This week to attain, maintain, or regain your sense of wellbeing...
...practice using mindfulness and visualisation to self-soothe with an exercise in observing your emotions and comforting them with calming colours. This week, schedule a regular time to practice the exercise and as it starts to feel familiar, begin testing out how to use it during moments of stress and distress.
Mindfulness simply means paying attention to the present moment, one thing at a time, on purpose and without making judgements about what is good or bad. We all make judgements all the time, so we won't be able to stop doing it completely. But when we are being mindful, we pay attention to the judgements we notice ourselves making, name them for what they are (e.g. 'I notice myself judging xyz to be something I don't like') and bring our minds back to the present moment, rather than being hooked into the judgements we have made. Paying attention to the present moment means we notice or observe what is outside and inside us and we describe it to ourselves in words. Once we are mindfully aware of what is happening inside and outside us, we are able to decide how we want to participate in the moment and what we need to do that - like maybe a bit of comfort.
This week, spend 5-10 minutes each day, practicing how to use mindfulness and a colour visualisation to comfort the places you feel distress. This is an exercise in four-parts.
1. Body Scan: Sit still, in a comfortable position, breathing in your natural rhythm. Closing your eyes (or staring softly at a fixed point in front of you), sit in silence and observe what is happening in your body. Starting at your feet and moving up to the top of your head, tune your attention into each part of your body and describe to yourself in words what sensations you notice - how hot or cold is your skin? Is there pain or discomfort? As you notice other thoughts entering your mind, observe and describe these to yourself too, and come back to scanning the sensations in your body.
2. Mood Scan: Once you have scanned your body, turn your mind to the emotions you are feeling in this moment - observing and describing to yourself each of the thoughts, images, memories and urges you notice and bringing yourself back to what you feel. What is the strongest emotion? Where do you feel it in your body? How does it sit in your body? What temperature and colour is this feeling or mix of feelings? If you struggle to picture one, just pick one you associate with the feeling. With each question you ask yourself, observe and describe the thoughts and other emotions that arise in response or that pull you away from paying attention to this feeling fully, without judgement and without judging your judgements.
3. Choose a Comfort Colour: Once you have tuned into the strongest emotion in this moment and found a colour that matches it, bring to mind a colour that you find soothing. This could be a colour you find peaceful, relaxing, happy, exciting, energising, calming, loving, gentle, supportive. What comes to mind when you think of this colour? What sensations, images, sounds, tastes and memories belong with this colour?
4. Recolour the Mood: Then turn your mind back to the strongest emotion you identified in the mood scan, find where it sits in your body and visualise the colour that goes with it. Next imagine you have filled a cup with your comfort-colour and drink it down, into the part of your body where your strongest emotion lies. In your mind,imagine re-colouring that strongest emotion with your comfort-colour, seeing it settle more and more, seeing it cool down or warm up as needed, seeing space and tension free up, as you pour more and more of your comfort-colour into that part of your body.
To finish, open your eyes slowly and bring yourself back to the room and the next task in your day. When you notice your mood shift throughout the day, practice observing it, noticing where it sits in your body, giving it a colour, finding a comfort-colour and re-colouring that space in your body.
Once you are familiar with using this mindful visualisation, add 'Re-colour the Mood' to your Personal Coping Kete as a way to self-soothe and create space inside yourself, during moments of stress and distress. Instead of trying to stay away from what you think or feel, and being pushed around by it, you will be able to observe what is happening inside you, where you feel it, and create some comforting sensations inside yourself. With each wave of sadness, anxiety, anger, frustration, fear or any other kind of stress, distress or upset, tune in, observe the feeling and re-colour it with something comforting.
Tag Archives: Visualisation
No. 162: Re-Colour the Mood
No. 155: Extend the Image
This week, to attain, maintain or regain your sense of wellbeing...
...practice extending the image when you notice yourself having distressing or worrying thoughts about the future. There are two ways to do this - experiment with both and see which one you prefer.
1. Pay attention to the image or story you see unfolding, and then extend that image or story in your mind until you come to its conclusion. Most often we stop right in the middle of the worst bit and worry about that. With this strategy we extend the story far past the thing we are worrying about, we tell ourselves about the next chapter too, the part where we cope with it, we can even fast-forward ten years into the future and it might look quite different from there. In this way, you will be able to introduce the possibility that things could turn out okay in the end, that you will eventually find a way to handle it and move on. Be mindful of how caught up you are in catastrophising though - sometimes it has such a strong grip on us we simply tell a very long, even more upsetting story, and that's probably not hugely helpful. If that's something you struggle with then practice this strategy on milder concerns first.
2. Bring to mind an image of what you are worrying about or think of an image that symbolises it, then imagine zooming out and notice what you'd see around it, then zoom out again, and again. In this way, you will be able to create distance from distressing thoughts and feelings and reduce their power over you.
For example, if I have a distressing thought, I might imagine it as a dark cloud and then extend the image to see the sky around it, making the cloud appear smaller and less threatening.
Once you are comfortable with this practice, add Extend the Image to your Personal Coping Kete for times of stress and distress.
No. 90: Picturing my Supporters at my Back
This week to attain, regain or maintain my sense of wellbeing… 
…when I am stressed, pressed or distressed, I will self-soothe by imagining my various support people standing encouragingly at my back, boosting me up. This might include my parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, therapist, key-worker or someone else, just all the people in my life who want me to do well and want me to feel better when I don’ t. I will make a list of some of these people before I try to practice imagining them standing supportively at my back, so I’ m not having to remember from scratch in the middle of a moment of distress. Some of the people might be in my daily life, but some might be more distant or less available, but they are still people in the world who want good things for me. It doesn’ t matter if I see them everyday or once every two years – they care for me and if they were here they would give me comfort. I will picture them sending me good vibes, saying comforting things and believing in me. No matter what is happening now, these people want good things for me. With them at my back, I know I don’ t need to cope with whatever life throws at me by myself. I will breathe and imagine my people are there quietly supporting me. If I find it particularly hard to think of people who fit the bill as supporters or I think I don’ t have ‘ enough’ of them, it might be that I need to spend some time finding some supporters for myself. But we don’ t need a huge number of supporters to get through, we really just need one or two people we can rely on when things get rough. Once I’ ve worked out how to get this strategy working for me, I will write it on a card and add it to my Personal Coping Kete, for future use.
…when I am stressed, pressed or distressed, I will self-soothe by imagining my various support people standing encouragingly at my back, boosting me up. This might include my parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, therapist, key-worker or someone else, just all the people in my life who want me to do well and want me to feel better when I don’ t. I will make a list of some of these people before I try to practice imagining them standing supportively at my back, so I’ m not having to remember from scratch in the middle of a moment of distress. Some of the people might be in my daily life, but some might be more distant or less available, but they are still people in the world who want good things for me. It doesn’ t matter if I see them everyday or once every two years – they care for me and if they were here they would give me comfort. I will picture them sending me good vibes, saying comforting things and believing in me. No matter what is happening now, these people want good things for me. With them at my back, I know I don’ t need to cope with whatever life throws at me by myself. I will breathe and imagine my people are there quietly supporting me. If I find it particularly hard to think of people who fit the bill as supporters or I think I don’ t have ‘ enough’ of them, it might be that I need to spend some time finding some supporters for myself. But we don’ t need a huge number of supporters to get through, we really just need one or two people we can rely on when things get rough. Once I’ ve worked out how to get this strategy working for me, I will write it on a card and add it to my Personal Coping Kete, for future use.
No. 75: Putting My Wants in the Present
This week, to attain, maintain, or regain my wellbeing...
When I find myself wanting or wishing things to be different, I will practice imagining I already have it. This strategy comes from the Buddhist philosophy that "whatever I say to the universe, the universe will respond with only one answer - yes." When we focus on our wanting, our thoughts, moods, and actions will often match that, and we can find ourselves thinking and doing things that perpetuate the wanting rather than doing and thinking things that achieve our goals and bring our yearnings to fruition. According to Buddhism, our thoughts, words and actions are the tools with which we create our realities and when we focus on expressing our state of wanting, that is what we push out into our reality, not what we actually want. So, this week I will experiment with using my self-talk and my imagination to 'push out' the object of my desires into reality, rather than 'pushing out' my wanting.
Step One: When I find myself wanting or wishing things were different, I will change my thought commands and statements to imagine myself in that state now. Instead of saying to myself "I want..." or "I wish..." I will say to myself "I have..." or "I am..." or "I will be...". So for example, instead of "I wish I was in love" I will say to myself "I am going to be in love."
Step Two: I will then imagine what it will feel like to have that which I want. I will let myself feel those feelings, not the feeling of wanting it, but the feeling of actually having it. I will put myself in those feelings in advance. The mind knows no difference between imagination and reality. I am already having the experience that I want to have, I know what it feels like and sounds like and looks like within me. I will stay with those feelings no matter what, I won't let external conditions tell me otherwise.
Life is happening through me. Life is not happening to me.
I will start out with the little moment-to-moment wishes for different interactions and things like that. Once I am comfortable putting my wants into the present I am seeking with everyday things, I will add this to my Personal Coping Kete as a strategy for dealing with distress. When I notice myself feeling distressed, I will tune into what it is I want and use my imagination and self-talk to put myself in that moment now.
No. 66: Visions of My Success
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… …When I find myself worrying about how something will turn out, I will redirect my thoughts by visualising the situation exactly as I would like it to go. In the same way that champion athletes picture themselves successfully completing their task before they begin, I will imagine myself competently going through each motion of the task before me. I will see myself smiling and feeling good. I will imagine myself feeling strong and at ease. I will see the people around me responding positively. I will see myself at the other end of the challenge having come through it well. Each time a new worry surfaces, I will visualise myself handling it well. As I focus my mind on images of myself getting through and enjoying myself doing it, I will take slow breaths in through my nose, allowing my stomach to rise with each breath in. I will let each breath drift out through my loosely pursed lips. In this way, for a short time, I will give myself physical safety messages with the breathing and psychological safety messages with my visualisation. I will also prepare myself to handle the situation more effectively, because I will have seen what that looks like. This is much more useful than filling my head up with what the worse case scenario looks like. When I find constant worries running through my head, this visualisation could be a good way to redirect them without suppressing them. I can let each of my worries arrive so I can help them leave by imagining it being resolved effectively. This week I will feed myself visions of strengths and successes. Once I am comfortable breathing and redirecting myself to visions of my strengths and successes in everyday situations, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete for moments of stress and distress.
…When I find myself worrying about how something will turn out, I will redirect my thoughts by visualising the situation exactly as I would like it to go. In the same way that champion athletes picture themselves successfully completing their task before they begin, I will imagine myself competently going through each motion of the task before me. I will see myself smiling and feeling good. I will imagine myself feeling strong and at ease. I will see the people around me responding positively. I will see myself at the other end of the challenge having come through it well. Each time a new worry surfaces, I will visualise myself handling it well. As I focus my mind on images of myself getting through and enjoying myself doing it, I will take slow breaths in through my nose, allowing my stomach to rise with each breath in. I will let each breath drift out through my loosely pursed lips. In this way, for a short time, I will give myself physical safety messages with the breathing and psychological safety messages with my visualisation. I will also prepare myself to handle the situation more effectively, because I will have seen what that looks like. This is much more useful than filling my head up with what the worse case scenario looks like. When I find constant worries running through my head, this visualisation could be a good way to redirect them without suppressing them. I can let each of my worries arrive so I can help them leave by imagining it being resolved effectively. This week I will feed myself visions of strengths and successes. Once I am comfortable breathing and redirecting myself to visions of my strengths and successes in everyday situations, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete for moments of stress and distress.
