Strategies for Improving Positive Emotions

Practicing Acts of Kindness

Being generous and willing to share makes people happy. Thinking about others and noticing others or when you can help someone has been shown to boost happiness. Helping someone with homework,  pushing the grocery cart back to the store, visiting an elderly or sick, writing a thank you note, washing the dishes, buying flowers for no reason, telling someone to thank you, helping someone with a chore

Action Steps: Perform five acts of kindness per week over a period of six weeks. One group did all five in a day, and another group spread out the acts of kindness, but the group that performed these acts all in one day reported more of an increase in happiness. Just like gratitude, acts of kindness seem to be more powerful when they are practiced more intensely.

Identify barriers or difficult thoughts that might prevent you from accomplishing your goals.  Avoiding overthinking and social comparison. Overthinking can increase sadness, foster negativity, increase biases, reduce motivation, worsen fears, reduce concentration, and diminish motivation and initiative. Evidence suggest ways in which thinking can be unhealthy see the category on managing thoughts stop searching for all the leaks and cracks be aware of negativity bias The happier you are the less you compare yourself with others also the less you criticize or judge yourself when you fail or make a mistake practicing acts of kindness obviously being generous and willing to share makes people happy weekly acts of kindness more of a boost is reported when people practice multiple acts of kindness on a single day rather than distribute him over a period of weeks and bigger actions for example spending the night with a friend is more powerful and smaller acts of kindness and giving a larger tip it seems the more people do the more they benefit kindness relieves negative feelings about self out of the people to perceive you more positively and helps you perceive yourself in a more positive wayPick one day per week and commit to one new and special large act of kindness or alternatively 3 to 5 little ones very these from week to week.

 

2.     Increasing Flow experiences Getting out of your own way related to overthinking microflow  superflow

3.     Savoring joy, beauty, excellence, being open, savoring two pleasures each day, maintaining focus as long as possible, recalling happy times or positive events, or reminiscence about good things

4.     Attention is more in the moment, thinking about what you are doing, focusing on something meaningful, slowing down, and enjoying things you do alone or with others.

5.     Meditation

6.     Change up

7. Having a project work toward a meaningful goal helps us stay focused, not preoccupied or focused on the goal itself as much as on the process of achieving the goal (present moment awareness)

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Daily formal exercises might include:

•Daily meditations through an app such as Headspace, 10% Happier or Calm

•A Loving kindness, gratitude meditation or mindfulness practice

•Breath Awareness or Yoga

•Body scan or personal meditation

•Nature walk or mindful movements and experience embodied self, (true and present self rather than narrative self)  it stand out

Expressive Writing David Hanscom, MD

Did you know the impact of chronic pain on a person’s quality of life can be compared to suffering from terminal cancer and that suppressing our thoughts and emotions can cause our body to go into “fight or flight” mode?

These are two very good reasons why we should all have some really good tools in our coping skill toolbox that help us to express or process our thoughts and emotions, and expressive writing is a tool no box should be without.

Expressive Writing

• Simply record your honest thoughts on paper. Thoughts, both good and bad, with no editing, censoring, or filtering how you feel or what you think. Then, immediately tearing what you wrote up and getting rid of it. It is important that you not judge or analyze what you write or that you share it with anyone.

Nature of Chronic Pain

  • Your brain memorizes pain (regardless of where it is in the body), and it becomes persistent. This is similar to how we learn a skill, and it becomes more automatic to us with the repetition of that skill. Most people can learn a skill within six to twelve months, and once you learn it, similar to riding a bike, you can’t unlearn it.

  • Chronic pain is “an embedded memory that becomes connected to more and more life circumstances, and the memory cannot be erased” and lasts longer than three months. Chronic pain is a neurological problem and is much different from acute pain.

  • “So the neurological circuits in the acute pain center go quiet, and instead, the brain's emotional areas light up. In other words, the person experiences the same pain, but in a different region of the brain is driving it— the emotional area.”

    The Curse of Consciousness

• Unpleasant thoughts are also sensory inputs that our nervous system identifies as threats. So, the body’s response is “fight or flight.” Unpleasant, repetitive thoughts become rooted in our brains and aren’t subject to reason, and the more attention you spend on them, the stronger they become. They can cause phantom brain pain and multiple other symptoms like chronic pain. The thoughts are the threat, and uncomfortable emotions are the feelings this stress physiology creates.

Stress is a Whole Body Response to Threats

• Stress and pain work both ways. Intense feelings can trigger, amplify, or even create sensations of pain where there is no obvious cause, and pain can often cause stress in our everyday lives. Many people who suffer from chronic pain complain of severe pain after a personal loss, like a family death or job loss. Often, a patient’s pain will resolve once they begin healing from their loss— even when there’s a serious structural problem causing the pain.

How to Do Expressive Writing:

  • Step 1: Write your thoughts out on paper and try to completely lose yourself in it. No filtering, censoring, or overthinking aloud! Don’t stop to think or choose words write and see what comes out.

  • Step 2: When you’re done, destroy it. Rip it up into itty bitty pieces and throw them away, burn them (safely), bury them, or shred them.

  • Step 3: Do this once a day for 5-15 minutes every day. Make it a habit, like taking a shower or washing your face. Even when your pain goes away, continue the expressive writing practice. This is just good emotional hygiene, like physical or bedtime hygiene.

    Why Am I Supposed to Destroy It?

  • First of all, remember we can’t escape our unpleasant thoughts, and what this writing does is it

    separates you from your thoughts. As you write, many different things will come to the surface. These are not issues they are just thoughts, and any time spent reviewing them reinforces them.

  • The second reason is to allow yourself to write with complete freedom. By writing, with there being no chance of them being discovered, there is more likelihood that they will emerge. You have broken up the need for mental control, which is the underlying problem and driving power behind them.

    Important!

  • Don’t force yourself to do more than you are comfortable with! However, some emotional

    discomfort is normal This is a long-term commitment, so small steps will work best.

  • View this process as just an exercise and an essential starting point and not as the one and

    only answer to breaking up obsessive thought patterns. Real healing happens when our nervous systems shift into more pleasant circuits; they can’t do that without first letting go.

    Why Do People Resist Engaging in this Simple Process?

    1. It seems too easy to have enough impact on such a big problem.
      • “I happened on it by accident without any idea it would have any effect on my prolonged

      suffering. Within 2 weeks after starting, I sensed a definitive mood shift, and six weeks later, I was beginning to feel much better. This after 15 years of struggling without any success. And If I stop for a few weeks, I am reminded of its power every time. About 3-5 of my symptoms consistently reappear and quickly resolve when I re-engage.”

    2. Humans have a need for mental control. The act of writing breaks through this. “Letting go” can be troubling, and the writing is a defined action to move you forward. This need for control causes disturbing and disruptive thought patterns.
      • Also, a reason why it’s important to only write what you are able to tolerate. If you start to

      develop increased anxiety and agitation, then you should immediately stop writing until you

      feel ready to start again. And when you do restart, start slow and be gentle with yourself.

    3. Your suffering isn’t being acknowledged. How can something so simple help heal your most intense pain? Research has shown that the impact of chronic pain on the quality of your life

      is similar to that of having terminal cancer.

    • But Remember, this is just an exercise and a starting point. There are other layers to the healing process.

    What are the healing benefits?

Precautions

  • Most of the research is done by asking patients to write about deeply emotional experiences. So, writing about random thoughts or discussing your day will not be as effective.

  • Expressive Writing physically affects your nervous system activity, alters your metabolism, and changes the profile of your stress chemistry that’s regulated through the autonomic nervous system, which is the nerve supply to internal organs.

  • “Opinion— “the space” created between you and your thoughts is a metaphor for that day and changes your relationship to them”

    Recap

  • We can’t unlearn old pain circuits, but you can build new ones and alter to more pleasant ones that go past the pain circuits.

  • Expressive Writing helps your brain relearn and rewire its response to the experience that triggers the threat response and pain.

  • Expressive Writing is one of many strategies: • Meditation
    • Sleep
    • Anger processing

    • Breathwork
    • Exercise and diet • Medicine
    • Identify triggers

    “Seen few patients deeply heal without engaging in this core exercise. The journey out of chronic mental and physical pain begins the day you start to write.”

    Other Writing Techniques:

    • Verbal Expression
    • Switch to the 3rd Person
    • “Air Writing” and other approaches • The 3-Column Method
    • Using a Keyboard it stands out