Avoiding "Dirty Pain"

                          

Troubling emotions and unpleasant memories are part of the human experience. We do not control the fact that they come up, unbidden and most unwelcome, but they come up to our awareness nevertheless.

          

The effort we put into NOT having these emotions, thoughts, sensations, and memories is called “dirty pain.”  Clean pain is the natural and automatic result of living life. When we try to deny, suppress, or “get rid of” normal life pain, we get caught up in a battle that causes even more distress.

Anxiety, depression, and fear all occur naturally in the human experience. But when we decide we do not want to have those negative feelings—thinking that they need to be gone before we can enjoy life-- and begin taking action to get rid of them, then we create the "dirty pain" that becomes more intense in direct proportion to our desire to get rid of them. The bad memory, the fear, the depressive thoughts are all transient, but when we engage them in a fierce battle they settle in for a good fight.

For many years I thought that I could control everything that went on in my mind. Of course, I failed miserably in trying to run my mind through logic alone. All these messy emotions kept coming up!  I wondered if there were some flaw in my personality that prevented me from suppressing specific emotions and memories.
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Current research into the minute workings of the human brain gives strong evidence that to be human means that we must accept and co-exist with an ongoing reactive set of  distress signals—which we do not control. These distress and alarm signals are part of the  primal mammalian survival mechanism; a system exquisitely attuned to the slightest deviation from our personal sense of comfort and safety. This is the system that tells us to run when we see a charging bear, but it is also the same system that sends alarms when we are late to work and the person in front of us is driving at the speed limit. Always on the lookout for what is "NOT right," the alarm goes off constantly in daily life.

Is there no escape? No, if the question is "are we able to escape from who we are" but yes, if it asks how may we work more effectively with who we are.The solution is to work with, accept, notice, observe-- all in a non-judgmental way what is  actually occurring inside of us. Often, when we tune in and ask: "What is actually happening to me right here, right now?"  The answer is...Nothing is actually happening to me right here, right now."  But our internal struggle, the "dirty pain" we have created, makes it seems as if we are in a life and death struggle.

Next time you are in intense emotional distress, check in with yourself and ask: "What is actually happening to me me right here, right now?" You may be pleasantly surprised by the answer.

 Reference:  Learning ACT Therapy Luoma, Hayes, and Walser

"Anxiety as Psychological Inflexibility"

From an interview with Steven Hayes, PhD, developer of ACT therapy. ACT therapy stands for acceptance and commitment therapy and the letters are pronounced as one word, ACT.


"We view anxiety is a problem of psychological inflexibility. It's an inability to come into the present moment and open up to your emotions, to see your thoughts as they are, and to focus on what's really of importance to you. The goal of ACT is to help people develop a sense of self that's larger than the limited story they are used to telling about themselves and others that's getting in the way.

When ACT works, it helps people get more in touch with their thinking and feelings as they are – – not what they are supposed to be. And instead of experiencing emotions as accidents or obstacles, people can understand their meaning and use them to move toward what gives them more energy and purpose in life. ACT isn't a panacea or cure, but it's a way to organize your life around a fuller sense of purpose and meaning, one step at a time."



From: "Point of View" by Ryan Howes, PhD in Psychotherapy Networker November/December 2017

Mindfulness Meditation Approach to Overcoming Addictions

Justin Brewer PhD, at Yale Medical School, studied how meditation can be used to deal with addictions. His premise is that meditation quiets the default mode network. "Modes" are the evolutionary parts of our brain that work independently, concurrently, and sometimes in opposition. That is why at times it feels as if there is an internal struggle with one part of the mind wanting something and another part of the mind wanting something else. In fact, that is what evolutionary psychology proposes: different parts of the brain developed at different time points in evolution, were geared to respond to different environmental demands, and thus, some of the brain modes end up in conflict. Nevertheless, these conflicts overall worked (the proof is that we survived)  in supporting the core and ultimate reason for evolution-- which is survival of the species and the passing of the genes to the next generation.

The default mode network is a primitive one. It is founded on raw, primitive emotion, it is impulsive, and quick to take action. Addictions are often created and maintained in the default mode. Even the person with the most hard-core addiction will admit, when clear of the substance, that the substance is not logically helping them to live a good life. Nevertheless, the person with an addiction, when he is fully in the substance, can only feel controlled by it, directed by it, and almost as if he or she had no power over it. That is the power of the default mode.

Mindfulness meditation is a way to deal with the default network. In order to step out of the default mode, one must find a way to quiet that mode of the mind. Think of your own experience when dealing with a powerful, primitive urge or impulse. There is a great deal going on in the default mode of thinking, it is loud and commanding an urgent. In order for change to occur, in order for one to step outside of the default mode and create a new behavioral pattern, the mind must be quieted and that is what the practice of mindfulness meditation is able to do.

The acronym R.A.I.N. is what Justin Brewster, PHD uses to describe his technique to use mindfulness meditation to overcome addictions:

R: Recognize the feeling.
A: Accept the feeling rather than try to drive it away.
I:  Investigate the feeling and its relationship to your body.
N: Non-attachment or non-identification-- as you look closely at the feeling you gain a critical  
      distance from the urge and the grip loosens. If it loosens enough, it is no longer a part of you.


From:  Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright