Boulder Counselor and Therapist | David Robbins, MA, LPC

Often when the subject of psychotherapy comes up one thinks of rehashing the past and analyzing the current situation using the conceptual mind. As if we can think our way out of different emotions. The mindfulness approach to working with the condition we call anxiety would be very different than this. As a therapist who utilizes mindfulness I encourage experience – meaning we directly contact our body and sensations associated with an emotional experience. We don’t think about them – we tune in and feel them directly as they are happening in the present moment. With anxiety these sensations are often quite unpleasant – a lump in the throat, tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, perhaps tremors in the body, sweating, clenching the jaw, flushed skin, etc. With a mindfulness experience in psychotherapy we learn how to contact and direct our concentration and awareness to be with these sensations without being overwhelmed by them. Breaking them up into manageable pieces instead of one chunk of overwhelming anxiety that feels as if its going to break us apart or send us into panic. There is of course a mental element to this experience as well – often the mind is teeming with negative dialogue – perhaps worries or fears, or potential negative outcomes. For many people who experience anxiety there is also an inner dialogue of self-hatred. With a mindful approach to psychotherapy we also learn how to look at and witness these thoughts directly – we do not fight them as often we attempt to do to make unpleasant thoughts go away. Thoughts are often an unconscious battle or an attempt to distract us from the unpleasant sensations in the body. If the sensations in the body can be observed and stayed with – using an unconditional awareness they naturally resolve and integrate. Often our thoughts are so strong they move us out of the body and into the mind, and we get overwhelmed with the content of these thoughts. These thoughts are overwhelming us and also interrupting an organic experience of emotion in the body. If this experience can be tracked with awareness – it often resolves into a healing, releasing and integrative experience. As an experiential psychotherapist it is my job to facilitate and teach you how to be with your emotional experience this way. With mindful awareness we encourage complete experiences of emotions – that are uninterrupted – and allow you to heal and let go of the sense of stuckness that accompanies months or years of interrupted emotional experiences that overwhelm and accumulate in our bodies and minds.

With a mindfulness-based therapy we learn how to embrace our experience without having to resist or fight it, allowing ourselves to heal without fear. If you are interested in learning more or scheduling an appointment or free consultation call 303-225-2700.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a comprehensive, integrative psychotherapy approach. It contains elements of many effective psychotherapies in structured protocols that are designed to maximize treatment effects. These include psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential, and body-centered therapies2.

EMDR psychotherapy is an information processing therapy and uses an eight phase approach to address the experiential contributors of a wide range of pathologies. It attends to the past experiences that have set the groundwork for pathology, the current situations that trigger dysfunctional emotions, beliefs and sensations, and the positive experience needed to enhance future adaptive behaviors and mental health.

The above information about EMDR was taken from the EMDR Institute Website. For further information on EMDR follow this link.

I utilize EMDR as a adjunct therapy to my unique blend of mindfulness based experiential therapy. It is also possible to use this treatment as a standalone therapy for certain clients who desire this, assuming this is the best possible modality for working with the the presenting issue. In our first few sessions together we will discuss various options for working with your particular situation and decide the best possible way to proceed.

Anxiety can come in many forms. It can range from a low level agitation, chronic worry, specific phobias or fears, to flashbacks of traumatic experiences and full on panic attacks. Mindfulness-based therapy in very effective in treating and resolving the reactions that create anxiety. These reactions, that are the core of our suffering, are usually a constellation of mental activity (thoughts) and body activity in the nervous system (emotional type body sensations). By using a mindfulness approach we can desensitize ourselves to reactions we experience, both mentally and physically, and reduce or eliminate the suffering produced by situations that would have previously been very unsettling or even terrifying. The mindfulness approach to working with anxiety allows one to gently accept and feel their experience without being overwhelmed by it. On the level of thoughts, one can work with anxious thoughts using mindfulness as a anchor and keeping ourselves from getting too wrapped up in agitating or fearful thinking, worrying, etc.

Most of my clients begin feeling relief from anxiety after the first 2-3 sessions. If you are interested in finding out more feel free to contact me for a free 20 minute consultation, in person or on the phone.

Often when we are feeling sad, depressed, or stuck in our lives we feel this sense of void in our lives. This may be slowed thinking, emptiness at an emotional level or just the sense that things are still in our lives – not alot is happening. I experience this feeling as a heaviness in body, with an energy that has a downward movement. Mentally, things are slow and maybe there isn’t much occurring there except for some circulating repetitive thoughts. Often, I experience this first thing in the morning, before my ‘self’ has fully coalesced.

This is actually a unique opportunity. This void might be correlated with emptiness or ‘nothingness’ that is talked about in Buddhist psychology. A Buddhist teacher that I study with calls this the great unborn and Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls refers to this experience as the fertile void. Both of these terms suggest a creative aspect of this void or empty state. There is potential in nothingness, but the Western culture (where efficiency and constant production are prized) often fails to see this as a valuable experience. There cannot be manifestation without nothingness, we must have times of stillness where we do not produce. In fact, I would go as far as to say that we must rest in nothingness sometimes in order to be able to create sometimes.

In my experience as a student of spirituality, a musician and a psychotherapist I have been shown that the most fruitful and creative times for individuals come after a period of nothingness, void-ness, or emptiness that is completely embraced by that person (or group). Often an experience of this kind of not-alot-happening is seen with aversion or distaste and we try to push it away or move out of it, perhaps even feeling a sense of dread or fear. I would suggest that a more useful and healing way to approach this void-like space is to accept it or even welcome it to the best of our ability. Being curious about it – what does this feel like…what is this, we might ask ourselves.

The more we embrace this time of nothingness the greater the rewards in terms of what springs forth from the fertile void. We tend to suffer greatly when we try to push through this and make something happen. Instead, paradoxically by feeling and embodying the nothingness or fertile void as much as we can, it seems to move into another energetic space quite quickly. The struggle with it seems to elongate the experience and enhance a belief that this period of nothing will not pass. Often we simply need to give up and feel the emotional/physical experience of void – it is a form of rest mentally, physically, and emotionally. I might liken it to the time in between planting and harvest, when there is no sign of the plant yet, but we must wait for patiently for the water and fertilizer to do their jobs. If we get out of the way by simply letting this process of fertile void occur the harvest you experience will be worth waiting for.

This way of framing depression, stuckness, or nothingness in our lives goes very contrary to many of our beliefs, largely because of where we were brought up. Often it is helpful to seek out therapy or counseling, or some kind of support to help us unwind the beliefs and resistances to this experience that can keep us in a state of depression, anxiety, fear, or stuckness.

Most of us at some level assume or believe that we ‘should’ feel joyful. On the other side of this we probably believe that we ‘should not’ feel fearful. I am most interested when talking about feelings or emotions, such as joy or fear, in looking at the bodily sensations that make up this feeling in the body. You might experiment with this by recalling a time when you felt joyful. Bringing this memory in all its technicolor detail into your mind. Then drop into your body, particularly paying attention to the jaw, throat, chest, stomach, pelvis and notice what sensations are occurring. For me it is expansion in the chest a freedom and looseness in the jaw and throat – that is what I notice most. What do you notice most? Identify that – this is your body’s experience of joy – this i what the mind categorizes as joy when it occurs in the body.

We can do the same with fear. Bring up a memory in which you experienced a fearful time. Again noticing the body – I feel tension in the jaw and a general sense of constriction and tension in my chest and stomach. Notice what your experience is in the body.

Our ‘normal’ or homeostatic state is most likely mid way between these two extreme poles of feeling/emotion. As dynamic beings we need to understand we may move through these sensations, but they will arise and fall away, leaving us somewhere in the middle. We can welcome both of thes states and the dynamic rising and falling, contraction and release, of bodily sensations that leads us there. We don’t really need to strive for either state and we will experience both, if we allow the full spectrum of these sensations. Giving ourselves the permission to feel both poles of emotion and to let go of striving for any idealized state is the key.

Pema Chodron, a revered teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition refers to this as letting in all unwanted guests (and the wanted ones such as joy, happiness, hope, etc.) In the end it is just our experience, our life – by allowing joy we allow fear and by allowing fear we allow a full experience of joy.

I feel afraid or anxious so what do I do? I run away from what I perceive to be the cause of it, do something to stop it, do something to distract myself from it. Maybe you have your own strategy. All of these ways of dealing with fear have one thing in common – they will perpetuate that fear.

The secret that no one tells you is that to let go of the fear and anxiety what we really need to do is turn towards it and take a good look. Perhaps we even lean into the fear.

I am not suggesting you run into to traffic if you are afraid of getting hit by a car, or jump out of a plane if you are afraid of heights. What I am suggesting is that you turn towards the feeling of fear, rather than stuffing it, burying it, eating it away, or trying to distract yourself from it with drugs, alcohol, the internet, television, pornography – or whatever your particular method is. There are probably thousands of ways to attempt to avoid anxiety and fear. And none of them work, because the more we avoid and marginalize our feelings the more they grow and control us.

Our feelings are in our bodies and when we contact the actual sensations of the fear in our physical body we begin to unwind it. As we turn the light of our awareness towards fear we can begin to get to know it in all of its intimate details. In this way, much like in anything else in life, the more we know the less fear and anxiety there is.

Most people have feeling centers that they tend to experience uncomfortable sensation in when they are reacting with fear or anxiety. Feeling centers for you may be in your chest, throat, stomach, solar plexus, etc. These feeling centers can be accessed directly and gently through our conscious intention to feel them when we are activated by a particularly fearful thought or situation. We also feel positive emotions in these areas. The question to ask when you are experiencing happiness, sadness, fear, joy, resentment, anxiety, contentment, etc. is where am I feeling this in my body?

I work with clients to directly contact and turn toward their fears in a way that is safe and progressive. One of the benefits of therapy is that a therapist offers you guidance and support in facing and exploring your fears and anxieties with the light of awareness. A counselor is also trained in working with strong and potentially overwhelming feelings. You don’t have to do it alone.

The combination of learning mindfulness skills (approaching your fear with gentleness, and non-reactivity in the present moment) and emotional support from a trusted counselor can begin to unwind even the oldest and strongest fears and anxieties you are experiencing. In this way mindfulness-based therapy can begin to transform your fear into wisdom and wounds into healing.