I’ve gotten to thinking about the experience of awe, especially in how it figures into the project of dismantling depression and anxiety. So the question for this essay boils down to: how does awe affect mood?
Ok. If we start with a brief definition from Websters, we get:
“Awe: an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.”
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”–(John 2:15)
I was sitting with a client who was describing being at a party full of close friends, people she’s known for years and is comfortable with, when she, out of the blue, began feeling anxious. There was nothing that happened in the interactions; the same sharing of recent events was going on as before the burst of anxiety. She was baffled at what was triggering the anxiety, and kept looking to the happenings around her and couldn’t find what was activating her. Which, of course, led her to feel more anxious. (Anxiety signals a danger, and marshals the “locate danger” circuitry, and when that danger can’t be found, prompts or reinforces the anxiety.)
So this article is going to be a very simple and direct reminder of something we all, across the board, forget to do. Which is to slow down.
Now, that’s often put out as a general injunction, as a “way of living,” or as a way of encouraging mindfulness and reflectivity and calm. Fair enough.
But I want say “slow down” as a literal injunction: don’t move your body as fast. Consciously retard movement. Not internally, not speech, but with your big muscle groups and gross motor actions. I.e., physically, slow down.
As I’ve been preparing for the next series of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (MBCT) classes (see below), my thoughts have gone to the subject of “taking action” within the context of a class which stresses heavily acceptance and non-resistance of the experience of depression. It’s an important issues, especially for a therapist like myself who stresses the aspect of mindfulness as a general principle of effective therapy (not the sole cause, maybe not even the most important, but pretty useful at least…).
“Burned all my notebooks, what good are
Notebooks? They won’t help me survive.”
“Life During Wartime”-Talking Heads
I think it would be fair to say that there’s a lot of stress in the air (or on our doorsteps) these days, and I don’t believe we can understate the often under-, or not-so-underground effect it’s having on us. The Talking Heads succinctly put it in their song: not a time to reflect, ’cause you gotta just survive.
So with the primaries over, and the campaign for President revving up, here are some suggestions about using this inescapable event to your benefit. The Wild Moods, depression and anxiety, have multiple factors that influence them, and though our recent bias is towards “brain chemistry imbalance,” the storms of culture cannot be taken lightly.
Edmund Bourne’s “Beyond Anxiety and Phobia” is a wonderful manual for those of you whose suffering comes in the form of anxiety. It talks about the core fears that are embedded in the personality of anxiety-prone people, beliefs that in a way precede experience.
Stuck Moods
It seems to me that one of the most important questions for those who suffer from chronic anxiety and depression is why they become chronic. Or another way of saying it is, what keeps these wild moods from arising and dissipating quickly?
If it’s true that one can define health at all levels as an integration of the parts, then the trouble with these moods is that they are dis-integrated from the rest of our selves, and from those around us (particularly with depression). So then therapy for these moods boils down to, in essence, integrating these standoffish moods back into the family of one’s thoughts and feelings, people and experience that make up the fullness of our lives.
But when you’re in it, you’re in it. The voice of depression and anxiety is that of despair and disbelief; when you’re overcome by them, you are feeling and thinking that you and the world don’t have what you need, that you can’t trust yourself or others, that there’s nothing that can be done to change your suffering. The more depressed and anxious you are, the more comprehensive these experiences.
There’s a quote that I haven’t been able to find, but I think it comes from Herman Hesse, which goes something like, “The greatest desire of Man is to forget.” With wild moods, this is true because a basic belief is that we don’t have what we need, and we just have to live with that. Whether that came from some kind of cultural philosophy, or trauma, or lack in one’s early childhood, the effects are the same: just get by, and try to be safe, or at least just hunker down so nothing dangerous sees you.
Finding Resources
In the late 1980’s, a psychologist named Francine Shapiro stumbled across the connection between what’s called “bi-lateral stimulation” and relief from trauma. Bi-lateral stimulation (BLS) is simply a term for stimulating the brain’s hemispheres by either moving the eyes back and forth, or tapping on the right and left sides of the body, in sequence. The name for the therapy that emerged out of this insight is Eye Movement Desensitization Routine (EMDR).
There are theories about why EMDR helps alleviate the symptoms of trauma-and the research at this point shows that it is in general very effective-but no one knows for sure why. Be that as it may, the effect is that the charge that is locked up in the memory of a trauma becomes discharged, and there is permanent healing.
Now, out of EMDR has emerged an elaboration of what is the first stage of the therapy, called “resource instillation,” a somewhat dry term to describe what’s essentially a re-learning of where you already feel good. This elaboration comes from the work of Dr. Laurel Parnell, who calls it “Resource Tapping” (from her new book, Tapping In).
Whereas EMDR needs a trained therapist to be effectively, and safely used, Resource Tapping is easily available and usable by anyone. It’s a way of consciously and systematically pushing back on the fragmenting quality of depression and anxiety, through using imagery and memory to call up the positive resources-joy, happiness, connectedness, safety, contentment-that are in you, but often difficult to find.
Connecting in to Resources
You can understand bi-lateral stimulation with the commonly used metaphor of a physical wound: BLS serves to clean out the wound, and to nurture the healing process. But if a body is to heal effectively, it needs to be nourished and supported-good food and water, and good relationships-and that’s what the resource tapping is there to do.
When you are feeling depressed, when depression is arising, it would be useful to tap into a feeling that you’re not, say, all alone. What resource tapping does is help find and strengthen your already existing sense, in this example, of connectedness. (I’ll give a sample of the way to do it below.) You recall an image/memory/person that conveys the sense of being in community, and then apply the BLS as you feel that sense in your body. Someone once used the metaphor of how metal is purified, where the metal is run through a ring of ultra-pure metal, which serves to pull the “impurities” and leaves the original metal stronger. The BLS seems to sort of gently shake the psyche into solidifying the place of these memories in the conscious mind.
Some people get hung up a bit on coming up with images or memories, feeling like there’s something artificial or forced. But what’s really happening is that you are simply finding existing triggers for existing states in your own mind. The image/memory is almost arbitrary; the important thing is that the trigger brings up the desired state. It’s really just a technique in managing one’s own self, like adjusting one’s body consciously to be more comfortable. Really. It’s about that simple.
Here’s an example: I was working with a client, doing EMDR, she came up with the image of a lizard as a soothing image (this historically was an important totem animal for her). This person was a bit skeptical about the process, but game enough. We weren’t sure if much happened, but a few day later I got this story: “I was walking along a street, and as I walked across the street, a car very nearly hit me, and then the guy yelled at me! Normally, it would have stuck with me all day, as fear and anger, which if I was already feeling low could have sent me into a depression. But what happened was that, almost immediately, the image of my lizard appeared and began stroking my hair, and I calmed down right there. And the upset didn’t carry on.” So even if you don’t believe the process, your system will actually respond as if you did.
An Example of the Process
I’ll end by giving an example from Dr. Parnell’s book on how you actually walk through Resource Tapping. I’d highly encourage it, and ask you to give yourself time to experiment (it’s not just a try it once sort of thing). For the project of re-integrating oneself in the face of the fragmenting effects of anxiety and depression, it’s remarkably useful. Really. And remember, the effectiveness comes when you can feel the desired state in your body, and then you apply the tapping. Wild moods cause your body to forget its resources, and tapping is a way to get the body to remember.
Here’s an appropriate one for the sense of being unsafe that comes with wild moods:
“Tapping in your inner Support Team” (from Parnell’s Tapping In)
Bring to mind someone you would like on your inner support team. It can be a friend, family member, partner, coach, or role model-someone you know personally or someone you have seen or read about.
As you bring this person to mind, feel his or her support for you.
When you can feel the support you get from him or her, begin to tap [I.e., the resource tapping].
Tap 6-12 times [right-left, right-left], and then stop and check in to see how you are feeling. If the positive feeling for you resource person is getting stronger, you can tap longer. [Stop if it starts feeling negative.]
Tap in as many supports as you would like. With each one you can feel the sense of support increasing.
Imagine yourself surrounded by you support team. You are in the center of a circle of support. Spend a moment and look at each one of your support people. Feel their support for you. Take it in; feel it as strongly as you can in your body.
Tap as you look at and take in the support from each one of your team members.
Now feel the combined support from your entire team. When you can strongly feel the sense of support in your body, begin to tap. Tap as long as it feels positive.
Imagine taking this feeling of support with you into your life. When you have an image or sense of doing this, tap to strengthen it.
Remember that your support team is always there. All you had to do is think of them and tap.
There was a cartoon that sticks in my memory from a bookstore I used to frequent. It showed an archetypally old man–wizened, bent, with warts on his nose and a cane by his bench–who was beaming at a flower that had grown up through a crack in the sidewalk. Around him were anonymous corporate buildings, and people passed by in their personal bubbles. But his attention was on the flower.
