The Mindful Migraine

Quite by accident, I came across a mindful-meditation teacher called Tara Brach.  I found her while searching for information about self-compassion and discovered that she had written a book called ‘Radical Compassion’.  I haven’t had a chance to look into it yet, but my attention was caught by a video called ‘Compassion for Overwhelm’.  The presentation includes her feelings on the topic, but also two short meditations that are seamlessly interwoven into her discussion.

In the presentation she recorded for Valentine’s Day, she begins by talking about her new puppy and the oxytocin flow that being with it entails [what I would call ‘puppy love’]. But she also recognized a feeling of being overwhelmed by the new responsibilities.  She refers to herself ‘getting in a tizzy’, her ‘tight heart’ and her ‘fragmented attention’.  When she stopped to think what all these feelings had in common, she realized she was frightened of failing.  Failing herself, her puppy, her family, her readers, the universe.  Later she would refer to this as being common amongst many of us, and that this idea of ‘falling short’ ‘fuels our anxiety’ and acts as an ‘undercurrent of our psyche’.

Ms Brach suggested that when we feel overwhelmed in a situation, we should ask ourself, what is it that you’re really worried about – what are you really thinking about – what is the feeling behind the thought?

I found this infographic (from a free poster) on a fantastic student-counselling blog site that illustrates the idea perfectly:

(Image source: WHAT’S BEHIND ANGER: WholeHearted School Counseling)

Ms Brach noted that the world we live in is accelerating at an exponential pace, far faster than the human mind was designed to accommodate, and as a result, our brains are becoming overloaded.

The amount of distractions it endures was demonstrated through a fantastic metaphor – imagine our brain is a computer’s desktop; there’s 17 tabs open, plus pop-ups and drop-down, ads, looping music and, and…

No wonder there’s so much existential angst, she noted; we live in a world where we are relentlessly told about climate catastrophe, global instability, emergency health outbreaks…  She referred to modern life as a ‘ceaseless frenzy’, where we feel as if we should always be doing something, or something else, or that what we’re currently doing is not enough, that there’s not enough time [and I would hazard, the feeling that WE are not enough].

She worried that if we are not careful, the average human will have nothing in their life that helps to calm their nervous system.  Moreover, even for those of us who do try to be mindful, the environment and our own minds make it hard to meditate or do yoga [or massage your vagus nerve].

Ms Bach noted that eventually we reach a point where too much overwhelm causes a ‘sinking feeling’, [we start to ‘give up’ and ‘go under’], we begin to ‘shutdown’. [Last Friday’s post also mentioned overwhelm-shutdown.]

That said, stress and overwhelm are a given – so why label them as ‘bad’ or ‘a problem’, why be at war with them all the time?  Instead of fighting against the overwhelm, she suggests, we should accept it as a natural part of life. If we do, we’re less likely to feel distressed, less likely to ‘rebel’ against the emotions it generates.  She recommended we ‘drop into our bodies’, become aware of our emotions, negative or otherwise, and ‘embrace’ them.

She recommends four steps to be compassionate towards our overwhelm:

1. Name the emotion – are you tense, tired, confused, frustrated…
2. Ask what is the fear behind that emotion – guilt, shame, isolation…
3. Feel what you’re feeling, don’t try to push it or block it – feel guilty…
4. Offer care – once you recognize the emotion, offer it compassion and self-care, she calls this a ‘hand-to-heart’ moment (she also suggested fingers to temple / hand on throat).

Elsewhere, I found that she reorganizes the 4 steps slightly differently to make an anacronym (you know how I love anacronyms!) and uses them for self-compassion towards difficult emotions during meditation:

Recognize what is going on

Allow the experience to be there, just as it is

Investigate with interest and care

Nurture with self-compassion.

You can read her RAIN guide here: TaraBrach_RAIN_A-Practice-of-Radical-Compassion.pdf.

One of her statements in the presentation really resonated with me – the idea that overwhelm is natural, but so are the other ‘larger’ emotions.  She recommended that we ‘rest in something larger’.  I like the idea that we don’t dismiss overwhelm, we acknowledge it is a part of modern life, but in some way, we minimize it, and strip it of its power by suggesting it’s not so important in the scheme of things. There are, after all, much ‘larger’ emotions to experience such as compassion, but also joy, love and hope.

Best wishes as always, and take care taking care, Linda x