Get Some Headspace: 10 minutes can make all the difference (25 page)

We discussed what might be causing the problem. Rachel thought it might be to do with being under a lot of pressure at work. She’d also moved in with her boyfriend and the fact she was working so much was causing arguments. He wasn’t unsympathetic, but he felt she had her priorities wrong.

Rachel referred to her problem as ‘insomnia’. I asked if she ever slept well and she said that sometimes she slept very well. This seemed to rule out insomnia, which tends to be both consistent and chronic. I asked if she could remember the first time it had happened. She said there’d been a particularly difficult day at work, about six months earlier, when she’d been preparing for an important presentation the next day and hadn’t got home until midnight. By the time she got back her boyfriend was asleep, which she said made her feel guilty and a little lonely.

She said she remembered feeling very anxious as she lay in bed, with thoughts whizzing around in her mind. She was conscious of needing to look good the next day and to perform at her best, but the more she thought about it, the more wide awake she felt. In fact she found that the anxiety soon turned into frustration. First she got angry with her boss, then she got angry with her boyfriend, then she got angry with herself.

As it happens, the presentation went well the next day and the company won the contract, although Rachel said that she felt awful and didn’t feel as though she’d contributed as well as she might have. What scared her the most, though, was that ‘it’ might happen again. By the time she got home she had already planned a strategy for getting to sleep. She was going to have a bath and go to bed very, very early. But even though she was tired, her body wasn’t used to going to sleep that early, so again she lay awake for ages. She started to panic that ‘it’ was happening all over again and that she was in for another sleepless night. And so it went on. Of course, sometimes she would fall asleep straight away, but a pattern had developed where she was becoming increasingly anxious about not sleeping, which itself was causing her not to sleep.

After reassuring Rachel that sleeping difficulties are very common I introduced her to the basic approach to meditation and got her doing ten minutes every day. Although she thought it a bit strange that I was asking her to meditate in the morning when it was at night that she was having the problems, I explained that this wasn’t necessarily how the mind worked and that it was more important that she had a stable daily practice.

I also asked her to look at her ‘sleep hygiene’. This is how you prepare yourself for sleep. I asked her to make sure she only used the bedroom for sleep, as well as for being with her boyfriend of course. This helps strengthen the association between going to bed and going to sleep. I asked her to avoid taking naps during the day and explained how important it was to develop a regular time for sleep, going to bed and getting up at pretty much the same time each day – even at weekends to begin with. This may sound strict, but for the body and mind to learn new habits, they need to be repeated many times. I also asked her to avoid watching any stimulating television late at night, or playing computer games as both tend to leave the mind feeling a bit speedy. We discussed food too and the importance of eating at least a couple of hours before going to bed, allowing the body time to digest everything. Finally, we talked about the importance of buying an old-fashioned alarm clock, so that her mobile phone could live in another room overnight and she would not be tempted to look at e-mails.

In the first week Rachel got very excited as she’d slept well for a number of nights in a row. But the gremlins returned in the second week and she became impatient with her progress. We discussed the approach again and the attitude that needs to be applied in order to see the best results, and by the third week she was starting to see genuine progress.

We continued to meet for a couple of months, slowly working through the techniques until we reached those specific to sleeping (you can refer back to page 156). Now and then she would have a bad night, but by and large she was feeling more confident. Perhaps the biggest change was Rachel’s perspective towards sleep. It no longer mattered that much. She said that looking back she couldn’t understand how she’d taken it all so seriously. She said that she now recognises that her sleep won’t always be perfect, but that’s OK, she’s happy to ride out the wave. And it’s this change that has made it a truly sustainable approach.

Pam was referred to the clinic by her doctor. She’d been on antidepressants for over three years and had tried various strategies to overcome the way she felt. She was still holding down a full-time job and, other than her GP and human resources manager at work, nobody knew about her depression. She described the depression as just ‘sitting there’, making everything look dark and pointless.

Pam had grown-up children who lived in other parts of the country and she had been divorced for ten years. Part of the reason for coming to see me was that she wanted to reduce her medication. With her doctor’s support, she was planning to very slowly reduce the dosage. It was estimated this might take about a year. That may sound like a long time, but when people suddenly stop the long-term use of antidepressants, the results can be quite serious, so it’s important to do it with your doctor’s consent and in a very gentle way. The other advantage of this approach is that studies have consistently shown that relapse is far less likely if the withdrawal is gradual. Pam had read in the papers that meditation was supposed to be very good for treating depression, and was keen to give it a try.

At the heart of Pam’s depression was the feeling that nothing went right for her and that everything was ‘her fault’. In fact, it was remarkable the way in which she would reinforce these ideas. This sense of identity had become so strong that this was the only way she was able to see herself. But as long as she was continuing to engage with these thoughts, to nurture them even, there was little chance of her being free from the feeling of depression.

We spent a long time talking about how it was possible to step back from thoughts, to create a little more space. We talked about not needing to identify with the thoughts so much, that they were not who she was, but simply thoughts that had been coloured by the feelings of depression. And we talked about the analogy of the blue sky. When someone feels depressed, the idea that there is an underlying sense of happiness can seem laughable. The clouds have received so much attention and been given so much importance that they’ve become thick and dark in colour. For many people in this position it’s difficult to remember a time when there might have been some blue sky, never mind the possibility of there actually being some now. But the analogy is important, because as long as you’re searching for happiness or headspace outside of yourself, it will only ever lead to a temporary end to depression. What’s more, it will intensify the feeling that what you’re currently experiencing is somehow ‘wrong’.

It wasn’t an easy process for Pam but slowly the clouds did begin to part and she was reminded of what the blue sky felt like. The depression had become a strong habit so the clouds would return at first. But because it was a habit, it meant that it could be unlearned and the more Pam saw these patches of blue sky, the more she realised that the depression was not something permanent. She couldn’t ignore these moments of calm and happiness that were creeping into her life, no matter how fleeting. At the same time, with the help of her doctor, she reduced her medication until she was ready to give it up altogether. At six months there’d been some reluctance to give up the medication. She felt it was part of who she was and worried who she was going to be if she was not that any more. In many ways it was about letting go of that identity. But by the time a year came around she was more than ready to stop. She added it felt a bit like saying goodbye to an old friend, but a friend she was very happy to see move on.

It was Pam’s willingness to understand the feeling, and make friends with it, that ultimately enabled her to let go of it. What’s more, she’d done it herself, taking time out each day to sit with her mind, no matter how she was feeling. Pam now keeps in touch by e-mail and is doing well. She still sometimes worries if she goes more than a few days or so feeling unhappy, fearing that the depression might be returning, but she says she’s learnt that as long as she remains aware and remembers that they are just thoughts, she knows that she can never be harmed by them again.

Sometimes people come to the clinic because they’re looking to add something to their lives or improve a particular aspect. It might be a professional athlete looking for that competitive edge, or an artist or writer trying to access their creative potential. When Clare came to the clinic, it was with the intention of ‘tapping into her creative reserves’, as she liked to refer to it. She believed that creativity was something that was always there, but that she couldn’t access it because of her busy mind. This view is not so different from the blue sky analogy; it’s not that we need to ‘create’ creativity, but, rather, find a way to allow it to come to the surface.

Clare seemed to do a lot of different things. She composes music and plays an instrument, but writes too and has even published a book. She also paints, draws, and creates sculptures. She’s an artist, in every sense of the word, and she’s clearly good at what she does. But with so many different things going on at once she could never settle to one idea long enough for it to develop fully. As a result, her home and studio was full of half-finished verses, compositions and pieces of art.

Clare’s biggest challenge, when practising the Take10 process, was noticing when the mind had drifted off – and it drifted off a lot. Clare would struggle simply to follow her breath up to a count of two or three. It’s a little bit like links in a chain: a thought arises and if it’s seen clearly, within the light of awareness, it doesn’t have anywhere to go, it loses momentum and the focus remains with the object of meditation. But if that first thought appears so interesting that all awareness is lost, a second thought is created, and then a third and a fourth. It might be that there are so many links in the chain that five minutes will pass before you even notice that the mind has wandered off. But by repeating the exercise each day, the length of the chain gradually gets shorter. Your mind may still have a tendency to wander, but when it does, you’ll see it happening a bit sooner and you can avoid getting caught up with the story.

Not only did Clare struggle with maintaining her focus, she also had difficulty remembering to take the ten minutes out of her day. She said that she really wanted to do it, but other things just seemed to get in the way. Some things do require urgent attention, but in most cases I’d guess that there’s not much in life that can’t wait for ten minutes. As a way of helping Clare, I suggested she put her meditation in her diary for each day. It was a simple way of saying ‘this is just as important as any other part of your daily routine’. I also asked her to write down each time she was going to miss a session – just a short sentence to say why she wasn’t going to do it. This isn’t a retrospective to be done at the end of the day, it’s about writing down, there and then, what it is you are about to do that can’t wait ten minutes. Clare found this second exercise particularly useful. In fact, she said that any time she went to write an excuse in the book, it just looked so feeble that she went and did her ten minutes anyway.

I also asked Clare to choose a couple of activities in the day that she did on a regular basis, which she could use as further prompts to be mindful. For example, drinking a glass of juice in the morning, brushing her teeth, or preparing herself at her desk for work. The idea was not to do the activity while focusing on the breath, but rather using the activity as a support to be present and in the moment. If she was brushing her teeth then the focus was on the physical sensation of the toothbrush in the mouth, of the taste of the toothpaste, the smell of the toothpaste, and even the sound of the toothbrush moving backwards and forwards. And if the mind wandered off, in that moment she realised it had wandered, simply to return the focus to the physical senses. She enjoyed doing this and added a new activity each week. By the end of ten weeks, she had short bursts of mindfulness dotted throughout the day. The accumulative effect of this, together with the ten minutes of meditation each day, cannot be underestimated. For Clare, those moments were a time to ‘regroup’, to check whether she was spinning off into other ideas, and bring herself back to what she was working on at the time.

John was at the clinic for one reason only: his wife had said that if he didn’t do something to control his anger she was leaving. John did not have a physically violent relationship, with either his wife or his children, but there were elements of verbal aggression and bullying at home. In fact, John found himself getting irate with perfect strangers too. He would barge past people in shop queues, drive like a madman, and get upset when the smallest things didn’t go his way. His blood pressure was high and he regularly felt a tightness in his chest.

John knew his behaviour was irrational, but said that it was as if a red mist would descend from nowhere. He had grown up in a household where emotions had neither been discussed nor expressed. He said that losing his job seemed to be the trigger for it all. It had put additional stress on the family, and John hated the fact he had nothing to do and that he’d seemingly lost his purpose in life.

I suggested that John gave the meditation two weeks and that if he’d not seen any benefit at all, then he would speak to his wife and discuss other options. I showed John how to do the ten minute exercise and spoke briefly about the kind of attitude that worked best.

When John came back to the clinic the following week, he said that far from calming him down, the meditation had actually made him more angry. He said that when he sat to do the exercise, all he could feel was anger, and that every single thought seemed to reflect that feeling. He felt angry at his old boss for making him redundant, but most of all he felt angry at himself. He was angry that he couldn’t control the thoughts and that the thoughts resulted in him being unkind to the people he loved. Most of all he was angry that he wasn’t the person he thought he was, or the person he wanted to be. I explained to John that the meditation would not have made things worse, but it may well have given him greater awareness and insight into just how angry he was feeling. But I also explained how reacting to the anger with more anger, while understandable and instinctive, was not the most helpful response.