Learning: I Can Change the Way I Feel

I love learning: it's my passion. But love and enjoyment were not the only emotions involved in this learning, as reading sometimes reminded me of unhappy, frightening or sad events in my life. I couldn't keep those memories out so I decided to use my reading to learn ways of dealing with them. One piece of information that was a tremendous help is very simple: at any time, one's body is in the same state as one's mind.

...if we think there is danger even when there isn't any, we react as if there were. The intensity of the reaction depends on how great we think the danger is...your body engages...and prepares to protect itself through confrontation or flight. Your muscles tense, your blood pressure and heart rate increase, your breath quickens, and your whole body is ready to do something. (Nuernberger, 1996, pp. 36-37)

Reading others' stories felt dangerous, and so did remembering my own. I had to keep reminding myself that to the brain, past, present and future are one, which was why I felt such intensity about past events:

The brain doesn't discriminate between thoughts or images of the past, the present, and the future. To the brain, every thought happens only in the present. Nor does it differentiate between thoughts about an actual physical reality...and fantasies.... So every thought is immediately translated into the body for action. When your mind anticipates the future or dwells on the past, your body responds as if the event were happening in the present. (Nuernberger, 1996, p. 61)

To change the tension or adrenalin rush that was part of my emotional reaction, I could deliberately slow my breathing. By relaxing my breath, I could read, or remember, without experiencing the original emotion. It felt like the difference between watching a movie of an event and living through it.

Another helpful development was learning to recall positive memories, where I had acted in opposition to the emotion being triggered at the time. The VALTA Project facilitators introduced this as a workshop exercise, and several authors recommended the technique as something to do before a stressful situation. By recalling and writing in my journal about times when I acted with integrity, courage, creativity or compassion and acted quickly or was unusually effective, I gave myself a string of positive emotions to call upon when the negative seemed about to cave me in.