Qu'est-ce qui t'appartient?

Recently I told one of my clients that his feeling of being manipulated by his partner didn’t mean that his partner was being manipulative. Within the same week, my sister informed me that my irritation with her didn’t mean that she was doing or saying anything irritating.

The assumption that your emotions accurately reflect reality is a cognitive distortion referred to as emotional reasoning. Examples include assumptions like “Because I dislike her, she must be a jerk” or “Because I feel intimidated by him, he must be trying to intimidate me.” Emotional reasoning is a backwards and often unhelpful method of interpretation; in interpersonal situations, it usually involves assigning responsibility for your emotions to the other person.

One of the best tools for disengaging from emotional reasoning is something I learned from doing therapy in French: the phrase “Qu’est-ce qui t’appartient?" which translates literally to what belongs to you. The idea is to consider the roles that your mood, history, and experience could be playing in the situation.

Keeping this concept in mind, my client and explored other possible explanations for his feeling of being manipulated (e.g., he has a hard time saying no; his previous partner was manipulative) and for his partner’s behaviour (e.g., she wanted to please him; she was trying to help). We concluded that his feeling of being manipulated was generated by his own history and context, rather than by anything that his partner did. In my own case, I was able to identify that my irritation was borne of my own fatigue that day and lingering hurt over a comment someone else had made the day before. Similarly to my client's situation, my emotional reaction had nothing to do with my sister.

When due to his history and experiences, my client feels manipulated by his partner who isn’t doing anything particularly manipulative, ca l’appartient.  When due to my history or context, I get irritated with my sister who isn’t doing anything inherently irritating, ca m’appartient. When, for example, due to your history and experiences, you experience recurrent jealousy in a relationship where there is no objective cause for jealousy, ca t’appartient.

Recognizing that part (or all) of your reaction belongs to you rather than being caused by someone else is a great first step in not being a jerk to others and in avoiding unhelpful automatic responses. 

The next time you’re upset, ask yourself qu’est-ce qui t’appartient? What happens?

Rest in the Not-Knowing

One of my clients is going through a period of uncertainty in several areas of his life. He's trying to determine whether or not to sell his business; he and his partner are trying to decide whether or not to try to adopt a child; and they are considering moving to another city. None of the issues are near resolution, and my client finds the uncertainty difficult to tolerate.

During our session this week, I suggested that he try to "rest in the not-knowing and see what happens." My comment startled me a bit because I don't usually say things like that. Rather, I'm likely to help clients weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each option, or to guide them in exploring the thoughts and feelings associated with each possibility. This time, I surprised myself even further by following up with "When we make space for not-knowing--rather than frantically trying to allevaiate our discomfort by settling matters immediately--possibilities that might not otherwise present themselves can bubble up to the surface."

As different as this is from some of my other therapy interventions, I'm confident that it's true. Last week I attended a six-day silent retreat, during which there was nothing to do but meditate. During this exceptional week, my mind and body were free from their usual tasks of working, socializing, shopping, cooking, exercising, organizing, planning, and scheduling. Thus liberated, my mind came up with a collection of new and helpful ideas and insights, none of which had surfaced over the course of prior months and years of stressful contemplation and rumination.

When I shared this experience with my client, he remembered that during his three-week vacation over Christmas, he had made a deliberate effort to limit his rumination over a work problem that had been causing him grief for months. He reported that the spaciousness of mind created by that decision had resulted in significant insights that allowed him to consider the situation with greater clarity, and to perceive options that hadn't been mentally available to him before. He concluded our session by assigning himself the therapy homework of tolerating not-knowing, rather than one of our usual CBT assignments like recording thoughts or making a list of pros and cons.

We can't go on a meditation retreat or take a four-week vacation every time we're facing a big decision, so how is the idea of tolerating not-knowing applicable in everyday life? The answer is that even without a retreat or a vacation, we can create mental spaciousness by sometimes choosing to put aside our lists of pros and cons and our step-by-step plans for arriving at a resolution. This choice protects the mental real estate that, given the chance, could house an insight or a creative solution.

The next time you notice that your mind is caught in endless or unhelpful speculation and deliberation, see if you can instead create some mental space for yourself by tolerating not-knowing. What happens? 

Something Will Happen

Take a second to think of the last time you were stressed out and plagued by what ifs? "What if I miss my flight?" "What if I hit 'reply all' instead of 'reply' on that last email?" "What if no one likes the dessert I made for the party?" "What if I made the wrong decision to end my relationship?"

Now think about what ended up happened on an occasion when your what if came true--when you did miss your flight, you did hit reply all, your dessert wasn't good, and you did break up with your partner too hastily? What happened?

You probably either caught a different flight or stayed overnight; your email overshare was probably problematic, embarrassing, or not a big deal; people probably ate your dessert or you went to the corner store to pick up ice cream instead; and you probably either got back together or got over it eventually. That is, something happened. 

In her book "Real Happiness at Work," American Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg writes that when her mind sets off a cascade of anxiety about a hypothetical scenario, she uses the phrase "something will happen" to regain her calm. I love this because it's true 100% of the time! Something always happens.

I wish I had known about something will happen last Christmas: I was taking a long trip with a connecting flight halfway across the continent and there was a blizzard on the eve of my departure. My mind frantically reiterated "What if my flight is cancelled what if my flight is cancelled what if my flight is cancelled??" As always, the answer was that, if the flight was cancelled, something would happen: I'd get a later flight, I'd fly the next day, I'd cancel the trip altogether, but no matter what, something would happen. And it did.

Something will happen also works for bigger issues. One of my friends has trying to get pregnant for a year with no luck so far. She frequently topples into the rabbit hole of "What if I don't get pregnant this month? What if I never get pregnant? What if two or three or five years from now, I still haven't gotten pregnant!" The answer is that something will happen. It might be eventual pregnancy. It might be a decision to consider adoption. It might be a change in how important pregnancy is to her. But no matter what: something will definitely happen.

Something will happen is the answer to any what if question. Next time you're fretting about being late, making a mistake, or any other what if scenario, answer your own question.

Does it help?

Discretionary Burdens

The other day I read a magazine article about the concept of discretionary burdens. We've all heard of discretionary spending, i.e., elective spending on non-essentials, but what's a discretionary burden (DB)?

A DB is an optional task that we peg as an obligation, burdening ourselves unnecessarily. Picture this: It's Friday and a friend or colleague is describing her to-do list for the weekend and complaining about how tired and overburdened she feels: "I have to take my mom shopping and I have to make the cake for my friend's birthday dinner and I have to get in a couple hours at the office and I have to go to yoga and I have to put away the Christmas decorations..." You're exhausted just listening to her list, but you're also skeptical: Does she actually have to make a cake? Can't she just buy one? Does she have to go to yoga? What will happen if she doesn't go?

The good news about discretionary burdens is that, because they're discretionary, we can just as easily unburden ourselves! The hard part is that we don't always recognize the discretionary nature of our burdens. While it's obvious to us that our friend or colleague could easily buy a cake or skip yoga, it's difficult to recognize our own burdens as discretionary. Therefore, the best strategy for unburdening ourselves is to read our to-do list to an impartial friend and let him or her point out the DBs.

The next time you find yourself complaining (to yourself or out loud) about how this weekend, you have to take the kids to visit your parents, attend your cousin's bachelor party, pick out paint colours for the bathroom reno, hit the gym, and read a couple articles for work, ask a friend to help point out the DBs. If you're not comfortable doing so, imagine that your list belonged to a friend. From an outside perspective, which tasks would you identify as discretionary? Can the paint colours wait? Will your cousin care if you don't make it to the party? Do you actually have to work on the weekend?

Let me know how this works!

Pattern Projection

Mental health tip: Experiences can make you feel the same way without being related.

When we go through a string of negative experiences (e.g., socially, professionally, romantically), our tendency is to review them as a group and search for patterns. This can be a worthwhile exercise: identifying patterns helps us establish what went wrong and determine whether or not there's something we could be doing differently. On the flipside, though, identifying a pattern where none exists can be quite unhelpful:

One of my clients has been looking for work for months and becoming progressively discouraged. Last week, after another promising interview failed to result in a job, he concluded that since "this keeps happening," he must be doing something wrong. At first glance, this seemed like a reasonable hypothesis; but when we took the time to explore the evidence for the idea that "this keeps happening," we failed to find a pattern. The most recent position my client interviewed for was filled by an internal candidate. The job before that fell through after the organization didn't received the grant needed to fund the position. Prior to that, my client was offered a part-time contract position that he declined because his daughter has a chronic medical condition and he needs health benefits to cover her medical costs. For the position prior to that, my client was short-listed but the first-choice candidate simply had more years of experience. In short, although none of the leads resulted in a job, there was no pattern.

One of my friends had two painful romantic experiences in the past six months. In the first case, a close friend for whom he harboured romantic feelings admitted that she'd always had a thing for him, too--and then promptly met and fell for another guy. In the second case, my friend ended a promising new relationship after a frank discussion revealed that the woman he was dating doesn't want to have children. These back-to-back experiences left my friend feeling pretty discouraged; he concluded that "this keeps happening" and that therefore there must be something wrong with him. Thinking of my client and his job search, I encouraged my friend to consider the possibility that he was projecting a pattern onto a patternless pair of experiences. He thought it over and acknowledged that the first situation was attributable to bad timing and the second to long-term incompatibility. That is, even though both relationships ended, there was no pattern.

How does realizing there's no pattern help? Finding patterns where none exist generally involves distorted thinking, including overgeneralization ("this always happens"), personalizing ("it's happening because of my own personal flaws and has nothing to do with external factors"), disqualifying the positive (e.g., my client ignoring the fact that he was offered a contract position; my friend dismissing the heartening facts that both women returned his feelings). Distorted thoughts make us feel bad, whereas identifying and reappraising our distortions alleviates the pain. 

Why do we project patterns onto patternless experiences? My theory is that we assume that experiences that make us feel the same way are related. My client felt discouraged and rejected each time a position didn't work out. My friend felt lonely and hopeless both times the relationship ended. But the respective HR departments made completely independent decisions not to hire my client--based, it turned out, on entirely different rationales. They weren't related. The two women my friend dated didn't know each other and didn't know of each other, and the relationships ended for entirely different reasons. They weren't related.

Both my client and my friend felt less discouraged once they stopped projecting a nonexistent pattern onto their experiences. The next time you're looking for a pattern in a string of negative outcomes, consider the possibility that there is no pattern in the experiences, only in the way you feel about them.

Does it help?

Strike When the Iron is Cold

In a conflict, is it best to strike while the iron is hot and try to identify and resolve the problem as it's happening? Or is it better to address it later, after you've cooled off a bit?
 
A couple weeks ago, I attended a mindfulness retreat. During a discussion of mindful stress management, the teacher informed us that in the moment of a stress reaction (e.g., mind racing, heart pounding, blood pressure skyrocketing), access to the rational and reasonable part of our brain is essentially cut off. While this initially seemed counterintuitive, it makes sense in evolutionary terms: When we face a threat, all of our body's resources are allocated to the fight-or-flight response, helping us either fight with all of our might or escape. Survival is the only objective and our attention narrows to focus exclusively on the threat; the part of our minds that can consider and deliberate isn't needed.

This resource allocation system is adaptive when it helps us escape from a sabre-tooth tiger or lift a car off a trapped child; however, our minds and bodies do the exact same thing when we're facing everyday hassles, delays, slights, and other stressors. Not recognizing the stress reaction, we often push forward with conflict resolution and problem-solving, making things worse. 

Earlier this week, I received what I perceived to be an unprofessional, insulting, and just plain mean email from a colleague. My body immediately launched a stress reaction--hot face, pounding heart, tensed muscles. My mind racing with righteous indignation, I dialed my colleague's number and then, remembering what I learned at the retreat, hung up and decided to step away from my desk. Sitting in the lunchroom a few minutes later, I observed what was happening in my mind ("Who does she think she is! That's so mean! After all I've done for her!") and in my body (see above), and dug around to see which emotions were present (hurt, anger, frustration). This information led me to believe that I was having a stress reaction and helped me decide to put off respond to the email for 24 hours. This decision definitely led to a more satisfying resolution of the conflict!

The concept of addressing conflicts and problems once you're temporally and emotionally removed from them isn't new. But learning that half of our brain is missing when we're in the throes of a stress reaction really hits home: It explains why it's so hard to think when we're upset and why, when we're mad or scared or sad, we can't consider alternative perspectives, and often miss information that's easy to see once the stress reaction passes. But how can you tell when you're having a stress reaction? This is where mindfulness comes in: Sit or stand still for a minute and become aware of your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Tune into how you're feeling and then use the data to decide what to do.

NB: Strike when the iron is cold applies equally to the other parties involved in your conflict. That is, you may be calm or have moved beyond your stress reaction but you need to be sure that the other party has too. You don't want to problem-solve or conflict-resolve with someone who's missing half their brain!

Positively Stressed

Mental health tip: Just cause it's positive doesn't mean it isn't stressful.

One of my friends is planning her wedding. She just sold her condo and she and her fiance are moving into their new house next month. Meanwhile, she was offered a promotion at work and her first short story was accepted--pending revisions--for publication in a national magazine, pending revisions. We recently met for dinner after not seeing each other for a couple months and when she told me all her news, I said something like "Wow, you must feel on top of the world!" Instead, she tearfully confessed "I'm so stressed out I can barely breathe. I've been taking sleeping pills almost every night to try and get some rest, and worst of all--I know I should be happy and enjoying all this!"

One of my mindfulness students is about to finish medical school. After four arduous years, he's going to graduate next month and is nailing down his plans to move to another city for his dream residency. In the meantime, he's training for his first triathlon and he and his girlfriend are expecting a baby in the fall. When he told me all his news, I remembered my friend and said, "Wow, that's a lot of stuff. You must be kind of stressed out." My student tearfully admitted that he hasn't been eating or sleeping well and is constantly picking fights with his girlfriend. "The worst part," he said, "is that I know I'm so lucky and that I should be happy instead of stressed out!"

What's going on here?

Both my friend and my student were compounding their stress with the erroneous belief that positive events should create only positive feelings. This idea meant that they were adding guilt on top of stress, making it worse.

Two things that helped:

a) Sharing the definition of 'stressor' that I use in teaching mindfulness-based stress reduction: "Any threat, demand, pressure, or change in the environment that requires the organism to adapt." Notice that this definition does not assume that stress is caused by negative events, but rather by pressure and change.

b) Introducing the Holmes and Rahe stress scale. Developed by two psychiatrists, this scale yields a total stress score based on life changes and experiences in the past year, including things like marriage, retirement, Christmas, change in personal habits, and change in number of family reunions.

Getting married, moving, changing jobs, morphing from student to professional, and preparing for a baby certainly all qualify as demands, pressures, or changes requiring adaptation, and almost all of them are listed in the Holmes and Rahe scale. My friend and my student were relieved to know that just cause it's positive doesn't mean it isn't stressful; acknowledging that positive stress is still stress allowed them to cut themselves some slack, decreasing the unnecessary additional stressor of guilt.

The next time you're feeling stressed out in the midst of an avalanche of good news or positive events, remember that just cause it's positive doesn't mean it isn't stressful.

NB: This first step will probably in itself make you feel better. However, an important second move is to take concrete steps toward stress reduction. My friend booked a massage, cancelled her bachelorette, and negotiated a week's vacation prior to beginning the new position at work. My student registered for a 10k race rather than a triathlon, and decided to stop collecting new baby gear until after the move. 

Sunday Neurosis

You know that creeping anxiety that develops on Sunday as the weekend draws to a close?

It's not just you! So many friends, patients, and mindfulness students have mentioned the "Sunday night feeling" recently that it merited a Google search. It turns out that Sunday-specific anxiety is a ubiquitous phenomenon: sources as diverse as Psychology Today and Victor Frankl--an Austrian psychiatrist famous for finding meaning in his concentration camp experience--have written about the Sunday feeling, with Frankl coining the term "Sunday Neurosis."

Sundays can be difficult for multiple reasons, including the following:

1) They're unstructured. Although we complain about workday constraints, many of us prefer routine and schedules. Saturdays are often filled with errands and chores, but Sunday is often a looser, lazier day--which is not comfortable for everyone.

2) We have to return to work the next day. Even if we're relatively happy with our job, the looming return to the office can be enough to stimulate apprehension. If we aren't happy at work, or left tasks undone on Friday, the Sunday feeling can intensify to dread.

3) We're still carrying childhood school anxiety. For many, the sad Sunday feeling has its roots in childhood, when we faced homework, the end of two days of play, and an early bedtime. If we were bullied or otherwise unhappy at school, Sunday night angst could intensify to outright fear.

4) We didn't accomplish all of our weekend goals--including relaxation. As Thursday and Friday roll around, we often build up our expectations of our precious two days off and generate unrealistic to-do lists. For example, we plan to--over the course of two days--catch up on reading, go to the market, visit our parents, sleep in, take the kids to the park, finally fix the leaky shower head, do a bit of freelance work, clean out the closets, and cook a couple dishes to freeze for dinner later in the week. Above all, we plan to relax and unwind--while accomplishing everything on the list above! Failure to meet our improbable goals contributes significantly to Sunday angst.

How can we decrease or manage Sunday Neurosis? Here are some solutions:

1) If your Sunday Neurosis is generated by unrealistic expectations for your two days off, try treating your weekend to-do list as a loose game plan, not a strict program. Better yet, identify two or three priorities and let go of the rest. For example: this weekend I will grocery shop, have dinner with a friend, and call my mom. Or: this weekend I will clean the bathroom (not the whole house), register the kids for summer camp, and take one hour to sit and read for pleasure.

2) If your angst is generated by the unstructured nature of Sundays, make a loose schedule for your day. For example, plan to go to the gym in the morning, catch up on personal email in the afternoon, and do laundry after supper before relaxing with an hour of TV. You don't have to schedule every minute of your day, but a general plan can alleviate anxiety created by lack of structure.

3) If your Sunday Neurosis is related to the upcoming return to the rush of the week, consider ways you can use your day to alleviate weekday stress. You might feel better about Monday if you took some time on Sunday to do laundry, make lunches, run errands, and otherwise prepare for the upcoming week. Getting the household to bed on time can also help.

4) If your Sunday stress is the result of a focus on Monday, try practicing mindfulness. Monday may feel looming, but today--now--is actually still the weekend. If your Sunday feeling is an echo of grade-school angst, remember that today--now--is 2013 and you're not in grade six anymore. Don't miss what could actually be a lovely day off by launching your mind back to elementary school or forward to tomorrow.

5) If your Sunday Neurosis stems from the upcoming return to work, consider some of the things you like about your job or are looking forward to. Are you going for lunch with colleagues this week? Finally submitting a big project?

6) If work-related Sunday apprehension persists, take the time to identify what is making you unhappy about your job and whether or not you can do something about it. For example, if having to be at work at 8am on Monday triggers your Sunday angst, can you negotiate to arrive at 9am and stay an hour later? If you feel isolated at work, is there a way to introduce more social contact into your workday?

Any combination of these strategies may be helpful in treating the uncomfortable Sunday night feeling. Since we tend to believe that our neuroses constitute a personal and idiosyncratic problem, just knowing that Sunday Neurosis is a common and known phenomenon may be helpful for some.

What's your strategy?

It's Your Call

Mental health tip: Just call.

When you miss a deadline or make a mistake at work, it is better to call or email? If you can't make your friend's dinner party after all, or remembered your sister's birthday only the following day, is it better to call or text?

Often when we're handling a stressful or delicate situation, we opt to email or text instead of calling. We tell ourselves that we're saving time, but usually the decision is motivated by avoidance. That is, we're anxious about the annoyance, anger, or disappointment that our communication may generate, and try to decrease our anxiety by avoiding the recipient's real-time reaction.

Is this a good strategy? Consider this story that a friend told me recently: 

Last Friday, a colleague missed an important commitment at work--an obligatory weekly meeting that staff in her small office cannot miss without an exceptional reason. She had a good excuse to miss the meeting, but it was personal and she didn't want to discuss the details with our boss. Anxious about his reaction to her absence, she decided to email the day before to say that she would miss the meeting for personal reasons. 

This was the first point where a phone call would have been preferable. My colleague sent the email and waited to feel relief, but none came. Instead, she became more and more nervous as she imagined our boss's angry response. Three hours later, she received a brief reply saying of course she could miss the meeting--if she really felt she needed to. The tone of the email was ambiguous and she felt flustered and panicked. This was the second point when my colleague could have picked up the phone, but the desire to avoid facing our boss was too strong. She didn't call and instead treated herself to a weekend of lingering stress.

How would calling have helped in this situation? First, my colleague would have been able to explain herself clearly, assuaging her concerns about being perceived as a slacker or malingerer. Second, she would have been able to gauge our boss's reaction, which is difficult over email. Third, the issue would have been resolved in minutes. Instead, she fretted all weekend--only to learn on Monday that our boss had been entirely unconcerned!

The question of calling versus texting or emailing is not limited to work situations, but is equally relevant in the social realm. When we're running late or have to miss a social occasion altogether, or don't want to tell our partner that we forgot to pick up milk--again--we use text messages to avoid directly witnessing negative reactions.

Example: Earlier this week, I had to cancel plans with a friend for the second time in a row. I didn't want to face his hurt or irritation so rather than calling, I texted to say I couldn't get together that evening after all, but how about Friday instead? He responded quickly: "ok." I waited for a further text, but none came, leaving me feeling uneasy and uncertain. Was "ok" equivalent to "No prob, see you Friday! :)" or did it mean something closer to "WTF?! :(" Remembering my patient's story, I called my friend instead of texting back. It turned out that he was at work--which explained the brevity of his response--and had to work late and was happy to postpone our plans.

How did calling help in this situation? First, I had the chance to fully explain why I had to cancel plans again, preventing my friend from perceiving me as inconsiderate. Second, I was able to assess his reaction, which was impossible from his ambiguous text. Third, rather than fretting about it until Friday, the situation was resolved in minutes.

Text messaging and email are great tools when used appropriately, but problematic when used in the spirit of avoidance. The next time you notice yourself texting or emailing when you know you should call, remember that avoidance maintains anxiety, and ask yourself if you'd feel better if you made the call. Even if your feared outcome comes true--e.g., your sister is hurt about her birthday, or your partner is cranky about the milk--at least you know where you stand and can start making amends. 
  

Worst-Case Scenario

What's the best strategy for coping with anxiety generated by hypothetical scenarios and "what if" questions (What if I hit 'reply all?' What if I made a mistake at work? What if I offended my friend?) Should we reassure ourselves that the scenario didn't or won't happen (we didn't hit reply all, we didn't make a mistake or offend anyone), or should we imagine the worst-case scenario?

You'd think that imagining the worst-case scenario would make us feel worse but counterintuitively, following anxiety-provoking "what if" thoughts to their conclusion can sometimes provide greater relief.

How does this work? The key principle is this: avoidance maintains anxiety. When we reassure ourselves that our stressful or scary thoughts probably won't come true, we're essentially avoiding the possibility--pushing it away and dismissing it. Avoidance is often effective in the short term, but the stressful what ifs return in full force after a few minutes, leaving us thinking "Okay I know I probably didn't hit reply all...but what if I did?" The possibility is still there so the anxiety remains.

When this happens, it can help to consider what would happen in the what ifs came true. Examples:

1) After some hemming and hawing about whether or not to make the trip, I booked an expensive airplane ticket to attend an engagement celebration in another city. As soon as I pressed 'purchase' on the airline website, my mind raced to "What if it's not that weekend after all? What if they change the date?" I tried to reassure myself that the party date was unlikely to change, but the anxiety remained. What worked was asking myself what if it were changed--then what? Answer: I'd be stuck with an expensive plane ticket I couldn't use and I'd be out $500.

2) I received an email from a supervisor concerning a decision I'd made about a project we're working on together. Before even reading the message, my mind reacted: "What if she thinks I made a bad decision?" Instead of reassuring myself that my supervisor probably doesn't care that much, I asked myself what if she did disagree--then what? Answer: My supervisor would be unhappy with one thing that I did.

3) I was running late and arrived only minutes before teaching a class, without time to review my notes as I usually do. My mind leapt to: "What if I'm unprepared and the class doesn't go well?" When it didn't work to reassure myself that not reviewing my notes wouldn't affect my teaching, I switched strategies, asking myself what if the class doesn't go well--then what? Answer: One of the classes in the eight-week course would be inferior to the rest and students might be dissatisfied with the one class.

In each of these situations, exploring the worst-case scenario was more effective than reassurance in alleviating my anxiety. Why?

a) Knowing the worst-case scenario puts an end to the what ifs. The answer is clear.

b) Knowing the worst-case scenario allowed me to figure out how to deal with it, and how to not make the same mistake in the future. I determined that if the party date changed, I'd try to sell my ticket online but that next time I'll double-confirm the date before booking. I realized that my supervisor disagreeing with one decision isn't the end of the world, but that next time I'll check with her first. I concluded that sub-par teaching wasn't something I was willing to risk, and that it was worth it to start class a few minutes late in order to review my notes.

Considering the worst-case scenario might not alleviate anxiety in every situation but next time reassurance isn't helping, try it out and see what happens!

Stress Reduction for Normal People

Last post, I wrote about the benefits of taking time out for relaxation, meditation, or other forms of non-productive downtime. But what if you want to be less stressed, and more relaxed and mindful in everyday life without setting aside time to officially relax or meditate?

Here are a few simple things that I've been trying lately:

1) Not jaywalking. A lot of us automatically cross the street as soon as it's clear, regardless of the colour of the traffic light. Last year, as part of a one-month mindfulness challenge, I resisted jaywalking for 30 days, and enjoyed it. I recently returned to this practice and have concluded that not jaywalking decreases stress and promotes relaxation and mindfulness in three ways: a) It's relaxing to realize that no matter how rushed you feel or how important your destination, you actually can afford to wait twenty seconds for the light to change; b) The twenty seconds of waiting at a red light is an opportunity to get out of your head, check out your surroundings, and ground yourself in the present (I sometimes say to myself things like "Here I am, this Tuesday morning at 9:15 in March 2013, walking to the bus stop"); c) It's relaxing to cross the street without having to suddenly sprint to avoid a car that came out of nowhere.

2) Going out without your phone. I'll admit this usually only happens by mistake, but it's undeniably relaxing. Cell phones are really good at taking us out of the present moment. When I pass an adorable kitten in an apartment window, I can notice and appreciate it and experience an awesome moment of kittenness. When I take out my phone to take a photo of the kitten and text it to my sister with a cute comment, I'm no longer present. Similarly, if you're having brunch with a friend but keep checking your phone for updates on dinner plans, you're not really experiencing brunch with your friend because your mind is already at dinner. Not having your phone on you can admittedly be inconvenient sometimes, but there are few things that actually can't wait; wouldn't it be nice to sometimes, instead of returning a call or posting on Instagram while we wait for the bus, actually just... wait for the bus?

3) Moving more slowly. If you don't jaywalk or engage in compulsive cell phone use, you probably still have the nearly universal habit of moving more quickly when you're stressed. I observed this on a recent morning when I was rushing around trying to eat breakfast, pack my lunch, brush my teeth, and get out the door. My movements were speedy and frantic and inefficient (e.g., picking things up and putting them down in the wrong room, banging my shoulder on the door frame), and I realized that moving my body on fast-forward was reinforcing the URGENT! LATE! message from my mind, amplifying my stress. In moments like this, simply returning to a normal pace lets your body send your mind a different message, instantly decreasing stress. 

Let me know how these work out!

Dying to Relax

One of my mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) students has three kids, a husband, and a demanding job. On occasion, she stops at a cafe on her way home from work to have a cup of tea and take a 30-minute breather before launching into her evening of dinner, homework, lunches, and bedtimes. When she makes the stop, she notices that she feels relaxed and grounded afterwards, and that she's more patient and present with her husband and kids. Despite the obvious benefits of the cafe pit stop, she hasn't made it a regular habit; it's too hard to justify "doing nothing" for half an hour when she could be completing one more task at work or getting a head start on dinner before her husband gets home. It feels indulgent, selfish, and like a waste of time.

This client isn't the only person who finds it hard to be unproductive for a few minutes, or who feels like they simply don't have time to relax. Friends, patients, and MBSR students struggle to find a few minutes per day to breathe, meditate, read, or simply be. So do I. How can we spend fifteen minutes sitting quietly and watching our breath when we have emails to send, texts to answer, and dishes to wash? How can we read a novel when we have a backlog of articles to read for work and the laundry isn't done? Not only is there a lot to do, but often each item on our to-do lists feels absolutely urgent--as if it needs to be checked off right this minute.

Even though we intuitively know that down time is good for us, many of us are unaccustomed to being unproductive, and find relaxing difficult to prioritize. When you're struggling between sending one more email and having a quiet cup of tea before bed, or between your morning meditation and getting to work a few minutes early, consider the following:  

a) Non-productivity is productive. The minutes you "waste" relaxing or meditating return to you several-fold in productivity. The relationships between relaxation and productivity and between meditation and productivity are well established--but research aside, most of us have experienced how much better we work when we're relaxed, when we're well rested, when we're able to focus. This is one reason that successful companies like Google, Sun Life, Ford, General Mills, and Twitter have established mindfulness training programs for employees.

b) Dying to relax. In his book Wherever You Go, There You Are (WYGTYA; see right sidebar), MBSR founder Jon Kabat-Zinn refers to meditation as "dying" to the world for a few minutes. He reminds us that if we died right this minute, our personal agenda would dissolve immediately. That is, some of our projects would be absorbed by others, but most of our oh-so-important goals and must-be-done-right-this-second tasks would simply evaporate. JKZ says "So if this is true, maybe you don't need to worry about it in any absolute way. Maybe you don't need to make one more phone call right now, even if you think you do. Maybe you don't need to read one more thing or do one more errand. Stopping for a few minutes--dying on purpose--to the rush of time, you free yourself to actually have time for the present. You become more alive now, and once you do decide to go again, it's more deliberate, more vivid, richer."

I love this! A friend recently reminded me of this passage from WYGTYA, and I used it the other night: I was getting ready for bed after an evening of baking, and as I turned out the kitchen light long past my bedtime, I noticed that there were still crumbs on the kitchen table. As I picked up the dishcloth, I stopped to ask myself what would happen if I died and the table didn't get a second wipe. Answer: nothing. Result: I put down the dishcloth and got in bed. Reminder: sometimes you just don't need to do one more thing.

Do the ideas of productivity via relaxation or meditation, and dying to our responsibilities mean we should all spend our days relaxing, meditating, and not answering emails or cleaning up after ourselves? That our personal agendas aren't important? No, of course not. But next time you're considering eating lunch at your desk, remember that taking a real lunch break isn't a waste of time. Next time you're sending work emails from your phone while you brush your teeth before bed, consider that managing your inbox at 11pm might not be as urgent as it feels.

NB: If you want to try adding ten minutes of mindfulness meditation to your day but aren't sure how, I recommend this free and easy guided program. 

First World Problems

Are you distracted from the truth that everything is basically okay? I often am. 

I didn't get my favourite seat on the bus yesterday morning; it was snowing and there were no cabs when I left home to go out for dinner last night; I woke up this morning feeling anxious about work; a friend said something that hurt my feelings; the market didn't have the kind of cheese I wanted; and my hair doesn't look right as I'm getting ready to go out tonight.

I know what you're thinking: rough life, right? Yet each of these things bothered me, however briefly, and created annoyance or hurt or stress or disappointment.

When I teach mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), one of the classes in the eight-week program is dedicated to coping mindfully with unpleasant emotions. In the discussion about mindful emotion regulation, we identify that negative feelings often stem from wanting--and not getting--things our way. That is, we want there to be taxis at the taxi stand, we want our favourite seat on the bus, we want our friends to be sensitive to our feelings, we want to look good all the time, and we want to be in a good mood. We want things our way.

It's easy to get so caught up in wanting what we want that the smallest deviations make us all worked up and unhappy. What's more, as soon as we get what we want, we usually want something else or something more. On the bus yesterday morning, I was initially pleased to get a seat on a very busy route that usually has standing room only. But no sooner did I sit down than I was distracted by the thought that I would prefer to sit further back. This morning I definitely was getting my way as I leisurely drank my coffee and read a magazine before heading to the gym--yet I was irritated and upset by my lingering anxiety. Although my Saturday morning was actually pretty lovely, I wanted it to be completely lovely. I wanted it my way.

What helped me snap out of it was one of the phrases we use in MBSR in the meditation related to painful emotions. Participants are asked to sit quietly and reflect on several questions, including the following: "Am I distracted from the truth that everything is basically okay?"

This question is great because in 99% of cases, the answer is YES. Yes, everything is basically okay and yes, I'm distracted from that truth. Yesterday, I was distracted from the pleasure of getting a seat on the bus by the existence of a "better" seat. Today, I was distracted from the truth that I was having a lovely morning by the prospect of the even lovelier one I wasn't having. Last night, I was distracted by the lack of cabs from the truth that I was happily headed to nice restaurant to enjoy a meal and a bottle of wine with good company. In each case, there's no question that the truth was that everything was basically okay.

The examples above are mostly minor upsets, but the lesson is equally applicable to weightier matters. Consider expecting parents, for example: All they want is for their baby to be healthy. Once a healthy child is delivered, though, it's easy to immediately switch to unhappiness with the hospital food and irritation with the grandparents, forgetting the truth that everything is basically okay. 

Asking yourself "Am I distracted from the truth that everything is basically okay?" is a genius cross between getting over yourself and counting your blessings. The next time you're fretting, moping, or seething, try asking yourself the question. If you're like me, most of the time, the answer will be yes.

Let me know what happens!

PS: You can also try "Does everything have to be perfect in order for me to be happy?"

A Recipe for Depression

It's pretty much fact that people who are clinically depressed demonstrate distorted thinking. Their reactions to negative events are skewed and they're more likely to make attribution errors--that is, to assign distorted meanings and causation to the things that happen to them.

Three specific attribution errors have been demonstrated to be typical in people who are depressed; my non-scientific guess is that they also show up in non-depressed people and contribute to feeling bad.

1) Internal versus external. People who are depressed blame themselves when things go wrong. In contrast, people who aren't depressed are more likely to attribute negative events to external factors like bad luck, chance, or others' actions. For example, a depressed person who doesn't receive a call back after a job interview assumes she made a gaffe during the interview or didn't prepare well enough. A non-depressed person is more likely to acknowledge that another candidate may have had more experience, or that the position could have been given to an internal applicant. A depressed person who gets hit by a car blames himself for not being more careful, even though the driver was running a red light; if his child gets bullied at school, he blames himself for poor parenting even though the bullies are targeting other kids too.   

2) Global versus specific: Non-depressed people typically view negative events as having only isolated or limited significance. In contrast, depressed people are more likely to conclude that a negative event has far-reaching or global implications. For example, a depressed person whose relationship didn't work out generalizes to other areas of his life and concludes that he has failed in every area; a non-depressed person is upset about the end of the relationship but can still acknowledge areas of his life where things are going well. A depressed person misses the bus in the morning and concludes that her whole day is shot; a non-depressed person acknowledges that the morning started poorly but figures that everything will be fine once she arrives at work.

3) Fixed versus changeable: Whereas non-depressed people often adopt a 'this too shall pass' attitude toward negative events or situations, people who are depressed view the same problems or situations as unlikely to change or improve. A depressed person feels lonely and believes she'll always be lonely; a non-depressed person acknowledges that she's going through a period of feeling alone but that it won't always be this way. A depressed person whose washer and dryer break in the same month that his cat gets sick and his transmission dies can't imagine a future wherein such things aren't happening to him; a non-depressed person knows that he's just having an unusually bad month. A depressed person who fails her exam because of poor study habits wonders if she should just give up on school altogether; a non-depressed person figures she can probably get help and learn new study habits.

In depressed people, attribution errors are problematic because they promote hopelessness and maintain depression. In non-depressed people, attribution errors just make us feel bad unnecessarily. In both cases, the first step is to realize that we're falling for these errors in thinking. The next time you're feeling down about some negative event, ask yourself if you're making an attribution error. If you think you might be, ask yourself: Is it really my fault? Am I overgeneralizing? What can I do about it?

NB: For other good questions to help you out of negative thought patterns, see here.

Enough is Enough

How's it going with your New Year's resolutions? If you're on track, good job! If you're less on track, read on:

Sometimes we're reluctant to take a baby step toward change or toward meeting a goal because the step seems too small. For example, say you resolved to quit smoking or to develop a regular meditation practice. And you decided to start by cutting back by two cigarettes per day or by meditating for five minutes every morning. Although these objectives are minor, you may find yourself not meeting them--because they feel almost too minor. 

Part of my job as a cognitive-behavioural therapist is to help people identify the thoughts that prevent them from moving forward. One thought that shows up repeatedly is "It's not enough." For example, a patient's goal might be to introduce regular exercise into his routine in order to counter anxiety and improve physical health. If his usual day involves no exercise at all, we'd probably plan to start with something like five minutes of walking every evening. My patient might express enthusiasm about the plan--but then end up going out walking once or twice, and then quitting. When asked what happened, he might reply that five minutes just didn't seem like enough. Similarly, severely depressed patients sometimes resist the validated strategy of planning small pleasurable activities, because it seems like calling a friend, taking a bubble bath, or going to the movies just isn't enough to counter depression.

The scourge of "enough" is not limited to the clinical setting. It comes up for me regarding writing. More than once, I've set the goal of writing for fifteen minutes every day, only to abandon it because it doesn't seem like enough. Similarly, I have a friend who has already abandoned her New Year's resolution to address her credit card debt with weekly payments of $15--because $15 is just not enough.

Here are a couple tips that might help when you're set to abandon your goals because your small steps seem inconsequential:
 
a) "Enough" is arbitrary. Why is cutting back by two cigarettes per day insufficient? Would three be enough? Four? Where credit card debt is concerned, would $20 per week be acceptable or would it have to be $25 to meet the enough threshold? Who decides? Recognizing that our thresholds for enough are arbitrary and idiosyncratic can help us adjust our expectations and commit to small steps. 

b) "Not enough" is how you get to "enough." Even if five minutes per day of walking isn't enough to immediately reduce my patient's anxiety or improve his physical health, it's a step toward enough. How will he get to twenty minutes per day if he doesn't start with five? Similarly, meditating five minutes per day may not seem like enough, but it's a step toward it. Recognizing that not enough is practically a required stop on the way to enough can help us persevere with small goals.

If the concept of enough is getting in your way, hopefully these tips will help you get back on track with your New Year's resolutions. Keep me posted!

Capacity for Empathy

How come sometimes you can listen to a colleague complain or to a friend vent for hours on end, never wavering in your sympathy, empathy, or active listening skills--but on other occasions, your patience wear thin after minutes?

Last fall, I posted about our capacity for composure, suggesting that composure is a limited and fluctuating resource dependent on physical comfort, mindfulness and the intensity of our stressors. Since then, I've been thinking about empathy--the often (but not necessarily) sympathetic identification with or experiencing of another person's thoughts, feelings and experiences. Empathy is a key component of friendships and of patient-therapist relationships, and a resource that may also be fluctuating and limited in nature.

For example, consider the time I lost my patience with my friend who kept repeating herself and unwisely retorted "I get it, already!" Not exactly empathetic! In retrospect, I can identify that it was the last week before the Christmas holidays and that we were spending the evening together after a long day of back-to-back therapy patients. That is, my capacity for empathy was low.

I was once on the receiving end of a breach in empathy on the part of my own therapist: I was complaining about something I wanted but felt was impossible to have and my therapist lost his patience and snapped something like "Can't you see that what you're looking for is right in front of you? Open your eyes!" I was pretty taken aback at the time but when I later learned that he had received some extremely distressing news about five minutes before our session, I understood a bit better. My therapist's capacity for empathy was very low during our session; otherwise impeccably appropriate, he slipped up and said something unhelpful and out of place.

For therapists and lay listeners alike, capacity for empathy seems to depend on a few things. First, similar to capacity for composure, having your basic physical needs met is key. It's hard to listen helpfully to someone else's problems when you're starving, exhausted, or have a raging headache. Second, capacity for empathy suffers when there's too much demand: if your best friend's marriage is breaking up and your sister just lost her job, you might not be a very good listener for your colleague who wants to discuss his toddler's bed-wetting. Third, it can be difficult to have empathy for others if you're having your own problems. If you were just diagnosed with a serious illness, your capacity to empathize with a friend's existential angst is probably pretty low.

Therapists need a pretty endless supply of empathy. To maintain capacity for empathy, in addition to attending to our basic physical needs, we need peer support (i.e., don't work all alone all week in your private office with no one to provide social interaction or peer support) and should avoid scheduling too many patients in one day, or too many patients in a row without a break. Further, awareness of how our personal lives are affecting us will allow us to monitor and minimize the impact on our work. Keeping these tips in mind can help us avoid exhausting our empathy reserves.

For non-therapists, the tips for maintaining the capacity for empathy are no different: in addition to making sure your basic physical needs are met, don't spread yourself too thin empathy-wise (e.g., if you spent the morning consoling your sister over her job loss and your friend calls to discuss his relationship woes, you might want to limit the length of the conversation or call him back later). Remember that your empathy reserves may be low if you're dealing with your own serious problems, and feel free to hoard most of your empathy for yourself during those times. Keeping these tips in mind can help you avoid breaches in empathy and maintain your reputation as an empathetic listener.

I Love Ya, Tomorrow

Last month, I went to see Annie on Broadway. Annie is the story of a plucky orphan living in New York City during the Great Depression. She escapes from the orphanage on a quest to find her birth parents and ends up adopting a dog, meeting then-president Roosevelt, and getting adopted by a billionaire.

One of the things that makes orphan Annie so beloved is her unshakable and infectious optimism; despite being destitute and having been abandoned by her parents, she always keeps her chin up. Several times during the show, Annie belts out her signature song, Tomorrow: "When I'm stuck with a day/that's gray/and lonely/I just stick out my chin/and grin/and say/tomorrow, tomorrow/I love ya, tomorrow/you're only a day away!"

Watching the 12-year-old actress playing Annie sing her heart out at centre stage, I was overwhelmed by emotion and optimism. I decided to adopt Annie's anthem as my personal theme song, convinced that the simple wisdom of Tomorrow could help me cope with everyday hassles and major life stresses. I sang the song in my head for days, confident in its optimistic message.

The following week, a friend who had been going through a tough time called me up for tips on using mindfulness to manage strong unpleasant feelings. She told me that her current strategy was to try not to think about it, to pretend the feelings weren't there, and to tell herself that tomorrow would be a better day--but that is wasn't working.

I put on my mindfulness teacher cap and suggested a new strategy: rather than ignoring or avoiding the unpleasant emotions, I proposed that my friend try to identify and acknowledge them, and even try to cultivate curiosity about her uncomfortable feelings. I reminded her that mindfulness means accepting and working with whatever's happening in the present moment--even when we don't like it.

After we hung up, though, I felt conflicted. What about Annie? What about "I love ya, tomorrow?"  Mindfulness explicitly advocates being in the present moment, and optimism is generally future-oriented. So on bad days, can you live mindfully in the present and still comfort yourself with the prospect of better days to come?

I had to think about it, but the answer is yes. While mindfulness means residing primarily in the present moment, it doesn't mean never thinking about or looking forward to brighter days. The key is to be optimistic about the future without avoiding the present.

Example: Say you wake up feeling anxious. You head to the office as usual and dive into your work, doing your best to ignore the continued roiling in your belly and tightness in your chest. If you avoid addressing the feelings and sensations and just tell yourself that tomorrow will be better, you're being optimistic, and you may be right--you probably will feel better tomorrow--but you're also avoiding experiencing your feelings. In contrast, say that rather than plowing through the day ignoring your symptoms, you decide to use half your lunch hour to sit quietly, identify what's going on, and practice experiencing your emotions. You can still be optimistic and remind yourself that tomorrow will probably be better, but you're not avoiding your emotional experience (a strategy that doesn't usually work it the long term).

Second example: Say you and your partner are going through a rough patch. And say you reassure yourself with vague optimism about the future of the relationship, rather than exploring your feelings and identifying the problems. With this blind optimism strategy, you can avoid uncomfortable or unpleasant feelings, but the relationship problem might remain. Say that instead you optimistically hypothesize that you and your partner love each other enough to make it through a rough patch, and decide to try to identify the problem, investigate your feelings about it, and discuss it with your partner. Such optimism combined with your mindful acceptance of the problem will probably lead to an open conversation, increasing the likeliness that your hypothesis will come true.

I was relieved to determine that Now this is happening and I love ya, tomorrow are not incompatible and that I can keep Tomorrow as my bad-day theme song without renouncing mindfulness. So if you're having a tough day, go ahead and remind yourself that you probably won't feel this way tomorrow. The only catch is to not use optimism about tomorrow to avoid experiencing today--unpleasantness, discomfort, and all.

Don't Believe the Hype

Although most of us would agree that worry, anxiety, and depression are unpleasant, these experiences are sometimes associated with positive beliefs. This is problematic because such positive beliefs make these mental health scourges resistant to change.

Example: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a disorder characterized by chronic worry and subsequent anxiety and physiological symptoms (e.g., muscle tension, headaches). People with GAD habitually create worry chains of worst-case scenarios, often starting with "what if" (e.g., My boss asked to see me, what if I made some kind of serious mistake, what if I get fired, how will we pay our bills? or My head hurts, what if it's something serious, what if it's fatal, who will take care of my kids?).

Although most GAD patients say they're sick of worrying and wish they could stop, it's well established that most people with this disorder have positive beliefs about worry. Among other things, they believe that worrying offers protection from feared outcomes (e.g., if I worry about my son being in a car crash, it's less likely to happen), that worrying is a positive personality trait (e.g., I'm the family worrier, it's how I show my love), or that worrying shelters them from potential future negative emotions (e.g., if I worry about losing my job, it won't hurt as much if I actually do).

Positive beliefs about unpleasant psychological symptoms aren't limited to GAD. A depressed patient told me that during her childhood, she and her siblings and their divorced parents scoffed at happy-seeming nuclear families, assuming that the happy families were either faking or stupid or both.  As an adult, my patient still believed that being happy was synonymous with being phony and dumb and that being depressed meant that she was smart and authentic. I had a patient with an eating disorder who believed that her bulimia made her dramatic and interesting. Whenever she attended a social function involving food, she would refer to her "serious eating issues," generating instant curiosity and solicitousness. She believed that recovering from her eating disorder would make her boring and pedestrian. Finally, I used to believe that anxiety made me productive. I spent years resisting mindfulness and other enormously helpful relaxation techniques, believing that I'd never accomplish anything if I weren't anxious.

In such cases, the best strategy is not to simply tell people that their beliefs are wrong, but to get them to test the beliefs. My depressed patient took inventory of the people she knew who seemed happy. She found that many of them were both intelligent and genuine, demonstrating that her belief wasn't altogether accurate. My GAD patient practiced not worrying when his son made the five-hour drive to visit; he noticed that not only did his son arrive safely, but he enjoyed their visit more because he wasn't a worried wreck by the time his son arrived. My bulimic patient made a list of people she found interesting and noticed that none of them had eating disorders--and that two of her friends who also suffered from eating issues hadn't made the list. She also made a list of the qualities that she admired in herself, and identified a number of interesting and enviable traits that weren't related to her eating issues. For myself, I took a closer look at whether or not I was actually more productive when I was feeling anxious. I noticed that while anxiety occasionally propelled me into action, it more often drove me to produce unrealistic to-do lists that raised my stress level and stifled productivity. I also observed that on days when I was more relaxed, I was happily productive.

It's counterintuitive that we want to hold on to being anxious, worried, eating disordered, and depressed, and it can be frustrating for friends, family members, and therapists who want to help us make change. In such cases, exploring beliefs about symptoms helps. Worked for me!

The Pleasure Principle

In the upcoming season of excess, what can we do when faced with temptation? When tempted to eat a third piece of pie, drink a fourth glass of wine, or buy a fifth adorable gift for our adorable niece, how can we exercise restraint? If you're wondering how to face the overeating, overdrinking, overspending, and other overs that run rampant in December, here are some ideas:

One way to handle situations that require will power is to have a predetermined rule. As discussed in an earlier post, using a rule means not having to make decisions, thereby avoiding poor choices borne of decision fatigue and ego depletion. For example, if you have a non-negotiable rule that you go to the gym before work every Monday and Wednesday, you don't have to make a decision when your alarm goes off in the morning, you just hop out of bed. If you have a non-negotiable rule that you don't drink coffee after 2pm, there's no will power involved in turning down your colleague's offer to pick you up a latte, because afternoon coffee is simply not something you do. 

Rules are rigid, though, and it takes time for them to be integrated to the point that no will power is required. I have a friend who has a novel approach: My friend pretty much never eats dessert. When others are impressed by her will power or accuse her of denying herself pleasure, she replies that rather than denying pleasure, she's giving herself a different kind of pleasure--i.e., the gratification of feeling fit and liking how her body looks. This is a new angle and one that applies equally well to saving money, avoiding sweets, exercising, and other generally positive behaviours.

I like to call this the Pleasure Principle and I've adopted it for my own use in situations involving, for example, spending versus saving money and going to bed at a reasonable hour versus staying up late reading or playing around on social media. I could enjoy new boots or I could enjoy feeling confident about paying my bills at the end of the month. I could enjoy sending one more message or I could enjoy being pleasant and well rested tomorrow. If I decide to save my money or decide to turn off the computer and get in bed, I'm not denying myself the pleasures of new boots or Facebook--rather, I'm benefiting from an alternative pleasure.

How is the pleasure principle different from rules, will power, and doing your future self a favour? Rules imply rigidity, will power implies self-denial, and doing a favour for your future self implies doing something grudgingly, but for a greater or future good. The pleasure principle removes all of the negative implications, leaving you with pure pleasure--it's win/win.

This holiday season, keep the pleasure principle in mind when you're trying to resist the third piece of pie, fourth glass of wine, and fifth perfect gift for your niece. Let me know if it helps!

Do Me a Favour

Mental health tip: Do your future self a favour.

In a prior post, I discussed how you can motivate yourself to keep your resolutions and to do things you don't feel like doing by connecting behaviour with values. Another way to motivate yourself to take care of annoying errands and tedious tasks is to view them as favours for your future self. For example, you might not feel like taking the clean sheets out of the dryer and making the bed right now, but when your tired future self retires to your bedroom at midnight, he or she will probably be pretty pleased that you did him or her that favour this afternoon. Another example: if you shlepped around shopping all afternoon, you probably don't really feel like making one more stop at the drugstore to buy shampoo. You might feel more motivated, though, when you consider the thanks you'll get from your tomorrow-morning self, who won't have to shampoo with body wash.

It can help to imagine the pleasure of your future self as he or she receives your favour, in the same way you might picture the face of a loved one opening a perfect gift. I used this trick today: It's Friday and I'm headed out of town for the weekend; my refrigerator is nearly empty, but I was strongly resistant to the idea of going out in the cold rain to get groceries. To motivate myself, I pictured the comfort and relief of my tired late-Sunday-night self, whom I know will be pleased to find provisions for Monday morning breakfast. Building on this kindness to my future self, I even convinced myself to wash all of the dishes before leaving (rather than leaving the skillet "to soak").

You can't always do favours for your future self, and different people will have different priorities. I have one friend who consistently practices what she calls Operation Integration: when she arrives home, she always puts her coat, keys, and bag where they belong, and unpacks any other items--rather than abandoning them in the entry way or only putting half her things away. She doesn't always feel like taking the time reintegrate her belongings, but her ten-minutes-later self is glad the apartment is tidy, and her next-morning self is glad she knows where to find her keys!

What favours do you do your future self?

NB: You can also do your future self a favour by not doing certain things. For example, you might be finishing a lovely meal out and really feel like having coffee with dessert--but it's 10pm. It could help to consider not having coffee as a favour to your midnight self, who would like a decent night's sleep.