THE ARMCHAIR DREAMER

We can pretty easily describe a metaphorical image of what we look like when we are highly stressed. For instance, we may refer to ourselves as a “wild-eyed, wild hair, raging beast” or a “racing tornado just like my mother.” Or we may see ourselves as a “warrior, battling the world.”

It is worthwhile to watch ourselves carefully when we are stressed to spot additional details of this inner character we play when things are not going well. This is not a casual, unimportant imagining of our minds for our minds take this stuff very, very seriously, indeed. The mind, and more specifically, the unconscious, loves this stuff. It is a primary fuel for our inner world.

If we run inner dramas of with us being a wild, barely in control character, we will live that role out. If our go-to role is harried, I can’t believe nor accept us with every stressor there is no room and no experience playing a different role.

But there are many other roles we can, with lots of practice, learn to act out. We see them in literature and movies:

The Clever, Self-Possessed Hero – These characters range from Sherlock Holmes to James Bond, to Laura Croft.

The Wise Person – Usually associated with the wise, old male, this characterization of a calm person is not limited to men. Many wise women who can see the big picture, hold things in perspective, who are patient can also be found.

The Centered and Detached Sports Person – Think balance-beam gymnasts; professional poker players, golfers.

The Bounce Back Person – We find these not only in literature but in life; the person who goes through tremendous trials but comes right back and keeps on keeping on.

The Immersed Artist/Craftsman/Worker – These people immerse themselves into something finite but seem to get almost infinite vitality, enjoyment, and relaxation from what they are doing.

The Keep to the Simple Person – Look for literary characters who keep a simple life that stands in contrast to the people spinning, busily around them.

How to Build Your Inner Relaxation Self-Image

1. Find an image from the list above (and from your list) the clicks for you. Note, it doesn’t have to be a single inner character. Our stressed out inner image is usually made of a little this and a little that, so you can make your relaxation self-image a little this and a little that, too.

2. Imagine that self-image a little bit each day for a month. We are talking about a few minutes each day. Do this until you feel connected to your image and that it is very clearly in mind.

3. Bring your self-image up in stressful but lower stress situations and start to act as if you are that image. See what you discover.

4. Apply imagining that self-image to memories of stressful situations and see what you can imagine as how you would have responded as that sort of character.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice steps 1 through 5. It takes awhile to develop our stressed-out image, it will take time to develop an inner image we know can pop up on its own when we are facing stress.

Photo attribution info

Switching from concern about stress let’s look at the other side of the coin, at relaxation. What is your history of relaxation?  What I mean is what has relaxed you?  Do you remember? Do you remember several sources of relaxation for you?  I know, it is hard to remember, at least most of the time, what has worked for us over the years.  No time to look backward we automatically concluded, got to take care of today.

Seriously, what have been things, places, people, and events that have brought you peace and perhaps brought you very positive feeling?. Take your time, don’t rush.

What brought you peace, relaxation within the last six months?
The last year?
Over the last 5 years?
Ten years?
When you were quite younger?

Again, don’t rush it. You don’t have to come up with everything right now, think about adding to your list over the next few days but be comprehensive. Dig deep. Pull hard. Assemble your list of what has worked for you, whether it was large or small, still possible to repeat or impossible to have again, what did it for you?

Look at the list. What was it that gave you that relaxation? What were the qualities of the person, place, thing, event that had such an impact on you?

Which are your top three?

Can you find and experience them again?

Stop stalling about trying imagery or getting into imagination. Start simply but profoundly. Sometime when you are just hanging out and are relaxed with nothing too special on your mind other than hanging out:

1. Pick an image, any image. This can be from any source or form (I prefer to hold something rather than just have it on the computer screen). This can be a photo of something you know or something totally unknown to you.  Don’t spend too much time picking “the right image” because the goal of this exercise is doing imagery work, not how to pick the right image.

2. Get comfortable, probably sitting rather than reclining.

3. Look at the image a bit until you have it rough out enough in your memory and then close your eyes.

4. Bring up the image but don’t worry too much about capturing all of the details. In fact, let your mind drift towards that seems the most interesting.

5. Let the image hang around and when it slips away, gently bring it back. This is not an exercise in concentration so let the image morph and float a bit in your head and heart.

6. Be aware that soon associations to the image will drift into your head. No problem, but be a bit curious as to why those associations came up with this image. Again, no hard thinking about this matter just appreciate it.

7. Explore for five, eight, or ten minutes.

8. Open your eyes.

9. Contemplate on what you discovered from this one image.

More await you.

I alert people to what they will experience once they start applying  stress reduction techniques to their most stressful situations. Frequently, things feel worse! How could this be? I thought stress reduction techniques work by cooling things down such as  stress hormones or our emotional brain systems. Cooling should make us feel less anxious, confused, angry, defensive, etc., right?

As beginners,  our anxiety can increase and our bodies can feel pretty bad. I think this happens for a couple of reasons:

• We put some of our focus on how our bodies are feeling in that moment. Frequently when we are reacting to a high-stressor, we go to our well learned responses which can be quite separated from body awareness. We are thinking a mile a minute and our emotions are following familiar paths and forms of expression. Our body does not get its due even though they are very involved in the situation.  When our focus returns to our body we can feel our breathing is off, or our bodies are pumped up with stress hormones, or our hands are shaking and more.  That doesn’t feel good at all.
• We split our focus from just what’s happening to working our technique.  That’s a heck of lot to juggle.
• We probably discover that we have not practiced the technique enough to know it well so we find ourselves trying to remember all of the steps.
• We probably discover that the experience produced by the technique feels too unfamiliar to make us feel comfortable doing it in a high stress situation.

Diminishing the Tornado and Passing Through the Doorway
The increased discomfort caused by the forces above is the tornado.  The doorway is where we can pass from high discomfort of a body and mind in stress, to feeling better and having more control over ourselves. There are three things we can work on to make getting through the doorway easier or even possible.

• We can diminish the power of the tornado by getting very familiar and practiced with our stress tools. Daily practice, in the face of lessor stresses, can really sharpen our mastery.
• We can learn to expect the tornado and therefore have a better chance of persisting with our technique. When discomfort rises (hello, tornado) we stick with our stress tool and not back off. Most of the time, eventually it will produce some results (perceivable stress reduction and/or clarity of thought/feeling).
• We can expose ourselves to the stressor or similar stressors and bring the discomfort down.  As the level of stress decreases the power of the tornado to rattle us diminishes. When a situation is less stressful, the tornado may not even appear. The balance between the stress and the effectiveness of our stress reduction technique will be such that the technique matches or exceeds the capacity of the situation to produce stress. Piece of cake.

Credits:
Funnel cloud photo – Public Domain. Credit: OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL).