Becoming conscious of inner states

A simple way of increasing awareness of inner states is to pay attention. Attention can be directed at feeling, at breathing, at physical aspects or by asking oneself ‘What is it I want to do right now?’ Or ‘What thought is uppermost in my mind right now?’ If one is unused to paying this kind of attention to oneself, then some things will be easier to focus on than others.

Often people don’t know what it is they are feeling although they may be aware of tension. Others may be unaware of tension but not notice that their breathing is shallow and depressed.

The idea of focusing attention is not to make whatever is being experienced disappear, but to simply notice what is there and use that recognition to make a more informed choice about the actions or non-actions which follow. Here are some examples:

Paying attention to feeling

You are in your consulting room or office organising it for the next day. As you reach for the diary or click through computer files notice, how do you feel about it? Focus on the whole activity. Do you want to be in the room? How does the decor affect you? What about the lighting? Are you enjoying the experience of setting the room up? Are you thinking about something else? How do you feel about the people you are currently treating or working with? Are they good to spend time with? Are they still strangers? Do you feel any good connection with them? Any attraction or repulsion to individuals? Are you happy with the way you are relating to them as a whole? Could you articulate what that way is? If so how did you do it? If not, what prevents you? Can you identify any of your responses to these questions as something which you do habitually? Can you change just a tiny aspect of your habitual behaviour so that it becomes more under your conscious control?

Paying attention to breathing

You are talking to some colleagues about the benefits of rescheduling appointments. The discussion becomes polarised with some supporting its adoption in certain circumstances and others being vocally against. You think you take the middle ground but when you check your breathing you discover it has become shallow and rapid. If you take this as an indication that your normal, balanced state is out of equilibrium in some way, are you able to identify quite how? Are you excited because you are about to go into intellectual battle? Are you disturbed by the disagreements? Are you angry with one side or the other because you agree or disagree? Is it the way the argument is being conducted? What do you want to happen next? Are you able to achieve that desire in any small measure?

Paying attention to physical aspects

You are having coffee with a colleague and you start to recount an incident which occurred with someone the previous day. As you talk you notice that your left hand continually massages your right shoulder and that you are blinking rapidly. Again these might be indications of some internal disequilibrium. Sometimes a useful way of discovering more about this internal state is just to start a sentence either to yourself or out loud which describes what you are doing and then continues it. For example ‘I’m rubbing my shoulder because I feel that I should not have had to intervene as I did and I’m consoling myself.’or ‘I’m blinking rapidly because I’m feeling tearful about what happened.’ Exaggerating the movement that you notice also helps to clarify how you are feeling particularly if you then describe either the movement of the feeling it induces.

Noticing what you want to do

You are in a meeting with colleagues. The meeting has got bogged down in a fruitless discussion between two people about a seemingly insoluble problem. What is your inclination? Do you want to help them? What does help mean? Would it be helping them if you ‘helped’ them or would it in fact be more helpful to let them struggle a little longer with each other? Are you able to arrest the action you intended long enough to question both its wisdom and its possible outcome?

Noticing what you are thinking

You go to a clinical meeting. The speaker is a woman in her late forties. You notice yourself thinking, ‘I like her voice’. Perhaps you could ask yourself some questions about this thought such as ‘Does her voice remind me of anyone’s?’ ‘What is it about the voice I like – pitch, timbre, nasality, pace – and why do I like it?’ ‘Why should a voice be important?’ ‘Are voices important to me generally?’ ‘How would her voice have to change to make it less acceptable to me?’ ‘Do I like my own voice?’ ‘Is there something ‘I’d like to change about that?’

Paying attention is a simple step towards increasing self-awareness, rather than allowing ourselves to be flooded by the ebb and flow of the tides of emotion that sweep through our lives in a seemingly chaotic way. This does not imply that what we become aware of must be changed, but heightening awareness increases the range of possible choices, and thereby shifts reaction to informed response.