Recently, Cosmopolitan magazine published a list of the 32 Books About Mental Health That Everyone Should Read, and I am pleased that my book, “Don’t Feed The Monkey Mind,” has made their list and that people are finding benefit from using it.
The very things we do to control anxiety can make anxiety worse. This unique guide offers a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based approach to help you recognize the constant chatter of your anxious “monkey mind,” stop feeding anxious thoughts, and find the personal peace you crave.
Ancient sages compared the human mind to a monkey: constantly chattering, hopping from branch to branch—endlessly moving from fear to safety. If you are one of the millions of people whose life is affected by anxiety, you are familiar with this process. Unfortunately, you can’t switch off the “monkey mind,” but you can stop feeding the monkey—or stop rewarding it by avoiding the things you fear.
Do you see a goblet or vase in the middle? Do you see the profile of two apes or monkeys?
This vase/face image is a metaphor I have been using for differentiating between our will, which is based on survival, and our wisdom, which is based on our higher values.
I have created a meditation using this metaphor to help connect with our inner wisdom. This is particularly useful when faced with a decision we need to make or when we need guidance about an issue that we are feeling confused or worried about.
Let me use an example from my life to demonstrate how this meditation can be used.
My 92-year-old mother-in-law recently moved to assisted living. She was having trouble adjusting to this move and was experiencing high levels of anxiety along with some mental confusion and depression. She lives in Florida. I wanted to go out and help her, but I felt conflicted and confused. She has six sons (no daughters), and I did not want to step on their toes by going out. The trip takes time and money to make. I was unsure if I would be a help or a hindrance, and I could not tell if she wanted me to come out.
My will represented trying to please everyone and my concern about money and time. It kept me going round and round. I wanted to eliminate the threat and make the “right” decision.
I did this meditation, and within a few minutes, I got a very clear answer: “She needs some feminine energy; go.” After the meditation, I could feel the love and caring manifested in going to see her.
Nothing is wrong with our will; it can help us persevere when needed, but it can cloud our ability to get in touch with our wisdom.
Here is a recording of this Inner Wisdom Meditation. You can stop it at any time if you need more time.
Inner Wisdom Meditation
Did you try the Inner Wisdom Meditation? How did it work for you?
I met my oldest son on Oahu for a mother-son vacation. I looked forward to quality time with him, relaxing, and getting out of my usual work routine. I forgot that vacations can be stressful!
We both love to snorkel, and I wanted to take him to a world-class snorkeling spot at Hanauma Bay that required making a reservation two days in advance for specific times of the day. I logged onto the online reservation service exactly when it opened at 7 A.M. and picked an available time, but when I tried to pay, all the spots were already sold out! I started over and went through all the steps with the same result. After multiple tries, sweaty palms, and heart beating hard, we finally got a slot! Whew!
We were warned that we would only be allowed in if we were on time for our reservation, so we made sure to get there early when the day arrived. But the parking lot was full, and there was nowhere else to park. So, we drove to a nearby shopping mall and called a Lyft. It seemed to my son was taking his sweet time as we walked to the ride-share pickup spot. The clock was ticking! Would we miss our reservation?
Fortunately, I had made an intention at the beginning of the vacation to practice ‘sweating the small stuff’ whenever things got difficult. What I mean by this is minor stressors happen constantly, and they are opportunities to practice our skills. Working with or ‘sweating’ the small stuff is where significant transformation happens. One of the ways I ‘sweat it out’ is to ask myself what is within my control and what is not.
Not in my control: The reservations system
Parking availability
Within my control: My attitude and behavior. I could:
Breathe
Ask myself, “How important is this?”
Be willing to let go of the outcome of snorkeling in Hanauma Bay
After doing what was within my control, while I wasn’t in a deep chill vacation mode of relaxation, I was fully present. I gave myself a pat on the back. I am a work in progress, and whether at home, work, or on vacation, I know that life will always provide me with more opportunities to practice sweating the small stuff. Then, hopefully, when the big stuff comes along, I’ll be ready!
Do you have examples of using stress as an opportunity? If so, post them in the comments. We can all learn from each other.
I went to Eastern Africa for two weeks on Safari in Tanzania with two dear friends of mine. It was a mind-blowing experience for me, and I learned a lot!
On one of our drives, we wanted to hang out with a herd of elephants. While watching them, I noticed they would pull up grass and shake their trunks vigorously. I asked our brilliant guide about this, and he told me they were shaking off the dirt and rocks. Elephants eat over 300 pounds of vegetation daily. For this, they need to be able to chew their food. Dirt and rocks wear down their teeth, and once their teeth wear down, they will die. They are shaking off the dirt to get the necessary nutrients and have a long and healthy life.
Watching the elephants feed was a metaphor for my trip. The terrain itself was visually stunning. I learned a tremendous amount about Tanzania, its history, economics, and different tribes through our guides and the staff at our lodges. I added 100 new birds to my bird list. I saw lions mating, the wildebeest crossing the Mara river, and a hyena stealing a leopard’s kill. It was an incredibly rich experience and fed me in many different ways.
I also had to shake off a lot of dirt, metaphorically and figuratively—much more than I do when I am in my familiar surroundings. We could not drink the water and had to be careful about what and where we ate. We went at the end of the dry season, so the roads in and out of the preserves were dusty. After one of our safari drives, I had dirt everywhere: my clothes, camera, hair, eyes, ears, and nose. Even with precautions, I ended up with traveler’s diarrhea off and on for most of the trip.
The grandeur and newness of Africa were so absorbing; it created effortless mindfulness; I was very much in the present moment, more when I am at home.
Now that I am home, I am incredibly grateful, feeding on the green grass of my life, the clean air and water, familiarity with my daily routines, being near the ones I love, and returning to seeing my clients.
I am also back to the familiar dirt and small rocks of my daily patterns, particularly my perfectionism. Trying to get too much done and my tendency to base my self-worth on how much I accomplish. Instead of grinding down my metaphoric teeth, I am shaking these well-worn habits and patterns off with the tools I use and teach others to use, for example, setting timers when I start a task and taking short breaks in between. Reminding myself that it is the process of how I do things, as opposed to the goal of getting things done.
Like the elephants, I am taking in the nutrients of my life while shaking off the dirt and stones of the things that wear me down. I too want to live a long, healthy —and happy—life.
What is the Difference Between Caring for and Controlling our Loved Ones?
My client, whom I will call Trish, has an adult daughter, Dawn, who is overweight and at risk of developing diabetes. As a loving mother, Trish is naturally worried. She knows that if Dawn had a better diet, she would be healthier and happier, which is what Dawn says she wants. Watching Dawn eat fast food and empty-calorie snacks is upsetting, and Trish shows her displeasure with subtle comments like, “I wonder how many grams of sugar are in that?” When Trish has Dawn for dinner and her daughter asks for a second serving of dessert, Trish will ask, “Why don’t you wait a few minutes and see if you’re still hungry?” She does other things like sending Dawn articles on healthy diets and diabetes prevention. She cares deeply about her daughter and wants her to be healthy and happy. But what she’s doing isn’t helping.
Caring Versus Control
Imagine that your hand is an open heart. It reaches out to the other person, palm open. This is caring, open, tenderhearted, and compassionate. You can offer help, but your hand is open, so you let go of the outcomes. They may take in what you say, they may ignore it, or they may reject it. Caring is trusting that the person you love is in charge of their own life and their happiness and health are based on the choices they make for themselves. When we care for someone, they usually feel loved and supported.
When we care for someone, they usually feel loved and supported.
Now imagine your hand is a tight fist, your reach out to the other person, grasping on to them, trying to fix them, attaching to what they do or don’t do. Your fist represents you trying to protect your heart just as you are trying to protect them. This is controlling. When we control someone, they usually feel judged and defensive.
When we control someone, they usually feel judged and defensive.
The Courage to Care
When we care deeply for someone, we will feel fear; this is inevitable. We want them to be happy and free from suffering. We become frightened when we see them do something that may cause pain. This fear presents a fork in the road; we can go down the path of caring or the path of control. If we choose the path of caring, we keep our hearts open. To care, we must be willing to allow our hearts to break, which takes tremendous courage.
On the other hand, control is an attempt to keep our hearts from breaking. We try to get the other person to make the right choice, so we don’t have to feel the pain of their suffering. But the truth is, we are not in control of others. It is hard enough to make choices that support our own health and happiness and impossible to do so for others. Either way, we will experience heartbreak in the end, and in the process, we often alienate the ones we love.
3-Steps to keep your heart open.
Trish chose the path of caring for her daughter. The first step was identifying her values and what she was aiming at. She chose Peace, Connection, and Acceptance.
Second, I had her identify the mindsets that would support a caring stance. She came up with:
“It is more important to enjoy my precious time with my daughter than trying to control what she eats; this gets in the way of my relationship.”
“She already knows what I think, this might influence her choices at some point, but I can’t control what will happen.”
Third, she needed to accept that anxiety she felt as something to be allowed rather than acted out on.
I made Trish a meditation to help her allow her anxiety. If this is something you struggle with, click on either the video below or this link to listen to a 5-minute meditation that will help you keep an open heart with the ones you love.
Last week, reading the entertainment section of the newspaper, I noticed a grass roots band that looked interesting was playing this weekend at the Green Center. Since the pandemic, my husband Doug and I haven’t been to a live music venue and we were overdue, so I asked him to get tickets. It felt like a risky thing to do. Doug can be over-frugal, and I didn’t want to end up in the cheap seats, using my binoculars to see the musicians. But I framed it as an exposure, welcoming the uncertainty of what he’d decide.
As it happened, he surprised me by getting premium seats. He’d stretched himself and let go of a few more bucks than felt comfortable to him. Alas, in life, you don’t always get what you pay for. The view from the seats Doug picked out on the seating chart was partially blocked by the seats in front of us. Both our monkey minds howled in unison. A mistake! We made a mistake!
It took a minute to remember that this was actually a golden opportunity. Here are three ways mistakes are good for us.
When we make a mistake, it is an opportunity to practiceself-compassion, a chance to choose forgiveness rather than blame. The more compassion we have for our own failings, the more we’ll have for others.
With every mistake we have an opportunity to practice accepting loss. While losing can be painful and disappointing, since it’s part of being human, we need to be willing to feel what it brings. That’s the only way we recover from loss.
Mistakes are how we learn and grow. When we try something new, or not good at, we’re not going to get it right the first time. We can measure how much we’re growing by the mistakes we make.
Once Doug and I forgave ourselves for our mistake (1) and accepted that we didn’t get the view we hoped for (2), we thoroughly enjoyed the concert. And when another concert comes along, we want to see, we will have learned a little more about picking good seats, as well as how to enjoy ourselves should they turn out to be not what we hoped for (3).
The next time you make a mistake, whether tripping on the stairs, forgetting someone’s name, or something more serious, practice self-compassion and pat yourself on the back. Remind yourself that since we’re all inherently fallible, losses are acceptable. Of course, you could have stayed in bed, and avoided the mistake, but what would you have learned from that? Plan to make some more mistakes tomorrow. You just can’t make enough of them!
A few days ago, Pat—my ninety-year-old mother-in-law who lives in an assisted living facility—sent us a text from her new iPad. Pat’s texts are often accompanied by a cartoon emoji of herself—sweet ones with hearts for eyes or funny ones with the top of her head exploding. But there was no emoji for this message. She’d just found out that the driver who’d taken her to her doctor’s appointment that morning, whom she had sat next to on the drive, who’d leaned over her to help her with her seat belt when she exited the car, had just tested positive for COVID. All they’d been wearing were thin surgical masks.
Now Pat has been fully vaccinated and boosted, but like anyone her age, she has underlying health conditions. We immediately Face-Timed her. I asked, “How are you feeling about this, Pat?”
“I’m feeling fine,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
She told us she was required to be in quarantine and was a little concerned about getting bored, but that was it. She also mentioned how grateful she was to have been able to see one of her sons and grandchildren the weekend before because, “I never know if that might be the last time I see them.”
How did Pat manage to be so calm, grateful, and present? She was under threat. Why was she not anxious, stressed, and worried?
Anxiety and Uncertainty
Anxiety, stress, and worry are all caused by not knowing for certain if we are safe. When we are uncertain about our safety, it is a cue for us to pay attention and do something. Scientists and public health experts have told us what we can do: wear masks, keep social distance, get vaccinated. But while these actions can reduce the chance of our getting sick, they won’t eliminate it.
Uncertainty is and always has been a part of life, no matter what we do. The greater our acceptance of it, the more relaxed, happy, and grounded we will be. Once we have taken all reasonable steps to address possible threats to our safety, we can take another counterintuitive type of action. I call it active acceptance. Helping people actively accept the uncertainty in their lives is the core mission of my work with my clients.
Three Steps to Active Acceptance
1. Expansive Mindset: We need to update our unconscious “monkey mindset” that says, I can relax only if I eliminate all uncertainty. Replace it with a healthier one, such as, I can influence outcomes, but I can’t control them.
2. Welcoming Breath: Our default reaction to the sensations of anxiety is to fight them off, tensing our bodies and/or distracting ourselves. Instead, welcome these sensations by consciously relaxing your muscles and breathing the feelings in, allowing them space to play themselves out.
3. Changing Behavior: Resist our urges to try to eliminate threat that is beyond our direct control. Examples of this are seeking excessive reassurance from doctors, the internet, or friends and family.
The Gift of Uncertainty
Every new thing we’re uncertain about is an opportunity to practice thinking more accurately, increasing our capacity to tolerate negative emotions, and controlling our impulsive behavior. Active acceptance is how we cultivate peace, presence, and happiness in our lives. When we learn to actively accept it, uncertainty becomes a gift.
If you ask Pat how she’s mastered her uncertainty, she’ll tell you with her religious faith. She’ll describe her process differently than I do mine, but one important word we use is the same: acceptance. To be at peace, we all, regardless of faith, must accept the inherent uncertainty of life. And acceptance is not just an idea; it’s an action. Start actively accepting uncertainty today!
Since the pandemic, my gym requires us to reserve a lane in the outdoor pool for ½ hour blocks. This morning I went to get in my reserved lane at 7 AM, and there was a woman in my lane. I waited patiently for her to swim to the edge and told her that I had reserved this lane. She said she was sure that she had reserved this lane.
Now, I knew I was correct; this was the lane and timeslot I always reserve. When she offered to double-check her reservation, I let her do it. This meant she had to get out of the pool dripping wet in the chilly morning air. Meanwhile, I hopped in the pool and started doing my laps. I was surprised when, a few minutes later, she showed up at the edge of the lane and showed me her reservation for this lane at this time!
“Wow, there must have been a glitch in the reservation system,” I said. Fortunately, I was able to share a wider lane with another swimmer. Then, after about five laps, I suddenly remembered that I had changed my normal routine and reserved the lane for 7:30, not 7:00! My monkey mind sounded the alarm, chattering, You were wrong! You made a mistake! You were rude! You are bad! You should be punished! Shock waves of shame pulsed through my body. How could I have been so sure of myself and been so wrong?!
Fortunately, I was able to recognize my perfectionistic monkey mindset at work, thinking that my mistake made me a bad person. What I needed was unconditional acceptance. So, I practiced the three steps I outline in my books.
Expansive Mindset: I changed my mindset, from “mistakes make me bad” to “mistakes make me human!”
Welcoming Breath: I welcomed rather than resisted the feelings I was having. For the rest of my swim, I breathed in my shame and breathed out forgiveness.
Changed Behavior: Instead of hiding or avoiding the young woman, I went up to her in the locker room and told her I had made a mistake and that I was very sorry that I had allowed her to get out of the pool to check her reservation, instead of checking mine. She smiled and said, “We all make mistakes.”
It is a widespread misconception that unconditional self-acceptance means we won’t improve ourselves. The opposite is true. When we acknowledge that mistakes make us human, not bad, we can take responsibility for our actions instead of cringing in shame. When we forgive ourselves rather than punish ourselves, we are cultivating kindness and self-compassion, qualities we are then more likely to extend to others.
Forgiveness Meditation:
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This is what my client Andi told me this week. Like so many others, she is very grateful that she will be able to get together with family and friends for the holidays this year. Last year had its own set of stressors, but it had fewer frictions that naturally occur during holiday get-togethers. Whether it’s friends or family, there are always people who rub us the wrong way.
What triggered Andi was when her mother suggested how Andi could do things just a little bit better. These suggestions were particularly distressing when it came to her parenting. Just this week, when her mother was over for dinner and her son was having a meltdown, her mother said, “When you did that, I would put you right in your room!.” At that moment, Andi felt like putting her mom in her room, not her son. Instead, she snapped at her mom, telling her she did not want to hear it. Her mom looked hurt. Andi felt even worse, thinking she was not a good enough mom or daughter.
Andi’s goal for therapy was to be more patient, loving, and compassionate with her mother at Christmas. These are beautiful goals, but they are not realistic. The gap between how we think we should feel and act and how we do, causes more stress, shame, and blame. We cannot just will ourselves not feel triggered by friends and relatives. But we can learn to respond to our triggers differently.
Expect and Accept you will get triggered. It helps to realize that it is normal to get activated. When we expect this to happen, we position ourselves to respond to our triggers differently.
Learn to relax rather than react to your triggers. When we get triggered, our bodies contract, and we tense up. By practicing labeling our feelings and training ourselves to relax our bodies, we become much less reactive.
Rehearse ahead of time. A powerful tool we use in cognitive behavioral therapy is called imaginal exposure. By picturing upsetting situations, we can generate similar feelings and sensations when they are happening in real-time. By practicing relaxation during an imaginal exposure, you are much more likely to remember to use them at your next get-together.
Listen to this imaginal practice at least one time before your next planned gathering. Be patient, loving, and compassionate towards yourself! Becoming less reactive takes time.
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