Mindfulness Handout

Handout for the Mindfulness group that I led today at the Houston OCD Program: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1lg3f09tqwvmkte/MindfulnessGroupHandoutJan62016.pdf?dl=0

Audio files for timers for taking regular 2 minute breaks

Taking 2 minute breaks either every 10 minutes or every 20 minutes has totally changed my life for the better. It's helpful to me that the breaks are contained, and 2 minute time periods have been a great container for taking a meditation break, or get up and stretch break, etc.

To download the mp3s I've made to facilitate taking 2 min breaks, click on the button in the upper right hand corner of the screen after you click on the links below.

- The quickest and simplest way to give taking regular 2 minute breaks a try is to use this combined-into-one mp3. It is for taking 2 minute breaks every 20 minutes. It is just over an hour long.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fu5dgaa5xp5agw0/StructuredTime20min-2min.mp3?dl=0

- I particularly like finding out when I'm at the halfway point in the 20 minute time periods. So, here's an alternative combined-into-one mp3 that's the same as the previous one except that, at the 10 minute mark, there is an announcement that 10 minutes have passed, and there are 10 minutes left.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddhkmu9a7hkqh6v/StructuredTime20-2-10minAnnounced.mp3?dl=0

If you want to make playlists for more than an hour long, or for taking 2 min breaks every 10 minutes instead of 20, you can use the following mp3s. My playlists have multiple copies of the mp3s, but you can also just set your playlist on repeat.

- This mp3 simply begins with an announcement that this is the beginning of a 2 minute time period and ends with 1 bell after 2 minutes of silence have elapsed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9ldecdh4xs7uqk/2min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 simply begins with an announcement that this is the beginning of a 10 minute time period and ends with 3 bells after 10 minutes of silence have elapsed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/29lizkitoaocwvu/10min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 is the same as the 10 minute one except it is for a 20 minute time period.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7373f0rut6gin1/20min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 is also for a 20 minute time period. But for this one, at the 10 minute mark, there is an announcement that 10 minutes have passed, and there are 10 minutes left.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvrw8kv42wbw2pj/20-10minAnnounced.mp3?dl=0

Helpful questions for when you notice yourself having unhelpful thoughts

• Is this thought in any way useful or helpful?
• Is this an old story? Have I heard this one before?
• What would I get for buying into this story?
• Could this be helpful, or is my mind just babbling on?
• Does this thought help me take effective action?
• Am I going to trust my mind or my experience?

From a handout for the Houston OCD Program's Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Group - Defusion & Getting in Touch with the Present Moment

Melt the resistance with curiosity and eagerness

One thing is clear. I want to be experiencing my anxiety differently, and I think what I'm realizing about resistance will help with that.

I'm realizing that I still have a lot of resistance to anxiety. I've been saying that I do sit with anxiety all the time, I can feel anxiety and still do things. So, I can do response prevention if something else is compelling enough to trump my anxiety. But, there's still resistance to the anxiety, and the anxiety can still unduly influence me.

I think the following post on Pema Chodron's Facebook page can help remind me to melt the resistance with curiosity and even eagerness to experience the anxiety.

From: https://www.facebook.com/notes/pema-chodron/dakinis-bliss/386161346427/

Dakini's Bliss

April 23, 2010 at 12:06pm

Excerpted from "Taking the Leap", by Pema Chodrön

A few years ago, I was overwhelmed by deep anxiety, a fundamental, intense anxiety with no storyline attached. I felt very vulnerable, very afraid and raw. While I sat and breathed with it, relaxed into it, stayed with it, the terror did not abate. It was unrelenting after many days, and I didn't know what to do.

I went to see my teacher Dzigar Kongtrül, and he said, "Oh, I know that place." That was reassuring. He told me about times in his life when he had been caught in the same way. He said it had been an important part of his journey and had been a great teacher for him. Then he did something that shifted how I practice. He asked me to describe what I was experiencing. He asked me where I felt it. He asked me if it hurt physically and if it was hot or cold. He asked me to describe the quality of the sensation, as precisely as I could. This detailed exploration continued for a while, and then he brightened up and said "Ani Pema, that's the Dakini'sBliss. That's a high-level of spiritual bliss." I almost fell out of my chair. I thought, "Wow, this is great!" And I couldn't wait to feel that intensity again. And do you know what happened? When I eagerly sat down to practice, of course, since the resistance was gone, so was the anxiety.

I now know that at a nonverbal level the aversion to my experience had been very strong. I had been making the sensation bad. Basically, I just wanted it to go away. But when my teacher said "Dakini's bliss," it completely changed the way I looked at it. So that's what I learned: take an interest in your pain and your fear. Move closer, lean in, get curious; even for a moment, experience the feelings without labels, beyond being good or bad. Welcome them. Invite them. Do anything that helps melt the resistance.

Then the next time you lose heart and you can't bear to experience what you are feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. That's basically the instruction that Dzigar Kongtrül gave me. And now I pass it on to you. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering - yours, mine, and that of all living beings.

Get out of your mind and into your life

I'm seeing how a good default for helping me do more getting out of my mind and into my life is to shift to practicing mindfulness whenever I'm being unduly influenced by anxiety-driven concerns. I want to keep bringing myself back to a value-driven way of being, and mindfulness practices seem like a promising strategy for helping me disengage from anxiety-driven thoughts and behaviors.

Deliberately doing an activity that will slow me down

Notes from talking to a residential counselor at the Houston OCD Program

Supposed to be faster for "generally want everything to be faster" sake e.g. walking her dogs

When finding herself unduly influenced by efficiency concerns

She will go do a task that will force her to slow down

Water the lawn by hand

[Gardening is something she used to enjoy more often, this task helps her enjoy valued things.]

Enforced slowness to enforce awareness

uncomfortable to do this

perhaps especially so when unduly influenced by efficiency concerns

uncomfortable but will slow you down

which can facilitate “twice as slowly” and “twice as calmly” mentality that I want to adopt as often as possible

Take time to do something

Art exercises I could do:

Blind sketching - keep eyes on the thing you’re drawing and don’t look down at paper

Use non-dominant hand to draw an object 

Intent to hold while doing the activity:

Cultivate awareness

Really look at the object I'm drawing 

Really experience the experience I'm having

Value the process of doing the activity and having the experience

Get to know something and engage and participate in doing something with it

The last item on that list provided an answer to a question I asked at the end of our conversation: "What is it all about anyway?" with "it" referring to life.

In response to this she talked about the River and Tides documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, and that provided an unbelievably (in terms of who would’ve guessed that my posing this question would actually yield an answer that really resonated so well for me) satisfying answer: 

Getting to know things and engaging and participating in doing something with them.

Tonglen

I was just talking through how to do an upcoming exposure with a residential counselor here at the Houston OCD Program.

At the end of the conversation, she was talking about accepting that things will just happen as they happen. My reaction to this was to yell "Ahhhh  Ahhhh" in response to this. My thoughts quickly turned from ideas around how a physical therapy appointment might go to tornados destroying everything in their path. Mayhem Mayhem Mayhem.

So, I stayed with the sensations that went with the utter chaos that I associated with her words about things just happening as they happen. What then ensued turned into a tonglen meditation. By the end I was imagining myself being able to sit with the ideas of things just happening as they happen more like my partner Peter would.

What I want to confront

Whatever causes the most anxiety, whatever is the thing I most want control over. These are the things I want to confront.

I've been working through how I want to be using the ratings I'm being asked to give my anxiety levels here at the Houston OCD Program. These ratings are called SUDS, Subjective Units of Distress.

1 - 3 Mild
4 - 7 Moderate
8 - 10 High

It seems like it'll be helpful to keep in mind the helpful guidance that you see above in italics. So, things that are TOO IMPORTANT!!!! definitely fall under the category of things I most want control over. Not wanting to be party to the spread of Molluscum is an example of that. So, how do I confront this thing?

[Molluscum (Water warts) is something that my 5 year old has on different parts of his body for 3 months now that can last for months to years and is itchy for him.]

Okay, so when I'm concerned about it, my SUDS are super high. The goal is to have things be more No Big Deal. So, one goal is to be able to go about tasks where I'm anxious about Molluscum with lower SUDS. Another goal is to not be over the top about the measures I take to prevent the spread of Molluscum.

So, perhaps one route* to achieving these goals is to write scripts about the spread of Molluscum and use them to get to a point where I can hold the idea of preventing its spread more lightly rather than with a death grip with the idea that it must be prevented at all costs.

I don't want to be unduly influenced by my anxiety. I want to be able to hold its concerns more lightly.

Perhaps, with SUDS, it might be easiest for me to rate things based on the degree to which I am feeling unduly influenced by my anxiety.

If I'm not being unduly influenced then I'll be able to go about things from a settled place. If I am, then "Ahhhh Ahhhh" is the energy that I'll be bringing to things. The gesture that goes with "Ahhhh Ahhhh" for me is waving my hands in front of my shoulders. So, my SUDS can be ratings of how much of that energy I've brought to what I've experienced.

Another thing I could do is rate things based on how able to be with a values-driven approach to things and to be more process-oriented.

Another thought is to think in terms of tonglen...

Yet another thought is to think in terms of how able I am to resist doing what my OCD bully is saying I must do...or how easy it is to shrug off the thing I wish weren't so.

*It's about being able to experience feeling super anxious about it without giving in and doing what would make me feel less anxious. One route to getting there is to spend time hanging out with high levels of anxiety about it while trying to dial the anxiety up with the goal of habituating to it.