Have you ever experienced what might feel like an emotional storm happening inside of you?
This might feel like
A panic attack or
Overwhelming anxiety or
Emotional dysregulation or
Hyper arousal or
Dissociation or
Impulsive or compulsive behaviour
Or you get so caught up on your thoughts, memories, urges, or sensations that you lose connection with the present moment.
And when this happens what do you do?
Do you get swept away by it? Where the storm controls everything that you do whilst its there?
Or do you try and fight it and try and make it go away, or maybe you try and do a bit of both?
Lets just move away from emotional storms for a minute and think about actual weather storms.
Imagine you are a captain of a boat that is sailing into a harbour. And as it enters the harbour you notice the wind start to pick up, some grey clouds in the sky and you feel that a storm is beginning to come in. What do you do in that situation as the captain?
Something you could do is drop an anchor to prevent your boat from swept up in the storm and disappearing. Now obviously dropping an anchor doesn't effect the storm at all, it doesn’t stop the high winds or the rain, the anchor doesn’t control the weather - but it holds the boat securely in place until the storm has passed.
So this exercise is going to show you how you can drop your own anchor when the emotional storm starts to show up.
This exercise, which you have probably guessed is called Dropping Anchor, and it appears in various books, mostly by the great Dr. Russ Harris and I’ll leave a link in the description to some books I recommend for both therapists and non therapists.
I like to remember the steps of Dropping Anchor through the letters FACE
I am going to go through each of these and what happens at each stage, then afterwards I’m going to combine them all into the exercise. It is probably more helpful to watch all of this than it is to skip ahead.
F is for Focus what is in your control, and really sets the scene for what we are doing.
If you’ve been following my videos for a while you will probably understand what i mean when i say our thoughts are difficult to change. Ive said this many times, our brains are designed to look for threats and bring them to our attention, I’m not going into more detail about that in this video because we will get side tracked, but thoughts are very hard to change. You also can’t directly control your emotions, if you could then i would be out of a job. But what we do have some more control over, and I am not saying it is easy, but its what we have the most influence over is our behaviour, so what we actually do. So that sets up the rational for what we are going to do next.
A is acknowledge your thoughts and feelings
Acknowledge what is coming up for you. So this could be thoughts, emotions, physical feelings, urges, memories, anything that is coming up for you. And if you can see if you can name it. And be as general or as specific as your noticing allows.
“Here’s anxiety again”. “Ah, here’s my worry”, “I’m noticing im having a feeling of sadness”. “Im having thoughts that i need to check myself for lumps”.
And while we are acknowledging whats going on for us we can at the same time do
C - come back into the body. And this is where we try and reconnect with our physical body as quite often we get caught up in our minds when we are becoming overwhelmed. So now we try to get back to our body. Theres a few ways we can try and do this. We can stretch our arms over our head. We can adjust our posture if sitting to be more active, so sitting up straight. We can press our fingers together. We can push our feet into the floor. Anything where we actively move our body, we are focussing on what we have some control over. So we are still acknowledging what is happening for us, we are connecting back with our body and now we can move to the E
Engage in what you’re doing. What we are trying to do here is to turn our focus on to the activity we are meant to be doing. Usually this is something important or meaningful like spending time with the kids, preparing a presentation that you are giving or writing an assignment.
And there are various ways we can do this. A popular way is to use our senses. Notice 5 things in the room you can see, you can add a twist and look for a certain colour, so 5 blue things. Notice 4 things you can hear. Notice 3 things you can touch. Notice 2 things you can maybe smell, and notice 1 taste in your mouth, then notice what you are doing in the present moment.
And we can loop through this exercise as many times as needed, and take as long as you need at each step.
Exercise
Okay so lets imagine you are my client and we are going to do this exercise.
See if you can bring to mind something that is difficult for you right now. Something that brings up some worry, or some anxiety or something with a bit of pain behind it.
Now please remember the context of all of this, I am not here with you so please don’t choose something that will be massively overwhelming for you. So pause this until you can think of something and bring it to mind.
I can see you are really struggling right now, and I would like you try something with me. So please listen if you can and follow what I am saying.
Acknowledge that right now there are some difficult thoughts and feelings showing up for you. What does it feel like? See if you can pay attention to it. Allow yourself to experience it. Dont fight it or push it away. There is something here with you, something you have brought to your mind that you don’t really want to, but its here, let yourself experience it.
And see if you can be curious. I know its difficult and its painful. See if you can see it it like someone seeing something for the first time. Like the first time you saw a beautiful sunset and you tried to take it all in. And notice … what is your mind saying.
Scan your body notice whats showing up. Any tension, or tightness.
Anything in your head
Your neck
your shoulders
Your back
stomach
your arms
your legs
your feet. Here and now these thoughts and feelings are here with you.
If you can, see if you can sit a bit more upright, and as you do this push your feet into the floor and feel how hard or how soft the floor is under your feet.
If you have arms on your chair then see if you can push your own arms gently into the chair arms. And again, notice what that contact feels like.
If you don’t have chair arms then try pressing your finger tips together, and if you can try rotating your shoulders at the same time.
And again, acknowledge that there is a lot of pain here, it has shown up right now. You don’t want it, and sometimes it comes without you asking for it to, but its here, right now, its uncomfortable and its difficult.
See if you can name whats going on for you. So “this memory is really painful”,
or “Here is worry about my partner showing up”, and if you can try to be specific for whatever is coming up for you.
And whilst you name this, notice and acknowledge that there is pain here, but around that pain is a physical body. And right now, you do have some control over your physical body. Notice you can gently turn your ankles and feet, notice you may be able to swing your legs a bit, or stretch out your arms above your head.
And whilst you are able to move see if you can notice this world here, this world outside of your body. And in this world are all the things you find meaningful and want to engage in.
Lets see if we can use our senses to really get connected with the world right now.
See if you have see 5 green things, or if you can’t, 5 blue things or any colour you wish.
Notice if you can hear 3 or 4 things. Any sounds at all, and if you can see if you can name what you can hear.
And whilst you are doing this notice that you are engaging in your surroundings and whats going on around you a bit more. Notice that you are engaging with me and this video. Notice you can hear me speaking. Notice you are listening.
And again, notice you are having some difficult thoughts and feelings that are showing up for you.
And whilst those difficult thoughts and feelings are there, again notice you have your physical body still.
A physical body that you can move. That you can stretch. And notice you have eyes that can look around the room.
And notice that right now you watching or listening to this video, and engaging in this exercise.
And now notice if you feel any difference now. Is it any easier for you to be with me here, listening or watching this video?
We are now coming to an end of this exercise.
Do you feel like you have any more control over your actions, and what you are able to do right now?
If so that is good. That is the intention of this exercise, its not to purposely get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings, its not to distract yourself, its not to relax you, its to allow you to have the skill to be present with them and keep some control over what you can physically do and engage in during these moments.
If you want to you can go to the beginning of this chapter of this video and repeat again.
Outro
Like I say with all my exercises. Not every exercise lands well with every person. This is why I try to offer a wide range of exercises. Notice with this one that the E stage - the engage in something meaningful, we used engaging with this video as the valued activity. If you weren’t watching this video but instead were doing something else say playing with your children, or studying for an exam, or revising, or preparing a presentation, anything that is important to you in that moment then that is what you would turn your attention to and engage in that.
There we go. I hope you got something out of that.
Take everyone and good bye.
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