TSHP425: Depression Could Be A Key To Happiness

What’s Coming This Episode?

Do you or does anyone that you know ever suffer from depression or anxiety? If you so do you know what it is that is underlying the symptoms? It’s hugely common of course… and perhaps to the point where we all need a bit of it to keep us going. Let’s chat it through…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Depression Could Be A Key To Happiness

Do you or does anyone that you know ever suffer from depression or anxiety? If you so do you know what it is that is underlying the symptoms?

The use of medication, to reduce anxiety and to lift depression, has become common place to the point where many of them are in our supply of drinking water. These comes from either people flushing unwanted medication down the toilet or the natural excretion of the medications in our urine.

In the UK in we currently write over 46 million prescription a year for antidepressants and in Covid these figures have greatly increased.

With both anxiety and depression we need to take into account the ‘clinical’ aspects and the psychological aspects. To be clinically depressed or anxious means that the body chemistry is mis-functioning. Just as when the pancreas is not working properly and we would take insulin to balance the system or with the thyroid when we correct the imbalance with thyroxin. The same is also true with depressions so that in the brain, at the pituitary end of things, we may need to regulate levels of serotonin chemically. When depression is not clinical it is described as ‘reactive’.

Reactive symptoms

Having made that distinction, the levels of clinical depression are relatively low. The vast majority of depressions are reactive. This means that an experience or an event has created a chain of reactions that have led to the development of symptoms that can, if not treated by psychotherapy, become the learned habits that eventually are described as our behaviour. In this case depression. We actually learn both anxiety and depressions as a habit, a habitual way of thinking or feeling. People say to me “that is just the way I am” and I say “no, that is how you have learned to be”.

Reactive anxiety

In anxiety we are projecting forward into images and ideas of a negative future that may never happen and living those idea in the present as though they are happening right now.  That means that we imagine a negative scenario and our body systems act out the images as though they are happening in the present.  Our body chemistry, fight and flight endorphins, are firing off into our blood stream to face a foe, or situation that does not and may never exist.

Reactive depression

Unlike anxiety, that looks forwards, depression looks backwards, replaying past events in the presents as though they are still happening now.  Where as anxiety powers up our chemical system, depression, as the name implies, depresses our chemical system and we become flat and inert.  In depression our energy levels drop and we do less and less.  Often we find the need to withdraw from the world and we can easily become agoraphobic and even stay in bed as a safe place to be.

What is depression telling us?

Needless to say happiness and depression do not generally go together.  And yet, it could be that, depression may just be something that we should celebrate!  If we look behind the depression what is depression telling us?

In the eastern approaches to psychotherapy depression is not always seen as something to be avoided or masked with medication. Rather it is seen as a sign that something in our life is wrong or out of balance. If used creatively depression can be a time of review and re-evaluation when are able to take stock of things get our lives back on track.

It is ok to take medication

Accepting that clinical depression concerns chemical imbalance that can only really be treated with medication. It seems strange that we are often embarrassed by the need for taking medication to regulate our mood. Yet at least one in four of us will. However, as well as using medication the symptoms of clinical depression can be diminished and often controlled using psychotherapy particularly using mindfulness techniques.  

Causes of reactive depression

In most cases of depression the sufferer feels a victim to circumstance and subsequently feels helpless and unable to deal with or change their situation. Depression strikes us most easily when we experience that something or someone else is writing our life script. It might be that have experience loss, divorce, redundancy, or an accident. Perhaps we have a bullying manager or partner. The economy has collapsed and we are about to lose the house. Maybe we have been diagnosed with an illness or perhaps our partner has. Whatever the issue the one sure thing is that we have lost control and with it our self determination, we have become a victim.

The magic of depression

This is where the eastern approach comes into it own. The person who is able to engage in therapy and, begins to understand and resolve the issues that are underpinning their symptoms, becomes very powerful indeed. Through the therapeutic process the person learns how to rewrite their own life script so that it can become the life that they really want. They can stop living the scripts that other people written for then so that they are no longer a bit part player in other peoples stories and become the star in the script of their own life.

When people engage with their depression, rather than burying it with medication, it becomes a truly life altering event. Human beings were designed with the creativity to solve problems, any problems. Collectively, sometimes in therapy, we can learn to see the wood and not the just the trees.

Act in the present

The warning sign is when you are waking in the mornings not wanting to get out of bed and engage in the world. When this happens for too many days together, don’t delay, get into therapy as soon as you can. If you need some medication to hold you up while you do the therapeutic work that is fine, and is how the medication was designed to be used.

Most importantly learn to pick up the pen of life and write your own script. In your life story you should be the hero/heroine. All good stories have happy endings.

Take care, be happy and live in the present

Sean x

TSHP424: Anger can be a useful emotion

What’s Coming This Episode?

We often see anger as a negative force. Though it can be a very creative and useful force. When our anger is stuck out the front of us it is in the way. It becomes a battering ram that bashes into other people and becomes destructive. When it is behind us it can be used as a power pack that positively can be a dynamic force that drives us forward and gets things done.

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Anger can be a useful emotion

We often see anger as a negative force. Though it can be a very creative and useful force. When our anger is stuck out the front of us it is in the way. It becomes a battering ram that bashes into other people and becomes destructive. When it is behind us it can be used as a power pack that positively can be a dynamic force that drives us forward and gets things done.

Preparing this podcast I was thinking a lot about how anger can effect each of us. Anger is really just another emotion, it is an energy. However anger is either a productive energy or a destructive energy. Anger can be described with other words such a passion, determination, assertion, drive, irritation, exasperation, vexation, indignation, displeasure, chagrin, aggravation and so on. Though in the extreme anger can sometimes it can tip over into aggression or even violence. 

When we have an anger response to a situation or event we are usually just reacting. Generally reactions are mindless. When we respond rather than react we think about what we are doing before we do it. 

Reactions are mindless where as responses are mindful. 

When we are mindful we realise that it is not what happens to us but it is how we deal with it that makes the difference. It will make it either good or bad. Simply it is the way that we see it. As Epicticus put it…

…we are not in the least effected by events, 

we are effected by our response to those events…

Each day throughout life we are surrounded by difficult news and experiences. As I write this there are huge flood and deaths across Europe. For many people there will be a reaction to these events that will be anger. The same is true for Covid and it’s effects. The world can sometimes seem to be a troubled place. I guess that we could say that the world is always a troubled place but somehow it can seem to be getting a bit worse. Anger and angry reactions seem to be all around us.

For me the reality of Brexit is coming to pass and I don’t like that and it could get more difficult yet. We have destabilisation across the globe and I don’t like that. Then we have North Korea off again producing missiles and winding up the anger of the USA, I don’t like that. I could go on. It seems like there might be quite a lot to let go of over in the coming months and years

Difficult events in the world can bring back a lot of really big negative reactions with many people. Thinking about this took me back to the Manchester bombing in 2017. At that time I had two families that were caught up in the incident. Luckily none of them were physically hurt though they had all seen people who were killed and they were showing high levels of post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. That scar of these events will remain with many people for such a long time. Yet after this event, amongst all the potential for hatred and retribution there came the love and forgiveness of a collective acceptance and forgiveness in concert of those refusing to be cowed by the terrorism. In a deeply emotional experience Oasis sang…

…don’t look back in anger…  

There are no words more appropriate to this event and to our lives.  

We all look back on life, we have a choice of looking at it positively or negatively. We have a mindful choice, do we ruminate and feed the negative events of life with our anger and allow the negativities to grow in our mind and our emotions? There is another option in life that is to feed the positive events of life with our love, ruminate on those and allow them to grow positively in our mind and our emotions.

Just after I started doing this podcast and blog there has been the shooting of a journalist in the Netherlands. On top of that is the apparent growing knife crime here in the UK with several people being killed each week. Every news broadcast tells us things to be angry about. If we are to move on from our anger about any events whatever they are we need to let them go. In general this is termed forgiveness and that idea makes many people feel angry. “Why should I forgive those people after what the did?”

Forgiveness and letting go

We need to let go of whatever is holding us back, of those things that keep us stuck in the past. These negative emotional attachments to unresolved events limit our ability to move forward, they stunt our creativity and weigh us down. To let go, to forgo, to forgive allows us to move forward unencumbered into the rest of our lives. 

Just as in the Step One, from the Live In The Present course and book, we need to let go of all our negative attachments right back to the moment of our birth. Holding onto negative past is a choice, though we may not realise it. In mindfulness we can choose to be different, to let go and enjoy this wonderful thing called life. If you haven’t already done so then visit step one on the website and complete the exercise focussing on any negativity that you are holding and let it go. That mindful journey begins right here, right now. the option is to let go of your negative emotions and attachments and embrace your positive future.

Whatever your faith, religion, ethnicity, nationality, orientation, or beliefs enjoy this moment. As we move into this strange post Brexit, post Covid world we all need to be as positive as we can possibly be with each other. We will be tested and we will need to let go of negative anger and look after each other.

Take care and have a fabulous life and look after each other.

Sean X

TSHP423: Tame Your Anxiety

What’s Coming This Episode?

Anxiety is a good thing. It has kept us safe throughout evolution by keeping us aware of potential threat and danger. Anxiety disorder is when we worry about things may or will never happen. This is a debilitating disorder that may require medication or therapy. With COVID piling on the stress it’s time to push back…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Tame Your Anxiety

Anxiety is a good thing. It has kept us safe throughout evolution by keeping us aware of potential threat and danger. Anxiety disorder is when we worry about things may or will never happen. This is a debilitating disorder that may require medication or therapy.

Anxiety has been identified as one of the greatest symptoms of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is expected that this anxiety will be with many people for many years if not for a generation. The important thing is that it doesn’t need to be. Just as we can be vaccinated against a virus we can also be vaccinated against unhelpful emotions. And, just as we can be treated for the symptoms and effects of a virus we can also be treated in the same way for anxiety. I think of it as taming your anxiety.

In the eastern psychotherapy the mind is often described as a monkey. This is the part of our mind that, if left unattended, can run off and create havoc for us. It is the part of your mind over which you feel you have little or no control. Actually, you can tame and control your monkey, it is just that you need to get to know it. This is called self discovery.

Monkeys come in many, and every, variety. Some are mischievous, funny or playful, while others can be negative depressive or angry. When people loose self esteem and self worth it is monkey business. When people become addicted to drug, religion, moaning or misery the monkey is at work. Whenever the mind plays tricks and does things that we do not want the monkey is out to play games with us. Sanity is when we know our monkey and are able to tame the beast and gently get it back into it’s cage and keep it safe and quite.

    The devil finds work for idle hands

The unoccupied mind will allow the monkey to run off and throw bananas at you. They may be bananas of joy and hope or misery and hurt. In human consciousness the most common monkey that most of us need to deal with is the anxious monkey.

Anxiety is simply the fear of the future

The reason we call what we do ‘Live In the Present’ is because in the now there is nothing but the present. When we bring the unresolved past into the present we call it depression and, when we bring unhappened and feared futures into the present we call it anxiety. Anxiety is the fear of what is yet to come.

The only way to overcome anxiety is to live in the present – LITP

Ed and I meet each week and have our own LITP time, it is the podcast. A while ago we were talking about people who do actually have to LITP. A racing motorcyclist travelling at 200 mph must live in the present or die. A moment of not being present can easily lead to a miscalculation and death. Equally a surgeon with scalpel poise over a brain or a heart must LITP to complete a successful operation. In fact anyone who is focussed on who they are and what they are doing is living in their present. But, as soon as they allow their mind to slip into either the past or the future they are lost.

The Mindful Moment

As much as I can my life is lived in the now. My LITP, comes mainly through the practise of meditation. The focus on breath and body is the experience of the present and the current heart beat forms the present just as the last heart beat was the past and the next one will be the future. 

How do you – or can you – live in your present?

Sad to say but, few people really do LITP. Most people are in the depression of the past or the anxiety of the future. The only way to tame anxiety is to discover your way of living in your present. All that antidepressant and anxiety medications do is to dull our sensations. We get the same effect from the self medication of drugs or alcohol. When the medication, drugs or alcohol have worn off, guess what? Back comes the anxiety just as before.

The bottom line is, if you want to tame your anxiety then engage your consciousness into something that excites you, something that makes you feel good. It might be exercise, a sport, a job, a skill, a hobby, a craft, whatever it is you will be focussed in the now, in your now, and you will no longer need to worry about what was or what will be. You will have created a new habit of LITP and you will have tamed your anxiety and be living in the now.

How will you live in your present?

This weeks resource is the Anxiety self help guide available on the site liveinthepresent.co.uk as a download. 

Take care

Sean x

 

TSHP422: Cyberchondria (or Google-itis)

What’s Coming This Episode?

Cyberchrondria has been with jus for many years. I always called it Google-itis. It is when the patient or the client has become so well informed about their condition that they often know more about it, or think that they know more about it, than their doctor or therapist. Let’s see if we can help!

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Cyberchondria – (Covid-chondria)

Cyberchrondria has been with jus for many years. I always called it Google-itis. It is when the patient or the client has become so well informed about their condition that they often know more about it, or think that they know more about it, than their doctor or therapist. Sometimes, what they think is information can be ‘mis-information’ as the sources of their information maybe dubious and come from any site or chat room on the internet.

According to Laura Donnelly, health editor (UK) Daily Telegraph, 

 

    ‘”Cyberchondria”  is fuelling an epidemic of health anxiety, with one in five NHS appointments taken up by hypochondriacs and those with irrational fears, experts have warned.’

Well that was written before Covid-19 so I expect that there are many more appointments from people fearing that they have a covid related condition. Or it could be that people are avoiding the NHS for fear of catching it. Having had covid and having, what I assume is, long covid, which is not diagnosed as such, do I have Cyberchrondia? This information about the symptoms that I have been feeling are from other people and from the internet.

Cyberchrondia is the modern digital equivalent of hypochondria that is a fear of illness often morbidly so. Usually seen as delusional, often accompanied by the hysterical development of physical symptoms that are dismissed by the doctor or therapist. Sadly I do see, on a regular basis, those with genuine symptoms and concerns ignored by their physician, who suspect them of hypochondria, only to go on and develop full blow and, sometimes, fatal disease that might have been cured if diagnosed earlier. 

If the statistics are true and that twenty percent of NHS time is wasted, the money spent looking after people who are not ill we have a problem…. But, just hold on a minute, maybe we have this wrong and we do have a problem, just not the one that we think we have.

What takes these people to the doctor in the first place?

Why would someone invest so much of their time and energy in worrying about being ill? Ok, so maybe they do not have a physical medical issue but they certainly due have a issue. It might just be called anxiety. 

In my discipline of psychotherapy we recognise that around 60% of those visiting a general practitioner/physician have an anxiety issues rather than or as well as a physical problem. We also know that when patients do have a genuine physical issue it is often exacerbated through their anxiety and concerns.

This does not mean that these people are wasting NHS time because they do not have a issues, they very much do have an issue it is called ‘Health Anxiety’. In covid health anxiety had increased dramatically.

Health Anxiety

All forms of anxiety happen when the consciousness of the individual is projected into their future. They are not living in their present. Fear of flying, is not fear of flying it is fear of crashing, fear of heights is fear of falling and so on.

You need a good imagination

Any anxiety can be defined as the person projecting into the future and imagining things that may never happen and then living those fears in the present as though they are actually happening right now. The better the person imagination the more intense their anxiety. You cannot be anxious without a good imagination. The person with health anxiety is using their imagination to assume and fear the worst and living those fears in the present as if they are true.

Often phobias and anxiety fears run side by side. So that health anxiety can lead to many phobic reactions and changes in behaviour to avoid a supposed or suspected illness or infection. Because of this health anxiety is often accompanied by OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder, the obsessive recitation of actions or thoughts. in reality the need to visit and revisit the internet to Google symptoms and diseases is also a form of OCD.

Symptom substitution 

The problem for these people is not that it may not be ‘health anxiety’ it maybe that they have ‘anxiety’ disorder. When someone has learned the habit of anxiety, living a supposed future in the present, the anxiety will attach itself to whatever is the latest focus of their attention. So now, with covid, it just happens to be health. If we resolve this obsession with covid the anxiety will simply attach itself to something else. So, now we have fear of flying followed by fear of nuclear war, followed by fear of losing a job, followed fear of becoming homeless. The attachments made by anxiety can go anywhere on an endless list of possibilities.

This is a real problem

This is not a fantasy. For the sufferer it is very real. It is not something where you can tell the person to ‘pull yourself together and just stop worrying’. From my experience as a therapist, and from what I read, anxiety is a developing and increasing problem. We can see from these statistics from the NHS and from the information form the office of national statistics (ONS) that amount of hours and days lost to sickness absence due to anxiety is a growing problem. So, if we are to solve the problem the question is why is it developing and what can we do about it? And, accepting that covid is making this much worse.

Life style changes

The person that was, just a few generations ago, driving a horse and cart is now flying a jumbo jet.  The world has changed, we have not. In the preindustrial, pre-urban society we ate what we could grow, foods that were in season and our expectations were less. With industrialisation and production comes choice and we now know that choice is stressful. Research shows us that if, when we are in the supermarket, we have a choice of one hundred different types of cheese, this in itself creates stress for us. If the choice is limited to less that ten types of cheese the stress much less. Think of the level of choices that we all have in all parts of our life. More choice, more decision making, more opportunity to get it wrong, creates more stress.

From the moment you wake to the moment that you arrive at work or school you will have processed more information than your great grandparents would have processed in several months. Life and news is instantaneous. Most of us are contumely connected. We cannot escape it and simply relax. 

Longevity

With improved living standards, nutrition and medication has come a longer life. In the UK we are looking at female death age in the mid nineties and men in the late eighties. In one sense with more time has come more anxiety. Also with longer life has come more disease. Illnesses that a few generations ago people would simply not have lived long enough to get have now become common place. We probably all know someone who has had cancer. We are now told that 50% of us will get cancer. However, we also told that the majority of us will survive it. The message that we focus on will depend on our anxiety. Those with anxiety disorder are likely  to hear “50% of us will get cancer and die from it”. Those without anxiety disorder are likely to hear “most of us will survive it”. There are other aspects of potential anxiety related to longevity such as pensions, financial support and care homes etc. 

Expectation

Along with increased life has come increase expectation. Expectation of wealth and consumerism, an expectation of things, of stuff. Many of us are no longer prepared to save before we purchase we simply rely on credit. Just like anxiety, credit gives us a way to experience the potential future in the present. From car loans and mortgages to credit cards and store cards we live the future in the present. It is then that we experience the pressure, the anxiety of having to pay it all off. The average UK household currently has about £15,400.00 of unsecured credit, that is before mortgages and car loans. (Guardian)

Media

The development of our expectations is mainly fuelled by the media, advertising and marketing. It serves to convinces us that we need things that we have never known about before. The new phone that appears every eighteen months, the lasted model of car, fashion, bags, shoes and consumables. For many fashion equals stress as we are convinced of those things that we just must have. 

News

Alongside media is the news that is broadcast at us every hour of the day. News rarely  ever tells us anything that is good, rather it fires up the fears and anxieties of the listeners. News is rarely balanced. News is about all the bad that is happening and all the bad that will happen next. It feeds our fear and anxiety, it creates anxiety. 

Internet

When it come to health we have Google etc., that does everything from misdiagnosing our symptoms, to making us envious of those wonderful lives that we see on FaceBook and Instagram, to wanting products from Amazon and other online markets. 

Technology

But, we must not forget our need for the devices that allow us to play with the internet. Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, smart TVs. I wonder what device you are using to read this on? 

Strangely the word ‘chondria’ comes from the Greek meaning cartilage. So hyper would infer an over focussing on the inner tissues hence the medical connection. If we take chondria, in a modern sense to mean “what we focus upon” Cyberchondria makes sense.

As we come out of covid and refocus our attention let’s try and focus on the positive and use the internet to reinforce what is good in life and not keep feeding the fear of what will happen next.

Take care and be happy and whatever your individual chondria is try and make it a positive one.

Sean x

 

TSHP421: Loving Kindness the Practise of Metta

What’s Coming This Episode?

Scientific evidence shows us the positive effects of doing kind acts for others as well as receiving or even witnessing kindness. Neuropsychology measure the increase of the positive endorphins in the brain that enhance our sense of well bing. Even the smallest act of kindness can change a life and it can change your life.

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Loving Kindness the Practise of Metta

Scientific evidence shows us the positive effects of doing kind acts for others as well as receiving or even witnessing kindness. Neuropsychology measure the increase of the positive endorphins in the brain that enhance our sense of well bing. Even the smallest act of kindness can change a life and it can change your life. 

Kindness week is in mid February. I am using https://www.twinkl.co.uk/event/international-random-acts-of-kindness-week-2022, as my resource for this week’s podcast. However, I am left wondering why we can’t have a loving kindness year or even a loving kindness life. Back to my mantra…

If we all look after each other we will all be okay 

The concept of loving kindness is common in most schools of meditation, known as Metta. Metta or a loving kindness meditation often comes at the end of normal meditation practice, though it can used as a full meditation of loving kindness. In Metta we are expressing caring and empathy for other and even all sentient, feeling, beings. Traditionally this begins with yourself and then, like ripples from a pond, it spreads in ever increasing circles to encompass all of creation.

In this blog I am partly quoting from Bodhipaksa who is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, and founder of Wildmind in 2001. Well worth a visit.

http://www.wildmind.org/metta/introduction/what-is-metta

In the current time we need to be building positive emotional connections with all those around us. For many meditators the cons put of Metta is not limited to meditation practice but is a way of life.

Metta is recognising that all sentient beings (including all animals) can feel good or feel bad, and that all, given the choice, will choose the former over the latter. Such contact with feeling implies that there can be suffering for all beings. This is the point where I become a vegetarian. The bottom line for me is that other animals do not have to die in order for me to live and that other animals do not need to suffer so that I can live.

Metta is the solidarity that we have with others, this sharing of a common aspiration to find fulfilment and escape suffering. At this time, dealing with Covid and the aftermath of Covid, we can choose to help others and they choose to help us we could reclaim community. The way that I see it is that if we all work together we can achieve anything.

Metta is empathy which is the willingness to see the world from another’s point of view: to walk a mile in their shoes. When we are consciously awake and aware and switched on we can learn from the experience of other people. When we are consciously asleep and switched off we often have to suffer in order to learn and grow. 

Metta is the desire that all sentient beings be well and are doing well, or at least the ones we’re currently thinking about or in contact with. It’s wishing others well. When we look after others the chances are that they will look after us and wish us well. Creating the positive and peaceful family of community.

Metta is friendliness, consideration, kindness, generosity. Charity is when we offer friendliness and support to others. It may be money though the most charitable thing that we can do I’d to be there for other people when they need us.

Metta is an attitude to action rather than just a nice feeling. It’s an attitude of friendliness but friendliness in action.

Metta is compassion. Compassion means ‘with feeling’. When our loving kindness meets another’s suffering, then our Metta transforms into compassion and we feel and respond to their needs.

Metta is shared joy. When our Metta meets with another’s happiness or good fortune, then it transmutes into an empathetic joyfulness. We feel better and more joyful from having made that compassionate connection with another person.

Metta knows no bounds. We can feel Metta for any sentient being, regardless of gender, race, nationality species, ethnicity, orientation. When trained in psychotherapy we are encouraged to treat all those people that we work with, with unconditional positive regard. We also need to treat ourselves in the same way with unconditional positive self regard.

Metta is the most fulfilling emotional state that we can know. It’s the fulfilment of the emotional development of every being. It’s our inherent potential. To wish another well is to wish that they also be in a state of experiencing Metta.

Metta is the answer to almost every problem the world faces today. Money won’t do it. Technology won’t do it. Metta will.

That last point is so simple, yet is is so true.All the world problems could be solved right now with a little loving kindness. Too often politics and the media go out of their way to reinforce the differences between people. Metta shows how similar we all are, and not just human beings all animals, all of creation.

Have a go at the meditation of loving kindness on the Palouse site and enjoy the other great links, knowledge and facilities offered there.

Here is a link to a full metta loving kindness meditation…    

https://palousemindfulness.com/meditations/lovingkindness.html

Be happy and share your Metta

Take care

Sean x