Engage Aotearoa

Tag Archives: Perspective

No. 83: Riding the Wave

February 10, 2012 10:28 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…When I notice shifts in the way I feel, I will stop, take a deep breath and acknowledge that even though they are distressing and unpleasant, I can survive them. I will say to myself “I am riding the wave of emotions” and I will keep breathing. If I can, I will name what I am feeling and thinking to myself. And I will keep breathing. It is okay to feel what I feel. Feelings always fluctuate and change, it’ s impossible to experience one feeling non-stop, so I can also trust that what I feel in this moment will change. Feelings come and go, rise and fall, like waves as my attention shifts throughout the day. As I stop and breathe in, I will breathe into an awareness of the feelings and when I breathe out, I will pretend to exhale the feelings with the air – as if I am releasing them. As I am doing this I will remind myself, “I am going to get through this, I am riding the wave of my emotions.” By riding the wave instead of running from the tide, I will get through this. There is an excellent video resource for this well-known mindfulness technique on the DBT Self-Help Website. If I find it hard to do mindfulness by myself at first, this website has excellent videos that you can practice with until you are familiar enough with the exercise to do it independently. Once I am familiar with mindfully thinking about my emotions in this way, I will add Riding The Wave to my Personal Coping Kete to help me get through moments of distress.
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No. 73: Using Opposites

December 1, 2011 1:51 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…I will practice coping by looking at the situation from the opposite viewpoint. Reversing my perspective in this way can take me down different and new trains of thought that could lead me to feel differently about things. When I notice slight shifts in my mood, I will pause myself to reflect on what I am thinking in the moment. Then I will ask myself “What if the opposite were true?” For example, if I notice I start feeling slightly hopeless or pessimistic, I will try to look at the situation from the opposite hopeful perspective. Instead of thinking “this is hopeless” I will ask myself “what if it was actually hopeful?“ How would I see the situation then? This week is about challenging the assumptions that underlie my thoughts and feelings. This week I open up to the possibility of other ways of experiencing my reality. Once I am comfortable doing this with slight shifts in mood, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of coping with distress.
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No. 70: Being Specific

November 10, 2011 10:45 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping KeteI will practice keeping my self-talk specific to help moderate my responses to things. Often I find my internal dialogue includes words like ‘ always’ , ‘ everything’ and ‘ never’ that generalise what I am experiencing in the moment out to all situations. This amplifies the emotions I experience as a result and makes things seem more significant than they really are. This week, I will practice observing my self-talk during the day and using the most specific language I can find. So when I catch myself thinking things like ‘ I always screw things up’ or ‘ they never notice me’ , I will turn it around in my head to be more like ‘ I made a mistake just then’ or ‘ they didn’ t notice me just then’ . Rather than then allow myself to go down the path of remembering other times this has happened or might happen, I will focus my mind onto other specific things about this current situation. This might involve simply listing to myself the specific elements in play in the moment – from the temperature, to the environment, to the people around me, to my own reactions to these things – or it might involve listing the ways in which this situation is different from past similar situations. As my mind wanders onto other thoughts, I will remind myself that I can only know what is here now and bring my mind back to the task of observing and describing my current situation to myself. Here I am in this moment, which I can only ever experience once. Once I am comfortable with noticing my self-talk and using specific language, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for soothing distressing or intense emotions.
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No. 69: Growth instead of Achievement

November 3, 2011 7:58 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellness… Coping Keterather than placing pressure on myself to ‘ succeed’ or ‘ achieve’ , I am going to practice being aware of how I am growing. As I move through my day, I will come back to the thought that “I am a work in progress, constantly learning how to handle life.” This week I will remember that anything that goes seemingly ‘ wrong’ , will teach me how to deal with it better next time, so it actually has value for me and will make me stronger. Once I am comfortable thinking of the ways I am growing in everyday situations, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of soothing unwanted or distressing emotions. By reminding myself of things like this in times of stress, I can work to make sure the expectations I am placing upon myself are realistic.
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No. 67: Removing the Pressure

October 20, 2011 8:16 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete…when I encounter everyday problems and hiccups, I will make things seem more manageable by reminding myself ‘ all I need to do is get through this one moment.’ Instead of piling pressure on myself to measure up to expectations, I will tell myself that I don’ t need to do anything but get through each moment and anything else is an added bonus, so I can relax and go with it. I’ ll then take myself through the standard breathing exercise while I give myself a brief running commentary of the moment I am currently in. Once I have described the moment to myself I will come back to my original idea that I just need to get through this moment and that means all I need to do is keep breathing. Once I am comfortable removing the pressure and doing some breathing in everyday situations, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete for times of stress and distress.
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No. 65: Soothing the Personal Sting

October 6, 2011 4:46 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping KeteI will practice taking the sting out of interpersonal situations by viewing other people’ s actions and reactions as being about them and not me. It is a natural human response to consider how we are received by those around us. Often though, we can personalise things that really have nothing to do with us. For example if someone frowns while we are speaking, we might assume they are displeased with us. But they could be concentrating or have a personal relationship to something we said. This week I will give people space to be responding to their own set of wants, needs, attitudes and challenges. Thinking about alternative, less personal ways of interpreting things can really help to reduce our sense of distress or hurt. So this week when I notice shifts in mood, I am going to scan my thoughts and see whether I have been taking something personally. Whenever I catch myself taking something on board as being about me, I will make a quick list of other things that could be responsible as well. It can often help to jot these things down in a notepad or on a scrap of paper – when we are really distressed it can otherwise be quite hard to concentrate on alternative explanations. This exercise could help with dealing with past situations that continue to distress me as memories as well. Once I have become comfortable identifying personalised thoughts and taking out the personal sting in everyday situations, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of thinking myself through stress and distress.
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No. 62: Easing the burden

September 15, 2011 11:08 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… ""I will remember the words of Ingrid Bacci, ‎”Inner growth is a slow and incremental process that accomplishes extraordinary results through what often look like minute daily changes” As I move through my daily life, this week, I will recall this quote and remind myself that all that is required are “minute changes” – and minute changes or minute actions are usually pretty manageable. I will observe how thinking about things in this way affects me. There’ s real wisdom in the old saying that the longest journey, begins with the smallest step. I will take comfort in my smallest steps. In each moment of distress, I will ask myself, what’ s the smallest step I could take to shift my experience right now? What’ s smaller than that? When I’ ve got to the minutest change, I’ ll think about giving that a go. The act of thinking through this exercise is a minute change in itself, whether it leads to anything else or not. When I manage to do it, I will be sure to acknowledge the achievement to myself. Once I am used to lowering my expectations for myself in everyday situations, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete for times of heightened stress of distress. When I feel impatient or frustrated with myself about something or feel overwhelmed by a situation, I will remember that growth and survival comes from minute actions. I will think of minute actions I can take in the moment and remember how they have affected me recently.
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No. 40: Inviting Good Times In

April 13, 2011 12:05 am ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing … Coping Kete I will create opportunities for enjoyment and positive emotion by inviting friends, family-members, colleagues or acquaintances to do things. This week, I will invite someone to do something or seek invitations to join in with other people almost every day. I will understand that people are not always available and don’t always enjoy the same things. When one invitation does not work out, I will make another one. In this way I will give myself some positive environments and the chance to experience positive emotion and form meaningful connections. My invitations may result in future activities instead of immediate ones, and this will give me something to look forward to. I will also strengthen my social interaction skills as I practice making and seeking invitations and following through on them. I might experience anxiety in doing this week’s experiment in engagement. This week, I will suspend my beliefs/fears about how other people might think of or respond to me. I will use self-soothing strategies to calm those fears and allow for the possibility that something better will arise from engaging in more activities with more people and opening my experience up to new things. Once I am comfortable inviting opportunities for positive interactions, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for shifting low moods and negative thoughts in times of distress.
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No 39: Tuning into Grey-Scale Thinking

March 30, 2011 10:08 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week, in order to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete I will practice choosing to see all the shades of grey in each situation, rather than focusing on the black and white. This week I give up on absolutes. I will catch thoughts that contain words like ‘always’ or ‘never’ or ‘should’ or ‘have to’ and replace them with words like ‘sometimes’, ‘could’ or ‘might’. I will consider alternative ways of viewing things and leave room for the possibility that one of the more positive perspectives could be true. I will allow the good to exist side-by-side with the bad, without letting one cancel the other out. Once I am comfortable thinking about everyday situations in greyscale terms, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a way of soothing intense emotional responses to unwanted situations.
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No. 38: Giving Up On Getting It Right

March 22, 2011 10:34 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅
This week to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… Coping Kete I will give up on trying to get things right. Instead of being concerned with getting the right answer, saying the right thing, doing it right and looking right I will be as open as possible, I will be willing to not get the right answer, to go through the process, rather than jumping ahead to the future. By remaining concerned with ‘being right’, the mind produces excess tensions in the body. When I make the choice to have an open mind, to wait and see what happens and to let whatever happens be okay, it will have a beneficial effect on my body. This week, it does not matter whether I am right or mistaken – it matters that I allow myself the opportunity to try things and relax into myself. I do not need to be on guard all the time to make sure I behave appropriately or am accepted. I can relinquish my control on getting things right, and still survive, still be accepted and still move forward in life. By removing the pressure to do it right, I am more likely to feel comfortable trying things. Once I am used to giving myself permission to be wrong and make mistakes every day, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for balancing distressing thoughts when I need to soothe distressing moods.
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