The Compassionate Mind

In the past year when I have struggled I have briefly dipped my toe in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help change unhelpful thoughts and break the cycle of behaviour which ultimately spirals into feelings of acute distress and failure. When last week, I reached a falling apart point and realised enough was enough I started reading up again and finding some exercises to do at home to rationalise thoughts and reduce anxiety. One of the things I came across was something called the Compassionate Mind by Professor Paul Gilbert and Dr Michelle Cree. This has it's roots in CBT, and I found that the way it explained the workings of the brain resonated with me, and allowed myself to use compassion to shake off the feelings of failure, which ultimately is the idea. I have only the briefest of understandings of psychology and the biology of the brain, but found the way it talks about the primitive brain reactions with more modern thinking was useful into trying to understand how as a reasonably intelligent human being, you can be felled by pure emotion and allow reactions and feelings to run your everyday life, cutting you off.

Permission

Dear You,

I think we should have some serious words.

I know you've been having a hard time recently. Or rather, Brain has been giving you a hard time. If it is any consolation, it isn't your fault about Brain. It's nothing you've done or not done that makes her a bit unstable; it's nothing your parents did or something that happened, it's just that that is how you humans are made. Sorry. It's an evolutionary thing. Those cave-ancestors have a lot to answer for, they set a pattern of primitive reactions designed to protect and save you. Only things have become far less clear cut since then. That's where I came in, to reason and rationalise, to plan and remember. Brain got a bit boisterous and took over a bit. The default alarm went off. But I'm back now and I'm just going to do some spring cleaning if you don't mind.

*does some dusting*