Category: The Happiness Trap

The past several weeks have been way too busy for my liking (hence a complete lack of time for posting to this blog!).  This is my favorite time of year and I would like nothing better than to relax with my family, celebrate the birth of Jesus, cuddle up to watch Christmas movies, bake goodies, and relish the season.  While I’ve gotten to do many of the activities of the Christmas season, some unforeseen circumstances have caused me to be mentally cluttered and stressed.

The team I manage at work experienced significant turnover this month and I took on a new leadership position at my church due to a sudden resignation.  Most of these situations were beyond my control.  I was already busy and these events pushed me to become overwhelmed.

As a result, I switched into hyper-planning mode in order to make sure no balls were dropped. Really, it was a survival mechanism.  However, I also started falling into the happiness trap of telling myself that all of this was fine.  Good, even.  There was a little of that, “Look how much I can handle.  How much I can successfully pull off, and with a smile!” attitude settling in.

It was a very familiar place for me.  I’d been there before.  Taking on more and more, living by my (ever growing!) to do list.  Making time for more activity at the expense of connecting and being in the moment.

But, after a little while, this state didn’t work for me.  I could feel the disconnectedness from my family and missing out on the enjoyment of Christmas time.  This was not how I wanted this season to be.  A couple conversations with my mom and husband helped me to clarify my feelings.  Although these extra responsibilities are mine and I’m not going to shirk them, I need be real that this isn’t all fun and admit that don’t I want to be this busy.

It’s interesting to me that, after all of this growth, I still have trouble identifying my feelings in the moment.  There’s still that sense that things need to be labeled as “good” in my mind, and that often means suppressing my real feelings.  Or, perhaps that’s just normal?  Maybe it takes awhile for ones “real feelings” about a situation to manifest themselves?

This week my friend and co-worker gave me a “Be Still and Know” sign, that I’m keeping in my office.  It was a perfectly timed reminder of how I want to live – in the peaceful knowledge that God is taking care of every moment, whether it’s happy, frustrating, stressful, or otherwise.

This situation was yet another reminder of the constant ebb and flow of emotions in life. I’m happy to be embracing the moment and focusing on celebrating the birth of our precious Savior this week.

In reviewing my posts on The Happiness Trap, I was surprised to find such an obvious oversight.  In my post The Struggle Switch, I ended with a teaser: This is where the critically important technique of expansion comes in… but then I neglected to write a post about expansion.  Oops!

So, here it is: Expansion.

Expansion is the technique for accepting your unpleasant feelings, whereas defusion is the technique for accepting unpleasant thoughts.   Dr. Harris states, “Basically, expansion means making room for our feelings.” By contrast, the words that tend to describe feeling bad are about restriction – “tension,” “stress,” “under pressure” and “strain” for example.  Through expansion, we’re giving our feelings space so they can move, and eventually, move on.

In this section, Dr. Harris revisits the concept of the Thinking self versus the Observing self.  The thinking self produces our thoughts, judgements, images, fantasies, and memories – it’s commonly called “the mind.”  The observing self is responsible for awareness, attention, and focus.  Expansion requires sidestepping the thinking self with the aim of observing your emotions. This way, you can experience unpleasant emotions without passing judgement on them, creating scary images, or associating with memories of past emotions.

Dr. Harris admits the obvious problem – the thinking self never shuts up!  While practicing expansion, you’ll also have to defuse thoughts that pop up to distract you from the pure awareness of your feelings.

The Four Steps of Expansion:

The four basic steps of expansion are: observe your feelings, breathe into them, make room for them, and allow them to be there.  Sounds simple doesn’t it? That’s because it is. It’s also effortless.  However, that does not mean it’s easy!  Remember the quicksand scenario? Lying back and floating on quicksand is both simple and effortless – yet it’s far from easy.

Step 1: Observe

Observe the sensations in your body. Take a few seconds to scan yourself from head to toe, noticing any uncomfortable sensations.  Pick the one that upsets you the most – lump in your throat, knot in your stomach, etc. and focus on it.  Observe the feeling with curiosity.

Step 2: Breathe

Breathe into and around the sensation. Begin with a few deep breaths, being sure to empty your lungs completely.  Slow, deep breathing is important – it lowers your levels of tension and provides a center of calm within you.  “It’s like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: the anchor won’t get rid of the storm, but it will hold you steady until it passes.”

Step 3: Create Space

In breathing deeply into and around the sensation, it’s as if you’re somehow making space within your body.  You’re expanding rather than tensing.  Open up and create a space around this sensation, giving it plenty of room to move.  And if it gets bigger, give it even more space.

Step 4: Allow

Resist the urge to get rid of the feeling.  Allow it to be there, even thought it’s unpleasant and you don’t like it.  Let it be.  When your mind starts judging and commenting, simply thank it and bring your attention back to observing.

This process is the natural progression from defusion of thoughts.  Essentially it’s the same process, only with feelings.  In both defusion and expansion, the goal is acceptance not “getting rid of” the thoughts and feelings.  Harris explains:

As you practice this technique, one of two things will happen: either your feelings will change or they won’t.  It doesn’t matter either way, because this technique is not about changing your feelings – it’s about accepting them.  If you have truly dropped the struggle with this feeling, it will have much less impact on you, regardless of whether or not it changes.

At the end of this section, Dr. Harris asks readers to practice expansion with an unpleasant feeling.  This practice is done so you can develop the willingness to have unpleasant emotions.  You don’t have to like the feeling or want to feel it, but since unpleasant emotions will arise throughout your life, you will benefit greatly from changing your relationship with them.  Instead of trying to avoid them or get rid of them, the willingness and acceptance of these feelings with make them less threatening.

 

Connection, as described previously, is simply being connected to the moment you’re currently in, rather than being mentally distracted, or carried away, by your thoughts. This next section of The Happiness Trap describes a powerful aspect of connection that people can tap into whenever they want and wherever they are. The title of this section is “If You’re Breathing, You’re Alive”. Dr. Harris writes, “Breathing is wonderful. Not only does it keep you alive, it reminds you that you’re alive.”

Deep breathing is suggested in nearly all of the exercises in this book. Most other mindfulness techniques: yoga, meditation, and the like also focus on deep breathing. Many people don’t breathe deeply which contributes to feelings of anxiety and stress. When I was on the phone with the counselor who suggested The Happiness Trap to me, she walked me through a deep breathing exercise. Brenda was a little shocked to hear how shallow my “deep” breath was compared to hers. Anxiety certainly had me breathing quickly and shallowly.

Dr. Harris describes a technique he calls “Breathing to Connect”:

Take ten slow, deep breaths. For the first five, focus on your chest and abdomen; connect with your breathing. For the next five breaths, expand your focus, so that as well as being aware of your breathing, you’re also connecting fully with your environment; that is, while noticing your breathing, also notice what you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.

This exercise allows people to feel more present and connected to where they are and what they’re doing in the moment. This awareness then sets the stage for one to take effective action to change their lives for the better.

Breathing to connect is most helpful and meaningful when facing an emotional crisis. Dr. Harris provides an example through his personal experience as a psychiatrist. He describes how he uses breathing to connect and expansion to deal with the natural surge of anxiety that occurs when clients share their intentions to commit suicide:

… I immediately take one slow, deep breath, and during those few seconds I make room for my anxiety, allow my thoughts to fade into the background, and focus my attention firmly on my client. And until the crisis is resolved, I keep breathing slowly and deeply, allowing my thoughts and feelings to come and go as I remain fully connected to what I’m doing. In this way my breathing acts as an anchor. It doesn’t get rid of my anxiety, but it stops me from getting carried away. It’s like a constant, soothing presence in the background, while my attention is focused on taking effective action.

Breathing to connect, then, provides the atmosphere in which defusion of thoughts and expansion of feelings can occur most successfully.

In two separate places within this brief section, Dr. Harris cautions readers not to start using breathing to connect as a control strategy (apparently this is a common issue!). Connection and particularly these deep breathing exercises often cause pleasant feelings like calmness and peacefulness. But, if you use these techniques in order to get rid of unpleasant emotion or to “feel better” instead of as acceptance strategies, you’ll be right back in the vicious cycle of control.

In my experience, breathing to connect did provide me with an anchor to weather emotional storms.  There were several weeks back in early fall where I practiced these exercises for ten minutes or more on a nightly basis.  It helped me to practice staying connected to the moment and get used to letting my thoughts come and go without connecting (or fusing) with them.

Have you ever been part of a conversation and tuned out? You got distracted by your thoughts and then realized you’d missed a significant portion of what the other person said? The worst is when you get caught and have to admit you weren’t listening and need them to repeat them-selves. Other examples of this type of mental distraction include arriving at a destination without having any memory of driving there (this always happens to me when I’m on the phone!) or reading a page of text and realizing you haven’t taken in any of the content.

What’s this all about? Dr. Harris explains that these are all instances where our observing self is distracted by our thinking self. The thinking self is like a time machine – constantly pulling us into the future by planning, worrying, and dreaming or into the past by rehashing events or remembering when times were better. When we do actually think about the present our mind typically judges, critics, and struggles against reality. “And this constant mental activity is an enormous distraction. For a huge part of each day, the thinking self completely diverts our attention from what we’re doing” Harris states.

This section of The Happiness Trap helped me to understand an odd phenomenon I used to experience pretty routinely, often while checking out at the grocery store but also at the office. Man, this is hard to explain. It felt like I was in a daze, of sorts. Like I was listening and trying to engage another person but my mind was cloudy and my thoughts and words weren’t coming as quickly as usual. After several instances of this, I noted that it occurred after a long stretch of being “in my head” and then trying to switch gears to communicate with someone else. Now I can recognize that “being in the moment” had actually started to feel strange because I spent so much time absorbed in my thoughts. Or, to use Harris’s terms, I was simply disconnected.

Connection is the third core principle of ACT. What is connection? It means “being fully aware of your here-and-now experience, fully in touch with what’s happening in the moment.”   And why is it important to be in touch with the present? Because “to create a meaningful life, we need to take action. And the power to act exists only in this moment.”

When I think about being connected to the moment and primarily experiencing life through the observing self more than the thinking self, it reminds me of that quote by John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” Once your mind starts commentating on what is happening, you are pulled from the pure experience of the moment (that may help you live a meaningful life) and engage in judging, evaluating, or critiquing your feelings.

So, practicing connection simply means letting your observing self take over. Harris says, “it involves bringing our full attention to what is happening here and now without getting distracted or influenced by the thinking self.”   There are several exercises that Harris outlines; the first few all involving awareness of your surroundings, such as being aware of your body, your breath, and sounds. While doing all of these simple exercises, Harris notes that thoughts will continually pop up and advises:

• Let those thoughts and feelings come and go, and stay connected.
• When your attention wanders, the moment you realize it, acknowledge it.
• Silently say to yourself, “Thanks, Mind.” Then gently bring your attention back to the exercise.

Building on thesebasic exercises, he describes the “Notice Five Things” exercise:

1. Pause for a moment.
2. Look around and notice five objects you can see.
3. Listen carefully and notice five sounds you can hear.
4. Notice five things you can feel against the surface of your body.

These exercises are simple, but they really helped me to realize how disconnected I’d been from my present, here-and-now experience. Harris uses the expression “half awake” to describe a life lived with the thinking self running the show. Maybe that’s the best description of the odd feeling I tried to express above!

The way Harris describes the observing self as registering “everything it observes with openness and interest” is very appealing to me. Curiosity is great! Therefore Harris explains:

“The fascinating thing is that when, with an attitude of openness and interest, we bring our full attention to an unpleasant experience, the thing we dreaded often seems much less bothersome than before. Likewise, when we truly connect with even the most familiar or mundane experience, we often see it in a new and interesting light.”

Can you guys relate to feeling the distinction between being disconnect or connected to the moment?  I’d love to hear others thoughts on this idea!

All of these months after first reading The Happiness Trap, the concept I most regularly revisit is “the struggle switch”. In my mind, there are two oppositional states: relying on myself, striving, and struggling to control my thoughts and emotions versus surrendering to God’s power, being in the moment and accepting my thoughts and feelings. In shorthand, the former state is when the struggle switch is activated.

Dr. Harris gives a great metaphor for this type of struggle – quicksand: “If you ever fall into quicksand, struggle is the worst thing you can do. What you’re supposed to do is lie back, stretch out, keep still, and let yourself float on the surface.” He admits that while floating on quick-sand is effortless, it isn’t easy! Likewise, with our difficult or unpleasant emotions, struggling against them only makes them more powerful:

“… imagine that at the back of your mind is a switch – we’ll call it the “struggle switch.” When it’s turned on, it means we’re going to struggle against any physical or emotional pain that comes our way; whatever discomfort we experience, we’ll see it as a problem and try hard to get rid of it or avoid it.”

The struggle switch is like an emotional amplifier, Harris explains. When you fight against a particular feeling, it creates added emotions. You could then have anger about your anxiety or guilt about your anger, etc. But, even worse are the control strategies people use to get rid of or avoid the discomfort of these difficult emotions. There are the obvious dangers of using alcohol or drugs to numb feelings, but humans also resort to gambling, food, shopping, or an infinite number of other strategies to avoid what they’re feeling.

So, how does the struggle switch develop?

Harris gives this little quiz-

Read the following list of the nine basic human emotions and just notice which you judge as good/positive and which you judge as bad/negative:

• Fear
• Anger
• Shock
• Disgust
• Sadness
• Guilt
• Love
• Joy
• Curiosity

He explains that most people judge the first six emotions as bad/negative and the final three as good/positive. Why? Because we’ve been programmed to believe this by the stories we’re told (and believe) about them.

Harris states that these uncomfortable sensations in your body cause you to judge particular feelings as bad. (Funny, I’d never consciously thought about the fact that “feelings” are literal in that they cause your body to feel something different!) The emotions themselves are neither good nor bad; they’re just feelings passing through the body. However, the judgment we make about each feeling is what sets us up to avoid negative feelings and seek out positive ones.

The idea that thoughts and feelings are separate things was mind blowing for me! Perhaps since anxiety is the emotion I struggle against the most and it’s characterized by compulsive thoughts, I’d associated thoughts and feelings so closely that I could not differentiate between them. That’s the beauty of ACT, I think. It addresses the issue of thoughts first, so that they can be defused; then moves on to feelings, knowing that you will have to be able to accept your thoughts effectively in order to deal with your emotions.

So, the issue with judging your feelings is that it activates the struggle switch and creates urges to avoid or get rid of the feeling, thus only intensifying your discomfort. The mind not only produces thoughts and judgments about your emotions but also stirs up questions and comments that make you feel worse. Harris goes through a list of several common thoughts, such as:

“Why am I feeling like this?” –people ask this because they want to figure out what made them feel badly so they can avoid it in the future or get rid of the feeling.

“Why am I like this?” – leads to you searching your life history for explanation and typically ends in feeling resentful and blaming parents.

“I shouldn’t feel like this.” – Harris notes “Here your mind picks an argument with reality.”

Can you relate to any of these?

Oh, I sure can. When this period of anxiety started I spent many fruitless hours wondering what sparked this feeling and arguing with myself about why I should really feel happy. So ironic that it was my need to stay happy that was the problem!

Harris concludes this section:

“Now you can see how the struggle switch got there. Our thinking self created it by telling us that uncomfortable feelings are “bad” or “dangerous,” that we can’t cope with them, that we are defective or damaged for having them, that they will take over or overwhelm us, or that they will harm us in some way. If we fuse with these stories, the switch goes ON and we perceive uncomfortable emotions as a threat. And how does our brain respond to a threat? It activates the fight-or-flight response, which then gives rise to a whole new set of unpleasant feelings.”

In order to effectively deal with uncomfortable emotions, then, you must accept the running commentary of thoughts about the feeling as only words and instead engage your observing self in feeling the emotion directly. This is where the critically important technique of expansion comes in…

 

After explaining how to handle unpleasant thoughts through defusion, Dr. Harris briefly describes how these techniques can also be used with images. Whereas thoughts are just words in your mind, images are pictures in your mind. Images can be disturbing and cause people a lot of pain. The techniques for minimizing the impact of images are similar to thought defusion; basically you are not taking the image seriously and seeing it for what it really is- just a picture in your mind that cannot hurt you.

Personally, I find images from scary or disturbing films to be the most troublesome. I recently made myself watch The Shining for two reasons: 1) my husband loves it and asked me to watch it numerous times and 2) so that I could practice these image defusion techniques and not fear disturbing images as much. Interestingly, the image that stuck with me (and disturbed me the most!) immediately after watching the film wasn’t one that bothered me while I actually viewed it. There are several scenes where a ton of red liquid (supposedly blood) pours through the closed elevator doors. It’s used to foreshadow that something evil is happening. This darn image kept popping into my mind as I’d walk through the dark hallway or room at home. After a few times, I thought to myself “How could I alter this image so it loses its power to scare me?” I ended up changing the red liquid to green slime, as in Nickelodeon’s “You Can’t Do That on Television”.  Suddenly, it wasn’t an evil, scary image but actually kind of silly!

After defusion, Harris segues into the second core principle of ACT: expansion, a technique to help you accept your unpleasant emotions. First, he sets the stage by illuminating what emotions are and debunking some popular myths regarding emotions.

People tend to believe that their emotions control their actions. Harris explains that there are “action tendencies” that are associated with various emotions, but “…emotions definitely do not control our behavior”. He goes on to provide examples of people facing intense fear or anxiety who are still able to act calmly. The goal is to be able to acknowledge your emotions and therefore make good decisions about how to behave. Harris says:

“… if we consciously bring our awareness to how we are feeling and consciously observe how we’re behaving, then no matter how intense our emotions are, we can still control our actions.”

This concept reminds me of a quote from Viktor Frankl that I came across about 10 years ago and really helped grow my awareness of personal responsibility. He is a Holocaust survivor and author that Harris discusses later in the book. Frankl stated:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

So true. It’s incredibly liberating when you realize that other people or situations are not responsible for your conduct. You are still ultimately in control of your actions and behavior despite how you’re feeling.

As mentioned in an earlier post, this is the section where Harris describes emotions as being like the weather. There’s always some weather condition present, just as you are always feeling some type of emotion. However, many emotions are not distinct or strong enough to be significant. The aspect of this metaphor that I focus on is that emotions are always changing. A rainy day will pass and the sun will shine again.

Finally, Harris wraps up this introduction to emotions by explaining how the primitive flight or fight response is responsible for informing whether your emotion is perceived as being harmful and negative or beneficial and positive. He states that emotions are not positive or negative but neutral. Of course, he admits, all of us prefer to feel positive/good emotions versus negative/bad ones. This is human nature. But, when that preference begins to impact your behavior and you actively avoid negative emotions – you’ve just engaged the “struggle switch”.

To further develop the concept of defusion, Dr. Harris begins the chapter entitled “Look Who’s Talking” by asking readers: when you’re not listening to someone and you claim to be “somewhere else” – where are you?

Haven’t we all had this experience? You’re present in a certain moment, but your mind has wandered. For me, it often happens in the car. I’ll put a song on and intend to listen to the lyrics. A couple minutes later I’ll realize the song is almost over and I didn’t recall hearing it. My thoughts had hooked me and took me “somewhere else”.

His explanation of this phenomenon is that there are two different parts of yourself: the “thinking self” (commonly referred to as your mind) and the “observing self”.  The thinking self is that part of you that thinks, plans, makes judgments, etc. While the observing self is responsible for awareness, attention, and focus. The observing self can observe thoughts coming and going from our minds, but it doesn’t produce thoughts.

Harris provides an illustration of how our thinking and observing selves function by describing the process of viewing a sunset. When you first see a sunset there may be a few moments where you are entirely focused on just observing the view. Then, your thinking self starts the commentary: “Wow, this is so beautiful! I should grab my camera. This reminds me of that sunset on the beach last summer.” Etc. Your attention is now on the thoughts, judgments, and noise coming from your mind and therefore you’re not fully focused on what you are observing.

To experience this dichotomy directly, Harris outlines an exercise that goes like this:

Close your eyes for one minute and simply notice what your mind does. Stay on the lookout for any thoughts or images as if you were a wildlife photographer waiting for an exotic animal to emerge from the undergrowth.

What you’ll notice is that there are two distinct processes happening: the thoughts or images in your mind and your observation of those thoughts or images. You can distinctly say, “There’s a thought and there it goes, out of my mind.”

So, how does this relate to defusion?

First, this realization helps you understand that you are not your thoughts. Thoughts come and go and they don’t necessarily deserve your attention. Attention and focus are from another part of you that can allow you to stay in the present moment, without passing judgment.

Defusion is the state when you can let your thoughts play in the background, like a radio that you’re not really listening to. You know that the music is playing, but you don’t have to listen unless you like the song. In other words, if the thought is helpful and is going to help you live a life you value then you tune in and pay attention to it. If the thought is unhelpful, then you just let it be without focusing on it.

As Harris explained earlier, human minds have evolved for survival, not happiness. Therefore, a lot of your thoughts are really warnings about things that may do you harm, reminders of bad memories, or criticisms about yourself. He calls this “Radio Doom and Gloom” in this chapter. Most “positive thinking” psychology advises you to change your thinking by broadcasting a positive radio show (aka “Radio Happy and Cheerful”) over Radio Doom and Gloom. In my experience, this type of thinking just sets up an internal duel between positive and negative thoughts. When I was in the depth of my anxiety last summer, I’d often experience mental debates where I’d argue with unpleasant thoughts by coming up with lots of reasons why the thought wasn’t true. In the end, the thought wasn’t true or false, and I certainly wasn’t accepting it; therefore, the thought would come back for another round of debate, regularly.

To practice defusion, Dr. Harris gives readers another exercise that can be done anywhere, at anytime.  It’s simply called Ten Deep Breaths:

Take ten deep breaths, as slowly as possible. (You may prefer to do this with your eyes closed.)  Now focus on the rise and fall of your rib cage and the air moving in and out of your lungs… Now let any thoughts and images come and go inthe background, as if they were cars passing by outside your house.  When a new thought or image appears, briefly acknowledge its presence, as if you were nodding at a passing motorist… You may find it helpful to silently say to youself, “Thinking,” whenever a thought or image appears.

From time to time a thought will capture your attention; it will “hook you” and “carry you away” so that you lose track of the exercise.  The moment you realize you’ve been hooked, take a second to notice what distracted you; then gently “unhook” yourself and focus on your breathing.

This process of unhooking myself from thoughts was transformative!  I’d previously given my thoughts too much power and importance.  Being able to accept a thought without having to struggle with it, prove it wasn’t true, or otherwise reason it away, has been fundamental to my growth and awakening.

As I reread this chapter, it occurred to me that the thinking self and observing self align with the struggle of control versus trust. When you are thinking, judging, and planning you are striving to control your inner experience. This state leads to anxiety and that phenomenon of being “somewhere else” mentally. In contrast, the observing self is able to accept what is given and be present in the moment. The concept of surrendering versus striving was significant for me. And ultimately, because of my faith, this state of accepting, being present, and ceasing striving meant that I was trusting in the Lord for everything. I imagine that without faith in God, it would be much more difficult to embrace the concept of surrendering.