Keeping Your Balance on the Tightrope
Many clients come to therapy because they are fixated on either the past or the future. Their focus on what might happen in the future creates anxiety. What happened in the past colors their thoughts and limits their ability to be ‘in the moment’. This is where the practice of mindfulness, the ability to focus attention on what is happening in the present, is a valuable tool. I sometimes use the metaphor of putting one foot in front of the other to move across the room. The thing we need to work on is “the next right thing” or moving one foot at a time.
There is value in talking and exploring the past. We can learn how certain beliefs were formed and evaluate if those ideas may have been necessary at one time, but may no longer be useful. It’s also valuable to access where we would like to direct our energy, to have goals for the future. But when our thoughts and feelings about either the past or the future color our mood we are not living life to its fullest. We are not fully present. And we are not using our ability to direct and control our thoughts and mood. This ability is the greatest asset which separates us from other species.
Keeping our focus on the past or the future can be a way of avoiding something in the present. It may be a truth that we need to accept in order to move on. The energy we invest in keeping our focus on the past or the future keeps up from accepting and living ‘life on life’s terms’, one of the famous phrases of AA.
Being able to balance our ability to attend to the present, while considering the future and exploring the influence of the past is a balancing act that we can master in the practice of mindfulness and being aware of our intentions. As with most skills, it takes practice. I find the practice of mindfulness can be elusive at times. The task involves practicing the skill of bringing ourselves back to the present yet designating some specific time to consider the past or future, but not allowing them to dominate our thoughts or mood.
We can remind ourselves that we don’t have to figure out the big picture when anxiety invades our mood. We can simply focus on the moment. Because each time we use the skill to focus we are in essence moving ourselves forward. A technique that I show clients that brings us back to the present moment is to take a minute and simply focus on our breathing. As we breathe in we think “in one.” As we breath out we think “out two.” With the second breath, “in two” and as we breathe out, “out two.” And so one with the third breath. As we’re doing this we are removed from past or future thoughts and are simply in the moment. We need to strengthen the muscle that moves us back to the present. Practicing this several times a day enables this neural network to strengthen. As we continue to use this technique we gain control over our thoughts and our mood, which is a result of the thoughts, conscious and unconscious that are constantly flowing through our mind.
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I think this is a really helpful post, however, sometimes I feel like my actions in my present relationship are residual behaviors from the previous one(s). Do you have any suggestions on how to counteract this? I also sometimes feel like it isn’t ok, or it is taboo, to discuss my old relationships, and the significant problems that came up in my old relationships, with my new partners. I wonder if there is a good way to do this in order to prevent the same problems and conflicts that arose in past relationships from appearing in the new one.