Catharsis on paper

Tuesday 29 May 2012 By in Mastery 1 Comment

Sometimes you just need to get something off your chest, and it might be something that you’re just not comfortable talking to someone else about.

Sometimes the solution might be to write about whatever’s bugging you, to do a brain dump to paper, or sometimes to keep a diary of your innermost thoughts and feelings.

Keeping a diary is not such a silly idea, indeed, it’s something I did myself during a dark period several years ago. The discipline of writing about what was going through my head each day proved to be a valuable way of helping me to understand just what I was thinking, how I was feeling, and why I was thinking that way at that point in time. At the time it helped me to face up to things that hadn’t been palatable, and that I hadn’t necessarily wanted to admit to myself.

Sometimes when I see the idea of keeping a diary being written about, someone comes up with the bright idea “Ooh! I might want to publish this!”

No. No no no no no no no no. No. No.

There’s a big difference between getting catharsis through expressing your deepest, darkest feelings on paper and writing something for publication.

That’s not to say that blogging, or writing for publication in any form can’t be a cathartic experience, but if you’re writing for an audience, whether you realise it or not, you set boundaries for yourself. No matter how open you are, there will still be lines you don’t want to cross, people or situations that are private and that you don’t want to talk about. The whole point of writing purely as a way of getting thoughts out of your head is that there cannot be any boundaries. You need to put yourself in a position to be able to write whatever you like, to be as bigoted, offensive, unreasonable, rude, unfair as you like without fear of consequences or retribution.

One of the other not-necessarily-so-bright ideas that seems to come up is the idea of keeping your diary on the computer. I’m not a fan of this for a couple of reasons, even though my handwriting tends to be  on the indecipherable side, and I can type much faster than I can write longhand. (Note to my 3rd form Typing teacher – my accuracy hasn’t improved much in the last 27 years, but my speed is much better!)

The whole point of keeping a diary, or writing purely for catharsis in any form, is to allow you to express yourself. If you feel like writing in half-page-high capital letters, then write in half-page-high capital letters. There’s nothing to say that you have to write everything in between the seven millimetre lines on the page. Pen and paper can record your words however you want them to be, rather than sanitising everything into 10-point Times New Roman.

The second problem that I have with keeping a diary on a computer is that computers make it really easy to edit what you’re writing.  This is great if you’re writing an essay (or a blog posting) but it’s not necessarily so useful if you’re brain dumping. The whole point is that you’re expressing how you really feel deep down, and if after writing half a page you look at what you’ve written and think “oh my god, that’s a load of shit”, then it’s very tempting to backspace over it and try again. If you’ve just written something that you think is a load of shit, then it could be much more valuable to follow up by writing “I’ve just read that last part, and it was a load of shit”, and then writing about why it was such a pile of rectal excreta. Were you surprised that you actually thought that way? Perhaps you’ve struck on something that may not be comfortable, but might actually be very significant for you?

And as for me? After a few months of daily diary writing, I found that I was only writing about the minutiae of my daily life. At that point I realised that I’d moved on from the circumstances that got me writing in the first place, and that the diary had served its’ purpose.

Even though it’s sitting on the desk next to me as I write this, I don’t feel any temptation to re-read it. It helped me to cope and to move forward at the time, but for me now it’s a relic of a time past, and I’ve got no need or desire to go back there.

Unwinding (Part 2)

Tuesday 22 May 2012 By in Mastery Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I wrote about a relaxation exercise that I use with my clients, and promised that I would show you a way that you could shorten the exercise, so that you can get the same benefit, but in less time.

Now, you’ve all been practicing with the relaxation exercise every day, haven’t you?

If you haven’t, go back to the first blog post and start practising with the full exercise. For this shortened version to work, you really need to have been working with the full-length version for a while, to the point where you feel as though you’re relaxing faster than the exercise, as though the exercise itself has become a trigger to feel more relaxed.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve reached this point yet, give yourself another week. There’s nothing wrong with taking a bit more time over the whole process, in fact that’s much better than rushing it and ending up not getting the full benefit.

So anyway, if you’ve been practicing with the relaxation exercise regularly, and you feel as though you’ve reached a point where you’re relaxing faster than the recording (and much more easily than when you started working with the exercise) here’s what you do:

  1. Put away the recording. You won’t need it from here on.
  2. When you are sitting or lying comfortably and are ready to practice relaxation, close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
  3. Say to yourself, in your mind, the following words:

I am going to relax myself.
I am going to count from five to zero.
And on or before the count of zero I will be totally relaxed.
Completely relaxed in body and mind.
Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

  1. Wake yourself up when you are ready, take three deep breaths, and stretch before getting up.

And that’s about all there is to it. Drop me a line to let me know how you’re getting on, and in a couple of weeks I’ll show you how you can shorten the exercise even further.

Of pink shirts and missing ears

Tuesday 15 May 2012 By in Connectedness Leave a comment

This Friday is Pink Shirt Day, so here’s a picture of Pink in a shirt:

Pink

What do you mean, not that sort of Pink shirt?

Pink Shirt Day is a campaign to promote prevention of bullying, a problem that affects an enormous portion of the GLBT community.

Like many gay men, I was on the receiving end of bullying at school, but not for the reasons most people would imagine. I can’t ever remember being on the receiving end of homophobic bullying, instead I was the quiet, bright kid with one ear.

I started primary school in a fairly rough part of West Auckland, where the school was only a few minutes walk away around the corner, past one of the local gang headquarters. For the first four years of my schooling, everything was fine. I was with kids who I’d known since kindergarten, and the worst I ever had to put up with was the well-meaning, but highly embarrasing pity from a girl called Georgina.

Shortly before my ninth birthday we moved to a “better” area, and that’s when things changed. Instead of being accepted, I was the new kid with a weird ear, and by my Standard 4 year, things were starting to get bad. The bullying never got physical, but to be honest I think that purely psychological bullying is worse because it’s too easy for people around you to ignore the injuries.

I recall one little shit in particular who used me as a regular target. Years later I came across his name in connection to a significant sporting event, and it didn’t take much to realise who I was looking at. Apart from not being able to fathom why they’d want an asshole like that on the team, I realised that I’ve aged way better than he has.

By Form 2, the bullying was getting worse, to the point that I had reached the limits of what I could handle.  By now several girls had joined the little shit in using me as a target. (Oh, the irony of being bullied by a girl named Aroha!)

aroha
1. (verb) to love, feel pity, feel concern for, feel compassion, empathise.
2. (noun) affection, sympathy, charity, compassion, love, empathy.

While I never became suicidal (the numbing inertia of depression by this stage was stopping me from feeling much at all) I can appreciate how kids on the receiving end of bullying end up in this position, especially if as I did, the only support they get is both ineffective, and ends up treating them as the problem.

If you are being bullied, the bully is the one with the problem, not you.

There was one occasion in Form 2 when one of the bullies (I think it might have been the aforementioned Aroha) said something in front of one of the teachers, and from that teacher’s reaction (and to my horror) I realised that the teachers knew exactly what was going on… and were doing nothing.

The following year I was off to high school and no longer had contact with those bullies. I was fortunate in that the high school I went to didn’t have a significant bullying problem, though there was a certain Catholic school down the hill that did have a bit of a reputation…

While it would be nice to think that we leave bullying behind in the school playground, the reality is that there are bullies in our workplaces, societies and clubs as well.

I was unlucky enough to work for a bully of a manager a number of years ago. I’ll call her Mrs Heffalump, because that’s not her name.  If she liked you, your life was hell. If she didn’t like you, you were history. Gone. And probably one of the lucky ones.

I used to feel physically sick arriving at work on a Thursday morning, knowing that the team leader’s meeting was at 11:00am, and you never knew who was for a verbal beating up this week.

I ended up leaving the company within a few months, worn down by constant intimidation, and realising that her behaviour was nothing short of abusive.

However, I did get my own back on the day I left. Giving a farewell speech to our department, I individually thanked two of my team members who had supported me during that difficult period. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Mrs Heffalump was not at all happy about this and I thought “Stuff you. They deserve to be thanked.”

I also voted with my feet and avoided dealing with that business for a long time until I learned much later that Mrs Heffalump had eventually been “asked to leave” the company.

The moral of the story is that nobody should ever be expected to put up with bullying behaviour, whether it is in the schoolground, at work, or anywhere. If you or someone you know is being bullied, it isn’t okay to be told to “just ignore it”, or to be told “that’s just how things are.”

So wear your pink shirt with pride this Friday, knowing that by doing so you are making a stand that bullying is not okay.

And on the subject of bullies, I’m sure that many of us can appreciate the sentiments of blogger Sam Luigi in his It Gets Worse video for bullies.

Letting go

Tuesday 8 May 2012 By in Self-Growth 1 Comment

Last weekend I had a surprisingly wonderful time sorting out my garage.

I’ve lived in the same place for over sixteen years, and you can accumulate an awful lot of stuff in sixteen years.

Hmmm… if my garage was a cuddly toy, would it be full of stuff-ing?

Garages are useful things.  Before I had the garage built, there was a carport on the side of the house. While this was a useful place to park the car, it was a rotting eyesore and it didn’t give me anywhere to store garden tools and other things that you want to keep but you don’t really want cluttering up the house.

Over time, the garage became a useful place for storing stuff that I didn’t want to get rid of, or didn’t know exactly how to get rid of, until slowly the stuff took over the space, to the point that my car got evicted and the stuff finally took over.

I’ve been looking at the garage for a quite while now and thinking that I really ought to sort out my stuff, but I kept putting it off because it all just looked a bit hard to do by myself.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that my Home Area Network servers (yes, when I’m not in clinic I’m a total IT geek) were really making too much noise to keep them in the house, and I found a way that I could get some network cabling from the house to the garage.

The only problem was that there was no room in the garage for a few useful pieces of technology because the stuff had taken over.

So I spent Saturday going through piles of stuff with a view to being fairly ruthless about what I got rid of. Much of the stuff was just plain junk that I haven’t got around to throwing out, but I’ve been storing a few pieces of old furniture that I replaced years ago, that I thought I would get rid of on TradeMe, or maybe donate to the Salvation Army. When I started to peel away the junk I soon found that the furniture was in much worse condition than I thought, so what might have been useful once was now junk as well.

Along the way I came across a few things that got me more emotional than I had expected, reminders from positive and negative times in the past and things that I didn’t expect to affect me in the way that they did. But clearing out the garage wasn’t a time to get sentimental about relics that I don’t need and don’t help me, so for a few items it was time to let go and move on.

As I was sorting the stuff in the garage, working out what I didn’t need and didn’t serve me well anymore, I realised that this was a bit like a process I went through a few years ago. (It actually ended up involving the throwing of imaginary suitcases off the imaginary interisland ferry Aratika, but that’s a whole other story.)

The process had a lot to do with the idea of forgiveness, and getting rid of baggage.  I’ve never been comfortable with the term forgiveness because it has connotations of “oh well, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter”, but sometimes it bloody well does matter. What I came to realise is that forgiveness has everything to do with the forgiver, and nothing to do with the forgiven.

Things that had happened to me in the past had left me angry and hurt, but I realised that by holding on to that anger, I wasn’t getting revenge on the target of that anger, all I was doing was hurting myself.  And I was finally sick of doing that.  Over time I learned to let go of the hurt and anger, letting go of the psychological “stuff” I’d accumulated over years, giving myself the space to grow as a person and do more productive and enjoyable things.

And as for the garage? I thought that I might have a couple of trips to do to the waste transfer station, but it wasn’t long before I realised that I was going to need some professional help in getting rid of my unwanted stuff, so next Saturday I have a truck coming to take it away, freeing up the garage for much more useful and productive things.

Doctors for the Family… and nobody else?

Tuesday 1 May 2012 By in Connectedness Leave a comment

A week or so ago something arrived through the Twittersphere that I found more than slightly disturbing.

As irritating as it is, we have come to expect poorly thought-out and often bizarre anti-gay rhetoric from fundamentalist religious groups, especially when issues associated with gay rights start to come into the public consciousness, often around campaigns for various law reforms.

It doesn’t take much to look back to homosexual law reform, or more recently, the civil unions legislation, to find religious groups in a flap that said legislation was going to mean the end of society as we know it. Well, both of these laws have been passed, and as far as I can tell, society as we knew it hasn’t exactly come to a blazing end.

In Australia right now, the campaign for marriage equality is in full swing, and along with it the fundies are out in force campaigning that allowing two men or two women to marry will mean the end of society as we know it. Personally, I’m fairly confident that this is not about to happen. (I’m referring to the end of society of course, not marriage equality.)

One of the more disturbing groups to come out in opposition of relationship recognition calls itself Doctors for the Family.

I don’t have a problem with individuals holding and expressing differing points of view, but there are a couple of things about this group that ring more than a few alarm bells.

Firstly, their website expresses some strong views, but nobody seems to be keen to put their names to them.  Consider this passage on their About page:

“Doctors names will not be visible on this website. In representations to parliament or other appropriate organisations name and address only will be used or just a simple tally of numbers.”

Hmm… so their submissions to government will consist of statement like “there are 100 doctors who support our views.” Or maybe 1000 doctors… or hell, there are somewhere around 80,000 registered medical practitioners in Australia, why not claim all of them? After all, nobody’s really going to know, are they?

While politicians sometimes don’t behave in the most intelligent ways, I’m sure they can see through unsubstantiated rhetoric like that, so DftF are prepared to provide a list of organisations that support their views.

This is even worse.  Say there is a medical centre employing five GP’s, and one of them signs up to DftF. Now everyone associated with that practice gets tarred with the same brush, let along whether that one GP is even entitled to speak for the medical centre as a whole.

Ironically, this group has made a submission to a Senate inquiry on marriage equality, listing the names of their members… which while I personally find is much more reasonable, isn’t exactly consistent with what the group claims on its’ website.

This makes me feel that this groups integrity and credibility is, well… just a bit compromised.

The second part that rings alarm bells for me is about the GP’s themselves, and whether signing up to these views is even appropriate at all.

As a primary healthcare provider, you never know what is going to walk through the clinic door. Straight, gay, bisexual, intersex, takataapui, single, married, divorced, we all go to the doctor expecting to receive the same basic standard of care. Now we don’t always click with every doctor we see, and sometimes it can take a few attempts to find a GP who you feel comfortable with. I don’t have a problem with the idea that you don’t necessarily get on with everyone, but I’m not comfortable with the idea of going to a doctor who behind closed doors believes that my mere existence means the end of society as we know it.

I would challenge any GP who has a problem with seeing gay patients to come out and say so… so that at least we can make the choice to go somewhere else.

And unlike the doctors who have tried to hide behind the anonymity of Doctors for the Family, I’m quite prepared to put my name to my views.

Steven Kendall DipClinHyp, ACBC, MNZSCAH, MNHC(NZ)
Clinical Hypnotherapist

P.S.  I’m reasonably optimistic (and thankful) that this group hasn’t made it to this side of the Tasman, after all, I’m not sure that the views of Dr Bloggs from Waikikamukau would be of great interest to Australian legislators.

Why ex-gay therapy doesn’t work

Tuesday 24 April 2012 By in Self-Acceptance 1 Comment

Ex-gay therapy has been floating around for years (sometimes in some very unexpected places) and after reading an insightful blog post last week on the subject by the Bipolar Bear, it got me thinking about just exactly why ex-gay therapy doesn’t work and cannot work.

The fundamental premise behind any form of ex-gay therapy is that sexual orientation is learned behaviour, because learned behaviour can be changed.

The problem with this premise is that it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. If you’re gay, where did you learn your gayness from? Did you learn it from watching too much Hudson and Halls? Or maybe all night marathons watching a shirtless Peter Sinclair doing pressups on Telethon before launching into a rendition of Thank You Very Much For Your Kind Donation? Or was it sick days off school listening to Alice Worsley on Radio i (or even 1ZB – eek! – now I’m showing my age) talking to David Hartnell? (My lips are sealed!) Whether we like it or not, we grow up surrounded by heterosexual role models, so why do some of us “ignore” the overwhelming influence of the heterosexual majority and permanently adopt the sexual orientation of an often marginalised minority? This makes no sense, and the bottom line is that there is no credible evidence to suggest that this actually happens.

The evidence is much more compelling to suggest that sexual orientation has a biological basis, most likely as an interaction between our genes and sex hormones during very early stages of development, well before birth.  I’m not going to go into the technical details, but if you’re interested, Gay, Straight and the Reason Why by Simon LeVay is worth a read.

So what has all this got to do with ex-gay therapy?

The “ideal” candidate for ex-gay therapy is someone who is gay or bisexual, is feeling conflicted about their sexuality, and has an underlying belief that they can change and a desire to change. The subjects strong desire to change is critical to these “therapists” because that deeply-held desire will drive people to come back again and again (often spending more and more money) to be “helped”, long after many would have dismissed the “therapy” as an ineffective hoax.

The therapists “pray the gay away” through forms of counselling, reinforcing the idea that homosexuality is wrong and sinful, and by using other behaviour modification techniques (some of which are perfectly valid in other situations) to discourage homosexual urges.

The problem is that when it comes to a battle between biology and psychology, biology will always win.

The best outcome from this type of therapy is that the subject realises that the therapy is a waste of time and money.

The dark side of ex-gay therapy is that this isn’t the only possible outcome. Being conflicted about your sexuality is a significant stress factor. (If it wasn’t, why would you want to change?) For some, this “therapy” only serves to reinforce and strengthen their conflicted feelings, driving the subjects towards depression and a deep self-loathing. For some, they reach a point of realising that things have to change, and they take the steps that they need to take to get themselves out of the abyss, and to learn to accept and like themselves for who they are.

Some don’t reach this point of realisation and instead take their own lives. I can’t even begin to imagine the point that these people reach, weighing up the prospect of living a life of intolerable sin against eternal damnation.

But the part that I struggle with the most is the sheer cruelty of those who through their own misguided beliefs drive others seeking help into nothing short of a living hell.

P.S. On a lighter note, I really recommend having a look at some of the links at the top of this post. I had a great deal of fun ferreting them out, and if you’re a Kiwi of a certain age (ahem!) I’m sure that they’ll bring back some fond memories.

What’s in a name?

Wednesday 18 April 2012 By in Self-Acceptance Leave a comment

In the non-straight community (I know it’s not a conventional term, but bear with me) we seem to have an obsession with labels.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex, fa’afafine, fakaleiti, queer, dyke, takataapui, bear, twink, queen, genderqueer, bicurious, Friend of Dorothy…

And then there are the, well, more perjorative (and sometimes downright obscure) labels.

Poof, faggot, fruit, arse bandit, shirt lifter, fairy, pansy, fudge packer, clay digger, pillow biter…

(On the subject of faggots, I was in England on holiday a few years ago, and in a takeaway bar in Plymouth the menu read “Faggots 20p”. I looked at this and thought that either I’d stumbled upon a really cheap gay brothel, or faggot didn’t quite mean the same thing as it did at home.  I recently asked my brother-in-law about it, and he explained that the faggots the takeaway would have been selling were a type of spicy meatball. Hmmm… I can see this term making a comeback.  After all, spicy meatballs!)

Not intending to offend anyone, but I’m sure there are labels that I’ve missed.

Usually this seems to turn into something of an alphabet soup, depending on which group you think is more important.  GLBT, GLBTI, LGBTIQ, GLBTTFFI…

I think there’s an easy answer to the soup: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRTUVWXYZ. Everyone in alphabetical order except for S, because that’s what we’re not.

Some of our labels have interesting histories. While I’m not Maori, I like the the genteel elegance and inclusiveness of the term takataapui.  The historical translation from Maori is “an intimate friend of the same gender”, and the term was originally used in this way in the story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai. In the original Maori version, Tutanekai sent his takataapui to the lakeside to fill the calabashes with water, whereas in the English translation his takataapui became his slave. Thanks to those depraved Victorians, what I want to know is, just what did they think that Tutanekai was up to with those calabashes?

Much like the Friend of Dorothy. With its’ origins in the pre-homosexual law reform United States and the gay icon status of Judy Garland, it was a useful euphemistic term to ask someone if they were a homosexual.  You could strike up a conversation and as “by the way, are you a friend of Dorothy?”  If they weren’t, well, they weren’t. If they thought they were, it wouldn’t take much more conversation to find out what sort of Dorothy they meant. If we didn’t live in slightly more enlightened times, the modern equivalent might be a Friend of Kylie, or even a Friend of Gaga.

Many of our labels have second meanings.  Gay used to be a term for carefree or happy, whereas queer used to have connotations of being abnormal.  While the term queer is widely accepted these days, it’s not a label that I’m personally comfortable with. After being brought up with the idea that there was something terrible wrong with me, and spending a long time coming to terms with the idea that there wasn’t, why would I adopt a label that had connotations of being abnormal? I’m quite happy with gay, and as for the carefree and happy bit, well, I can live with that.

And as for the idea of gay becoming a term for something stupid, well, those young breeders just don’t have any respect for their elder fudgepackers.

And as we get older, while some of our labels remain, sometimes as a relic of our generation, some of our labels will change and evolve.  After all, as the cubs becomes bearier and the twinks less twinky, sometimes we come to realise that our interests and our place in the community changes and evolves.  After all, have you ever been to a bar and wished they’d turn the music down, or caught yourself saying “in my day…”?

And as we evolve and change, our labels evolve and change along with it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The declining significance of homophobia?

Tuesday 10 April 2012 By in Self-Acceptance Leave a comment

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to listen to a fascinating interview with Dr Mark McCormack from Brunel University in the UK who has recently published a book titled The Declining Significance of Homophobia: How Teenage Boys are Redefining Masculinity and Heterosexuality. The book is derived from his PhD thesis, in which he spent time in three secondary schools in England observing what it was like to be a teenage guy at school in the 2000′s.

Dr McCormack was interviewed by Dean Beck and Dr Lauren Rosewarne on Word for Word on JOY 94.9.  (Yes, I know it’s an Australian radio station, and I’m in New Zealand, but they have some really interesting shows, and thanks to the Internet you don’t need a ridiculously large aerial on your radio to receive an FM signal from Melbourne.)

You can listen to the whole interview here

Download: download.php?id=8637

or find podcasts for the programme at http://cpod.org.au/page.php?id=250.

Anyway, one of the most notable findings from Dr McCormack’s study is a remarkably low level of homophobic behaviour and views at the schools studied.  Dr McCormack spent about six months in the first school, being an “average” middle-class secondary school in a medium-sized town, and surprised at the low levels of homophobia, he followed this up with periods in more “challenging” schools, namely one smaller “working class” school catering for students with behavioural problems, and one religious school. In all of the schools he found that homophobia was not present, and in many cases there were out gay students within the schools.

Fair to say that this was met with some surprise by the hosts as being in stark contrast to their own experiences at school in Australia.

This got me thinking about my own recollections of high school 25 years ago, and I honestly can’t recall any examples of overtly homophobic behaviour towards myself or anyone other students that I knew of.  I do recall one teacher being referred to in hushed tones as a “pink triangle”, more out of a sense of curiousity than any sense of vindictiveness.

There certainly weren’t any out gay students, though there was the odd rumour from time to time. But bear in mind that all this was happening within a couple of years of homosexual law reform in New Zealand.  Up until this time being out at school was inconceivable because you would have immediately been labelling yourself as someone who indulged in illegal carnal acts.

One of the problems with Dr McCormack’s study is that while it was certainly in depth, (spending 4 – 6 months in each school) only three schools were studied – out of over 400 secondary schools in England and Wales. So what is happening in the other 397? Are these schools representative of the general population, or is there something about the communities that these schools exist within that explains the tolerant views of the students? And if homophobia was not a problem in these three schools at the time of Dr McCormack’s study, was it ever a problem in these schools?

While Dr McCormack’s study raises as many questions as it answers, I hope that it can foster further research, and a better understanding of what these communities are getting right.

Unwinding the quick and easy way

Tuesday 3 April 2012 By in Mastery 1 Comment

Last week I promised to share with you a relaxation exercise that I use with my clients, and here it is!

If you would prefer to download it to your PC, smartphone, or iPod, you can right-click and save it from http://www.thinkhypnotherapy.co.nz/resources/relax.mp3.

Okay, now go and relax!

Actually, that’s not quite fair. I should explain a bit about how the exercise works.

Before I begin, there are a couple of things I want to point out about this exercise.

Firstly, while this exercise does use some principles of suggestion, it does not use hypnosis, and will not leave you clucking like a chicken, stuck to your chair, or anything like that.

The simple fact that this exercise uses principles of suggestion to help you to relax is one of the things I like about it the most. When we take on stress, this happens (to put it very simply) because of the ideas that we have retained in our minds about situations we encounter, so it makes the most sense to deal with stress by starting with the mind.

Secondly, the point of an exercise like this is that it helps you to learn to relax. Not everyone experiences this the same way. Some people notice that they feel very relaxed and chilled out after using this exercise, and some people report that they don’t think they feel any different – but they also report that some of the symptoms of stress that I mentioned last week have started to reduce.

When To Use The Relaxation Exercise

Ideally you should set aside a time to use the relaxation exercise every day.  The whole exercise takes less than 10 minutes to complete, and if you think that sounds a bit long, bear with me. In a few weeks time I’ll show you how you can shorten the exercise, but unless you’ve been working with the full exercise and become proficient with it, what I’ll be showing you won’t work.

You could use the exercise at any time of the day but the least preferred time to use the exercise is last thing before you go to bed. The reason for this is at the very end of the exercise you will be giving yourself suggestions about feeling refreshed, energised and wide awake… and if you have any tendency towards insomnia this is the last thing you need to be suggesting to yourself.

Ideally you should make time towards the beginning of the day to practice relaxation, for the simple reason that if you start the day feeling calm and relaxed, you’re in a better position to deal with the stresses that you encounter during the day, and by the end of the day you’re still more calm and relaxed than you would have been if you had done nothing at all.

Preparation

To do the relaxation exercise, you need to set aside about 10 minutes when you’re not going to be disturbed, and find somewhere comfortable to sit or lie down. It’s a good idea to loosen any tight or restrictive clothing since any discomfort can become distracting as you work through the exercise.

Some people have reported falling asleep part way through the exercise, and if this happens to you, or you think that it might happen, you would be better off sitting upright, rather than lying flat on your back. If you do fall asleep before you’ve completed the exercise, you won’t be getting the full effect of it.

Ideally you should not be facing a window or be in direct sunlight because changing light or shadow during the exercise can be distracting.

Some people find that it’s easiest to fit in the exercise while they are sitting in the car, and this is fine as long as you’re not going to be disturbed, and there is nothing outside that’s likely to distract you.  If you are going to do the relaxation exercise in the car, don’t do it while you are driving.

Using the Relaxation Exercise

When you’re ready to begin, start the recording, and get yourself comfortable. There’s a bit of a preamble at the start, which will give you ample time to get back to your seat/couch/bed and get comfortable.

After the preamble (where I explain most of what you’re reading here) I will take you through three deep breaths, then I say the word “Begin” and after the word begin, you will hear me say a phrase, then pause. When I pause, repeat the phrase back to yourself silently. This process of hearing a phrase then repeating it back to yourself continues for the rest of the recording.

Some people complain to me afterwards that the pauses are too short… or too long. If you find this to begin with, don’t worry. Once you’ve completed the exercise a few times you will get used to the pace of it, and the length of the pauses won’t be a problem for you.

Some people make the mistake of listening to the exercise without repeating the words back to themselves, and while they might enjoy listening to me rabbiting on for ten minutes or so, they’re not getting the full effect of it. The process of concentrating on the phrase I’m saying and then repeating it back is how the exercise works.

At the end of the recording, take three deep breaths when instructed, and have a good stretch.

What’s Next?

Now that you know how to use the relaxation exercise, go and relax and chill out!

In about a month’s time, I’ll show you a way that you can shorten the exercise, but for this to work you will need to have been practicing regularly with the full relaxation exercise that I linked at the top of this posting.

In the meantime, drop me a line to let me know how you’re getting on, and while you’re at it, if you’re on Facebook, don’t forget to Like the Hypnobear.

Waiting to unwind

Tuesday 27 March 2012 By in Mastery, Self-Growth 2 Comments

What do you do to relax?

Some people like fishing, the process of baiting up a rod and sitting with your line in the water, waiting for some fish to bite onto some tasty morsel without noticing the sharp hook that it’s attached to.

Some people like to relax with a good book, or they might like to go for a walk.

Personally I like to go diving up at the Poor Knights, communing with intersex Nudibranchs, transgendered Wrasses, if I’m lucky (according to Hide & Seek last Thursday night) bisexual Dolphins, and other GLBT marine life.

A boy (formerly girl) Wrasse

Intersex Nudibranchs

But it’s not just the in the water bit that’s relaxing, it’s the whole package. Once I’m clear of the Auckland traffic, I like the drive north, and if it’s a clear day, the view from the top of the Brynderwyns, taking in the expanse of Bream Bay. I like having a night away in Whangarei, not that Whangarei is much to get excited about, knowing that I can still sleep in a bit on Saturday morning because I’ve only got a half hour drive to Tutukaka. Once I’m on the boat I can sit back and relax until the boat parks up somewhere interesting, preferably inside Rikoriko Cave because that’s one of my all time favourite dive sites. (Who knew that a dive site that only had rocks, very clear water, blue maomao and whale bits could be so fantastic?)

Whatever you do to relax, the whole point is that you’re giving yourself the space to unwind, to let go of the stresses and pressures that you deal with every day.

And this is actually pretty important.

While things sometimes happen that get us wound up quickly, most of the time we accumulate the effects of stress slowly over a period of time, and very often we’re not aware of this accumulating effect until we’re starting to notice common symptoms of stress.  These include:

  • becoming generally more prone to coughs and colds
  • inexplicable aches and pains
  • finding it harder to concentrate
  • becoming more pessimistic and more inclined to catastrophise
  • forgetfulness
  • changes to our sleeping patterns, either finding it harder to sleep, or sleeping more than previously
  • irritability

One of the problems with diagnosing stress is that the common symptoms are shared with other medical conditions. If you are noticing any of the physical symptoms of stress in yourself, the first step in dealing with it is to get checked out by your GP, so that any other medical condition that may be causing the symptoms can be ruled out.

Once we start to recognise that we’re not performing as well as we would like due to stress, we tend to get stressed out about that, which makes us more stressed, and so on. In the longer term, unchecked stress triggers can lead to depression, burnout, and more serious health problems.

Whatever the causes of stress for us, the solution will include finding a way, and giving ourselves permission to unwind.  While we might be tempted (in our stress-induced loss of perspective) to see this as selfish, the reality is that there’s nothing selfish about doing the things you need to do to take care of yourself.

Unwinding might involve taking some time out from your day to day stress triggers, but often this is easier said than done. If I’m stressed at work, I can hardly drop everything for a couple of days to go diving (as much as I’d like to) nor could you reasonably excuse yourself from a stressful meeting  by saying “excuse me, I need to go and catch a fish.”

The short answer to unwinding when you don’t have time to unwind is to learn to use a rapid relaxation technique.  Some people swear by yoga or meditation, I’m personally a fan of self-hypnosis.  There are some very effective rapid relaxation exercises around, and next week I’m going to introduce you to one that I use with all of my clients.