Finding The River by Sally Topham

Chapter 4

Moods, Feelings and Emotions

Besides looking after the body, we also need to find out how best to look after our moods and emotions. As William Bloom says, “Our emotional life needs the same care, attention and friendship as our bodies.” Why? Because your body responds to the way that you feel—your feelings are all about your emotions and your emotions affect your mood.

We’ve already seen how damaging it can be if we focus on negative emotions. Think back to Exercise 3 where you recalled a situation which was very unpleasant. Remember how your body felt when you thought about those uncomfortable events? You felt the “acid” of adrenalin and cortisol, rather than the “honey” of endorphins.

Moods like happiness, contentedness and peacefulness will trigger endorphins, but moods which are angry, sad and fearful will trigger adrenalin and cortisol instead. Which would you rather have coursing around your body?

Managing moods and emotions doesn’t mean you don’t go through all the usual ups and downs of life anymore. You can’t prevent that, I’m afraid! It just means that you’re able to handle your feelings in more appropriate ways and make life a bit easier for yourself. There are a number of techniques you can use, such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and EmoTrance (more about these later), that enable you to help yourself target problems and dissolve distress on many levels. This kind of emotional “self-management” means you have ways to shake off many problems, rather like gathering up remedies and sticking plasters to keep in a First Aid Kit! The more solutions and antidotes you have to make life less of a bumpy ride, the better you are at bouncing back from any difficulties you may encounter along the way.

Emotional management is about being aware of what may lurk beneath that feeling of hurt or anger. It’s about learning ways to handle sadness and pain, about taking responsibility for our actions and decisions, or keeping to commitments we’ve made. It’s also about managing relationships better and knowing when you project your own reactions and judgements onto other people. It’s to do with being assertive rather than angry and aggressive. It’s also about learning to compromise rather than always trying to get our own way.

In the first part of this chapter, I’m going to focus on looking for telltale signs which can signal our emotions need some care and attention. Strange though it may seem, we may think we’re always aware of what’s going on inside of us, but often we’re kidding ourselves. We bury stuff. We hide it. We deny it. We forget it was there in the first place until it jumps out and trips us up!

One way of becoming aware of what’s going on inside is by noticing any physical symptoms, such as a change in appetite, extreme tiredness, upset stomach or alternate constipation/diarrhoea, weight gain or loss, high blood pressure, general aches and pains, headaches, or sexual problems, etc.

Life factors can also disrupt your emotional health and leave you feeling sad or anxious. For example, losing your job or not getting enough work if you’re self employed, death of a loved one, a close friend, a family member or a beloved pet, getting divorced, moving home or relocating to another part of the country, suffering illness or injury, money problems, and so on.

You can even experience emotional wobbles when good things are happening in your life, such as getting married. All that planning for the wedding can be really stressful. Being promoted is another instance. You might get very worried thinking about the added responsibility and feel anxious about whether you’ll come up to scratch. Having a baby brings challenges within all the joy. Huge changes are taking place throughout the body and mind of the pregnant mum. In addition, there is often major anxiety going on for the dads-to-be who might be getting stressed out thinking about the responsibility and changes in life style which may have to be made.

Everyone has emotions and there’s absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with them. They’re perfectly natural human feelings. It’s when we start denying them, trying to control them too rigidly, or getting swamped by them that we make life more difficult for ourselves and other people.

Most of us are already trying to manage our daily ups and downs to one degree or another and a lot of our free time is spent on trying to balance our emotions as well as relax. We do this through reading or indulging in some retail therapy, watching films or TV, or spending time with friends and loved ones. But it’s not a particularly conscious (or even successful) way of doing it.

In Part II of this book, I’m going to explain how to use specific therapeutic techniques to help you through difficult emotional issues. For the moment, however, I want to explain about mood enhancers and some very basic emotional monitoring and self-care. Becoming more aware of any changes which we experience in mood and body means we’re then in a position to administer whatever “first aid” is required. Exercise 1: The Magic of Memory and Imagination and Exercise 2: Creating a Safe Place Within Yourself and those pleasure-giving ingredients of your life in Exercise 5: The Inner Smile, are not only useful for changing moods, they can also be helpful in managing emotions.

Exercise 7: Collapse and Retreat Endorphin-Style incorporates some of the endorphin work we’ve already done and adds in another dimension to it. It’s a great thing to do if your mood is low or if you’re tired or generally needing some TLC.

Exercise 7: Collapse and Retreat Endorphin-Style

Next time you’re feeling low, allow yourself to collapse onto your bed or the sofa and cover yourself up with a duvet or warm throw. It sometimes helps to let yourself assume a foetal position or curl up physically like a small animal in a burrow. You can put the duvet right over your head if you want! Take comfort from being in this little sanctuary, knowing that you are safe and that everyone else is going to back off and leave you in peace.

Enjoy snuggling down into your chosen position. Feel the weight of your body on the mattress or the sofa. Imagine you can feel the forces of gravity pulling on you and let your body collapse inwards and downwards.

Now, start thinking about some of those things which you listed in Exercise 6: Working with the Best Things in Your Life. Bring to mind some of the things you particularly love. Be aware of how conjuring images of these things in your mind gives you a sense of pleasure. Turn up the volume a bit on that sense of feeling good and breathe it in deeply into the very core of you.

Switch on your “Inner Smile” and smile down into your body. Sweep your body with the smile. You can do this quite quickly, like scanning with a searchlight. Then, return to thinking about those things you enjoy so much. Notice how your body responds when you think about them. Notice how this creates a feeling of those sensations coursing through you like a river. Start guiding this flow of feel-good sensations through all of your body, directing them into every part of you. “Simply by thinking about a particular part of your body, you create what is called a neural pathway, a connection between your mind–brain and that body part. Using your creative mental faculties, you can deliberately imagine and guide good feelings through your body.”*

Have fun sending this river of endorphins wherever you want it to go in your body. You might find yourself dozing off in the middle of it, but that’s fine. When you awake, yawn, stretch, wiggle your toes and make conscious contact with your body again. Then very slowly get up.

This exercise is a very good one for improving your mood!

Exercise 7 is an endorphin exercise by William Bloom.
*From The Endorphin Effect by William Bloom

Another good way of raising your emotional state is to sing. Yes! Singing is incredibly uplifting. Why do you think religions all over the world have used singing and chanting as an integral part of their worship? We have to breathe more efficiently when singing in order to allow more oxygen down into the lungs and this can have the effect of calming the mind and opening the heart. A well-oxygenated body produces healthier, happier and more alert states of mind. Singing has also been found to boost the immune system, lower heart rate, decrease blood pressure, reduce stress and depression, and enhance feelings of relaxation, mood and confidence. There’s also evidence that it helps Alzheimer’s patients re-find their ability to socially engage with others, and that it improves breathing capacity in asthma sufferers. In addition, singing triggers a rush of endorphins—which of course makes you feel good!

Don’t worry if you think you haven’t got much of a voice. It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about becoming a professional singer! This is for fun!

Here’s some things you could try to get yourself singing:

• Make the most of your bathroom acoustics (they usually provide something of a built-in echo chamber) and start singing in the bath!

• Sing along with a CD by one of your favourite singers or bands. You can do this either at home or in the car. Or try some Karaoke!

• Join a choir. It’s fun singing with others. Your local church would be a good place to start, but there may be other possibilities in your locality.

• Watch out for any workshops in the UK run by Chris James, an internationally renowned teacher of Voice and Sound. Chris has the amazing ability to make a roomful of shy, retiring people feel OK about standing up and singing their hearts out! I once sat in on a platform workshop of his at a Mind Body Spirit Exhibition some years ago, where he had just half an hour to demonstrate what he could do. By the end of that time, 50-odd people were on their feet, singing and clapping their hands and providing en masse backing vocals for him! It was fantastic, and great fun! Everyone had a smile on their face and he made it all feel so easy (see the Further Information and Suggested Reading section at the back of the book for more information).

• Investigate overtone singing. This is an ancient form of harmonic singing and chanting which has been used in sacred ceremonies for hundreds of years. What happens is that you learn how to manipulate certain harmonics and overtones in the voice in a way that can produce two notes at the same time. The effects of mastering this technique are extraordinarily spectacular, and you can produce amazingly beautiful sounds from within yourself which are very healing and uplifting. Jill Purce is an expert in this field and details of her cassettes, CDs, workshops and lectures can be found in the Further Information and Suggested Reading section at the back of this book.

You can also help your mood by taking care not to catch other people’s mind states. Some folks can bring us down very easily if we’re not careful. Have you ever noticed how sometimes you’re badly affected by people who are full of whinges and complaints? Some people grumble and carp all day long, day after day—and anything goes! They’ll complain about the weather, about the government, about what’s on the news or in the papers, about work, about their children, about the queue in the supermarket, about public transport, or about how much they have to do. The possibilities are endless!! Listen to it for long enough and it starts to have an effect on you. It brings you down. It gets you into complaining as well!

If you find yourself in the company of someone who does this regularly, either make a strenuous attempt to bring some positivity into the conversation, or keep the time spent with them to a minimum. Better still, avoid them completely if you’re feeling rather vulnerable yourself! Please note, I’m not suggesting that you should “shut out” someone who’s genuinely going through a bad patch and needs to unload. I’m talking about people who just have a habit of being negative about everything on a daily basis.

Another very simple and effective way of regularly keeping track of how we’re feeling is to start keeping a journal (Exercise 8). Now, before you start thinking that you have to write lengthy descriptions each and every day addressed to “Dear Diary”, let me tell you, journaling doesn’t have to be like that!

I also want to make it clear that you don’t have to be a good writer to keep a diary, nor is it important to be good at spelling or grammar. All you have to do is to write down how you feel about life, events, people, your job, your significant other (or lack of one!) or whatever. Journaling is simply writing about how you’re feeling.

Exercise 8: Keeping a Journal

Buy yourself a nice fat notebook and make some time to sit down regularly and write! A good time to start is on a Sunday morning when the house is quiet.

You don’t have to write every day. Do it when something is “up” in your mind and you need to “talk about it”. You can write about anything and everything. Don’t stop to think, edit or criticise what you’re putting down as you write. You’re simply expressing your thoughts and feelings and it’s a wonderfully releasing process.

If you need to pour out your heart, then do so!

If you’re feeling fantastic, aligned and in flow, then write about that!

If your mind is full of something that happened last night with so-and-so and you can’t get it out of your mind. Marvellous!

Got the idea? Start writing in that notebook and see how much clearer you feel once you’ve done it!

I recommend that you keep doing this for around 6 to 8 weeks. This will give you a chance to see how you can benefit. Read through what you’ve written after about a month. Notice the patterns of difficulty which emerge and in what areas of your life they predominate. This will show you areas where you need to work on yourself with other techniques.

Negative stuff may come up. If so, let it! People who’ve schooled themselves into working with affirmations might throw up their hands in horror at the thought of writing about whinges and perceived failings. But actually, as they say, it’s much better out than in! Lots of people are surprised at how much negative self-talk they engage in, and it’s really important to be aware of it!

Keeping a journal is a great way to offload safely. There’s no-one on the receiving end no-one is going to judge or misunderstand what you say. And you can say anything you like without any worries about starting World War III!

An additional and very useful journaling process for getting stuff off your mind is a technique called “The Morning Pages”. You’ll find this technique in a workbook by Julia Cameron called The Artist’s Way. This technique involves writing non-stop at the beginning of each day in a stream-of-consciousness writing. This is a great method for finding out what’s going on inside of you. I recommend that you read the book. It’s not just for artists or those aspiring to be artists. It’s helpful for anyone who’s trying to find out what stops them from doing the things which they want to do in life.

Writing can be a wonderfully therapeutic process and there’s an extremely helpful exercise you can do when you need to tell someone exactly what you feel and think about them, but just can’t bring yourself to do so. I’ve given this exercise to countless clients and students over the years and those who’ve tried it confirm its effectiveness in helping them to let go of a troubling situation or finding a new attitude towards it.

Use Exercise 9 for any situation that’s reached an impasse, where communication has broken down, where all negotiations have come to naught, where you feel totally helpless or victimised, where the other person seems incapable of understanding your point of view, or where you feel you’ve been particularly hurt, etc.

Exercise 9: Write Them A Letter

Organise yourself with some private space, something to write on (i.e., paper, notebook or computer) and make it clear to anyone else in the house that you don’t want to be disturbed. You can have music playing in the background if you wish or do this exercise in silence. However, you must do this exercise in one go and complete it the same day you begin it.

Start writing this person a letter: Dear _________

Without censoring anything, write down everything you feel about this situation or person. Describe the pain/anger/sadness/grief or whatever as graphically as you can. Tell them what you think of them—no holds barred! You can call them names and use whatever swear words seem appropriate if you wish. You are never going to send this letter and no copy of it will exist after you’ve finished writing it, so you can feel free to say whatever you want to say without holding back in any way.

Don’t worry about making the letter grammatically correct. Don’t worry about spelling. Don’t try to edit it as you write. Just write it!

Tears and anger may arise, sadness and grief also. Let it all out and onto the page. Speak out everything you’ve felt or been holding on to. Let it all go.

When you’ve finished, read it through and sign your name.

Then either burn it or tear it up into small pieces and flush it down the loo.

On no account should you keep this letter amongst your belongings and never, never send it.

You can also use this letter-writing exercise to address someone who is dead and therefore leaves you in a position where you no longer have any opportunity to clear things with them.

As you progress through this book, you’ll be learning about many other tools and techniques to help you with various different issues and events in your life. Learning to read the signs signalling a major wobble ahead, understanding your moods and handling them better, and starting to be generally more aware of how you are on a daily basis, are understandings which will serve you incredibly well on your journey to find your river.

I’m going to end this chapter with a three key things to remember about difficult times and wobbly emotions:

• When you’re relaxed, you can’t feel negative. That’s right! It’s a physical impossibility! So make relaxation a priority!

• Remember: nothing lasts forever! Write this out and pin it up somewhere to remind you when you’re going through difficult times.

• Remember to keep your sense of humour!