Treat the Past as a passing Visitor, not a Permanent House Guest

When the past comes knocking, I have some choices to make. I can ignore the knock on the door, or I can open the door and face it, or I can open the door, invite the past in and ask it to live with me. Each response will have its own consequences good and bad.

Too often I have lived with the past as a permanent house guest. It has lived in my mind with memories and waking dreams that keep the pain of past traumas alive. In a way, I helped it feel at home in my head, by engaging it in conversation, I thought I would be able to 'understand' my past and find reasons why and why not. Instead, it became comfortable and made itself at home. So much so, that I missed a lot of my present, simply because looking after my 'house guest' left me emotionally exhausted and unable to engage with the here and now.

As I have worked through the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy programme, the importance of the Core Mindfulness Module has become central to my letting go of the past and its hold on my life. It doesn't mean, that suddenly I don't have to deal with flashbacks or disturbing dreams, but it does mean that I don't have to let the memories and emotions from the past spoil my present.

When I get the inevitable knock at the door and I know it's the past lurking outside, I open the door, I acknowledge that the familiar visitor is there again. No longer, do I have to invite the past in, to make itself comfortable in my head. 'You shall not pass'! Having acknowledged that it's visited again, I close the door on it and return to my life as it is - in the present.

Here is a simple explanation of the What and How skills of basic Mindfulness:

Learning to keep your mind in the moment….

Stop Your Mind Racing… (WHAT skills you use…)

Observe

* Just NOTICE the experience – Don’t react, don’t analyse
* Have a TEFLON MIND – let thoughts, feelings and experiences just pass through your mind – don’t focus on them or hold on to them, let them SLIP AWAY
* Keep your FOCUS – don’t get distracted by thoughts or sounds or sights that take your attention away from what you are doing right now.
* Be ALERT and aware of every thought, feeling and action that come to your mind.
* WATCH your thoughts coming and going. Notice each feeling – as they come and go like waves. Notice exactly what you are doing.
* Use your SENSES – when your focus slips use one of them to bring you back to the here and now – ‘Stop and Smell the Roses’'Wake up and smell the Coffee!'.

Describe

o When you notice something – Put WORDS to the EXPERIENCE eg in your mind say ‘I’m feeling sad’…. Or ‘my stomach muscles are tightening’… or ‘I’m thinking I can’t do this…or ‘I’m walking one step at a time…’
o PUT YOUR EXPERIENCE INTO WORDS – as if you were commentating on what is going on. Don’t analyse or criticise.

Participate

o COMPLETELY LOSE YOURSELF IN THE MOMENT – get involved in the here and now. For example, Don't just listen to the music, really enjoy it and when the urge comes over you, dance - madly, badly and with your whole body committed to the experience.
o GO WITH THE FLOW – dance to the music, sing along, whatever is needed in the here and now.
o Actively PRACTICE your new skills
(see previous post: http://bpdlifeinthemoment.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/you-mean-i-have-to-keep-going-with-all.html)

‘Taking every thought captive….’ (HOW you use your skills….)

NON-JUDGEMENTALLY
• See but DON’T EVALUATE. Stick to the facts. Don’t think about ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’
• UNGLUE YOUR OPINIONS FROM THE FACTS
• ACCEPT each moment as it is
• ACKNOWLEDGE both the helpful/wholesome around you and also acknowledge what is negative/harmful.
• DON’T JUDGE YOURSELF

ONE-MINDFULLY
• DO ONE THING AT A TIME – When you are eating: eat. When you are walking: walk.
• LET GO OF DISTRACTIONS – if your thoughts or feelings distract you from what you are doing, let them go and go back to what you were doing – and keep doing it again and again.
• CONCENTRATE YOUR MIND – don’t multi-task, if you find you are trying to do two things at once, stop and go back focus on doing one thing at a time.

EFFECTIVELY
• FOCUS ON WHAT WORKS – do what needs to be done in each situation.
• PLAY BY THE RULES – don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.
• BE AS SKILLFUL AS YOU CAN – in the situation you are actually in.
• BE AWARE OF WHAT YOUR OBJECTIVE IS – do what is necessary to achieve them
• LET GO OF ALL THE NEGATIVES THAT HURT YOU AND DON’T WORK IN THE SITUATION AS IT IS. 

Tell the past where to go and remember:

The Past is History
The Future is a Mystery
Right now is a gift, which is why it's called the Present.

Music, my own special TARDIS

I have always loved music, playing it, singing it, listening to it. Emotionally, of all my pastimes, I have found music the most evocative in terms of conjuring memory. When I was growing up I was selectively mute for many years. Music became the way that I expressed myself. It helped me to survive. I just didn’t speak to adults, I had one friend in school who spoke for me. After my first year at school, aged 5 my friend was taken from me as they put us in different classes. Due to my non communication I was labelled as ‘remedial’, requiring ‘special help’. When teachers started to ask questions about my physical and emotional welfare, my parents took me and my brother out of our local school and we then attended a private school in the city centre. In 1970s Northern Ireland, child protection was a taboo subject. During this period, from the age of seven, I discovered the joy of playing music. I would lock myself away with my piano and play for hours on end. Then in my teens, I learned to explore every nuance of my pain through other people’s music, again, locked away with my stereo/radio for hours on end. Perhaps, an extension of my choice not to engage with the world around me.

It is when I attach personal feelings and memories to my music that I believe it finds its real power. Music has the power to lift your spirits, to articulate your grief, to take you back to specific times in the past. In a sense Music, along with the sense of smell tends to be the most powerful of ‘time machines’, usually with a default to the past.

It was at this point that I found music to be a potential obstacle to my recovery. Mindfulness training and DBT exercises were focused on bringing me to and keeping me in the moment. However, one of my true pleasures in life was in danger of inadvertently causing me to ‘time travel’ to the past. I didn’t want to lose out on one of my real pleasures in life, just because of my overwhelming emotional responses to it. Not every memory is painful and it’s important to acknowledge that, even before recovery, my life was actually made up of shadows AND light.

Because of my tendency to use music as shorthand to express important emotions, it follows that when trying to build up the skills to manage my overwhelming emotions more effectively, I needed to find a way to either use it as an aid to my recovery or lose it by limiting my exposure to it.

It occurred to me that the waves of emotion evoked by music, had a tendency to recede if I focused on the music itself, rather than use the music to unpick my emotional scars. So I recognised that the way forward was to perhaps treat the emotions evoked by music in the same way that I had learned to let go of unwanted thoughts and feelings which arose during mindfulness exercises in DBT skills group.

In practice, this means that my focus is not on the emotional impact of the music on me, but is on the notes themselves, the instruments and voices listened to. When my feelings arise and are in danger of taking me into the past, I notice them, then return to my musical focus. Listening mindfully is an excellent practice, simply because music is all around us and could become a problem, with songs evoking flashbacks and unwanted feelings and thoughts in all sorts of environments. It has taken me some time to extricate my emotional memory from music and learn to enjoy it as it is in each moment. Equally, music can express emotions effectively so that it can soothe, or change emotion, or help us to ‘sit with’ painful emotions. For me the important factor is about ‘when’ I am feeling the emotions: am I ripping the plaster off painful feelings from the past, or am I experiencing sadness, grief etc. in the here and now? In which case, music becomes an aid to observe, describe and then let go.