Taking control over the emotion of memories

This is the *extended Wellbeing column, published in the York Press on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2015.

As yet, there is no link to the York Press website. No doubt due to staff on holiday.

This is the last column for 2015 and I have been asked to continue writing a monthly column in 2016, my third year of writing for York Press. So see you next year!

..........................................

“Strange how potent cheap music is.” Noel Coward.  Private Lives.

If music, cheap or otherwise, was not potent, then it wouldn't be used by advertising agencies to sell merchandise. At this time of year, we seem to be assaulted everywhere by Christmas music. Our brains block out most of it, but for many, there are one or two tunes that will ‘hijack’ our emotional brain and makes us stop and reflect on a memory that has come to mind. Perhaps our eyes become moist or we inwardly smile. Then most of us will stop the train of thought that is usually heading back into the past and get on with whatever we are doing in the present.

Personally, Chris Rea brings smiles from a warm memory, while choirs singing carols can bring tears of loss.

At home or in the car, I can listen to music of my own choosing. There is little choice elsewhere and I can be ‘emotionally hijacked’ in seconds.  The first thought cannot be helped, but there is control over the second.  If I wish to be self-indulgent and dwell in self-pity, it’s my choice. On rare occasions I will chose to continue to listen to music that makes me feel miserable, through the memories it evokes. Bittersweet memories.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is often offered to people when their thoughts and subsequent behaviours are unhelpful. People can be helped to take control and change their thoughts, internal dialogue and actions. A thought will be triggered by an emotional reaction to something sensory. A smell, sight, taste, feel or touch. I’m writing about music, but it could be anything. Sometimes it’s not an obvious memory and we can often wonder why we’ve reacted in certain ways. 

It’s this brain function that can make Christmas time such an emotional time, with its variety of sensory triggers. Many people don’t like it for that reason. It’s also a time for trying to recapture the past, which is impossible and can cause disappointment with unfulfilled expectations.

If I was granted a wish by the Christmas fairy, it would be to have the family at home, around the table on Christmas Day.  This is logistically not possible, so this year we arranged to have a pre-Christmas gathering in late autumn instead. I looked at the extended family interacting and dwelled on the ‘if onlys' and ‘what ifs’. I was living in the past. It felt sad. Then I changed my internal dialogue. If I focused my mind on the past, I was going to miss what was happening in the present. I had the opportunity to make new memories. It became a cognitive exercise, not dissimilar to Mindfulness. I changed my train of thought and enjoyed the moment. I was making new memories. I felt happier.

*Over the Christmas period, I have been 'emotionally hijacked' on many occasions.  I always had a choice of where I took the train of thoughts and what mood ensued. Sometimes I indulged myself, because a duvet of self-indulgant misery can be strangely comforting at times. But only for the short-term. 

None of us know exactly what tomorrow will bring, let alone a whole year. I wish you all the emotional strength to manage whatever comes your way, bad and good, sad and happy, despair and elation, failure and success, pain and pleasure and all the ordinariness of in between.  

Here's to 2016 with my favourite quote.

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." Helen Keller

©AlisonRRussell2015

Let the past go.

       
       The monthly column in the York Press. Published April 7th, 
       2014
              http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/health/11131659.Mind__body___soul__Put_the_past_behind_you/
       
       Plus added paragraph*.

April’s Column

There were times recently, when I felt as if I was being hurled around the universe in Dr Who's Tardis. No adventures in the future, but numerous trips, both physical and emotional, into the past. These included two funerals, a college reunion, a BBC5Live anniversary reunion, a grandson in a school concert playing a superb Beatles medley and the first Mother's Day after my mother's death last year.

Emotions experienced ranged from hilarity, laughter, poignancy, joy, sadness to tears. To my surprise, most tears trickled down my cheek at the school concert.

Over two weeks, I met some wonderful, inspiring, courageous, ordinary people. People who reminded me of past loves, hurts, adventures, successes, failures, hopes and dashed expectations.  And that's the point. Whatever the experiences, they were all in the past.

It was boys at the concert that really bought this home. Two hundred teenage boys full of expectations of a future, just as I was, when listening to the Beatles music in the 1960s.  Expectations of life that will turn out to be nothing like they may be imagining. 

I discovered as a psychotherapist, that the majority of reasons people become unwell with emotional health problems, is that they are endeavouring to change things in their life that cannot be changed.  Too often people want to change the past and get stuck in therapy, on medication or with addictive behaviours, trying to do the impossible or waiting for the impossible to happen.

          * It came towards the end of a residential study week for the   
       psychotherapy diploma in 2000. The subject under discussion
       was 'Spare Capacity'. The tutor explained that, as therapists
       we should make sure we had 'spare capacity' for the work we
       were about to undertake. Physical and emotional spare        
       capacity.  I would add ethical principles too.

       So it was in 2010, when three years of family illness elsewhere
       in the UK, a house renovation and move, a downsizing of the
       practice and writing about the subject matter of emotional 
       maturity, that one day a client sat in front of me and my
       feelings were ones of frustration. Frustration that the client
      wanted to cling on to the past, believing it would change. They
      were not ready to change the present and future.

       I went home and knew that I had no spare capacity left. No
       spare capacity to 'care'.  I knew that I shouldn't see clients
       anymore. I couldn't be true to my ethical principles and run an
       ethical practice.

       I still felt I could help people and loved writing. As a result
       in 2013, the book was published and it gives me a deep sense
       of satisfaction, when feedback confirms that I made the right
       decision.
  
      Reflection

Imagine a rainbow.

It could be a memory of a real experience, or a figment of the imagination. 

We become lost in wonder at the rainbow’s form and the spectrum of rich colours in a changing sky. 

We are momentarily entranced and we marvel at the rainbow’s natural beauty and its transient nature.

Our eyes wander to where the end of it disappears... The image fades. 

It was a moment of innocent wonder and curiosity. 

For a few precious seconds the intrusion of our everyday activities was excluded. 

No harm was done. In fact, we may even feel uplifted.

Now, let us imagine another rainbow. 

Again, we become entranced by it, but this time we concentrate on where the rainbow ends. 

We remember the stories and myths we heard as children. 

Is there really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? 

A pot of gold that would provide a resolution to all our problems? 

We want it, and we want it now!

Leaving common sense and reason behind, we chase the end of the rainbow, again and again. 

We keep trying, but the end is just out of reach and always unobtainable. 

We feel disappointed, frustrated and weary. 

Will we ever reach it? No. The pot of gold of resolution is the delusion in the illusion, but we continue to reach for and chase the end of the rainbow. 

In fact, the more we try, the more we can become deluded. 

We can become emotionally and physically unwell.

©AlisonRRussell2014