Does your mind go a mile a minute? Do you feel like your thoughts are in hamster wheel? The same problem, issue, person or situation does it get stuck in your brain without breaks or intermissions over long periods of time?
Connect to your senses! What does that mean? First what are the five senses? Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. All are necessary to live the life we’ve been given fully. All of which we can tap into at any moment, we’ve just forgotten that they are there and accessible.
With years of stress, trauma, abuse, estrangement and/or dysfunction, we become numb. Our senses go into hiding. After leaving my marriage, my senses came back–all of them. I didn’t know how muted they were until I began living on my own, utterly alone when I didn’t have my daughters during my ex’s custody time. In retrospect that time alone turned out to be a blessing because without distraction I could focus on my own healing and road back to myself.
One day a couple of years after I had separated from my husband, I went into my therapy session with determination. I wanted to end my endless ruminations over the unfairness that occurred during the marriage and worse, after divorce. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the estrangement with my eldest daughter would never have happened had we been coparents, had I married and divorced someone who would be able to separate the desire to hurt me and think of what was best for our daughters–to have both parents working as a team for their best welfare. (PS In all fairness, it took me quite awhile of therapy and taking my own fierce moral inventory to realize I too had to let go of my hurt and focus on what was best for the girls.)
I was so angry inside I just couldn’t let it go. I was consumed with the unfairness I had been dealt with the finances, the 50/50 custody that wasn’t upheld and most of all the estrangement with my eldest daughter. So I asked with desperation and hope, “Pam, how do I get my hamster thoughts off the wheel?” She replied, “Get present.” “How Pam?!” I asked with a guttural tone of anguish. “Get back into feeling your senses and focus on each one,” she answered.
Today I call this mental strength training. When your mind wanders and you pull it back to your breath when meditating or back to the present moment by connecting to your senses, you are building brain control muscles. Think of it this way. For years, if not decades, you simply let your not so positive thoughts take over for minutes, hours, days, weeks and months which more than likely spiraled you into sadness, depression and exhaustion.
By recognizing how your mind gets stuck in negative loop cycles, you can redirect your brain into the present moment. You see, in the very present moment you are more than likely safe. When you realize you’re safe you can begin to relax and as you relax you can focus on what’s before you.
Depending on your location when you lead your mind and thoughts back into the present, you might become aware of the tantalizing smell of a homemade meal being cooked. You might hear squirrels or the sound of a jet plane overhead. Perhaps you’re eating an incredible saucy pizza slice that you were simply trying to just get down, until you get present and realize, “Hey, this is amazing sauce! And the cheese, My God, is so flavorful and tangy and…” Or maybe you’re sitting on a rock and instead of barely recognizing how uncomfortable you’ve been, you become aware that there are more comfortable positions or better rocks to sit upon.
I could go on forever with examples! But when you begin tapping into where you are for real and not to where your mind has taken you to, you not only appreciate what’s before you, you can begin to enact changes for the better. You can begin to be grateful for what you have in the moment like great weather, your dog who ‘s staring at you with true love, the kind new friend with whom you’re having lunch. You can begin to see what is GOOD about life and slowly eliminate perpetual mind dips into past hurts and injustices or obsessive doomsday worrying about your future.
Again, like strength training, this takes time and practice. It takes awareness that your mind is spinning out of negative, anxious control. Awareness is key. Congratulate yourself when you catch your mind doing its “thing.” Remember before you didn’t even really understand you were obsessively thinking about all that was horrible in your life. That was a part of your life. That was a part of your daily living. Each day you catch your brain off the present moment and into its dark places, and you choose to see, smell, touch, taste and hear what is in front of you, you are building muscles towards mental positivity.
I hope you find the Tool of Connecting to the Senses as helpful as I have. For me it lowers my intense bouts of anxiety and makes me appreciate what is good in my life instead of all the obstacles and challenges I have to overcome in it. Get back to NOW. Reset your brain and have a marvelous and peaceful next moment.
Hugs!