Archive for month: October, 2017

This week Ed and I revisited the subject of guilt but from a different perspective. A listener had emailed asking for a podcast, “ I have been thinking why I can’t relax, and wonder why I feel guilty when I get the chance to”?

Guilt is one of the strangest, and least productive of human emotions. When you ask what use the habit of guilt would have been to us throughout evolution and consider why we would have developed it, it can leave you feeling at a bit of a loss. Looking at it from a psychological point of view guilt sits on both spectrums of depression and anxiety though when people describe the physical symptoms that they experience it often sounds more like anxiety. Guilt is often about what we have or not done, or wanted to do but didn’t while these all relate to past events the feeling attached to them are those of anxiety.

There are many ways of looking at guilt…

1: Guilt for something that you did
This is very often equated to sin or bad karma. I suspect that everyone reading this could look back at their life and think of things that they have done that they wish they had not. It could be the acknowledgment of mistakes made in thought, word or deed. The point is that they have passed, that ship has sailed and you cannot change what happened. All that we can change is the emotional relationship that we have to past events. We call this apology, letting go, forgiveness, repentance and so on.

If we can change our view from blaming to learning perhaps we can move on. If we look at the issues that we feel guilt about and rework them as lessons. “What did I learn?’ ‘How can I use this experience to create positive change?’ When we no longer have problems rather that we have learning opportunities we can choose to let go of guilt.

2: Guilt for something that you didn’t do
This can be a bit more difficult. Perhaps the thing that we didn’t do seriously affected other people, maybe damaged or killed them. In cases like this the need for self forgiveness and to apologise is enhanced but perhaps even more difficult. But, again we cannot change the past. We might be able to recompense those that were hurt but what we failed to do. Yet again this comes back to realising what is it that we can learn from understanding what happened.

3: Guilt for something that you didn’t do but wanted to do
I see that as the ‘If only” issue or the “Why didn’t I?” issue that can be quickly followed by the “why did I?’ issue. Over all this type of guilt is regret. Again how many of us would, if it were possible, change what we did or didn’t do. Hindsight is a clever, but often, useless thing to do unless we use it to learn so that out future behaviour and responses are different.

4: Guilt for something that you think you did
This is a good one. It is when we think we did, or might have done, but we are not really sure. Have you ever had the feeling that you might have knocked someone down on a in the dark and while you sort of know that you didn’t, you sort of feel that you did? So, you go back to the bend to check it. It is a bit like having obsessive compulsive disorder when you know that you did actually lock the door but you just need to check a few times to really convince yourself that you did. Or maybe something happened, perhaps the science lab blew up and you are not sure whether or not you did actually turn off the Bunsen burner before you left. In cases like this anxiety and guilt are running side by side. In many cases we will never truly know the answers. This is classic monkey business and needs to be dealt with on the basis that there really is nothing that you are able to do about it. Time to let go and move on.

5: Guilt that you didn’t help someone enough
Many years ago when I was about seventeen I was in Croydon in London just walking down the road. Suddenly, and literally, out of the blue a woman landed at my feet bleeding everywhere. It was so sudden and so close that I nearly stood on her. In my shock I was frozen to the spot unable to act in any way. A man came running down the road pulling off his coat and shouting to get an ambulance. He dealt with the situation. I spent a long time feeling very guilty that I had been of no use and could not respond in any way that would have been of help to the woman. I get a similar feeling when I pass homeless people and even if I do put some money in their cup I do not seem to be able to get rid of the feeling that I should be doing something more to help them. The way that i deal with my own guilt issues is to have several planned charity things that I contribute to each month and each year.

6: Guilt that you are doing better than other people
In some ways this can be similar to the previous case. Is it ok that we are all eating when other people are starving? Is it ok if I have been successful when my brothers and sisters have not? Why did I get picked for this award and others didn’t? The list can be endless. The most extreme version of this form of anxiety if survivor guilt. Perhaps a plane has crashed and I am the only survivor, or we all caught an infection and I was the only one to survive. There were many people who survived the concentration camps of World War Two when all the rest of their family perished who had survivor guilt and asked the question ‘Why me?’ Yes we need to do what we can for those less fortunate than ourselves, we need to treat each other with compassion. However, that does include us as well, we need to treat ourself with compassion and however life turns out for us we need to face it with gratitude and be thankful for what we have and for what happens to us.

7: Guilt for attending to your own needs
This version of guilt is where we came into this blog. It is, for me, the issue of are we allowed to be human beings or do we see ourselves as human doings? Do we value our self for who we are or for what we do? The strange thing is that when you ask someone who they are they tend to give you list of the roles the play in life, a list of what they do. If I identify myself and give myself value from what I do, then the act of doing nothing can be seen, in my own eyes, as worthless.

When did you last spend an hour doing nothing, either by yourself or with your partner. Philosophies of life vary, the Christian concept ‘the Devil finds work for ideal hands’ and the good old Protestant work ethic all come into play her. It is ok to do nothing, it is ok to look after yourself, it is ok to value the skin that you stand up in.

Be happy and bin the guilt

Take care

Sean x

As you will have guessed Ed and I are into Mindfulness, we do keep going on about it. The question is, is Mindfulness all that it is cracked up to be? It is currently being highlighted negatively in some press reports. A review published today in the journal ‘Perspectives on Psychological Science’ suggests that the hype about the effects of Mindfulness is ahead of the evidence. Some reviews of the studies done on mindfulness suggest it may help with psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and stress. However, even grander claims that are being made for the power of mindfulness can begin to make it look a bit silly. I can feel ‘the Secret Issue’ all over again. So, let’s get out of the hype and look at what Mindfulness really is.

The two words that get translated into the word mindfulness are the Sanskrit word Smrti and the Pali word Satti. Both would be translated as remembrance or to remember. This means that to be mindful is to remember but remember what?

The mind will always wander, it is what minds do. To allow the mind to simply wander is seen as mindless. To be mindful is to gently gather the mind back to a point of focus. Mindful practices are simply techniques that teach us to remember to bring our attention back to the point of focus. When the mind wanders and becomes mindless we forget to focus. When we realise that the mind has wandered and we bring it back to the point of focus we have just practised mindfulness. We forget and then we remember over and over again and this is the practice.

So what is the practical application of this. Mindful practice is normally based around, and begins with, breath focus exercises. We all know that our mind wanders. It is fairly easy to get hold of the idea that if we can be more focussed, in whatever we are doing, we will get a bit better at it. So if we sit and try to focus on our breath the mind will wander. As we observe the wandering mind and bring it back to the breath we are learning to be mindful. The more we practice the less we get attached to the wandering mind and the more we able to focus. The magic effect of this is that learning to focus spreads from the simple mindfulness practice into the rest of our life and we find that we have improved concentration, we are able to get more done and can become a more efficient person.

We also become more attentive and aware. With increased awareness the side effects can be calmness, increased sensitivity, reduced stress, pressure and anxiety and increased happiness. It is obvious that some people will not like meditating, even people that ‘like’ meditating have moments of not liking, that’s the point we become aware, we notice craving and aversion. For the people who really don’t ‘like’ there are other ways to develop mindfulness.

Mindfulness purists will tell you that the only way you can become mindful is to meditate, this is not true. To be Mindful is to remember to be in the present moment. Many processes allow us to be in the moment such as running or any exercise that requires that we are living in the present moment.

It is quite right to say that someone can mindfully make a cake, paint a picture, write a book, ride a bike and so on as long as we mean that during those activities we were remembering to be in the present moment.

Once we realise that most depression is attachment to past unresolved emotional events and that depression comes from reliving these events in the present, it then follows that if we can remember to let go of the past, and remember to focus into the present then the depression will diminish.

Once we realise that most anxiety is the imagination projecting into the future imaging events that may never happen and living them in the present, it then follows that if we remember to let go of the future, and remember to focus into the present then the anxiety will diminish.

Mindfulness is not a trick, it is not a magic cure, it is the simple act of remembering to remember. It is Satti and Smrti it is remembrance.

When we forget to remember, when we become mindless, our world can change in a very different way. When we forget who we are we can do bad or negative things that do not serve us well and may lead us into harm or danger. We can create debt, make bad relationships or create dependency on substances, things or other people. It is only in remembering that we overcome addictions and problems.

When we remember to remember we have moved from reaction to response. When we respond we become truly ‘respondable’ or responsible and choose to take control of who we really are. Any process or change comes from the ability of remembering to remember. But, you know what?, doing some mindfulness practice for just thirty minutes a day will make remembering to remember oh, so, much easier to do.

Above all remember to be happy

Take care

Sean x