Ten Times Happier

NEGATIVE OR TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES

These experiences are past events you had no control over, which led to damage and hurt in your present life. Only you will know what these events are. As a general rule they tend to feature regularly in your thoughts, impact on your happiness, deplete your self-worth and leave you with a prevailing sense of powerlessness. The most common events from the past I hear people discuss are:

• Abuse of all kinds (emotional, physical, sexual)

• Violence

• Poverty

• Deprivation

• Family conflict

• Addictions

• Bullying

• Cultural conflict

• Hardship.

The list is endless and again I would encourage you for now to simply make a note of any negative or traumatic experiences you would like to start letting go of. In summary, if the event still replays regularly in your mind, creates distress, and impacts on your happiness then you haven’t let it go. In therapy we would say the event hasn’t been processed.

HOW YOU CAN MOVE FORWARD

UNHELPFUL RULES AND BELIEFS

Earlier in the chapter you will have listed some of your unhelpful rules or beliefs learnt from past experiences. I want to keep this really simple by asking you to go back to your rules and for each of them ask:

1. Do these rules work for me?

2. Are they achievable all the time?

If not, then it’s time to re-evaluate and make them more flexible. Remember, as I mentioned earlier, not all rules or beliefs are unhelpful but if they lack flexibility, therein lies the problem.

I worked with a client recently who had very strong rules and beliefs about being a ‘good person’. He did laugh in a therapy session one day when I highlighted that Mother Teresa would have struggled to live with some of his rules! He worked as a fulltime carer, volunteered in a soup kitchen five days a week and sang in the church choir.

His belief was that he should always help people and put others first. If he didn’t, he then saw himself as a bad person. It won’t surprise you that he arrived in therapy exhausted, frustrated and unfulfilled. He was operating from a belief that to be a good person he had to do good all the time. It wasn’t sustainable. Ultimately, he had to learn that he was a good enough person whether or not he engaged in all these activities.

As you look at your rules from earlier I would encourage you now to consider introducing some flexibility to some of the more rigid rules you might have. For example, the rule, I must be perfect, could now become, I don’t need to be perfect all the time. Likewise, I must never disappoint people, could now become, sometimes it’s OK to say no. If it’s helpful for you, write your new flexible rules down in your journal so you can remind yourself of them when needed.

Be mindful that this work takes time and patience. You are rewiring your brain to respond more flexibly. Sometimes you will fail and want to return to the safety of what you are familiar with but stay focussed on the new freedom and flexibility this will eventually bring.

You are now giving yourself the opportunity to rewrite the rules from your past, and make the new rules work for you. You are no longer living by the unhelpful inherited rules that simply don’t work for you.

It is important to be mindful that you can respect the inherited rules of your past but you don’t have to agree with them.

Living your life by rules that are not comfortable for you is tough. It’s almost like walking through life in a pair of shoes that are the wrong size. It will be uncomfortable, restrictive and painful at times. You now have the option of choosing a more comfortable fit. Take it from me, I’ve spent many years wearing size seven hobnail boots, when a pair of size nine loafers would have been a much better fit.

NEGATIVE OR TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCES

Some negative or traumatic past experiences will get in the way of your life if they are not dealt with. I am confident some of what I offer you here will be immensely helpful and allow you to move forward. It is worth mentioning some long-standing deep issues from the past may need discussion with a professional, simply to help you process the events and leave them in the past. Not everyone needs therapy, but some people do. There is no right or wrong here. Simply be aware that there are options for how you decide to manage this section of our work together. If self-help work isn’t enough, always seek professional guidance.

The approach I use to help process a difficult experience or event from the past encourages you to ask yourself five key questions about that event in the here and now:

1. Ruminating. Is there any benefit to holding on to this hurt from the past?

2. Self-judgement. Was it your fault this painful event or circumstance took place?

3. Expectations of self. At the time of the event can you accept it would have been difficult to have the perfect mindset to deal with it?

4. Self-blaming. Did you wish for this event or experience, which ultimately had a negative impact, to happen?

5. Mindful awareness. Can you accept the actual event is in the past and you are now safe?

In the vast majority of cases the answer to all or some of these questions is likely to be no. But no matter how many you answer no to, the main aim is learning to stop with any self-judgement or self-blame, which can often accompany these experiences.

What I know from the hundreds of clients I have treated over the years is that holding on to the past causes one thing only: pain. My interest is in easing that pain and I believe the solution lies in the five alternative options below which link to the questions I have just asked. For example, if harsh self-judgement is one of your patterns, then you have the option to drop this and replace it with something more helpful. Below are some of the alternatives I propose you take on board. You will know what resonates with you.

I suggest you reflect on a past event that troubles you and work through each of the five points below with the event in mind. It will help you find a new perspective.

FIVE ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS FOR MANAGING THE PAST

1. You don’t need to replay this event over and over again. That achieves nothing other than keeping you stuck in the past. If you are unable to stop replaying it, this is when professional support is important.

2. Ease up with the self-judgement. Self-blaming or punishment is never helpful.

3. Remember whatever happened, it’s over now and you have survived.

4. Taking care of yourself is of utmost importance. Do this with compassion.

5. None of what has happened can be changed now. You deserve a happier future.

HOW THIS WILL CONTRIBUTE TO A HAPPIER LIFE

Learning to manage the past will liberate you and allow you to experience a new sense of empowerment. When I talk about ‘managing the past’, I am encouraging you to use these techniques that will help you file away memories that are no longer needed in the here and now. You will no longer be controlled by unhelpful or painful aspects of your past. Instead the past can now become a teacher, a tool for wisdom.

THE EVIDENCE AND RESEARCH

What we know from all the major research papers on depression and other mood ‘disorders’ is that one of the strongest factors for maintaining low mood is ruminating on the past. Let me explain this a little more. In short, if you replay the same material in your mind over and over again, then you are reliving the experience in an unhelpful way. If you are feeling low or want to avoid negative changes in your mood then scientifically the evidence is clear: don’t overthink the past. Overthinking will not change what has happened, it will not lead to a resolution, and it will keep you stuck. If you still feel stuck after following the steps in this chapter or it seems impossible to not think about events, that is when professional help might be considered to help you process whatever is going on.

It’s a similar story with anxiety. Many of the latest neuroscientific developments on mindfulness indicate that living in the present moment deactivates the brain’s threat centre (the amygdala) and reduces symptoms of anxiety. When excessive time is spent focussing on the past then the present moment gets lost, leading to rising anxiety levels.

Almost all of the research into self-esteem has also clearly shown that when people do not challenge or restructure unhelpful rules or beliefs from the past then self-esteem issues become more prominent in adult life.

In short, if you dwell too much on traumatic events of the past or unhelpful rules and beliefs, you can be robbed of your future. I present to you a choice: a future nourished by your past or one that is sabotaged by it.

COMMITMENT

I hold a belief that changes don’t happen in life unless we commit to them. Imagine you were to move forward focussed on building a hopeful future, with the same energy that you’ve previously dedicated to your past. Can you visualize how much power you would reclaim? Can you see how much potential there is? You have the chance to rewrite the script of your life. Can you see what an amazing opportunity that is?

With that in mind I invite you now to write down in your journal your commitment to yourself. What will you do to help you engage less with the unhelpful parts of your past?

For example, you could consider how you reduce time spent thinking over events. What items that activate unhelpful memories could you dispose of? How can your behaviour towards yourself change? What have you learnt from the events? How will you treat yourself more compassionately going forward? What rules can you drop, amend or tweak?

CASE STUDY

In the introduction, I promised some real-life case stories on how my approach impacts and influences lives for the better. In my line of work as a psychotherapist I have learnt that you sometimes must be brave enough to appropriately share parts of your own story and that’s what I want to start by doing. It is often easy for professionals like me to hide behind our titles. However, we are human beings. We are all in this life together, making our way through and trying to make sense of it all. If I am going to invite you to listen to my teachings and experiences, then I equally owe it to you to share some of my story at times.

When I was a young boy I was severely bullied at school. I was different from the other kids in Belfast. I was learning to play piano, loved the theatre and never quite understood why the other boys wanted to run after a ball as a means of entertainment! I’m still working on that. Of course, they didn’t understand me either. I was the 1970s equivalent of Billy Elliot minus the dance moves. I lived in a world of make-believe, while many of the other kids were living in a different world.

After many years of bullying, rejection and humiliation, I started to ask questions such as, ‘Am I good enough? Am I the problem? Why don’t I fit it?’ I wasn’t happy.

Fast-forward to my adult years and of course this part of my past travels with me, like a hanger-on at a party. I realize that I sometimes doubt myself and feel anxious. It was in my own therapy I discovered that I didn’t have to live by some of my inherited rules and beliefs about fitting in or pleasing people. I discovered I was good enough and that the problem wasn’t me. Other people who couldn’t tolerate difference were the problem.

If I had made the choice to continue listening to this message from my past then I wouldn’t have gone to university, created a nice life and become a successful therapist and writer. I made the conscious decision to acknowledge the hurt this part of my past caused but it didn’t have to define my future or block my happiness. I had to practise the letting go I talk about. I had to learn new flexible rules and most importantly I had to learn to accept and like myself. Happiness for me truly is an ‘inside job’.

Another part of my past also worth sharing is my growing up in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Living in Belfast during an intense period of bombs and bullets was a scary experience. I learnt from a very young age that life wasn’t safe and threat was everywhere. To be fair, during that time there was some truth in this. Yet when I moved away from Northern Ireland I had to learn to start letting go of this part of my past otherwise all of life would appear a threat. It’s difficult to feel happy if under threat.

When I moved to London I went to see my first ever West End show with a friend. I was ecstatic and the moment of entering the theatre was one of the best of my life. This was the stuff I had dreamt of as a child. However, it was short lived. The opening scene of the play had an unexpected gunshot sound and I instantly jumped to the floor. No one else budged! Yes, all my street credibility was lost in a moment and you can imagine some of the strange glances from the surrounding audience as they wondered about the strange man on the floor.

That strange man on the floor was hardwired to fear loud bangs, traumatized from an early life of bombs in Belfast. I had to relearn that not all loud noises were a threat. My anxious brain had to be rewired from earlier traumas. This was a part of my past I had to deal with.

Experience has taught me to use this part of my past in my work as a therapist to help other people manage anxiety. I didn’t have to be defined by a negative aspect of my past. Neither do you. Whatever has happened in your past, it doesn’t have to define you.

There is a wise expression: ‘Don’t look back, you’re not going that way.’ Sometimes we have to look back but it doesn’t mean we should keep looking there. The people in my depression therapy group decided to stop looking back and it became their way forward. I now pass this insight on to you. The past is over. You can rewrite your rules. You can let go of the difficult stuff. You are not going that way any more.

Where we will go next, though, is to your mind. Together we can explore how it may also be getting in the way of your happiness and what you can do about that.

SUMMARY

• Negative past experiences that have not been dealt with can get in the way of your happiness.

• Some of the rules and beliefs inherited from your past may not serve you well now.

• Learning to let go of difficult past events will bring you a new sense of freedom.

• Learning to create new, flexible rules and beliefs will offer psychological flexibility. This will contribute to your happiness.

• You have a choice to take control and not be dominated by the darker parts of your past.

CHAPTER 2

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD

Have you ever stopped to consider that your mind, and how you relate to it, might play an enormous role in how happy you are? With absolute confidence, I can assure you it does. My mind once sabotaged my happiness on a mindfulness retreat! I’ll explain.

I had always thought of myself as a mindful and pretty chilled kind of guy. That was until I attended a mindfulness teacher-training course.

It was an intensive retreat over nine days, with very early starts and late finishes – often after 10 p.m. Most meals were in silence and large parts of the day were spent practising mindfulness. Set in a beautiful location in the heart of the countryside, it should have been the perfect place for calm. We were privileged to have the inspirational Melanie Fennell (a very respected figure in the world of therapy and mindfulness) as our coach – and her words ‘just notice’ played a huge part in my training. But calm didn’t come easy.

Before the course I had envisaged nine days of peace and tranquillity leading to a blissful state of contentment. But I was wrong. Once I had the space to breathe and find silence, I discovered that my mind didn’t stop.

• If it wasn’t worrying, then it was planning.

• If it wasn’t thinking about the future, then it was replaying the past.

• If it had nothing to do, then it would start wondering what was for dinner or what the other participants were doing.

I thought I was a pretty calm person, but I was astounded to discover I had a mind on overdrive that didn’t quite know how to slow down.

The experience was uncomfortable but an incredible breakthrough. My mind was getting in the way of living and of my happiness. And this realization was swiftly followed by another – that I would now be a lot better at being able to identify with, and help, my clients for whom this was also a problem.

The volume of the noise in my head was astounding. For example, it was day four of the course and I was seated ready for a forty-five-minute guided mindful meditation. The focus was compassion. I had been looking forward to this meditation and had made a decision that it was going to be a perfect, peaceful one.

This was not the case. Even before the meditation started, I was irritated with my position in the room, as it was close to a door. I had planned to arrive on time to get a better seat but I’d been delayed. This started a self-attack in my head: ‘You idiot, why did you arrive so late?’ There wasn’t much compassion happening at this stage!

And it got worse. My next irritation was a person close to me breathing too loudly, followed by a cramp in my leg, and then my tummy started to gurgle louder than it has ever done in my life. The noise in my head got louder, the self-criticism strengthened and suddenly I was telling myself this was all a waste of time. I was deflated, disappointed and by that stage I just wanted to give up on the course. Here I was, a therapist on meditation training, and I couldn’t get the basics right.

When the meditation session had ended, I had an opportunity to discuss the experience with my mentor. I described what happened and to my surprise, she smiled. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a great meditation.’

I was stunned. What was so great about that? But as she explained, it was a great meditation because I had noticed my mind. I had noticed all of the activity and frustration. But it hadn’t stopped me trying to meditate. It was fine if I noticed all of the activity in my mind – noticing it didn’t mean I had to engage with it. This was one of the most liberating moments of my life. I realized I needed to learn the skill of managing my mind and regulating the volume.

Our minds are at the centre of all our experiences. You are learning the skill of taking back control of your mind, so it doesn’t take control of you.

WHY YOU BECOME STUCK

I believe that most human distress relates to what goes on in our minds. Regardless of the event, how we feel about it always links back to how our minds interpret it. That will always vary from person to person. Going on a roller coaster terrifies me, whereas my partner behaves like an excited child! Essentially, it’s difficult to live a happy life if you haven’t got a handle on your mind.

A client, Nick, who was struggling with anger issues and depression, described in a session with me an event in his life that perfectly illustrated this. One day, he was driving to work and he encountered a delay at a railway level crossing. Nick was only one car away from getting past the gate but just as he approached, the gate came down and he was forced to stop. Even though it is standard procedure for a gate to block traffic crossing the rail tracks when a train is passing through – in fact, it’s vital for safety – he was furious. He got out and started to scream at the car in front of him for not driving fast enough. He kicked the gate at the level crossing and then returned to his car to persistently sound his horn until the train had passed and the gate was raised.

When we explored his actions, Nick was able to reflect that, at the time, his mind felt ‘as if it were going to explode’. He wanted to get to his destination quickly and his mind was telling him:

• This is just your bad luck

• This shouldn’t be happening

• You will be late getting to work

• Why do trains get priority?

• The driver in front of you caused the problem

• This isn’t fair.

Nick had listened to these thoughts, started to engage with them and then responded by screaming, jumping out of his car, and sounding his horn continuously.

In this moment Nick’s mind was inappropriately in threat mode. His amygdala, the centre in the brain that protects us from danger, was telling him there was a threat and he should react accordingly. There wasn’t any real danger but his threat system reacted because something hadn’t gone to plan. But by following the steps outlined on pages 47–9, Nick could have had a very different reaction. If Nick had allowed himself time and space to acknowledge but not to engage with the content of his mind, his thoughts would have been quieter and more flexible, and would perhaps have played out something like this:

• That’s a shame but it’s OK, I can wait

• Better to be safe than have an accident

• I’ll listen to the radio while waiting.

The more Nick is able to practise this approach, then the easier it becomes for him longer term.

Can you see the difference in his thoughts? And how they in turn would have produced a very different reaction, too? If we believe everything our minds tell us it won’t always produce a rational, sensible outcome.

UNDERSTANDING OUR MINDS A LITTLE MORE

We have around 60–80,000 thoughts per day according to neuroscientific research. Some of the research indicates that as much as 60 to 70 per cent of thought content can be negative in nature. When I say negative, let me give some context. Back in Neanderthal times it was helpful to have fearful protective thoughts as a means of staying safe from predatory animals. The problem is we have evolved as a species and we don’t need as many of these types of thoughts to protect us any more.

It’s important to understand that most of our thoughts are automated processes and link closely with our life experiences, culture, rules, beliefs and predisposition. This is how our neurological pathways develop thought patterns. In simple terms, we have often formed habitual ways of thinking that are the ‘norm’ for us but not necessarily helpful. Don’t fret though because, like all habits, thought habits can be unlearnt.