How can mindfulness help us navigate discomfort?
When life gets hard, we usually have a tendency to do one of two things: ruminate on the challenges or avoid the discomfort. Ruminating can look like over thinking, worrying, excessive negative thoughts or anxiety. (Ruminator over here 🙋🏻‍♀️) On the flip side, some people have a tendency to avoid discomfort, which can look like suppressing emotions, avoiding difficult conversations, pretending everything is fine when it’s not, or toxic positivity.
Mindfulness offers us a third way, or a middle way for managing challenges as they arise. Mindfulness prevents us from always going too deep into the discomfort that it’s debilitating. It prevents us from always avoiding discomfort to the extent that dis-ease manifests in our system, or we overreact later on. Mindfulness offers us a way to dance between the two extremes.
This concept is especially useful for me when I am constantly inundated with news stories that fill me with fear, grief and/or helplessness.
Below are a few steps to help you and your kids practice mindfulness amidst discomfort.
1. Notice the sensations in your body. Hot or cold. Tense or relaxed. Fidgety or still.
2. Use the sensations to help you name the emotion. For me, tightness in my chest = anxiety. Uneasy stomach = worried. As you start to pay attention, you’ll learn more about what your sensations mean for YOU. Your child’s sensations may point to different feelings than yours. It’s important to remember that, though we have many similarities, we’re all having unique experiences.
Did You Know? When we name our emotion (or someone helps us name it) we can access a different part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) that allows us to tame that emotion. Being seen and heard is healing. By accessing the prefrontal cortex, we can see the big picture, empathize and understand cause and effect. We have a more holistic view. As humans and especially, as parents, we have a tendency to want to fix peoples’ problems and give advice. While I think it’s important to help promote a benevolent outlook on the future, I think it’s even more important to name the emotion that is present, and neuroscience does, too. When witnessing our child have a hard time, we might have the tendency to say “you’re fine!” or “calm down” (which, by the way, when has someone telling you to calm down ever helped you calm down??)
We can actually support our child and help them name their emotion by saying something like “it looks like you’re upset” or “that must be really frustrating, am I right in saying that?”. Being that the pre-frontal cortex isn’t fully developed until about 25 years old, children need our support in helping access that part of the brain!
Simply acknowledging our emotion (or helping our kids to do so) allows the brain to switch gears.
3. Once you name the emotion (if you can, you may not find the words right away) you can choose to utilize yoga or another technique to soothe yourself. On my self-regulate blog and IGTV, I created some videos where I model a couple of options for regulating yourself. Stay tuned for more options to be shared over time!!
4. Once you notice the discomfort and acknowledge it, you may choose to draw your attention to something other than your internal experience. (Especially useful for fellow ruminators.) This is different than avoiding or pretending that everything is fine when it isn’t. It’s honoring how you feel while also giving yourself some space to process. Personally, noticing nature is very soothing for me. It reminds me that life is much bigger than my personal experience, and it reminds me that just like the ups and downs of my own life, great nature has seasons & cycles, and ups and downs, too. By simply drawing my focus to the color of the sky, or the texture of the leaves, I start to drop into a sense of wonder that allows me to soften my breath naturally.
Every up has a down, every in has an out, every high has a low, and in the center is you, mediating between two polarities: dark and light, effort and grace, rumination and avoidance. Mindfulness gives you the ability to notice your experience with honesty and compassion. It gives you the opportunity to allow your experience to be exactly as it is and to allow there to be room for joy and other experiences alongside the discomfort. We have the ability to hold many many truths at the same time, and mindfulness makes it so. đź’ť
Steps for Practicing Mindfulness during discomfort:
Notice the sensations in your body.
Name your emotion.
Utilize yoga techniques to soothe yourself: slow your breath, practice self holds, or move your body, etc.
Notice nature.