Topic Subtopic

Health, Fitness, & Nutrition Health

Overcome Your
Overthinking
Guidebook

Heidi Sormaz
LEADERSHIP
President & CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAUL SUIJK
Chief Financial Officer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BRUCE G. WILLIS
Chief Marketing Officer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALE PRITCHETT
SVP, Marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JOSEPH PECKL
VP, Customer Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KONSTANTINE GELFOND
VP, Technology Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MARK LEONARD
VP, Product Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JASON SMIGEL
VP, General Counsel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DEBRA STORMS
VP, People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AUDREY WILLIAMS
Sr. Director, Creative & Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEVIN BARNHILL
Sr. Director, Content Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEVIN MANZEL
Director, Business Operations & Planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GAIL GLEESON
Director, Editorial & Design Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FARHAD HOSSAIN
Director, Content Research & Alternative Programming. . . . . . . . . WILLIAM SCHMIDT
Director, Creative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OCTAVIA VANNALL

PRODUCTION
Studio Operations Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JIM M. ALLEN
Video Production Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ROBERTO DE MORAES
Technical Engineering Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SAL RODRIGUEZ
Quality Assurance Supervisor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMIE MCCOMBER
Sr. Post-Production Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PETER DWYER
Production Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RIMA KHALEK
Content Developer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MATTHEW LAING
Associate Producer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SAM BARDLEY
Graphics Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMES NIDEL
Sr. Graphic Artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BRIAN SCHUMACHER
Editing Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OWEN YOUNG
Producer/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KATY MERRY HANNAH
Assistant Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHARLES GRAHAM
Audio Engineer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GORDON HALL IV
Camera Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ERICA CORSO
VALERIE WELCH
Production Assistants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LAKE MANNIKKO
PAUL SHEEHAN

EDITORIAL & DESIGN

Managing Writer/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JENNIFER ROSENBERG
Sr. Graphic Designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KATHRYN DAGLEY
Editorial Associates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MOLLY LEVY
MARGI WILHELM
Research Associate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VIOLA KOZAK
Editorial Assistant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WILLIAM DOMANSKI
Heidi Sormaz
Heidi Sormaz is the founder, owner, and director of Fresh Yoga in New
Haven, Connecticut. She earned her PhD in Psychology from Yale University
and has obtained the highest teaching credentials from both Forrest Yoga
and Yoga Alliance. She is an expert on the influence of arousal and attention
on performance and habit change, the effects of anxiety on thinking, stress
management, and performance in pressure situations. Her publications
include Performance under Pressure: Managing Stress in the Workplace and How
to Live a Yogic Lifestyle. She is also the expert for the Wondrium course Yoga
for a Healthy Mind and Body.

i
Table of Contents

About Heidi Sormaz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
1. Are You an Overthinker? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Conquer the Illusion of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8. Name and Tame Your Emotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
11. Solve Problems More Effectively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

ii
Disclaimer

This content is intended to convey general health, fitness, and nutritional information
and is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for, nor does it replace,
professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of health conditions. Please
consult your physician or other health-care professional before beginning or changing
any fitness or nutrition program to make sure that it is appropriate for your needs.

If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult
a physician or other health-care professional. Do not disregard, avoid, or delay
obtaining medical or health-related advice from your health-care professional because
of something you may have seen or heard in this content. Current health and fitness
research may exist that could affect the educational information provided in this
content, and advice found herein may not be based on the most recent findings or
developments. Therefore, the use of any information provided in this content is solely
at your own risk. By continuing with the programs, exercises, advice, information,
and/or diets discussed in this content, you recognize that there are risks of injury or
illness that can occur because of your use of the aforementioned information, and you
expressly assume such risks and waive, relinquish, and release any claim that you may
have against The Teaching Company as a result of any future physical injury or illness
incurred in connection with, or as a result of, use or misuse of the programs, exercises,
advice, information, and/or diets discussed in this content. The opinions and
positions provided in this content reflect the opinions and positions of the relevant
presenter and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of The Teaching
Company or its affiliates.

The Teaching Company expressly DISCLAIMS LIABILITY for any DIRECT,

INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
OR LOST PROFITS that result directly or indirectly from the use of this content. In
states that do not allow some or all of the above limitations of liability, liability shall
be limited to the greatest extent allowed by law.

iii
Overcome Your
OVERTHINKING

iv
Are You an 1
Overthinker?
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

J
 st as your eyes are designed to see
u
and your ears to hear, your brain
is designed to think. Productive
thinking leads to actions, decisions,
and solutions, while overthinking is
often habitual and gets you nowhere.
This lesson explains different types
of overthinking, why the human
brain overthinks, and how to start
breaking the habit. A short exercise
demonstrates how easily the mind
wanders even when attention is
focused.

1
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

Helpful Thinking versus Overthinking

^ You can probably remember a situation where you spent a lot of time
thinking, and it led you to a creative solution. Perhaps you planned a
vacation, a wedding, or a career change, and you got a positive return on
your thought and energy investment. When thinking leads to a specific,
doable action, it’s not overthinking. It’s problem-solving and life-affirming.
In these situations, thinking is good.

^ You’ve probably also had moments when a lot of thinking didn’t pay
off and actually interfered with your life. Maybe you were up all night
replaying an argument you had earlier that day. When thinking causes
distress or increases negative emotion, that’s overthinking, and it’s
unhelpful. If your thinking begins with a goal but then leads to more and
more thinking that never leads to a solution, that’s also overthinking.

^ The solution to overthinking is not to control your thoughts. Your brain

reacts constantly to your senses and what’s happening around you, and
because you can’t control the world, you also can’t control your thoughts.
But there are ways to work with your thoughts when they interfere with
your life that can help to stop them from turning into overthinking.

SIGNS OF OVERTHINKING
‘ second-guessing your decisions
‘ reliving embarrassing moments over and over in
your mind
‘ obsessing over what someone else said or did
‘ getting stuck weighing the pros and cons of a situation to
the point of never making a decision

2
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

Types of Overthinking

WORRYING
^ Worries can usually be phrased as what-if questions: What if my child
decides to drive home drunk after a party? What if my partner is secretly
meeting up with their ex? What if my project falls flat and the company
pulls the funding? When you’re worrying, you’re taking a scenario and
imagining a terrible outcome.

^ Worrying keeps you up at night. Predictions are not based on probability,

reality, or fact—they’re based on fear. And worrying about something
doesn’t help the situation or solve a problem.

RUMINATION
^ Rumination is repetitive thought, often accompanied by feelings of sadness
or anger. It is not problem-solving, and in fact, it usually makes a problem
bigger. We can distinguish two subtypes: depressive rumination and angry
rumination.

^ Depressive rumination is engaging in negative, repetitive self-focus. For

example, you go to a work-related dinner, and when you arrive, you realize
that you are dressed more casually than everyone else. Internally, you
begin criticizing yourself. Your thinking turns inward toward how bad and
awkward you are, and it makes you unhappy. It leads to distorted thinking
about yourself and can quickly become a vicious cycle.

^ Angry rumination typically takes the form of blame. It’s about what
other people did and their mistakes rather than about yourself. Angry
rumination can happen when you’ve had a fight with your partner and
you keep replaying the words in your head, fueling your anger. It leads to
aggression, resentment, and distorted interpretations of others.

3
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
^ Cognitive distortions are errors in thinking that lead to excessive or
unnecessary emotional reactions. They can take many different forms, and
they manifest when habitual ways of thinking, or overthinking, get in the
way of assessing a situation neutrally.

^ For example, if someone pays less attention to you at a party than you
would have liked, you might try to explain the situation by thinking the
other person found you uninteresting. This is an error in thinking because
you can’t read people’s minds and there’s no truth value to that thought.
It can be easy to overanalyze, magnify our mistakes, assume the worst, or
blame ourselves if something goes wrong.

^ These types of thoughts are often cognitive distortions because we likely

have no evidence for any of them. And none of them will make us happier
or more content. Or, if there really is a problem to be addressed, these
reactions won’t help solve it either.

Why Do We Overthink?

FEAR
^ Overthinking is often a habit deeply rooted in our emotions. It begins with
fear, our oldest survival mechanism. Fear teaches us to avoid dangerous
situations through a process called reinforcement. For example, if you
step out into a busy street, see a car coming, and have a fear response,
you’ll jump back instinctively to the safety of the sidewalk. This is called
negative reinforcement because your reaction helped you avoid a negative
outcome—you didn’t get hit by a car. You are then more likely to not step
out into a busy street in the future.

^ Because survival depends on it, evolution has made this fear-based

learning automatic. For humans, the process occurs in the amygdala—the
primitive, survival-oriented area of our brain. The amygdala uses basic
emotional responses to help us react quickly to what’s happening around

4
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

us all the time. When you

feel your hand burning
when it touches
something, you
don’t have to
think about it; in
a split second, you
just instinctively
pull your hand
away. This is your
amygdala at work.

^ In the last million years,

humans developed a prefrontal
cortex, the part of the brain
associated with problem-solving, future
planning, and decision-making. Whereas
the amygdala just reacts, the prefrontal
cortex responds in a more complex way,
analyzing what went wrong and how to avoid
unpleasant events in the future. The problem
is that the prefrontal cortex needs accurate information to make accurate
decisions. But it doesn’t always wait for accurate information, and some
kinds of unpleasant events are much more difficult to predict than others.
Enter anxiety.

ANXIETY
^ Fear is an immediate reaction triggered by known stimuli. The avoidance
of harm as a result of fear is an adaptive learning mechanism. Anxiety,
on the other hand, is often maladaptive. Anxiety enters the picture
particularly when information is ambiguous.

^ Because you can’t be sure what other people are thinking or how they’re
going to behave, you can’t be sure how to protect yourself from, say,
future heartbreak. And when the prefrontal cortex doesn’t have enough
information to accurately predict the future, it starts spinning fearful

5
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

tales and generating anxiety, trying to fill in the blanks. This isn’t active
planning, problem-solving, or decision-making. It’s overthinking. And it’s
a habit.

^ Generating alternative explanations for ambiguous situations can

momentarily distract you from feelings of anxiety, and that makes you feel
OK for a while. So, thinking in response to a negative emotion has just
been reinforced. This has to happen only a few times for it to become a
habit. Eventually, any stress or negative mood will motivate overthinking.
Your well-intentioned prefrontal cortex takes whatever information it has
in the moment, fires up your adrenaline system, and starts working on
a story.

ATTENTION EXERCISE
‘ Come to the edge of your chair and sit in a way so that
you can lengthen up through your spine with your feet
flat on the floor.
‘ Close your eyes or soften your gaze to the floor or onto a
table in front of you.
‘ Bring your awareness to the sensation of your breath,
wherever you feel it most. Make that sensation the most
important thing to pay attention to. Pay attention to the
feeling of your breath moving in your body.
‘ If your mind wanders off onto something else, gently
redirect your attention to the sensation of the breath.
‘ Do this for two more minutes. Keep returning your
attention to the sensation of the breath.
‘ Open your eyes.

6
 1. Are You an Overthinker?

^ Did your mind wander away from the sensation of the breath, even when
you really wanted to keep your attention there? Of course it did—that’s
what the mind does. And when left to its own devices, which it is most
of the time, the mind engages in the habit of thinking, and sometimes,
overthinking.

Breaking the Habit

^ Because so much of our thinking is automatic and unconscious, it’s very

easy to reinforce bad thinking habits, which increase under stress, fatigue,
and cognitive load. To change a habit, you need to change the context of
what’s happening when you engage in the habit. For overthinking, this
includes the content of your thoughts, how you’re paying attention to
those thoughts, and your emotions and physiology that go along with the
thoughts.

^ Remember, intelligence isn’t the issue when it comes to overthinking. It’s a

habit that anyone can fall into. At a very basic level, overthinking is a form
of avoidance. A general principle we’ll return to throughout this course is
to approach, not avoid, your thoughts. Avoidance can lead to temporary
relief, but you never really move forward, and you reinforce avoidance
behavior. You never really change or deal with the original issue. Problems
persist, fester, and grow. The answer to overthinking is to approach it, to
pay attention differently to those very thoughts you would like to avoid.

READING
Brewer, Judson. Dr. Jud. https://www.drjud.com.

——— . Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break

the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind. New York:
Avery, 2021.

7
Conquer the 2
Illusion of
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Control

T
 e habit of overthinking comes with
h
payoffs. It can help you feel like
you’re in control, like you’re solving
a problem, even when you’re not.
And while you can’t control all your
thoughts, you can control how you
react to them and how they affect
you. The practices in this lesson
teach you how to engage with your
thoughts by naming, describing, and
labeling them—a process called
objectification—to interrupt the spiral
of overthinking.

8
 2. Conquer the Illusion of Control

Default Network

^ According to some researchers, up to 98% of our thoughts are the same

ones we had yesterday, and about 70% to 80% of them tend to be negative.
This is because when we’re awake and not doing anything in particular,
the resting state of the brain is constantly tracking our body and
environment for possible threats. This is referred to as our default network.

^ If you were to try to sit quietly and think about nothing for one minute,
you probably wouldn’t get through five seconds without a thought popping
up. You can’t control the thoughts that arise automatically. You can’t turn
off your default network. But you do have the ability to interrupt the
cascade of thoughts and questions that come after that first thought.

^ The paradox of overthinking is that to get away from unwanted thoughts,

you have to move toward them. By consciously responding to the first
thought in a new way, you can moderate how much that thought will
affect you.

A Game of Darts

^ Buddhist philosophy describes the process of interrupting the habitual

cascade of thoughts as stopping the second dart. Put another way, pain is
inevitable, but suffering is optional.

^ Pain is the first dart. We can’t avoid it. No matter what we do in this
world, we’ll encounter physical or mental discomfort, including thoughts
we do not want and that are not under our control.

^ Suffering is the second dart. These are the darts we throw at ourselves—
the thoughts we add on in response to the first one. Typical second darts
include overreacting to little things, holding grudges, dwelling on the past,
worrying about things you can’t control, mentally rehashing conversations,
and asking what-if and why questions. The amount of suffering we

9
 2. Conquer the Illusion of Control

experience (the amount of overthinking that we do) depends on our

reaction to the original pain (the original thought). And we have some
control over this part.

^ Second darts vastly outnumber first darts. It’s the habit of the mind to add
on. But by turning toward the thoughts, you can interrupt them. This can
be easier to do if you consider thoughts to be like any other experience
you’re having. Your ears hear, your intestines digest, and your brain thinks.
Your brain is just doing its job.

Objectification

^ Interrupting your second darts takes practice. You can begin with a process
called objectification, where you step back, observe whatever’s in front of
you, and describe each element of experience as an object in your internal
environment. For example, imagine you’re looking at your bank statement.
Perhaps you’re thinking you made poor choices last month. You might
begin adding on thoughts like being resentful of the kids asking you to
take them to the mall, rehashing a conversation with your accountant, or
worrying about the cost of tuition next semester.

^ Instead, you could take a step back, see numbers on a piece of paper, notice
that you’re thinking a thought that you made poor choices last month, and
feel your heart beat faster. These are elements of objectification. This isn’t
your usual way of going about things. So, while you don’t have control over
the current state of the bank account—it is what it is—you do have some
influence over the unnecessary cascade of thoughts generated from the
situation.

SENSE DOORS
^ Anything that enters your experience can be objectified. You can call it
what it is and literally name it to tame it. Most objectification mindfulness
practices involve simply giving names to experiences; they are labeling
exercises.

10
 2. Conquer the Illusion of Control

^ In Buddhist philosophy, thinking is described as a sense just like hearing

or seeing, and any experience you have can be labeled in terms of a sense
door, meaning the experience is placed in one of the categories of your
senses.

^ Sense-door labeling is a practice of turning toward your thoughts. You

aren’t trying to get rid of anything. You’re identifying what is happening
in order to interrupt the habitual way that you string objects in your
experience together.

SENSE-DOOR LABELING EXERCISE

‘ Within the following exercise, the possible labels to
incorporate are feeling, hearing, seeing, smelling/tasting,
and thinking. Smell and taste fall into one category
because they are challenging to separate.
‘ So, for example, you may notice the pulsing of your
heart and say “feeling.” Then you might notice the sound
of the wind against the window and label that “hearing.”
You might find yourself analyzing whether you’re paying
more attention to the feeling of your seat or the sound
of a dog barking and label that “thinking.”

‘ Sit in a way so that you can lengthen up through your

spine. Take a moment to feel into the sensation of
your breath.
‘ As you start to notice things, you don’t need to label
every single event that happens. Simply notice and
label at a pace that doesn’t create anxiety.
‘ No matter how far away your mind wanders, you
can always just label that reaction as “thinking” and
begin again.
‘ Slowly, open your eyes and drop the labeling.

11
 2. Conquer the Illusion of Control

Avoidance

^ As human animals, we’re hardwired to move toward things we like and

away from things we don’t like. These reactions are an automatic part
of our survival system—our default network—and they’re beyond our
conscious control. Our initial reaction is the first dart.

^ When we have a difficult experience or emotion, we want to get away from

it. Avoiding thoughts can bring temporary relief, but nothing changes, and
the thinking comes back. By turning toward the thought, you can create a
new pattern and change the habit.

Control Theory

^ Control theory describes overthinking as problem-solving gone wrong.

Thinking begins when you become aware that you have not obtained a
goal or made sufficient progress toward it. Useful thinking will lead you to
actions that help you get answers and assess your progress toward the goal.
Action-specific questions often start with how.

^ Where problem-solving goes wrong is when you begin thinking in terms

of what if and why. These are not answerable questions on your own,
because you can’t know the future or why others think or do what they
do. Speculating is not solving a problem or making progress toward a goal.
Your thinking can’t solve it, so you end up overthinking unproductively.

^ Within this model, the problem isn’t the thinking. The problem is the
goal. Goals that are unresolved, beyond your control, or impossible to meet
are likely to lead to overthinking. Hence, the question to ask yourself is, “Is
reaching my goal under my control?”

^ Impossible goals are common. The reality is that most of what we want is
beyond our control. From the beginning of our lives, we have constantly
tried to assess whether it’s safe for us to pursue goals. As children, we detect
and learn unspoken contingencies in the world, such as, “If I cry, then my

12
 2. Conquer the Illusion of Control

mother will come and soothe me.” Your goal is to be soothed. The action
you take is crying. This pattern of understanding develops early, during a
childhood period that’s prone to overgeneralization, lack of experience, and
the illusion that we can control how another person responds to us.

^ As an adult, your if-then statements might sound like, “If I make this
person laugh, then they’ll want to go out with me.” Your goal is to get
someone to go out with you. The problem is this is beyond your control.

^ We can repattern the habits of how we think by using mindfulness

exercises such as sense-door labeling. There are other techniques covered
in later lessons, including physical activities and psychological tools, that
can help. But in the moment of overthinking, at its most basic, you can
also just pause, pay attention to your thoughts, and ask yourself if there is
a problem that exists now in the external world around you. If there is, can
you do something to change it now? If the answers are yes and yes, your
thinking will be concrete problem-solving. Go, solve the problem. But if
the answer to even one of the questions is no, then you’re more likely to
overthink.

READING
Salzberg, Sharon. Real Happiness: A 28-Day Program to
Realize the Power of Meditation. New York: Workman, 2011.

13
Interrupt the 3
Emotional
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Cascade

I
f you’re an overthinker, you probably have
a favorite obsession: your body, your
relationship, your job, etc. But obsession
is often just a cover-up, another way
to avoid difficult feelings. This lesson
explains the psychology and physiology of
an emotional reaction and how thoughts
can be interpreted as symptoms of
feelings. The mindfulness practice of
vedanā can help you shift awareness from
the content of your thought to the root of
your feeling.

14
 3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade

Overthinking as a Distraction

^ Historically, philosophers and psychologists viewed emotions as something

that got in the way of logical, rational thought and our ability to solve
problems. Some people still feel this way.

^ But what if we use thinking to avoid feeling? It’s pretty normal to want
to change or numb unpleasant emotions. We intellectualize problems to
minimize emotion. In psychology, intellectualization is described as a
defense mechanism, a coping strategy that most of us use at one time or
another to avoid feeling emotional stress.

^ Yet, when left alone, our emotional reactions resolve themselves very
quickly—usually within 90 seconds. But because humans are story-
making machines, we tend to interpret our body’s signals as a reflection of
a factual story, when in fact, they’re just bodily processes happening. They
will pass unless we attach a story to them and keep them alive.

THE 90-SECOND PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE

When a person has an emotional
reaction to something, a series of rapid
neurochemical processes take place in
the body, putting the person on full alert.
But it only takes 90 seconds for these
chemicals to be flushed from the system
and the body to return to normal.
The sensations that we
associate with emotion—
adrenaline, heat in the
face, tightness in
the throat, a rapid
heartbeat—rise, peak,
and dissipate very
quickly on their own.
Any reactions you
have beyond that are
what you’ve added
to the situation.
15
 3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade

Obsession

^ When things are beyond our control, it feels more comfortable to point our
attention toward something we think we can control. You get temporary
relief from an unpleasant emotion by obsessing, and you’re clinging to
an illusion of control that developed when you were young. But once
obsessing becomes a habitual response to escaping emotion, it will continue
to manifest no matter how close you come to your goal. Overthinking and
obsession are the second, third, fourth, and fifth darts. They take us away
from the feeling of the first one, but then those subsequent darts become
the habit.

^ This response has very deep roots within us, coming from a desire to be
unconditionally loved. As infants, we’re totally dependent on others and
won’t survive without unconditional love. This soothing and safe feeling
regulates our nervous system. If we receive unconditional love, we can
tolerate any difficult emotion.

^ If it’s taken away, though, we engage in behaviors to try and get that
unconditional love back. But as we learned from control theory, those
efforts can easily become the foundation of impossible goals. We can’t
control the behavior of others or make them love us.

Emotional Cascade Theory

^ Your brain has a hard time distinguishing between what’s actually

happening and what’s happening in the theater of your thoughts. This is
one reason why storytelling can be so problematic. Storytelling is typically
projecting into the future something unpleasant and anxiety-provoking.
Your unconscious brain doesn’t know it’s not actually happening. Your
body reacts. This is how an initial emotional reaction extends past the
90-second physiological response. We have emotional reactions to the
content of our thoughts, regardless of whether that content is true or false.

16
 3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade

^ The part of the brain that gets involved when you’re afraid is the amygdala.
It’s the primary brain structure associated with the fight-or-flight response.
It works faster than the cerebral cortex and has a direct connection to your
eyes and ears, getting information from the outside world before any other
part of the brain. It learns by association.

^ The problem is that the connections between the amygdala and cerebral
cortex only allow for one-way communication. The amygdala can send
signals to the cortex but not the other way around. That’s why you can’t fully
calm down by telling yourself to calm down. Your amygdala isn’t listening.

^ Emotional cascade theory shows that overthinking and negative emotion

magnify each other in a cycle that gets worse over time. More thinking
leads to more emotion, and vice versa. The emotional cascade occurs
when negative emotion and rumination synergistically and progressively
aggravate each other, resulting in an aversive experience that escalates
rapidly and sometimes exponentially.

^ This can lead some people to engage in impulsive or addictive behaviors

or even self-harm. What’s going on here is that the thinking has stopped
serving as a way out of the emotion, and you need something else. The
impulsive behaviors then provide physical sensations and a whole host of
other complications that distract and short-circuit the emotional cascade.
Obsessive thoughts have spiraled into obsessive, and maybe harmful,
behaviors.

^ So, it’s important to recognize that your thoughts are a symptom, a cue to
examine what you’re feeling. If you have anxiety, and you’ve made attempts
to work with it, you probably already know that there are physical sensations
that accompany fear, such as your heart beating faster, your hands shaking,
and your foot tapping. You learn to interpret the symptoms accurately and
take some sort of action. The same should be done with thoughts.

^ It’s easy to get fooled into believing your own stories and the content of
your thoughts. But just like you can notice the heartbeat quickening and
call it anxiety, you can also notice the content of your thoughts and call
that anxiety, too, rather than believing it and jumping into the emotional
cascade.

17
 3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade

Vedanā

^ Your amygdala is constantly scanning your environment for threats and

is adding a tag to every experience you have as pleasant, unpleasant, or
neutral to get your attention if necessary. This tagging isn’t a conscious,
judging action. It’s involuntary and not under your control. Think of it as
part of the first dart. And it will continue for as long as you live, even if
you practice mindfulness every day.

^ But remember, on a very basic level, overthinking is a form of avoidance,

and the answer to any form of avoidance is approach. One way you can
begin to approach emotion is with a mindfulness practice referred to
as vedanā, or “feeling tone.” This is the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral
feeling that any experience contains. Vedanā isn’t an emotion or a
judgment—it’s fast and automatic. It’s the hedonic tone of something
you’re experiencing.

^ Vedanā practice will help you become more aware that this tagging is
happening in your system all the time. More importantly, this practice can
help you understand that feeling tone can influence or drive your behavior
if you’re unaware of it. If you have an experience that is tagged as negative,
your mind will often use that as a cue to begin thinking in order to move
you away from the unpleasant thing.

^ We often ignore things that are neutral or try to manipulate them into
being what we want. Neutral is just not that important to us; it’s boring.
It’s our brain’s way of saying you don’t need to pay attention to that.
Humans want to feel secure, positive, and excited. No matter how much
mindfulness you practice, you’ll still want these things. Being human is
not a problem. The problem is reactively reaching for something, including
your own obsessive thinking, because it gets you away from a feeling.

^ To add vedanā to the sense-door labeling practice—a process called dual-

parameter noting—you first note the sense door and then whether the
experience of that sense door is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

18
 3. Interrupt the Emotional Cascade

VEDANĀ EXERCISE
‘ Within this practice, the possible labels to incorporate are
the senses—feeling, hearing, seeing, smelling/tasting—
and thinking. The second label is feeling tone: pleasant,
unpleasant, or neutral.
‘ For example, you may notice the pulsing feeling in your
chest and say “feeling, pleasant,” then notice the sound of
the heater in the room and label that “hearing, neutral,” and
then find yourself analyzing whether you’re paying more
attention to the heat or the very bright light in front of you,
and note “thinking, unpleasant.”

‘ Sit in a way that you can lengthen up through your spine.

‘ Take a moment to feel into the sensation of your breath.
‘ Continue internally at a calm pace.
‘ You don’t need to label every single event that happens;
simply notice and label at a pace that doesn’t create
anxiety.
‘ Nothing is a distraction. Any experience you notice
will have a feeling tone, even if it’s just neutral. Even a
moment of thinking “this is boring” can be labeled as
pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then you just return
your attention to the experience of the breath.
‘ Slowly, open your eyes and drop the labeling.

READING
Korb, Alex. The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse
the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time.
Oakland: New Harbinger, 2015.

Peacock, John, and Martine Batchelor. The Definition, Practice,

and Psychology of Vedanā. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020.
19
Engage Your 4
Body to Stop
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Overthinking

S
itting quietly and labeling your
experience may be all you need
sometimes to interrupt your
overthinking. But there are also ways
you can use your body, particularly
through yoga and breathing exercises,
to soothe your system in times of
stress. The style of yoga you choose
is not as important as the common
goal they share of teaching you how to
pay attention to and manipulate your
breath in different situations.

20
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

Avoidance Tactics

^ Once emotions and thoughts have become overwhelming, and you’re in

the grip of overthinking, sitting down may not even seem possible. You
need a different intervention to get out of that mode. In those moments,
we often instinctively opt to soothe ourselves by avoiding our thinking.

^ On some level, you know this. Whatever your habitual avoidance tactic
is—going to the gym, binge-watching a TV series, eating cookies, etc.—
it’s an attempt to soothe yourself. And you’re getting something out of it.

^ Distractions like a sugar coma or exhaustion from a spin class will change
your physiology in the moment, but taking avoidant action doesn’t change
your underlying feelings, and worse, it can condition fear, creating more of
a problem later.

Using Yoga to Interrupt Overthinking

^ There are ways of using your body and physiology to interrupt

overthinking without it being merely a distraction. If you have a tendency
to overthink and get stressed out, yoga may be helpful for you. You can
find thousands of classes online, and it’s offered at nearly every gym and in
many schools, places of business, and apartment complexes.

^ But how is yoga more useful than any other physical activity? This question
has a lot of possible answers, but one of the best is that yoga is different
because of how we choose to pay attention to and change our breathing
while we practice it. Yoga soothes your system by changing your breath.

^ The health benefits of yoga have generally not been shown to be particular
to any specific style or tradition of yoga. Theoretically, what they all have
in common is a systematic attention to and manipulation of breathing,
with the goal of helping you become more skilled and efficient at it—no
matter what your fitness level is.

21
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

^ Within a yoga class there are often specific breathing exercises, referred
to as pranayama, and poses, like triangle or downward-facing dog, that
challenge the mechanics of how you breathe. In essence, you’re learning
how to breathe differently and deliberately in a difficult or stressful
situation. In a quality yoga class, the teacher should not just tell you to
breathe, but teach you how to breathe.

Breath as a Habit

^ You have many habits in your body that show up in the ways you move or
interact with the world. But a lot of your physical habits don’t always serve
you in the best way. What can start as a habit of limping to avoid a sore
foot can turn into an abnormal gait that puts stress on joints and other
parts of the body—a habit of avoidance that leads to new problems. Sound
familiar?

^ How you breathe is a habit pattern, too. When you’re under stress, your
breath pattern reflects the fight-or-flight response. Your body thinks
that, to survive, you need to tighten your muscles, particularly the ones
around the rib cage, to get ready to run. You start taking shallow, rapid
clavicular breaths, meaning that you use your neck, shoulders, and upper
ribs, rather than your diaphragm, to move air in and out of the lungs. This
shallow breathing increases your anxiety. It increases your heart rate and
blood pressure and makes the physical symptoms of stress worse. Like the
abnormal gait, at some point, this will become a health complication.

^ Breathing is typically such an automatic process that as soon as you

bring awareness to it, you interrupt the ability to keep it automatic. You
can change the habit of how you breathe by consciously choosing and
practicing a different breath pattern. You can learn through yoga to
regulate your breath even under very challenging conditions.

22
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

BREATHING EXERCISE: EXPANDING THE RIBS

‘ Start by giving yourself a hug. Put your hands on the
sides of your rib cage and give a little pressure.
‘ Inhale, specifically into the bottom of your rib cage.
‘ With each inhale, push the rib cage wide against
your hands.
‘ With each breath, feel the movement of your ribs
expanding, widening outward.
‘ As you do this move, you may even feel some of the
tension leaving your neck and shoulder area. That is the
habitual stress-related tension you’ve accumulated in the
breath being redirected.
‘ Release your hands and keep that movement going.
‘ Feel the breath in the rib cage.
‘ Inhale and expand your ribs. Feel those little muscles in
between the ribs, your intercostals, stretching.
‘ Now try telescoping the ribs. This is expanding and lifting
the ribs away from the pelvis.
‘ Put your hands on the top crest of your hips and push
down slightly. Inhale, filling the breath into the bottom,
middle, and upper ribs. Drag the rib cage up away from
the hips.
‘ Exhale everything out. Pull the low belly slightly back to
help get the air out.
‘ Inhale and fill the breath into the bottom of the ribs,
lifting the rib cage up away from the hips.
‘ Exhale and release the shoulders away from the ears.
‘ Release the hands and try telescoping the ribs again.

23
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

FREEING THE DIAPHRAGM: UDDIYANA

‘ There’s a yoga asana specifically designed to help you
free up your diaphragm. It’s the only exercise for your
diaphragm in hatha yoga. It’s called uddiyana, or you
could just call it a fake inhale. To do it, exhale all of
your breath out, hold the breath out, and then, without
actually inhaling, use the muscles you would normally
use to inhale, so your rib cage widens without the intake
of air.

‘ Let the belly relax before you inhale.

‘ Come to a standing position, bend your knees slightly,
and brace your hands on your thighs.
‘ Lean forward.
‘ Exhale all of your breath out. Hold it out.
‘ Draw your belly back and expand the ribs.
‘ Relax the belly. Inhale.
‘ Stretching the breath—making it longer, slower, and
fuller—is the key to most of the stress-reducing and
health-improving changes that come from yoga practice.
When you slow down the breath, the level of carbon
dioxide in your bloodstream rises. This allows the blood
vessels in your brain to dilate so that the brain can
get more oxygen and better blood flow. This tends to
increase a feeling of calm alertness and well-being.

24
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

Stress results in a constriction

of the rib cage; it’s like putting
a vise on your diaphragm and
organs, clamping the rib cage
in and down. With the breathing
techniques in this lesson, you’re
deliberately moving the rib cage
in the opposite direction—
out and up. Freeing up your
diaphragm helps other organs
function better as well.

Neuroscience and Yoga

^ The effectiveness of yoga to reduce emotional hijacking is supported by
recent work in neuroscience. Studies have shown that yoga practice can
decrease activation in the part of the brain that responds to affect or
emotion, giving practitioners more control over their emotional processes,
which leads to deactivation in the amygdala. In other words, when
emotional experiences occur in the context of a demanding situation, yoga
practitioners appear to resolve emotional interference with a recruitment of
various brain regions while deactivating the amygdala, that fight-or-flight
center of the brain that constantly senses and reacts to the environment.

^ There’s also a neurochemical shift that happens during yoga. Yoga

increases levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in your brain.
GABA slows down the firing of neurons in your brain. It makes you less
excitable and produces a feeling of calm. This neurotransmitter acts like
an antidepressant. By increasing the amount of GABA circulating in your
brain, yoga practice can alleviate feelings of anxiety and depression. Even
if the yoga practice is vigorous, engaging in it increases relaxation and
reduces anxiety. This reduces stress.

25
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

Activating Your Body to Change Patterns

^ There will be situations where belly breathing is the way to go, but when
you are in the overwhelming cascade of emotional and psychological
reaction, you can’t just tell yourself to relax; your amygdala isn’t listening.

^ Because the amygdala learns and creates new associations only when it’s
activated, changing patterns of stress in the body is easiest when you’re a
little bit stressed. Your muscles will let go of their habit pattern more easily
if a new pattern is created in an active way, such as through expanding and
telescoping the ribs and uddiyana.

ACTIVATION EXERCISE
‘ Place your arms by your sides, and then relax your
shoulders. Notice what that feels like.
‘ Now, do a super shoulder shrug. Inhale and expand your
ribs. Hold your breath. Hike your shoulders up by your
ears and squeeze the shoulders straight back.
‘ Exhale and lean your head back on the shelf that you
created with your shoulders.
‘ Hike your shoulders further up and further back.
‘ In one exhale, slowly lift your head and relax your
shoulders. Notice the difference in your shoulders.
‘ Take a breath and notice the quietness in your mind.

26
 4. Engage Your Body to Stop Overthinking

READING
Sormaz, Heidi. How to Live a Yogic Lifestyle. Chantilly: The
Great Courses, 2021.

——— . Yoga for a Healthy Mind and Body. Chantilly: The Great
Courses, 2014.

27
Simple Yoga to 5
Calm the Mind
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

P
r acticing yoga is one way to develop
new habits that can affect both
your body and your mind. Many
studies have shown that long-
term practitioners of yoga tend to
experience less stress, anxiety, and
anger than those who don’t practice.
This lesson includes breathing
techniques and yoga poses that will
challenge your habitual breathing
patterns and help you learn to breathe
more effectively in times of stress.

28
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

Breathing Exercises

SUN BREATH
‘ This breath exercise, or pranayama, is a form of alternate
breathing that moves breath in through the right nostril
and out through the left nostril.
‘ On your right hand, fold the first two fingers down. Bring
your fourth finger to your left nostril and close it off.
‘ Inhale through the right nostril and count silently to five.
‘ Close off both nostrils with your thumb and fourth finger.
Hold the breath and count to five.
‘ Release your left nostril and exhale through it for a count
of five.
‘ Repeat the breathing
pattern: Inhale
through the right
nostril. Close off
both nostrils. Hold
the breath. Exhale
through the left
nostril.
‘ Release your hand.
Take a full breath
through both nostrils.
Expand through the
rib cage.

29
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

UDDIYANA
‘ Place your hands on the floor, in front of your shins. If
you’re in a chair, place them onto your thighs.
‘ Exhale fully. Hold the breath out. Draw your low belly
back and expand the ribs. As you hold uddiyana,
lengthen your spine and lift the chest forward and up.
‘ When you
need a breath,
release the
belly first and
then inhale
fully. Feel the
breath rush in.
‘ Repeat the
exercise two
more times.

Floor Exercises

You can do floor exercises on a yoga mat or soft floor, but if you’re
feeling discomfort or too much pressure on your knees, use a
blanket for padding under your knees. You can also fold part of your
mat under your knees for added cushioning.

30
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

TWIST
‘ Straighten your left leg. Bend the right knee toward
you, and with your hands around your shin, inhale, and
telescope the ribs up.
‘ Exhale and twist, bringing your left elbow around the
front of the shin while placing your right hand on the
floor behind you.
‘ Inhale and expand, lifting your ribs up away from the
pelvis.
‘ Exhale and anchor down through both sit bones,
reaching down.
‘ Inhale and widen the rib cage all the way around.
‘ Exhale and come back around to the front.
‘ Repeat the twist with the right leg straight and the left
leg bent.

31
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

CAT AND COW POSES

‘ Make your way
onto your hands
and knees. Bring
your hands under
your shoulders and
your knees under
your hips.
‘ Inhale and release
your upper ribs
toward the floor.
Arch through the
upper back, lifting
your head up.
‘ Exhale and bring
the rib cage toward
the ceiling, rounding
through the upper
back, relaxing
the neck.
‘ Repeat the poses
one more time, and
then return to a
neutral spine.

32
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

PROTRACTION AND RETRACTION

‘ In this exercise, you
move the rib cage
without arching
or rounding in the
upper back like
you did for cat and
cow pose.
‘ Exhale, retraction.
Move your rib cage
toward the floor and
let your upper arm
bones move toward
the ceiling.
‘ Inhale, protraction.
Lift the rib cage
toward the ceiling
and spread the
upper back.
‘ Repeat these
movements two
more times.

33
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

DOLPHIN POSE
‘ Starting from your hands and knees, bring your elbows
underneath your shoulders and clasp your hands around
your upper arms to get the right elbow distance. You can
interlace the hands or bring the forearms flat.
‘ Inhale, protraction. Lift between the shoulder blades.
Widen the rib cage all the way around—front, side,
and back.
‘ Exhale and push down through your forearms and
straighten through your legs.
‘ If your hamstrings
or calves feel
tight, you don’t
have to bring your
heels all the way
down. You can
even bend your
knees and push
strongly through
your forearms,
sending the
hips back.
‘ To come out of
the pose, bring
your knees down
to the floor
and come back
onto your hands
and knees.

34
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

PLANK PUSH-UPS
‘ Start from your hands and knees.
‘ Step one foot back and then the other into plank.
Squeeze your legs together.
‘ Exhale and bring your knees down. Then lower your chest
and hips at the same time, pulling your shoulders away
from the floor and away from your ears.
‘ When you are all the way down, move your shoulders as
far away from the floor as they can go. Curl your pubic
bone toward the floor.
‘ Inhale and come back up in one straight line.
‘ Repeat the pose one more time.

35
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

SPHINX POSE
‘ Start by lying down on your front, supported by your
forearms. Shift your forearms so that your elbows are
just about under your shoulders, palms facing down.
‘ Exhale and curl your pubic bone toward the floor.
‘ Inhale and lower the front of your rib cage toward the
floor and pull forward. This move is a traction through
your spine.
‘ Exhale and curl the pubic bone toward the floor, using
your forearms to help you move your ribs forward, away
from your hips.
‘ On your next exhale, come all the way down. Bring your
forehead to your hands or turn your head to one side and
take a full breath there, through your core, feeling your
rib cage move.
‘ To move into the next pose, low cobra, stay on your
forearms.

36
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

LOW COBRA POSE

‘ Bring your elbows under your shoulders with your palms
facing down.
‘ Exhale and curl the pubic bone toward the floor.
‘ Inhale and lower the front of the ribs, pulling forward
like you’re trying to pull yourself off the front end of
the mat.
‘ From there, push with your hands and lift your elbows
two inches off the mat.
‘ Exhale and curl the pubic bone toward the floor.
‘ Inhale and pull your chest forward. Keep pulling forward
as you lower back down.
‘ Bring your hands under the forehead and turn your
head the other direction. Take a breath through your
lower back.

37
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

DOWNWARD-FACING DOG POSE

‘ Start from hands and knees, bringing your hands under
your shoulders.
‘ Exhale and press back to hands and knees.
‘ Inhale (protraction) and spread across your upper back.
‘ Exhale, push your hands into the floor, and straighten
through your legs.
‘ Inhale, widen the rib cage, and push into your hands so
your rib cage moves away from your shoulders.
‘ Exhale and relax your neck.
‘ To come out of the pose, bring your knees back down to
the mat.

38
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

LUNGE POSE
‘ Try adding the lunge pose to downward-facing dog.
‘ Inhale (protraction) and widen across your upper back.
‘ Exhale and push back into downward-facing dog.
‘ Lunge and inhale, stepping the right foot forward and
bringing your left knee to the floor. If your right foot
doesn’t come far enough forward to have your heel
solidly on the floor, you can place your hand on your calf
and help the foot up. In lunge, you can leave your hands
on the floor, bring them to your front thigh, or reach up.
‘ Exhale and bring the hands down. Step back to hands
and knees, and then push back to downward-facing dog.
‘ Repeat on the other side. Lunge and inhale, stepping the
left foot forward and bringing the right knee down. Place
your hands where they are most comfortable. Inhale and
telescope the ribs up away from the pelvis.
‘ Exhale and bring your hands down, but this time, step
forward, bringing the right foot to the front of the mat.
‘ Inhale; round up through the spine.

39
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

SUN SALUTATIONS
‘ For sun salutations, several
poses are strung together with
the breath. The idea is that you
complete a movement on each
half breath, so either on an
inhale or an exhale.
‘ Begin in a standing position at
the front of the mat.
‘ Exhale and bring the hands
together in front of the chest.
‘ Inhale and reach up, lifting the
rib cage up.
‘ Bend forward and exhale. You
can round down and bend the
knees as much as you need to.
‘ Lunge and inhale, stepping your FORWARD BEND
left leg back. Hands can stay on
the mat, come to the front thigh,
or reach up.
‘ Exhale and bring the hands down.
‘ Inhale and move into plank, stepping back and squeezing
the legs together.

40
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

‘ Bring the knees down. Then lower all the way down,
keeping shoulders away from the floor and away from
your ears.
‘ Move the hands forward a few inches for low cobra.
Tuck the tailbone.
‘ Inhale and pull the chest forward to come up.
‘ Exhale and come forward to come down.
‘ Bring the hands under the shoulders, and then push
back into downward-facing dog.
‘ Lunge and inhale, stepping your left foot forward.
Reach up.
‘ Exhale and bring the hands down.
‘ Inhale and step forward to forward bend. Round up
through the spine. Reach up.
‘ Exhale and bring the hands together at the chest.
‘ Repeat the combination of poses—forward bend, lunge
(right leg back), plank, low cobra, downward-facing
dog, lunge (right leg forward), forward bend—and end
by rounding up through the spine, inhaling and reaching
up, and then exhaling and bringing your hands together.

41
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

RECLINING TWIST POSE

‘ Lie down and hug both knees toward your chest.
‘ Exhale and bring the knees over to the right side. It’s OK
if your right shoulder comes off the floor.
‘ Flex your feet and roll the left side of your upper back
toward the floor.
‘ Swing your left arm overhead, keeping it on the floor.
Bring your right hand to the bottom of the ribs on the
left side.
‘ Inhale and fill your breath into your rib cage. Feel the
breath move underneath of your right hand.
‘ To come out of the pose, unwind your arms, lift the left
leg first, and then come onto your back.
‘ Exhale and bring both legs over to the left side.
‘ Flex the feet and bring the right side of the upper back
toward the floor.
‘ Bring your right arm overhead, keeping it on the floor.
Place your left hand on the bottom of your rib cage on
the right side.
‘ Feel the heat of your hand. Aim your breath into your
hand. Feel those little muscles in between the ribs
moving and responding to your breath.
‘ To come out of
the pose, unwind
your arms.
Inhale and lift
your right leg
first, followed by
the left.

42
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

SAVASANA: FINAL RELAXATION POSE

‘ Lie on your back. Take a moment to center your
shoulders with your hips. Straighten through the legs and
let your arms come out to either side, palms facing up.
‘ As you exhale, allow your weight to settle toward
the floor.
‘ If your mind starts wandering, just bring your attention
back to that settling feeling that happens on the exhale.
‘ Take a deep breath and notice if your breathing feels
any easier. Take another deep breath and notice any
aliveness or release in the muscles. Take a third deep
breath and notice the quietness of your mind. These are
the effects of your yoga practice.
‘ To come out of the pose, bend your knees, roll to one
side, and make your way up to a seated position. Feel
your internal environment.

You don’t need to do a 30-minute guided yoga session every

time your mind races. But doing a few simple yoga exercises is a
powerful way to use your body and physiology to settle the mind
and interrupt the emotional cascade that perpetuates overthinking.

43
 5. Simple Yoga to Calm the Mind

READING
Sormaz, Heidi. “Heidi Sormaz Channel.” Mat2Mat. https://
mat2mat.com/channels/heidisormaz/.

——— . Yoga for a Healthy Mind and Body. Chantilly: The Great
Courses, 2014.

44
Practice 6
TABLE OF

Mindfulness for CONTENTS

Self-Soothing

I
 addition to using strategies like
n
objectification, labeling, and yoga
and breathing exercises to overcome
overthinking, you can also soothe your
system by changing the pattern of
your attention through meditation. As
with yoga, there are many approaches
to meditation. This lesson guides you
through concentration and mindfulness
meditations as well as practices that
promote clear seeing and compassion.

45
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

Concentration

^ Approaches to meditation can be grouped into two broad categories:

concentration and mindfulness. Mindfulness practice can then be broken
down into two components: clear seeing and compassion.

^ In concentration meditation, your awareness is focused on a single point,

such as the sensation of your breath or a single, repeating word or mantra,
and each time you notice your mind has wandered, you refocus. Through
this process, your ability to concentrate improves over time.

COUNTING BREATH EXERCISE

‘ One of the most straightforward concentration techniques is
counting your breath. In this practice, you’ll count your exhales
backward from five to one.
‘ Sit on the edge of a chair with your back straight and your
hands resting on your legs. Close your eyes or just soften your
gaze toward the floor. Sit in a way that you can lengthen up
through your spine.
‘ Feel the sensation of your breath. Notice your exhale. With the
next exhale, internally give it the label five. Label your next
exhale four, and so on, counting all the way down to one. When
you get to one, begin again at five.
‘ At some point, you’ll notice that your mind has wandered off
to something else. When this happens, simply return your
attention to counting your exhales backward from five to one. If
you lose track of what number you were on, simply begin again
at five.
‘ After several rounds, slowly open your eyes.
‘ One of the great things about this simple breath-counting
meditation, or any concentration exercise, is that it can help
you recognize when you’re present and placing your attention
where you want it to go—and when you’re not.

46
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

Mindfulness

^ Mindfulness encourages you to observe your experience as it moves

through your mind. The intention in mindfulness is to be aware of each
mental activity as it arises without judgment.

^ Like with the concentration practice, when you’re practicing mindfulness,

you choose something to focus on, such as your breath, and place your
attention there. This is often referred to as the anchor or perch from where
you begin. However, instead of focusing on just one thing and excluding
everything else, you remain aware of your surroundings. As other
sensations, thoughts, and feelings come into your awareness, you simply
observe and label them, allowing your experience to come and go.

SPIDER IN THE WEB EXERCISE

‘ This mindfulness practice is designed to help you
balance concentration and mindfulness. You begin by
paying attention to the sensation of the breath, but then
you’ll move your attention to other things as they arise.
When you practice mindfulness, nothing is a distraction.
‘ Take a moment to sit up straight. Close your eyes or find
a spot in front of you for your gaze.
‘ Center your attention on the sensation of your breath
wherever you feel it most. This might be your belly, your
rib cage, or your nose where the air is moving in and out.
Visualize where you feel yourself breathing as the center
of a spider web that fills up the whole room. If you don’t
like spiders, try visualizing a cartoon with a cute spider.
‘ At some point, your mind will move away from the central
sensation of the breath and be drawn to something
else, like the sensation of the back of your legs on the

47
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

chair. At that point, bring your awareness to the new

sensation and visually imagine where it is on the web.
Take it in fully; absorb the experience of it. Then bring
your awareness back to the center of the web, the place
where you feel your breath most.
‘ Moving your attention this way is similar to what happens
when a fly is caught in the web near its edge. The spider
runs over to check it out and then moves back to the
center of the web.
‘ You might notice a thought. If you feel like the thought is
located in your head, move your attention to your head.
Fully notice the thought and then bring your attention
back to the center of the web. Continue this movement
of attention for several minutes.
‘ Gently open your eyes. Take in how that process has a
different feel than concentration.

Balancing Mindfulness and Concentration

^ Concentration and mindfulness balance each other. It’s important to

practice both. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed in a mindfulness
practice because there are too many things to pay attention to, you can
shift into a concentration practice.

Mindfulness has a broader scope than concentration. Concentration

is exclusive; it settles the mind down on one thing and ignores
everything else. Mindfulness is inclusive; it stands back from the
anchor of the breath and watches with a wider lens.

48
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

^ The challenge is that stressful, anxious, or intense experiences are easy to

get lost in or be overwhelmed by. When you’re lost in worry, you’ve usually
lost the ability to be mindful. But with practice, it will become easier to
know the difference between worrying and noticing that your mind has
begun to worry. The latter has more perspective and will help you avoid
the cascade. You can treat those thoughts as flies on the edge of your web.
You can take them in without getting carried away by them, and then you
can return to your center.

Clear Seeing and Compassion

^ Clear seeing is knowing what is happening. It’s paying attention to

whatever arises, even if you’d like the situation to be different. In clear
seeing, we aren’t deliberately attempting to change our experience.

^ To clearly see an emotion like anxiety, you might notice that your
heart is racing, that your back and neck feel tight, and that you have a
desire to flee. Clear seeing would be recognizing these things without
doing anything about them. You aren’t reacting or trying to get rid of
anything—you’re just noticing.

The Vedanā Exercise on page 19 is an example of a clear-seeing

mindfulness exercise, where you notice an experience and label it as
pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, rather than trying to alter it.

^ Compassion practice includes things like gratitude, loving-kindness, and

acceptance. It’s what holds you steady enough to see clearly. The balance
helps you to be kindly present with your experience so that it doesn’t turn
into a downward spiral. Without compassion practice, the challenge of
feeling what comes up might be too unbearable to continue practicing
mindfulness, and you might try to avoid it.

49
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

^ To develop a compassion practice, you can use techniques that allow you
to turn toward what’s happening and respond to it with kindness, like
a parent would respond with love toward their child. You can learn to
regard your anxiety, judgment, or desire to run away with care—maybe
responding to yourself with “it’s OK,” or “this is the human condition.”
This can become a very effective way of self-soothing, which will help you
interrupt the emotional cascade and calm your mind.

^ You can also add a layer of compassion, such as acceptance, onto a clear-
seeing exercise like the spider in the web. Acceptance can be defined as
the willingness to tolerate a situation. So, for example, when something
disturbs your web, you can respond with the word yes, simply accepting
that, in that moment, that experience is happening.

^ There’s often a part of us that initially fights acceptance because we

interpret the momentary action of accepting as approval, agreement,
or something other than just a willingness to tolerate the moment. But
practicing acceptance can help us approach our thoughts and current
experience more easily.

ACCEPTANCE EXERCISE
‘ Shift to a position where you can sit up straight. Close
your eyes or find a spot in front of you for your gaze.
‘ Center yourself on the sensation of your breath where
you feel it most. This might be your belly, your rib
cage, or your nose where the air is moving in and out.
Visualize where you feel yourself breathing as the center
of a spider web that fills up the whole room. Rest your
awareness at the center of the web.
‘ At some point, your mind will move away from the central
sensation of the breath and be drawn to something else,
like a sound. Move your attention. Visualize moving to the
part of the web where you’ve located the sound, take in
the sound fully, meet it internally with the word yes, and
then return to the center of your web.
50
 6. Practice Mindfulness for Self-Soothing

‘ Next you might notice your thoughts. Move your

attention and visualize moving to the part of the web
where you locate thoughts. Acknowledge that you’re
thinking, respond to the thoughts with the word yes, and
then return to the center of your web.
‘ Continue moving your attention from the center of
the web to what catches your attention, meeting that
experience with the word yes, and then moving back to
the center of the web.
‘ Gently open your eyes.

READING
Brach, Tara. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the
Heart of a Buddha. New York: Bantam, 2003.

——— . Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and

Your World with the Practice of RAIN. New York: Viking, 2019.

Dharma Seed. www.dharmaseed.org.

51
Try the Power 7
of Yin Yoga
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Y
in Yoga is a passive style of yoga
with a simple structure that creates
space to practice mindfulness more
easily than in an active style of
yoga. It uses gentle stretches and
long exhales to activate your body’s
relaxation response and help you
think more clearly. The practice in this
lesson combines Yin Yoga poses with
the soothing elements of a loving-
kindness meditation.

52
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

Active versus Passive Yoga Styles

^ Traditionally, the main emphasis of yoga was meditation and breathwork,

not asana, or doing postures. Historical practices focused on teaching
students how to pay attention and think differently.

^ Active, or posture-based, yoga, also known as hatha yoga, really didn’t gain
widespread interest in India or in the United States until the 1920s and
1930s. Hatha yoga emphasizes the overall health of the body and the idea
that if your body is healthy, your thinking is clearer.

^ Yin Yoga is a modern style of yoga, becoming popular only in the last
30 years or so. It is a passive style of yoga meant to improve flexibility
and increase circulation in your joints by targeting constriction in the
connective tissue of the body. Connective tissue refers to, essentially,
everything other than your muscles. As you age, this tissue can become
brittle, dry, and restricted. But a gentle, prolonged stress on the tissue can
help bring back the moisture and suppleness that it once had. This is why
you hold the poses longer than in a more active style of yoga.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the words yin and yang refer to

contrasting qualities: cold, passive, and slow (yin) versus hot, active,
and fast (yang). Connective tissue is considered the yin tissue in
the body because, compared to muscle, it’s dense and not very
flexible. Yin Yoga gets its name from its focus on the connective
tissue.

^ The breath pattern in Yin Yoga often emphasizes a long exhale, which
can help you to engage your parasympathetic nervous system and clear
your mind.

53
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

Autonomic Nervous System

^ The autonomic nervous system regulates our actions and reactions

unconsciously. It has two major divisions: the sympathetic and
parasympathetic systems. Your sympathetic nervous system is responsible
for the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when you are stressed by a
situation. It causes your body to tense up, your heart and blood pressure
to rise, and your mind to go on high alert. The parasympathetic nervous
system does just the opposite. It calms you down, lowers your heart rate
and blood pressure, and relaxes the body.

54
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

The goal of many meditative and calming exercises is to deactivate

the sympathetic nervous system, which responds to stress, and
activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which relaxes the
body. To overcome overthinking, engaging the parasympathetic
nervous system is very helpful.

^ Inhaling and then exhaling more slowly than you inhaled also increases
your heart rate variability, which represents the healthy fluctuation in beat-
to-beat intervals of the heart. During inhalation, there’s a brief acceleration
of heart rate, and during exhalation, there’s a deceleration. Greater heart
rate variability is associated with lower overall stress levels, better health,
and improved cognition, and for our purposes, better decision-making and
an ability to think more clearly.

^ In addition to breathing, timing is also important. Postures are held

for a long time, and they demand little attention or effort. This creates
an excellent opportunity to practice paying attention to your thoughts
differently. And since the structure of the practice leads to an increase in
clear-mindedness, this is the perfect arena to practice mindfulness.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

^ One of the most traditional and effective ways of developing a more

compassionate presence in meditation is with mettā, or loving-kindness.
Loving-kindness can be described as extending friendship, compassion,
warmth, or just good wishes to ourselves and others. Words or phrases that
express kind wishes are silently repeated internally, first toward yourself
and then to others.

^ A typical meditation might include the following phrases:

V May you feel happy and content.
V May you feel safe.
V May you be healthy and strong.
V May you live with ease.

55
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

^ In the Yin Yoga practice that follows, you’ll direct loving-kindness

phrases toward yourself. You don’t have to try to feel any particular
way, and you can change the phrases to whatever feels right for you.
The practice is putting your attention behind each phrase as you repeat
it internally.

Yin Yoga Practice

SITTING ON A BLOCK
‘ Come to a kneeling position, place a block underneath
you, and sit back on the block. If this bothers your knees,
you can sit cross-legged on the block or on the edge of
a chair.
‘ As you exhale, feel
yourself sitting. Feel your
sit bones and your pubic
bones settling down on
the block. Each time you
exhale, feel how gravity
naturally helps your
muscles release. It’s just
a slight shift with every
breath. This shifting
sensation is Yin Yoga.

56
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

BANANA POSE
‘ Lie down on your back, bend your knees, and bring your
feet to the floor. Shift your hips about an inch to the left.
Reach your legs out to the lower right corner of your mat
and shift your upper torso slightly to the right. Cross
one ankle over the other and reach your arms overhead,
grabbing your left wrist with your right hand.
‘ The appropriate stress or stretch level in Yin Yoga is
moderate, meaning the sensations you feel should not
be too intense or too effortless. If this pose feels too
intense, you can ease your side bend by moving your
hips a little further to the right.
‘ Exhale and settle your weight toward the floor. Allow
gravity to take over.
‘ To come out of this side, uncross your ankles, bend your
knees, and bring your feet back to the floor. Center your
shoulders and your hips. Just pause. Let your sacrum
settle on the floor. Feel for extending your exhale a little
bit longer.
‘ Repeat the pose on the opposite side. When you come
out of the pose, feel the shift on your exhale.

57
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

When doing a Yin Yoga practice, keep the stretch or stress

sensation level in the moderate range—a 5 or 6 on a scale
of 1 to 10. If you feel an intense sensation, adjust your pose;
otherwise, your muscular system and your sympathetic
nervous system will turn on and take over to protect your joints.

ADDING METTĀ PHRASES

‘ As you hold the poses, this is where you can practice
mindfulness, repeating each of the mettā phrases three
times silently to yourself.
‘ May I be happy and content.
‘ May I be safe.
‘ May I be healthy and strong.
‘ May I live with ease.

SPHINX POSE
‘ Roll to one side and then shift so that you’re lying on
your belly.
‘ Bring your elbows under your shoulders and the palms
of your hands together. You can let your shoulders hike
up and the rib cage fall slightly forward. It's OK to keep
the head up or relax the neck. You can close your eyes or
find a spot on the floor to focus your eyes on.

58
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

‘ Exhale and release any tension in the buttocks or the

back of the legs. It's OK to feel compression in your spine
as you relax, but if you feel anything sharp, shooting, or
electrical, bring your elbows out to either side and bring
your forehead down to your hands.
‘ Say each of the mettā phrases three times silently to
yourself.
‘ May I be happy and content.
‘ May I feel safe.
‘ May I feel healthy and strong.
‘ May I live with ease.
‘ To come out of the pose, bring your elbows out to either
side and your forehead down to your hands. Take a few
breaths into your belly, allowing your back to release.
Bring your hands under your shoulders and push back to
hands and knees.

59
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

SLEEPING SWAN POSE

‘ In more active, or yang, styles of yoga, this pose is more
commonly known as pigeon. Start by exhaling. Bring
your right shin to the floor between your hands, and then
walk your left foot back until you can settle toward the
ground. If your hips are far up off the floor, you can slide
a blanket under your right hip.
‘ Exhale and bend forward over the front leg.
‘ If you’re feeling this shape in your front knee, try moving
that knee closer to the midline of your mat. You can also
try sitting on the right hip and bending forward toward
your right shin. It’s OK if the back leg bends.
‘ Exhale and release with gravity toward the floor. If you’ve
found a shape that feels OK for your knees, stay there. If
not, another option is the eye of the needle pose.

60
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

EYE OF THE NEEDLE POSE

‘ Lie down on your back. Cross your right ankle over the
end of the left thigh.
‘ Exhale and pick up your left foot. Reach your arms
around the left shin, hugging the legs toward your chest.
‘ Once you’ve found the pose that works for you, choose
one of the mettā phrases that resonates with you most:
‘ May I be happy and content.
‘ May I feel safe.
‘ May I be healthy and strong.
‘ May I live with ease.
‘ Bring your awareness to the feeling of settling on the
exhale. When you notice your mind attending to anything
other than settling on the exhale, repeat to yourself
internally the phrase that you chose.
‘ To come out of the pose, push into your hands and shift
the hips back. Move back to hands and knees.
‘ Repeat the
sleeping swan
pose—or the eye
of the needle
pose—on the
opposite side
using the same
mettā phrase or
a new one.

61
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

RECLINING TWIST POSE

‘ Come onto your back and roll over to your right side.
Bring your knees toward your chest. Roll the left side of
your upper back to the floor and bring your left hand to
your rib cage.
‘ Feel the sensation of settling on the exhale. When you
notice your mind attending to anything other than
settling feeling, repeat a mettā phrase to yourself. If you
have further to go, you can reach your left arm out to
the left.
‘ To come out of the pose, roll over to your right side and
pause there. Allow your spine to settle on the side.
‘ Repeat the twist on the opposite side.

62
 7. Try the Power of Yin Yoga

FINAL RELAXATION POSE

‘ Come onto your back and center your hips in line with
your shoulders. Straighten through your legs and reach
your arms out to either side, palms up. In this final
relaxation, focus on your exhale. Feel for how it allows
you to settle toward the floor.
‘ Take a deep breath and notice the quietness of
your mind.
‘ Bend your knees, roll to one side, and make your way
up to a seated position. Feel your internal environment
now that your body and mind have worked together in a
practice combining yoga and meditation.

READING
Salzberg, Sharon. Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of
Happiness. Boulder: Shambhala, 2003.

Sormaz, Heidi. “Heidi Sormaz Channel.” Mat2Mat. https://

mat2mat.com/channels/heidisormaz/.

——— . Yoga for a Healthy Mind and Body. Chantilly: The Great
Courses, 2014.

Summers, Josh. Personal website. https://joshsummers.net/.

63
Name and 8
Tame Your
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Emotions

E
 otions such as anger, fear, and
m
anxiety can be easily confused, but
being able to distinguish between
them can affect how you respond to
a situation. Recognizing what you’re
feeling is key to emotional regulation,
and being able to differentiate
emotions is related to better overall
coping skills. In this lesson, you’ll
practice several tools and techniques,
including affective labeling, a body
scan, and positive self-talk, that can
help you diagnose and regulate your
emotions more effectively as well as
alleviate emotional distress.

64
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

Negativity Bias

^ People tend to experience positive emotions more frequently than negative

ones, but the negative ones receive more of our attention and have a greater
impact. Think of the last time you did anything in a large group. You’re
more likely to remember one awkward moment you had than all the positive
exchanges that occurred. This is the negativity bias at work. Negative
emotions are more memorable—they feel more salient. Our brains are
wired to have this bias toward things that are unusual or negative, and that’s
because we want to avoid pain and problems in the future.

^ If the thought of looking more closely at your emotions seems like an

unpleasant thing to do, remember that most people think that way. It’s
the human condition. Also remember that the way to change the habit of
overthinking is by moving toward thoughts and emotions instead of away.

Mood Meter

^ The Mood Meter is a chart that’s used in a program called the RULER
method, developed by Dr. Marc Brackett at Yale University, to teach
emotional intelligence skills in schools and organizations. This chart can
help you identify what you’re actually feeling. It helps you recognize not
only your emotions but also the energy and felt sense behind them. When
you practice this recognition, you get better at noticing the changes in
thought, energy, or body sensation that occur with particular emotions.

^ The Mood Meter plots two characteristics or dimensions of emotion:

energy and pleasantness. The yellow quadrant reflects high pleasantness
and high energy. This translates to emotions like happiness, excitement,
and optimism. The red quadrant, on the other hand, contains emotions
that are low in pleasantness and high in energy. It contains anger, anxiety,
and frustration but also assertiveness and competitiveness.

65
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

RULER METHOD
‘ RULER stands for the skills associated with emotional
intelligence:

‘ Recognizing emotions in oneself and others

‘ Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
‘ Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary
‘ Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and
social context
‘ Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

Source: https://www.rulerapproach.org/about/what-is-ruler/

^ The blue quadrant is low pleasantness and low energy. This translates to
feelings such as sadness and apathy but also empathy and concern. Finally,
the green quadrant is high pleasantness and low energy. This includes
feeling peaceful, calm, content, or relaxed. Throughout this course, we’ve
been using exercises to try to shift ourselves into the green quadrant.

66
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

^ The line between the quadrants can move from person to person. For
example, for some personalities, feeling sleepy, quiet, or calm can be
relaxing and pleasant, but for others it can feel boring and lazy. When
you can tease out what you’re feeling, it can be easier to allow yourself to
experience the full range of emotions.

^ Recognizing what you’re feeling is key to emotional regulation. Emotional

regulation is not about not feeling or having tight control over what you
feel, and it’s not about banishing negative feelings and feeling only the
positive ones. Emotional regulation starts with giving yourself permission
to feel all of your feelings and then choosing how you’ll respond.

Affective Labeling

^ Experiments have shown that using words to describe feelings, referred

to as affective labeling, can moderate emotional experience, help alleviate
emotional distress, and lessen pain. Affective labeling is linked to lower
activation in the amygdala—the part of the brain that’s turned on when
we feel negative emotions—and higher activation in the right ventrolateral
prefrontal cortex, which supports emotional regulation. Affective labeling
disrupts the emotional responses in the limbic system.

^ But how good are we at diagnosing our high-energy, unpleasant feelings?

Accurately labeling what we are feeling is not as easy as it sounds.
Practicing labeling emotion may also help us more easily differentiate
between emotional states. For example, it can help us know when we are
feeling anger instead of fear.

^ Emotional granularity is a term used to describe the ability to put feelings

into words with a high degree of complexity. There are individual differences
in how people verbally report their affective experiences. High granularity is
associated with better coping. It predicts less panic when under stress and an
increased ability to find positive meaning in negative experiences.

67
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

BODY SCAN
‘ To better recognize emotions and provide higher granularity
when describing them, you can return to objectification
practice, which means stepping back and recognizing each
element of an experience as an object in your internal
environment.
‘ The body scan is a mindfulness technique you can use to shift
from being in your head to settling into a felt sense. From
there, you’ll be better able to identify and give a label to any
emotion that may arise.

‘ Sit on the edge of your chair with your feet flat on the floor.
Lengthen up through your spine and bring your hands to
your thighs. Bring your awareness to the sensation of your
feet touching the floor.
‘ Notice any heat, coolness, or pressure. You don’t have to
change or fix anything. If your mind wanders off, redirect
your attention to a different area.
‘ Notice any sensation on the top of your feet, your inner
ankles, and your outer ankles. Notice the sensation of
clothing against your skin.
‘ Bring your awareness to the lower leg. Notice any sensation
in your shins, calves, kneecaps, and the back of your knees.
‘ Bring your awareness to the upper leg, the quads in the
front, and the hamstrings in the back. Notice the sensation
of your legs against the chair.
‘ Bring your awareness to your pelvis, hips, and buttocks.
Notice the clothing against your skin.
‘ Bring your awareness to the front of the torso, the lower
belly, the front of the rib cage, and the chest. Notice any
sensations and any movement happening with the breath.
‘ Bring your awareness to the back of the torso, the low
back, the rib cage in the back, and the shoulder blades on
the back.

68
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

‘ Bring your awareness to the arms—the upper arms, the

lower arms, the inner arms, and the outer arms. Feel your
hands—the palms, the backs of the hands, and each finger
individually.
‘ Bring your awareness to the neck and the jaw. Feel your lips,
cheeks, cheekbones, nose, bridge of the nose, eyes and eye
sockets, forehead, and your ears. Feel your skull bones and
the whole head.
‘ Feel all the sensations in your whole body all at once. Listen
for a few minutes.

LABELING EMOTION
‘ In this practice, you’ll feel into your experience and give it an
emotion label. Use the Mood Meter to help you choose a label.
If you don’t know what emotion you’re having, don’t know is an
option.
‘ At first, it may feel like you’re labeling retrospectively. In other
words, you feel something, check the chart, and then as you
give the label, that feeling may already be in the past. That’s
OK; it will still help build your practice.

‘ Take a breath and lengthen up through your spine.

‘ Take another breath, feeling the sensation of your breath.
‘ If you get lost in thinking, the sensation of the breath in the
body is a good anchor to return to.
‘ You don’t need to label every emotion you have. Simply
check in, notice, and label at a pace that doesn’t create
anxiety.
‘ Do this for a few more minutes. No matter how far away
your mind wanders, you can always begin again by
anchoring to the sensation of the breath.
‘ Slowly open your eyes and drop the labeling.

69
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

POSITIVE SELF-TALK
‘ Self-soothing is another tool you can use to regulate
emotions by deliberately choosing how you talk to
yourself. Everyone engages in self-talk from time to time.
Often this kind of talk is critical, telling us what’s wrong
and what we should be worried about. But self-criticism
activates the sympathetic nervous system and elevates
the stress hormones. Compassionate or positive self-talk
triggers the parasympathetic system and the hormones
of affiliation and love.
‘ Speaking to yourself in the third person, as though you’re
talking to someone else, can be a very effective way
of self-soothing. It helps you get a bit of psychological
distance from your own experiences, which can be
extremely useful for regulating emotions.
‘ To begin building this practice, add third person positive
self-talk to your emotion labeling technique. Respond
to your internal environment with self-compassionate
phrases, such as it’s OK or good job. Use a voice that
feels soothing to you.

‘ Begin by sitting in a way so that you can lengthen

up through your spine. Take a breath and feel the
sensation of your breath. If your mind wanders off,
return to the sensation of the breath as an anchor.
‘ Label the emotion. Use the Mood Meter for help if
you need it, and remember that don’t know is also an
option.
‘ Respond with third person compassionate self-talk if
necessary. If your mind wanders off, begin again with
the anchor of the breath.
‘ Continue for about three minutes.

70
 8. Name and Tame Your Emotions

READING
Brackett, Marc. Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of
Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive.
New York: Celadon, 2019.

71
Express 9
Gratitude
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

to Change
Your Thinking

W
 en you’re in the throes of
h
overthinking, gratitude might be
the furthest thing from your busy
mind. But a gratitude practice can
help you think differently by shifting
your attention and changing your
perspective. This lesson explores
the benefits of gratitude and how
you can generate it by recognizing
gifts, counting your blessings, and
reflecting on or reappraising past
events.

72
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

Analysis Paralysis

^ Analysis paralysis is when you think and think and think and end up
doing nothing because you can’t decide on a solution or a course of action.
It’s the quest for an answer to an unanswerable question.

^ Often, what’s happening here is that you’re looking for the perfect solution.
But it doesn’t exist, so you’ve created an impossible goal. And control
theory tells us that when the goal is impossible or out of our control, this
leads to a lot of spinning thoughts with no actual solution.

^ Another factor is anxiety. Decisions have risks and uncertainty associated

with them, and the bigger the decision, the more risk involved, and the
more likely you are to worry. Considering the pros and cons of a decision
is important and normal, but the anxiety created by attempting to make
the decision can lead to avoidance. So, you need to be able to create an
internal environment where you can think productively about a decision or
problem without getting paralyzed by that thinking. A gratitude practice is
a great tool to help you create that space.

Benefits of Gratitude

^ Scientific study has shown that gratitude can change a person’s physiology,
mood, and thinking. Psychologists find that feeling grateful boosts
happiness and increases both physical and psychological well-being, even
among those struggling with mental health problems. It can also help
you be more open-minded and flexible, allowing you to interpret stressful
experiences differently.

^ So, what is gratitude? Gratitude is an attitude of thankfulness for the

benefits you’ve received. It involves noticing the value and meaning of
something and feeling a positive emotional connection to it. This isn’t just
a subjective experience—research has been uncovering the remarkable
neurochemistry of gratitude.

73
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

Gratitude and Your Brain

^ Actively practicing gratitude enhances the levels of dopamine and

serotonin—the neurotransmitters responsible for happiness—in your
brain. They increase positive affect and decrease negative affect, anxiety,
and depressive symptoms. There’s even an increase in the neuromodulation
of the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for managing
negative emotions, so you’re better able to cope with those emotions.
Gratitude also leads to a marked reduction in the stress hormone cortisol,
which is associated with fear and anxiety.

^ Brain scans of people assigned a task that stimulates the expression of

gratitude show lasting changes in the prefrontal cortex. Specifically, greater
neural sensitivity in the prefrontal cortex, which is also associated with
learning and decision-making, was found in those who actively practiced
gratitude in a controlled study versus those who didn’t. And months later,
those brain changes were still there.

^ Gratitude practice also activates the hypothalamus, which regulates sleep,

and studies have shown that being grateful and thinking positively are
strongly associated with longer and better-quality sleep at night.

Gratitude and Thinking

^ Studies show that practicing gratitude shifts an individual’s attention away

from negative emotions like resentment and envy, reducing the possibility
of obsessively thinking about negative things. One study examined the
effect of gratitude on the intrusiveness of unresolved, unpleasant memories.
Its findings suggest that if there’s something you commonly overthink
about, you can help yourself find closure by deliberately considering the
consequences of the event that you are grateful for.

^ Gratitude enhances your ability to take a broader perspective on the

problem or situation. In grateful reappraisal—the deliberate reconsideration

74
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

of a past event—you’re not negating the original event. You’re simply

adding more elements to your perspective, allowing yourself to see it from a
different angle.

^ Gratitude has also been shown to counteract depressive rumination.

Rumination is the most common cognitive characteristic of depression.
It’s one of the worst types of overthinking—stewing. Because rumination
occurs frequently, unintentionally, and repetitively in the same emotional
context of a low or depressed mood, it becomes an ingrained habit.
Psychological response styles theory describes this type of depressed
rumination as a style of responding that eventually becomes a trait of an
individual, an automatic response to the conditioned stimulus of being in a
low mood or depressed state.

^ But practicing gratitude can reduce depressive rumination by removing the

mood that kicks it into gear. The brain can’t focus on positive and negative
information at the same time, so by consciously practicing gratitude, you
can train the brain to selectively focus on positive emotions and thoughts,
which reduces feelings of anxiety and depression. This is the opposite of
the negative emotional cascade.

Generating Gratitude

^ To generate gratitude means to see and appreciate the gifts in your life.
This can be achieved by recognizing any of the following four elements:
the gift itself, the goodness of the gift, the goodness of the giver, or the
gratuitousness of the gift.

^ Recognizing the gift has two components: realizing that you’ve received
something and realizing that it came from an external source. The first
component is important because most gifts go unnoticed; we easily become
habituated to the simple things that we’re given all the time. The second
component is especially effective when you are considering something
that you were partially responsible for. By broadening your awareness, you
realize that your success includes contributions from outside of yourself.

75
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

^ Recognizing the goodness of the gift centers around the perceived value
of the gift. It’s not about the objective value but rather the elements of the
situation that make the gift special.

^ Recognizing the goodness of the giver includes acknowledging the

benevolent intentions of the giver and that what was given to you came at
a cost to the giver. When something is given freely, it’s likely to engender
gratitude. But if you believe the gift was required or that it was given
through manipulation, this generally doesn’t lead to gratitude.

^ Recognizing the gratuitousness of the gift means that you feel more
grateful when the gift is not strictly necessary. For example, you might feel
more grateful when you receive a gift for no special reason as opposed to
receiving one on a holiday.

^ You can deliberately incorporate these elements that increase gratitude

into formal gratitude practices such as counting your blessings, grateful
reflection, and grateful reappraisal.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

‘ Often done as a journaling exercise, this practice involves
listing things that you’re grateful for. An easy place to start is
the alphabet list, where you go through each letter and name
one thing you’re grateful for. You can also use prompts like the
ones below to guide your writing:

‘ What are three personality traits that you are grateful for in
others?
‘ What is one aspect of your life that you don’t always
take time to appreciate but that you are actually very
grateful for?
‘ Write about one person you are especially grateful for.

‘ As you do these practices, take note of the small and large

things that you’re grateful for. Recognizing the small things
helps you see the goodness of gifts that you might overlook
every day.

76
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

GRATEFUL REFLECTION
‘ This practice involves recalling memories, moments,
events, or people from the past that evoked gratitude.
Essentially, you strive to re-experience the event as
vividly as possible. What’s extremely useful in reflection
exercises is the felt sense of gratitude that comes
along with the memory. If you’re just listing things and
not paying much attention, sometimes it can feel like a
problem-solving exercise. But when you recall a moment
where you’ve felt extremely grateful in the past, you have
the opportunity to re-experience the feeling.

GRATEFUL REAPPRAISAL
‘ In this practice, you find a new way to view a past event
that includes the consequences you feel grateful for. You
can also reappraise something that’s right in front of you
by looking around and creating a feeling of gratitude for
something in your immediate environment.

GRATITUDE EXERCISE
‘ Take out a piece of paper and pen. Think about and write
down a decision or choice you need to make, or one that
you just made that you’re feeling uncertain about. Recall
that choice or decision and take a moment to remember
where you are with it. Think about the pros, the cons, and
how it makes you feel. Take one minute to write.

77
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

‘ Skip down on the page so that you are no longer looking

at the issue. The first exercise will be to count your
blessings. Think back over the past week and write down
three small things in your life that you’re grateful or
thankful for. With each item you generate, notice how you
might feel if you didn’t have that gift. What might it have
cost someone else, and what exactly needed to come
together so that you could receive that gift? Consider
how the gift is beyond what you needed or expected.
Take three minutes to write.
‘ Next, take one minute to recall an event from the past
that you’re grateful for. Close your eyes and re-experience
the event as vividly as possible, revisiting how you
originally felt.
‘ Now, take one minute to reflect on a person, an animal,
or an environment that you’re grateful for. Consider all
the ways that you are grateful for it.
‘ Finally, recall that decision or issue that you began with.
Set it in front of you like you’re watching it on a movie
screen. When you consider it now, how has gratitude
changed your perception of that situation? Do you have
new, important information about it? Do you have an idea
for the next right action you might take? Take a minute to
write it down.
‘ Hopefully, cultivating gratitude allowed you to see the
situation in a broader context, to shift your perspective
at least a little, to see a new solution, or to feel more
confident in the decision you made or are going to make.

78
 9. Express Gratitude to Change Your Thinking

READING
Godkin, Sophia. The 5-Minute Gratitude Journal: Give Thanks,
Practice Positivity, Find Joy. Emeryville: Rockridge, 2020.

Lyubomirsky, Sonya. The How of Happiness: A Scientific

Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York:
Penguin, 2008.

79
Think Clearly 10
with Cognitive
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Restructuring

C
 gnitive restructuring is way to
o
change your thoughts by thinking
differently about them—a deliberate
reappraisal. It has been shown to be
effective in treating general anxiety,
social anxiety, depression, addictions,
relationship issues, and post-
traumatic stress. This lecture explains
how it works and guides you through
the steps of creating a thought
record, which can help you substitute
distorted ideas and problematic
thought patterns with more adaptive
beliefs about yourself, the world, and
the future.

80
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive Restructuring

^ Cognitive restructuring has been at the heart of cognitive therapies since

the 1980s. The term refers to a process of challenging our thoughts. It isn’t
a single technique. There are many ways to approach restructuring.

^ Cognitive therapy is typically collaborative. A therapist and client work

together to identify thought patterns that are contributing to the problem
and then practice techniques to reshape them. For this course, we’ll adapt
the approach by writing everything down, which will help you to create a
view of your thoughts that’s different, and hopefully clearer, from the one
inside your head.

^ So, how do you deconstruct unhelpful thoughts and rebuild them in a

more balanced and accurate way? First, you check the facts. You need
to become a detective and gather evidence for and against the thoughts,
questioning the assumptions that you’ve made.

^ Next, you create a more adaptive belief based on the evidence. The first
hurdle is to remember that just because you think it, that doesn’t make
it true.

Check the Facts

^ Sometimes your gut feeling is correct. But sometimes it’s not, and your
emotional reactions can lead you to errors, making you believe things
that aren’t true. You may also be thinking in ineffective ways such as in
absolutes, or assuming a threat, or predicting a catastrophe. Checking the
facts doesn’t get rid of the emotion, but it can keep the downward spiral
from progressing.

^ It’s important to remember that feelings aren’t facts. When we treat

them like they are, this can create overthinking. Sometimes we use our
emotions as evidence for what we believe to be true. For example, imposter
syndrome—where you feel like you’re not good enough for the position

81
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

you have or doubt your skills and talents—can be falsely validated in your
mind because you take your feelings of fear and insecurity as proof that
you are not as competent as people think you are.

^ Our interpretations can also lead us to error. Temporary moods can

influence our interpretation of events. Because most of us are so used
to believing our interpretations as truth, it’s important to recognize the
difference between a fact and an interpretation. Consider these examples:

V You hear a creaking sound in the middle of the night. This is a fact. You
think someone is trying to break in. This is an interpretation.

V You find out that a person made plans without you. This is a fact. You
decide that the person no longer wants to spend time you. This is an
interpretation.

V You drop the ball in a game. This is a fact. You think you are a loser.
This is an interpretation.

^ When interpretations change, emotions change, and overthinking can be

avoided. Cognitive restructuring can help you broaden your perspective by
moving beyond the habitual ways in which you think.

Common Cognitive Errors

^ There are common errors of thinking that underlie faulty interpretations.

In the examples that follow, be on the lookout for ones that resonate with
you. By becoming aware of your tendencies, you’ll be more easily able to
counter them with an adaptive thought.

V Polarization: This is all-or-nothing thinking. This is when you are

thinking in absolute terms or extremes. The words always and never
might tip you off to this type of error. When you’re lost in all-or-
nothing thinking, you’re missing the complexity of the situation, and
there are always shades of gray in every situation. It can become an easy

82
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

downward spiral if you start dwelling on only one side of the evidence,
the negative side. An adaptive way of thinking is considering the shades
of gray and other possibilities.

V Catastrophizing: This is jumping to the worst-case scenario or the

worst possible conclusion. This is very often the beginning of excessive
worrying. It’s a projection into the future of a very negative possible
outcome. The way out is to consider the evidence for and against that
outcome. Typically, there is very little evidence for the worst-case
scenario. An adaptive thought would be to recognize that we can’t
predict the future and that it’s as likely to be positive as negative.

V Overgeneralizing: This is predicting the outcome of something

based on just one instance. The way out of this cognitive distortion
is to recognize that only one instance has occurred, and one instance
doesn’t predict the future outcome of all similar events. It’s also good to
consider other occasions where you overgeneralized but then a different
outcome occurred. It’s adaptive to ask, “How could I test this belief?
What would be a real-life experiment?”

V Personalizing: This is when you entirely blame yourself or someone

else for a situation that involved many factors and/or was out of your
control. The way out is to create an adaptive thought by gathering
evidence for what you are and are not responsible for and what is and is
not under your control.

V Mind reading: This is assuming you know what someone else is

thinking without having much to go on. In reality, you don’t know
what other people think. It can be difficult to separate out empathy,
which is understanding and relating to what other people are feeling,
from knowing what they’re thinking. The remedy here is to list the
evidence for and against the claim, and then you can decide based on
all the evidence.

^ Now that you know a little bit about what to be on the lookout for, you
can examine your own thoughts for errors by creating a thought record.

83
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

THOUGHT RECORD
‘ This is a chart that you can create for any belief that’s causing
distress or overthinking. It will help you search for errors,
generate evidence, and design more adaptive thoughts and
beliefs.
‘ On a fresh document, create six columns with the following
headings:

‘ Situation
‘ Thoughts
‘ Emotions
‘ Evidence For
‘ Evidence Against
‘ Adaptive Thought

‘ In the first column, describe a situation that led to unwanted

overthinking. It can be something external to you or an internal
event, like an emotion, or a series of thoughts you’ve been
having. Write down only the facts of the situation—what,
where, how, and who—without interpretation or emotional
language. This can take some practice because we often
describe situations in judgmental language. But doing that isn’t
effective because it can create a strong emotional reaction.
‘ In the second column, write down the thoughts you had about
the situation. This can be interpretation or opinion, whatever
comes up for you. Write what you were thinking, even if you
think or know now that those thoughts might not be true.
‘ In the third column, write a single word or a brief description
of a feeling that you had while you were thinking through the
situation. If your feelings changed throughout the experience,
describe that. You may want to go back to the Mood Meter that
we used when we practiced labeling emotions (page 65).
‘ In the fourth column, fill in any factual evidence you have that
supports the accuracy of the thoughts you had.
‘ In the fifth column, fill in any factual evidence you have that
goes against the accuracy of your thoughts.

84
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

‘ In the sixth and final column, answer the following questions.

The goal isn’t to be overly positive here. You just want to be fair
and rational given the facts of the situation.

‘ What’s a different thought you could have?

‘ What other ways might this information be interpreted?
‘ What are other possibilities?

‘ Sometimes, the more adaptive thought can be a challenge

to come to on your own. This is the very reason why thinking
becomes overthinking. Your habitual thinking isn’t helping you
because it’s full of errors. If you couldn’t create an adaptive
thought for this situation yet, you can try two things:

‘ First, consider the evidence-gathering stage more deeply.

This is often where we find ourselves believing things that
aren’t true.
‘ Second, as you move through the columns on the chart,
take a third-party or observer stance and pretend that the
situation isn’t yours. Pretend instead that it happened to
your close friend.

‘ Now, look at your chart. Check your thoughts. Did they contain
any of the common errors? When you put yourself in the shoes
of an objective third party, do you want to change anything in
your evidence or adaptive statement?
‘ Paying close attention to your thoughts can feel cumbersome
at first, but take in how you feel when you reach your adaptive
thought. This, in and of itself, might be the reason to come
back to the thought record. You may begin to see patterns of
thought distortion that you tend to use. When you can more
easily identify your habits of thought that lead to overthinking,
you’ll get better at catching them and changing them on
the spot. Instead of overthinking, you will end up thinking
effectively.

85
 10. Think Clearly with Cognitive Restructuring

A good rule of thumb with any of the techniques you’ve learned,

including cognitive restructuring, is: If it gets worse the harder you
try, then that technique is making you overthink more, not less, and
it’s time to try something else.

READING
Dobson, Keith, Pamela Hays, and Amy Wenzel. Cognitive
Restructuring of Automatic Thoughts. Washington DC:
American Psychological Association, 2015.

86
Solve Problems 11
More Effectively
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

I
f you’re focusing on a problem without
working toward a solution, you’re
overthinking, and you’re stuck. Your
thinking narrows, your stress increases,
and your ability to solve the problem
diminishes. When this happens, it’s time
to channel your mental energies into
more productive areas. This lesson guides
you through a strategy for problem-
solving and explains how the DEAR MAN
approach can make your communication
with others more effective.

87
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

Formula for Problem-Solving

^ When you’re problem-solving effectively, you’re actively looking for and

focusing on solutions. You’re figuring out specific actions you can take,
strategies you can employ, and skills you can sharpen that will help you
reach a goal. Actual problem-solving decreases stress because it gives you
confidence that your problems are solvable.

^ For this exercise, you’ll write out your thinking. This will help you to
create a view of your thoughts that’s different from the one inside your
head. The steps outlined here are meant to help you break down the
problem into what’s possible to solve and what’s not, one step at a time.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE SITUATION

^ Take a moment to consider a current issue in your life that you feel
uncomfortable about, one that might cause you to overthink and that you
would like to solve.
^ Ask yourself, “What’s the problem that’s prompting my overthinking?” For
now, don’t edit, just write out the problem as it comes to you.

STEP 2: CHECK THE FACTS

^ This step helps you determine if you’ve identified the right problem. Ask,
“What makes this situation a problem?” This can be broken down into two
sections, “What is problematic about the situation?” and “What are the
obstacles to solving the problem?”

^ Go a little deeper to make sure that what you’ve written is truly only
description and fact. Just like in cognitive restructuring, you need to
question what you’ve described and see if adjustment is needed. Look for
extremes. Have you exaggerated anything or used absolutes like always or
never? Take a moment to look at your problem and adjust if necessary.

^ Look for interpretations and assumptions. List as many as you can think
of, including those that challenge your understanding of the problem.

88
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

^ Check your description for perceived threats. Are you assuming there’s a
threat? If so, what’s the worst-case scenario if the imagined outcome does
occur? Follow this up with ways you might cope if it did occur.

^ Ask yourself, “Does my emotion fit the facts?”

^ Now, look back through your answers. After checking the facts, write out a
revised problem to be solved.

STEP 3: IDENTIFY GOALS

^ The next step is to identify a realistic short-term goal that would help you
solve the problem. To do that, figure out what must happen for you to
feel like you’ve made progress toward your goal. List as many solutions
and coping strategies as you can think of. Don’t edit or evaluate, just write
down what comes to mind.

^ Take five minutes to brainstorm as many different short-term goals as you

can. If you find yourself judging your goals or analyzing their practicality,
leave that commentary out.

^ Choose two goals that look the best, that will move you in the direction of
solving your problem. Write them at the top of a new sheet of paper, one
on the front and one on the back.

^ For each goal, make a list of the pros and cons. Review your lists and
choose one short-term goal to implement.

STEP 4: IDENTIFY NEXT STEPS

^ Create doable-sized steps you can take to move forward toward the
solution to your problem. They may seem obvious, but don’t skip this part
of the problem-solving. One of the easiest ways to get overwhelmed and get
trapped in analysis paralysis and overthinking is when the goals or tasks
ahead of you haven’t been broken down into smaller, doable steps.

^ You might think you’re ready to put the solution into action, but a good
idea at this stage is to engage in visualization or an imaginative rehearsal
of you taking action. This can help you break down the steps further and
eliminate potential barriers.

89
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

^ You now have the first action you can take to solve your problem. Take a
moment to notice if you feel better about the problem than you did before.

PROGRESS CAN MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS

^ Effective problem-solving will take sustained effort, and once you’ve met
your first goal, the problem itself may appear different. And even if your
first effort doesn’t solve the whole problem completely, it will improve the
situation somewhat and help you lessen your overthinking about it.

^ In the exercise, you may not have even reached the goal stage. You may
have found that the problem was not what you thought it was, or that it
was not something under your control. This is still progress, and if the
problem is different than what you initially thought, you can begin this
process again from there. If you realized the problem is not under your
control, then you can use a different tool from this course.

Interpersonal Effectiveness

^ A major cause of overthinking is our relationships with others. We tend to

stew and ruminate over people who bother us, but we rarely translate that
thinking into action toward solutions.

^ Say, for example, your partner does not take out the trash when they’ve
said that they would, and this leads to arguments. The goal, as you see it, is
for your partner to take out the trash. But this is an impossible goal, even if
it is justified, because you can’t control another person’s actions.

^ What you can do in a situation like this is figure out what is and is not
under your control and what aspects, if any, you can change. For example,
you could request that the trash be taken out. You can control what you
ask for and your behavior. Sometimes this will be enough to help you feel
better about the problem. If nothing else, it can help you make decisions
about what to do next.

90
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

^ Interpersonal effectiveness requires communication. Asking for something

can feel especially challenging because the other person can always say no
or tell you something that you don’t want to hear. But making requests is
a necessary part of life, so knowing how to ask effectively is a valuable skill
to have.

DEAR MAN APPROACH

^ The DEAR MAN approach is a communication skill developed by
Dr. Marsha Linehan as a component of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or
DBT. DBT is an evidence-based treatment that focuses on helping people
build skills to navigate through the world in a way that’s less reactive
and more mindful. DEAR MAN is an acronym to help you remember a
strategy for more effective communication.

^ The D stands for “describe the current situation.” Stick to the facts
regarding what is happening between you and the other person without
ascribing motives or assumptions. Try to remove yourself from the
situation and speak as an impartial third party. By describing it factually,
you’re making sure that they understand the circumstances that have led to
your request.

^ The E stands for “express your feelings and opinions about the situation.”
Don’t assume that the other person knows how you feel. Use I-statements,
which show that you’re taking accountability for yourself and your feelings.
This can also help prevent the other person from getting defensive.

^ A stands for “assert yourself by asking for what you want or saying no
clearly.” It means be direct, not aggressive. You might think that what
you want is obvious, but the person you’re talking to may have no idea.
Or they may be unclear as to what specifically you’re asking. Use phrases
like I want or I would really like instead of you should, I don’t want, or
you shouldn’t.

^ At this point, the person may refuse the request, and one option is to
change the request to have the conversation at another time. This gives the
person time to think about it and gives you time to clarify what you want.

91
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

^ R stands for “reinforce or reward the person ahead of time” by explaining

the positive effects of getting what you want or need. If necessary,
also clarify the negative effects of not getting what you want or need.
This is not the place to make empty threats or attack the other person.
Relationships are built on reciprocity. If you can remind someone what’s in
it for them, it can help build the relationship.

^ M stands for “mindful.” Keep your focus on what you want in the present
time. Avoid distractions. Don’t get off topic. If the other person threatens,
attacks, or tries to change the subject, ignore the attempts to divert you.
Just keep making your point.

^ This also includes being mindful of what you’re feeling. If you get upset,
you may need to step away from the conversation to be able to maintain
your effectiveness.

^ The A stands for “appearing confident and effective.” Speak calmly and
clearly and make good eye contact. When you appear confident, it signals
that what you’re requesting isn’t unreasonable or difficult. It also makes
you seem like a harder person to turn down. Practice what you want to say
ahead of time, out loud.

^ N stands for “negotiate.” Be willing to give to get. Listen to the other

person. Remember, you’re asking, not demanding. The ideal outcome is
when both parties feel like they’ve won. You may need to alter your request
to make it more appealing to the other person. You can offer and ask for
other solutions. When you’re willing to negotiate, you’re showing the other
person that you care about them.

^ Note that negotiation is not where you start. Begin with a clear and direct
request by using the elements of DEAR MAN. Negotiation comes in if the
other person declines your request.

^ In the end, you may or may not get what you want. But knowing that
you’ve asked clearly and effectively for what you want can help you move
to your next course of action with an awareness that you did all that you
could do.

92
 11. Solve Problems More Effectively

READING
Galen, Gillian, and Blaise Aguirre. DBT for Dummies. New York:
Wiley, 2021.

McKay, Matthew, Jeffrey Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley. The

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical
DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal
Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation, and Distress Tolerance.
Oakland: New Harbinger, 2019.

93
Cultivate an 12
Upward Spiral
TABLE OF
CONTENTS

B
 cause your brain cannot focus on
e
positive and negative information at
the same time, when you interrupt
the downward spiral of overthinking,
you create space to generate an
upward spiral of positive emotion and
happiness. In this lesson, you’ll learn
one more practice to support the
process of redirecting your thinking.
You’ll also learn how to recognize each
stage of the downward spiral so that
you can choose the approach that will
be most effective.

94
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

Broadening Attention

^ Researchers at Stanford have shown that walking in a calm, natural

environment is an effective way to reduce rumination and negative self-
referential thinking. It helps you shift and broaden your attention to
encompass a vast space, which can change the content of your thoughts for
the better.

^ Many of the mindfulness practices in this course have had a broadening

element of observing thoughts through a wider lens. These practices
include objectification, third person positive self-talk, compassion, grateful
reappraisal, cognitive restructuring, and problem-solving.

^ When you broaden your attention and listen for something that you can’t
hear, your mind turns away from storytelling and becomes engaged in
listening. Broadening awareness has been shown to correspond with more
pleasant internal feelings and increased creativity as well as an ability to
solve problems more easily and in novel ways. It lessens overthinking.

BROADENING ATTENTION EXERCISE

‘ Sit in a way that you can lengthen up through your spine.
Close your eyes or soften your gaze in front of you. Feel
the sensation of your breath wherever you feel it most,
just to help you settle into this practice.
‘ Listen to the sounds in your immediate environment. As
you listen, you’ll notice your mind doing other things.
When this happens, just gently shift your attention back
to listening to the sounds around you. If you find your
mind labeling, analyzing, or judging the sounds, shift
back to simply listening.
‘ Feel yourself becoming open to the possibility of hearing
sounds all the way out to the end of your street. Be open
to the possibility that you might hear them even though
they’re far away.
95
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

‘ Now imagine the closest body of water to where you

are—a lake, a bay, the ocean—even if it’s very far away.
Listen for sounds of a ship on that body of water. Be open
to the possibility that you might hear the sounds on that
ship. You will hear other things. When you notice that
you’ve stopped listening for the sounds of the ship, just
begin again.
‘ Keep returning to this listening practice for the next few
minutes.
‘ Slowly shift your awareness to notice the sensation
of your breath. Take a moment to notice your internal
environment. Is there a quietness or a pleasant feeling?
‘ Open your eyes.

Downward versus Upward Spirals

^ Broadening attention is part of what can be called an upward spiral. By

now you’re familiar with the downward spiral—when overthinking and
negative emotion magnify each other in a cycle that gets worse over time.
You can interrupt this cascade by doing objectification practices and by
soothing the nervous system with yogic breathing, yoga asana, Yin Yoga,
positive self-talk, gratitude, and loving-kindness phrases.

^ These practices also increase positive affect; they simultaneously interrupt

the downward spiral and begin an upward spiral. Remember, your brain
can’t move in a positive and negative direction at the same time. When
positive emotion is generated, it can have an “undo” effect on anxiety
and fear.

96
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

^ The broaden-and-build theory posits that emotions are self-organizing

systems that operate to maximize and maintain themselves. In other
words, emotions are self-reinforcing. Positive emotions want you to stay
positive, while negative emotions want you to stay negative. They create
filters through which you see the world, and those filters maintain or
exaggerate the original emotion.

^ The downward spiral leads to constriction, a narrow focus of attention,

rumination, and stereotyped behavior and thought. The upward spiral
leads to broadening, openness to others, and openness to novel or
spontaneously exploratory activity. The more novel, pleasurable events
you engage in, the better you feel. Those positive events color future
experiences in part by making your thinking more flexible and increasing
your ability to reappraise your situation positively.

^ The traditional perspective on happiness approached it as something

passively experienced, something generated by factors beyond your control.
Modern perspectives, like the broaden-and-build theory of positive
emotion, suggest that positive emotions produce health and well-being.
Cognitive behavioral therapists have been working with these ideas for
decades. They know that the deliberate activation of positive feeling
predisposes individuals to experience more positive events, which can then
result in increased positive emotions and less overthinking. In the modern
view, then, happiness—and upward spirals—can also be something you
deliberately cultivate.

Choosing the Right Approach

^ Throughout the course, you’ve learned a variety of strategies for addressing

your overthinking and shifting yourself into an upward spiral. As you
begin to incorporate these tools into your life, keep in mind that some
approaches will be more effective than others, depending on the situation.
Before deciding which practice to use, identify where you are in terms of
thoughts and emotions. You can think of your experience as falling into
one of three stages: calm, pre-spiral, and overthinking.

97
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

CALM STAGE
^ Any of the practices in this course are appropriate for this stage—when you
are not overthinking. This is a good time to focus on daily maintenance or
sustained efforts to change your thinking.

^ A good strategy is to commit to a certain amount of time per day on a

regular basis whether you’re going through something challenging or not.
This is how you break an old habit and solidify your new way of thinking.
Start small and build. For example, try 5 minutes of gratitude practice four
times per week, and then gradually extend it to 10 minutes.

^ When you’re building a practice, it’s important to pause after practicing

and consciously take in the beneficial effects of your practice. How you
feel serves as positive reinforcement for the new way of thinking.

PRE-SPIRAL STAGE
^ In this stage, you begin to feel anxious or notice unwanted thoughts.
You don’t yet feel overwhelmed, but you recognize a situation that’s ripe
for overthinking. The goal here is to enhance your capacity to not do
the thing that makes the situation worse. That includes avoiding your
thoughts and/or engaging in ruminative thought that’s not helping you
attain a goal or take an action. As soon as you feel yourself doing this, it’s
time to act before you spiral into overthinking.

^ First, address your physiology physically. Get up and move, even if that
means just walking up and down the stairs. If possible, walk outside and
broaden your view, or engage in a physical practice like yoga to shift the
habit of your breath and attention.

^ Next, or if you don’t have the opportunity to move, address your

physiology through self-soothing. Use one of the mindfulness practices
that helps generate compassion, such as acceptance, third person positive
self-talk, loving-kindness meditation, gratitude, or broadening awareness
through listening.

98
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

^ Now that you’ve shifted your physiology, try to get more clarity on the
issue that’s threatening to move you into overthinking. This is also a good
time to deliberately change your thinking with cognitive restructuring or
problem-solving.

^ You can decide if problem-solving is the way to go by asking yourself two

questions. First: “Is there an actual problem motivating this thinking that
exists right now in the world around me?” If the answer is yes, then ask,
“Can I do something to change it now?” In other words, is reaching your
goal possible and under your control?

^ If the answer to one or both of these two questions is no, stop attempting
to solve the problem with your mind—it won’t help. Instead, redirect your
mind toward a self-soothing practice or try bringing the issue to cognitive
restructuring. If the answer to both questions is yes, continue with
problem-solving.

OVERTHINKING STAGE
^ First, attempt the suggestions for the pre-spiral stage as if overthinking is
not yet full-blown. You might be surprised at what you’re able to address
simply by approaching your thoughts instead of avoiding them now that
you’ve had some practice.

^ If that feels overwhelming, try active distraction to interrupt the cascade.

Engage in an activity that will purposefully take your mind somewhere
else until your thoughts calm. Use this approach only to get back to the
pre-spiral stage. Then be sure to engage in one of the mindfulness practices
you’ve learned; otherwise the distraction will serve only to reinforce the
habit of overthinking.

99
 12. Cultivate an Upward Spiral

Conclusion

^ Remember, overthinking is a habit, and habits require sustained and

constant effort to break and to keep them from reappearing. Changing
a pattern in your life that has had many causes and that’s been present
for a long time will require practice outside of the moments when you’re
experiencing overthinking. Recognize that you need to address it in
different ways, as often as possible.

^ Also remember that change is not a linear process. It’s more like a very
wavy line that gradually increases in small amounts over time. So, be
patient. And take time to notice the internal effects of your practice at
the end of a session. If you do this, you’ll be more likely to return to that
practice. Be careful not to judge your progress based on any one experience
with your new tools.

^ Congratulations, you’re on your way to the mind you’ve always wanted!

READING
CognicHealth. Behavioral Activation: A Daily Journal
for Mental Wellness—A Practical CBT Journal. Toronto:
CognicHealth, 2022.

Korb, Alex. The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse

the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time.
Oakland: New Harbinger, 2015.

100
Notes
Notes
Notes
Notes
Notes
Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2022

Images: cottonbro/Pexels; Getty Images

Printed in the United States of America

This book is in copyright. All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of
The Teaching Company.

4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 400

Chantilly, VA 20151‑2299
USA
1-800-832-2412