Experience sampling - goal for the day? Yes, use tap forms to implement it, talk at phone.

I want to remind myself to do more experience sampling.

I can set doing experience sampling as my goal for the day for one of the days I'm in Houston. Freewrite to carry it out as a concrete goal? Talk at my phone? Yes, using tap forms!!!!

Big picture questions to help with hoarding issues

I have trouble making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. So, I was really struck by how helpful it could be to ask myself:

Who are you with the object? Who are you if the object is gone?

Those questions came up in a conversation I had with a residential counselor at the Houston OCD Program, and she said she had more of these big picture questions. Getting her list of questions today has got me feeling quite hopeful. I need all the help I can get to support me in being able to make these decisions in a way that I can feel good about myself. These questions look like they'll keep me pointed in the right direction.

1. In making this decision what are your overall goals?

2. What values are you enforcing by discarding this item?  How would you choose to sustain a sense of responsibility for following your primary values?

3. How are others impacted if you keep this?  What other-focused values are you embracing if you let this item go?

4. Visualize how you would like your living space to look like…does this item fit with your image?

5. If there is a sense of loss or discomfort resulting from discarding this item, how will being mindful help?

6. What might you gain from discarding this item?  

7. Does this item change you as a person?

8. When was the last time you used this?

9. Will you remember this or be able to find it?

10. Is keeping this workable?

surely you would have to agree

still need to take this first draft that I dictated in in a hurry and make it into something more shareable

so it's become this pattern where I have this kind of like choking strangling somebody kind of gesture that I make while I'm thinking about how to important something is and how surely you would have to be anxious about this.

And people find ways of helping me see that No one wouldn't have to agree.

1 time when this happened I was talking to a residential counselor who does art therapy

In the beginning of rivers and tides there's a part where he's building a cone out of slate and it gets bigger as it goes up

and the thing I need to capture in this blog post has to do with this way he has of being with this process.

So I was saying to her but it could be made worse I could make it worse

and she used this example to give me a different way of looking at it

so it's about learning about yourself its learning about how you respond in situations where you feel this way

Make a plan, work a plan

pp. 44-46 of The Perfectionist's Handbook provides some strategies for behavior change:

• Commitment to action
• Identify alternative strategies
• Use cues and reminders
• Use a stepwise process
• Use social supports

With commitment to action, I often have trouble making a plan and working a plan...and especially with sticking to the plan... I've had some better success with this, occasionally, when I write out what I'm doing instead of just holding in my mind the different things I'm trying to do. I'd really like to get something set up for myself that will get me to write things out more and stick to them...

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.