This page considers a range of safe experiments to meet our own feelings of anxiety. Elsewhere, I have identified how safe experiments might be categorised. I understand this page has helped some people.
Another approach to ‘organising’ safe experiments is to think neurologically. There is a good account of how our neurons fire at:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-an-action-potential-2794811
The key point is to bear in mind that when an experience happens, it may not register in our consciousness. It’s there but we do not know that it is there. The cascade of neuronal firing simply did not get that far; the event happened but it’s not recorded in our awareness.
I expect you’ve had the experience of your emotions going from 0 – 60; finding your reactions have taken over – seemingly – without any warning.
This can happen when the early warning system does not sound. If I can become more sensitive, then our early warning system will increase my awareness.
Increasing awareness through just noticing
That’s why I encourage you to use:
- the art of ‘just noticing’, and
- the Subjective Unit of Discomfort (SUD).
I can miss a micro-second of opportunity to meet my high emotions in a different way and that can be a costly experience. In therapy, I find some people struggle to notice the Subjective Unit of Discomfort (SUD) at levels 1 – 4, and srelyuddenly become sensitivity when the ratings reach 5+.
The result? Less time to respond to our feelings and to regulate them.
The diagram, below, demonstrates how one function of therapy is to create ways to notice the 2’s, 3’s and 4’s, if not a 1, and use those extra micro-seconds to our advantage.
How can I better notice what I find not easy to notice? How can I know what is so often not known? Through practise. Safe experiments are a key element in finding what to practise and how to do so.
This outlook on life may help all of us to design safe experiments. It begins with slowing down and noticing where we are NOW. Examples of how to do this can be found when experimenting with Controlled breathing.
Other ‘slowing down’ experiments
… include paying attention to the way we speak; in particular, our rate of delivery.
Feelings, such as anxiety, anger and fear, tend to accelerate our speech until, sometime, we trip over ourselves.
This graph suggests there are three sets of experiments you may want to develop.
Apologies for the tatty design; it’s one of my oldest diagrams, and I trust it has stood the test of time!
Three experiments
The first level of safe experiment – SUD’s 1-3 – involves ‘talk’ and ‘self-talk’.
Here, I am back to that internal dialogue I mentioned elsewhere. Practise attending to the way you talk to yourself, or about yourself to others. Note the quality of actual conversations you have with others. Writing such things down can, in itself, slow us down.
Body scan
When you do a body scan and notice any feeling, you can identify a Subjective Unit of Disturbance (SUD) to measure your own score for that level of feeling. Where the SUD is lowish, say, 1-3, then it is possible that conversation, and inner re-assurance may lower the SUD without further ado.
In the middle ground, around 4 -7, you may need more active strategies; these are termed distractions or diversions.
In the higher ground, from 7 upwards, the diagram identifies but one experimental strategy that will help. It is a strategy, however, that can take many forms. The ultimate intention, here, is to acknowledge that, by and large, people do not die from high emotions. This is despite the many sayings that suggest ‘you are killing me‘, ‘I will die of a broken heart‘ or ‘he died of fright‘.
Going with the flow
Instead, is it possible ‘to go with the flow’ – to be mindful – in the certain knowledge that human beings are ‘hard-wired’. Our level of emotion is closely associated with the level of neural firing. And what goes up has to come down – from more intense and, inevitably, come down again. This is epitomised in the phrase, ‘this cannot last for ever‘. The neural pathways creating the flight, fight and freeze responses are not designed to go on for ever.
There are occasions when those pathways give a good impression that they can, but it is not so! Indeed, some psychological problems arise when the neurons do go on firing and create conditions that benefit from the services of a therapist. Of course, you may faint but even that is one way to help the level of emotion to subside.
The problem is that humans can imagine. We can imagine our SUDs continuing, onward and upwards, relentlessly. It is that imagining that can create much trouble. Effective therapy uses our power to imagine to help us meet an experience, rather than magnify it.
Once it is possible to ‘just notice’ the experience we are having, it may be feasible to step back and watch it coming and going. Nothing lasts for ever.
OTHER ACTUAL EXPERIMENTS
Cast your mind to a recent time when you were anxious. How did the incident actually pan out? Some people tell me it petered out with a whimper, because all the imagined fears came to naught. Other people tell me that they experienced panic symptoms in their bodies. They survived it but became sensitive to the possibility that similar things might happen again.
What happened to you? What conclusion did you draw from the experience? Do you view it differently now, compared to then? Does the diagram offer you some alternative experiment to try out in similar situations?
Writing your own manual
The diagram, above, is central to the management of high emotion. Consequently, where this is an issue for you, a whole range of experiments may be used and developed. Create yourself the best ‘toolbox’ you can. Your toolbox will be different from mine; this has to be personal.I can only introduce some typical experiments:
EXPERIMENTS WITH TALK
This might seem easy. After all, we talk all the time to other people. However, the initial experiment is to choose some-one and the next step is to chose what to say.
Be careful with your choices; for instance, please avoid your children, if you have any. Even grown-up child might be best avoided lest you ‘put upon them’ and they feel reluctant to say ‘no’. For a start, make sure it IS some-one who can say ‘no’ and that you can respect their choice and go on to do something different.
That said, it does not have to be a big deal. It may be sufficient simply to say ….”can I tell you something that is important to me …..”. Please note that asking for support here is not optional.
With those preliminaries complete, speak slowly and personally, using the first person, “I”, to describe what you are noticing. If the person you are with knows about SUD‘s, you can use them to describe what you feel – the emotion you have now – and the strength of that feeling.
As and when they reply, simply accept whatever you get. If you do not like it, wait until they have finished, and ask to say more. That said, avoid explaining, and re-explaining. At the end of the day, your experience cannot be fully known to any other person. You, in your turn, cannot fully know what prompts another person to reply as they do.
Accept what you are told at face value and focus more on your inner experience. Name, in your head, the feeling you have and apply a SUD to help identify whether the intensity of that feeling goes down, stays the same or increases.
If it persists in going up, then do something different, say, take time out for yourself. If it stays the same, discuss with your partner ways in which you might reduce the level of feeling further. They may be very willing to help you experiment. If it goes down, be curious. What made for that change?
Accept any safe experiments put forward, and notice how, sometimes, you will want to argue about it. Don’t; just listen to them and notice what you are feeling!
EXPERIMENT WITH SELF-TALK
Again, this sounds simple. After all, I have already mentioned ‘internal dialogue‘ and the fact that it is with us 24 hours a day. However, the problem with a lot of self-talk is the quality. Too often it is critical. Just stop for a moment, and notice your ‘internal dialogue’ as it is running, now. If you have struggled with this part of my blog, what are you saying to yourself? It could be a rude remark about my writing style but, as often as not, it will be a self-criticism: “why can’t I understand this ... “. It is only too easy to blame ourselves, if not others!
In this typical experiment, however, I want you to notice both the problem you are experiencing, when it rises, and to use language that is more kindly – about yourself. Typically, this might be “I notice that I am struggling [with whatever it is; naming things is important in such experiments] and I will give myself some more time to consider it further [or re-read something]” .
The key is the use of that first person, I, plus the ‘and‘ – the intention to do something that will help you. Watch out for buts instead of ands. But often heralds an excuse and it won’t help here.
A second issue is to keep it brief and direct: what is the feeling? What can I do about it now?
Other ‘kinder’ internal dialogue might be: “I am feeling [what ever it is is] now, and I am going to respect it.“
Affirmation: a way to revise some common beliefs about ourselves
Here is a sample list of common ‘cognitions’, that is, beliefs about ourselves. How many negative beliefs, in square brackets, and how many positive beliefs do you subscribe to easily?
You can use Affirmations by just noticing the ‘cognitions’ below and deleting the ‘not’!
I [do not] deserve love;
I am [not] a good (loving) person.
I am [not] fine as I am.
I am [not] worthy;
I am [not]honourable.
I am [not] loveable.
I am [not] deserving (fine/okay).
I [do not] deserve good things.
I am (can be) healthy.
I am [not] fine (attractive/loveable).
I am [not] intelligent (able to learn).
I am [not] significant (important).
I am [not] okay just the way I am
I [do not] deserve to live.
I [do not] deserve to be happy.
There is a large number we could develop. Do you have another that makes more sense for you, now? Most of us have a few ‘favourites’ – we might not want them on one level, but they hang around!
EXPERIMENTS with Diversion and Distractions
Let’s move away from talk and self-talk.
What have you done in the past to neutralise unwanted habits? If little specific comes to mind: what antidote might you design now to face up to one or more negative cognition, and act just a little bit differently?
There are many diversions and distractions we could use in experiments. The words are not really so separate one from another so I will use both words inter-changeably..
Controlled breathing can be a diversion. You notice some discomfort and you start to ‘think-about-breathing’ instead. Rather than breathe on auto-pilot, as is normal, you stop, take a longer, gentle in-breath (not a sharp or deep in-breath. You take this breath in only through your nose. Use a slow count of three, possibly four, as a guide, but do not let your breathing become laboured. It is not a competition.
Use the same slow count to breath out. Continue this for around 30 seconds, no more than 45 seconds, and then stop and complete a body scan. This body scan will help you notice what you are experiencing in even more detail. From that information you will design further experiments to become more at peace with yourself.
Another diversion experiment is to do something completely different, as Monty Python used to say. Just as ‘thinking about breathing’ can help, so do other actions. This can include tapping on different parts of your body, as mentioned earlier on.
Also, very practical tasks such as getting out a notepad, making notes or a developing a ‘to do’ list would be practical.
FURTHER EXPERIMENT WITH DISTRACTION
Typical distractions can involve using your body. In your mind’s eye it may be possible to create different images. One very important image is the use of the safe place.
The safe place experiment is so important that I will address it in detail later on. For the moment, just consider whether, in your mind’s eye, you have a safe place to go when the going gets tough. An alternative to a safe place in your head is simply to take time out, that is, remove yourself from the vicinity of the current source of stress.
Another distraction is to use your eyes. If you notice a strong emotion, some people find they can do ‘first aid’ by raising their eyes up, say, toward the ceiling. Do this without straining; a small move up should suffice. At the same time, look to your left and move your eyes slowly to the right. Repeat this back and forth movement of the eyes, still raised, for a short while. Record a SUD of the intensity of any feeling from time to time. Use the body scan to notice discomfort within your body. Devise ways to ‘talk’ to that discomfort differently.
In time, I may well re-record digital records, mp3’s or mp4’s, to help with this part of the experiment.
Experimenting with the Dan Siegel approach to Body Scanning
This American doctor has some very interesting things to say about the process of change. Those wanting to research his work may want to start with:
https://www.drdansiegel.com/resources/wheel_of_awareness_thanks/
The reason why I mention his work is that his Wheel of Awareness fits very well into the Body Scanning experiments I have included many times. I cannot reproduce his wheel for copyright reasons, but take a look at it. It may help you devise experiments that lead from the ‘inner’ body scan I have focused on. See if your next experiments can incorporate the ‘Seven Senses’ Dan Siegel describes.
His wheel is helpful in adding a scan of our relationships into the process. This moves us from the internal experience into our much more complex social world.
EXPERIMENT WITH ‘GOING WITH THE FLOW’
A typical experiment here is to ensure that the feeling you’ve got is named. Most often, you will find a word that describes an emotion: anxious, angry or puzzled etc. Be aware that this label is something you are applying to a whole load of sensations in various parts of your body. That is you giving a label to the otherwise meaningless.
Use the body scan to identify and explore those sensations. Note where they are located: nausea in the stomach, tightness in the chest or a lump in the throat. Most emotions are accompanied by a number of different sensations in different parts of our body. Look, again, at the diagram above relating to body reactions where several such sensations are listed.
The aim of ‘going with the flow’ is not to do the body scanning, the labelling and the location of sensations but these are helpful preliminaries.
Going with the flow is the seemingly simple act of saying ‘hello’ to what you’ve got. As I have said, nothing lasts for ever and your emotions are not going to kill you. What goes up must come down. These are all everyday sayings that may help you find your way of ‘going with the flow’.
Don’t fight it and you will recover. The key experiments will come after your recovery as you take small steps to generate small victories and become more confident in your ability to build that ‘toolkit’ and manage your emotions just a little bit differently.
Further lines of enquiry
How to design safe experiments
Categories of safe experiments
Meeting obstacles on the scenic route