional problem).
The Solution
What we do here at Analog is help you develop solutions that actually solve. We target your nervous system, memories and core emotions to create real change. A lot of therapies are too hot or too cold. Therapies that are too hot are all about the intesity and the cathartic experiences. This creates relief but actually creates an addiction cycle over time where the system learns it has to build up to a breaking point to release. It doesn’t learn how to release in a measured way that allows the nervous system to metabolize the stress. Additionally, too much too fast can re-overwhelm the nervous system causing shut down. So too hot can create three problems: you learn that the only way to have relief is the mountain top, you feel terrible all over again and you don’t create actual change.
The too cold are the therapies that just talk and think. They stay away from the heat of the visceral emotions. We know from neuroscience that without feeling something viscerally we can’t change how our brain is wired. And it really helps to feel something with someone else so they can help us co-regulate the feelings. Our brains need experience to cause neuroplasticity (the academic word for the fact that our brain can rewire) and emotion is what provides experience. So all talk will equal more knowledge and likely some emotion but little change to the automatic stuff.
We work on that Goldilocks solutions of not too hot or too cold. We help you build resource in your nervous system, the ability to feel calm and peace so that you can take on, slowly and little by little, the stress/pain/suffering/trauma you have. By going back and forth between resource and stress and by using a bunch of different ways of engaging those things (from both Somatic Experiencing and Psychoanalytic Therapy) we help you tackle the mountain you hold inside without major catharsis but with deep change and relief.
Game Changer Tool #1 : We start with attention in vs. attention out.
Step one is awareness. Can you notice how you are? Often we are so stuck in our routine of anxiety or avoidance we are unaware of the actual emotional problem that we are trying to solve (with a solution that doesn’t solve).
Step two is then moving from noticing the inside (attention in) to noticing your environment (attention out). This simple tool is a game changer. When you move from “attention in” to “attention out” you give your nervous system a break and a chance to reset. This is needed for being able to handle the stress inside eventually. This move of attention out comes from Somatic Experiencing and is called Orienting. You can orient by just slowly looking left to right or right to left, trying not to think but just taking in the visual of where you’re at. Notice colors, textures, lighting, images, shapes, etc. whatever catches your eye. Do this for a minute or two. If you start to feel negative because you’re environment is bothering you then stop and utilize touch instead. Notice a texture by feeling it and focusing on how it feels on your skin. By doing this you likely will feel more present and grounded but that is not what you’re trying to do - this is not about grounding. What you’re trying to do is move from attention in to attention out. This allows you to start to be able to have a hand you can put in the elevator to stop an automatic solution that doesn’t solve.