Dear Reader,

 

As those of you who have been reading my newsletters know, I have been writing about well-being of late. In December, I edited a Mindfulness e-newsletter for the New Jersey Psychological Association and along with nine other articles by NJ psychologists, I included an article on happiness. Also included was my interview with Patricia Bloom, M.D. on mindfulness' usefulness in treating those who have turned to opioids seeking relief from pain. To read the full Bloom interview, please click here. By now, it is no secret that many people in this country are not exempt from suffering. But, something particularly peculiar to the United States for the last few years has been the increase in anxiety-driven stress related to politics. While in NYC shortly before the election, my husband, Jim, and I were having coffee at the Zabar's coffee shop on the upper West side when we struck up a conversation with an endearing young woman from Turkey who is here studying psychology. She shared her concern that her landlady, who was a sensitive older woman who had become almost like her American parent, was unable to sleep at night because of her anxiety about the election. Since then, I have heard many similar stories, and mental health workers have been reporting a much heightened level of anxiety in their patients nationwide.

 

In a recent article in the New York Times entitled, "Depressed by Politics? Just Let Go," Arthur C. Brooks, wrote meaningfully on this topic. To read the full Brooks article, please click here. Brooks points out that for the last few years he has noticed an un-happiness pattern that he believes is related to politics. As a matter of fact, he even believes that many of the people who are most in the know tend to be unhappier than those who are paying less attention to the political state of the country. Accordingly, he hypothesizes that unhappiness is related to what has been known in psychology as having an external locus of control and cites a famous 2004 study of college students that having an external locus of control is correlated with greater unhappiness. Brooks' particular interest is on the deleterious effects of feeling victimized by an experience when it is based on what may be illusory or possibly self-inflicted.

 

Brooks also cites an example of the consequences of over attachment that is similar to a story from India which describes a technique for how to catch a monkey. This technique involves tying a hollowed out coconut to a tree, cutting a hole in the shell just the size of the monkey's hand, and placing a banana as bait inside the coconut. When a monkey comes along and and reaches inside to grab the banana, suddenly the monkey is stuck. No matter how it struggles it finds itself caught, when all it would have to do is to let go of the banana to free itself. As the title of his article suggests, one step toward  greater well-being is to learn how to "just let go."

 

Brooks suggests that much of our attachment to what he calls our political consumption is like this. He adds that too often we tend to consume political news and commentary in "a compulsive, concupiscent sort of way, voluntarily subjecting ourselves to gratuitous information and stimuli, particularly on social media."  Since it follows that intermittent reinforcement is the most difficult to extinguish, he suggests that intentionally reading the news once a day rather than impulsively and repeatedly clicking on social media posts can offer an antidote.  

 

Another antidote, of course, is to become more active in terms of seeking political solutions, in other words, taking action so politics is no longer causing you to live in the throws of an external locus of control. In terms of not taking action, Martin Seligman actually defined one of the root causes of depression as related to feelings of "learned helplessness." Fortunately, there are vibrant movements afoot in our country which educate and encourage individuals who are eager to undertake constructive means for taking political action and taking a stand.

 

Brooks' article led me to think about the relationship between taking a stand in one's life and letting go. The challenge of "just letting go" as expressed in the title of Brooks' article led me to think about another, albeit complementary, and potentially energy-enhancing pathway related to "taking action" and "letting go." It is a pathway that a mindful approach to living has the potential to offer. What drew me to this article was Brooks' suggestion that "letting go" might be an antidote to anxiety. Having practiced and taught this skill through MBSR for many years, I knew there was no contradiction between cultivating a mindfulness practice and taking action. Cultivating inner strength, resiliency and creativity are common by-products of practicing mindfulness. One of the ancillary practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages is even something called, "Mountain Meditation." Additionally, as part of the course, I often read aloud a passage about a mountain-climbing adventure Jon took with his son, Will, who was then ten years old (JKZ, Full Catastrophe Living, pp. 422-424).  Jon and Will, finding themselves challenged by adverse conditions during a steep mountain climb, and feeling discouraged, sat down where they were to better collect themselves, reflect on the apparent obstacles, and look for a creative solution. It is a lovely tale of father and son honoring their fear, collecting themselves, and discovering a creative solution, one to which their fear had initially blinded them. They were then able to creatively discover a pathway where there seemed to have been none before. For them, taking a stand was actualized through finding a new possibility for how to climb the mountain which rested on the seemingly counter-cultural practice of "letting be" or "letting go." As a matter of fact, on a larger scale, the profound stands taken by Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King revealed that at their best, "letting go" and "taking action" need not be contradictory.

 

The path toward "letting go" begins with the reminder to "start small." What is simple in conception is actually a skill that needs to be learned like any other skill.  As Kabat-Zinn reminds us, "When we were born, no one gave us a user's manual."  In relation to this, I like to remind myself that, "the good news is that we can always begin again" and "the bad news is that  we must always begin again." Many students find that committing to a small intentional change in their lifestyle like going to a meditation cushion first thing in the morning or eating one meal a day mindfully, is a way of committing to a practice of "letting go" which offers an opportunity for creative renewal.

 

Although the steps are small and entirely manageable, the results are often profound. One of my favorite stories is of a student who went on a trip to St. Maarten half way through the class. When she came back, she said the experience had been transformative. She shared that she had been making the trip with her family for years, but this time she experienced St. Maarten as if she was truly there for the first time and that all of her senses seemed to have become awakened. In our most recent class, after I told her story, a couple made a trip to Cuba and generously sent me a post-card that read, "Having a wonderful time. Wish we were here." It brought a big grin to my face.

 

In terms of getting grounded in, and opening to one's life, an art historian and music teacher, after practicing mindfulness for a few weeks, commented in our most recent class that a mindful approach to living had some very unexpected and tangible benefits. She said that practicing mindfulness had helped her realize that she had become entrained to the automatic rhythms of her life. Now while walking through her neighborhood, she suddenly found herself noticing details of homes that she had just been passing by for many years. She also described an exquisite experience of holding a bar of Dove soap in her hand (something that she had been doing for 20 years) and suddenly receiving a new impression of it's shape, softness, whiteness and foaming bubbles in her hand, as if for the first time.

 

During that same recent class, the challenge to being grounded while living in the electronic age arose. Several students shared that they tended to become glued to their cell phones from the moment they got out of bed each morning. During that discussion, I noticed a psychiatrist, a very caring and responsive physician, who has a busy clinical practice, deeply attending to everything that had been said. After class, he came up to tell me that the next morning he was not going to allow himself to turn on his cell phone until after he had completed his meditative practice. That reminded me of my own similar struggle. For most of my life, I have sat on my meditation cushions first thing in the morning.  Since teaching mindfulness and having so many people reaching out to us online, I have noticed a pull to stop at the computer on the way to my cushions. For me that is a slippery slope.

 

Related to the deleterious effects of surrendering to an external locus of control, a number of people spoke about how the news cycle had begun to become so compelling that several members of our class found themselves repeatedly checking the news. It had become a slippery slope for them and it took an effort of disciplined, renewed intention for them to return to becoming more focused on making their sitting meditation the first business of the day and allotting a specific time to turning toward the news later in the day.