By Allie Chapman
Joanne was having a really bad day. It wasn’t one of those catastrophic, life altering days, but it was a day where everything seemed to just go wrong or be wrong. The house was a mess, the laundry machine broke, her kids were mean and fighting, and her dog left an endless trail of bodily fluids all over the house—through which the baby kept walking before Joanne could find it. The baby also wouldn’t nap, and the moment he did, he was up again just as Joanne had her first minute to herself. She was tired, annoyed, cranky, and irritable.
She had no patience. She was tired of waking up feeling like her family was living in the movie Groundhog Day; every day was the same (mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic), and she was wearing down. Distance-learning homeschool for her 4 school-aged kids was a catastrophe, and she had a laundry list of things to do for her own graduate school work and employment search since the pandemic layoffs. (Not to mention the 10 loads of actual laundry needing to be folded on her bed.) Simple, minimal goals for the day were not met, and there were tears, yelling, eye rolling, and punishments.
Finally, in the early evening hours just before her husband came home from work, she snapped. She was in her son’s room attempting to finish hanging some things on the wall while the baby cried at her feet. This was a small project that began a month earlier (seemingly never to be finished again), but that day she couldn’t find the tools she needed, causing her to break down into a full ugly cry on the floor. More than once that day she had been tempted to quit, walk out, find a beach somewhere, and not come back until she was happy. But this was the pinnacle height of her frustration.
This moment was one of the many choice points in her day—a point when she had the opportunity to decide how to react. She had a moment between the stimulus (the missing tools, the crying baby, or just the overwhelming day altogether) and the response (how she chose to react) in her thought process.
Here was her thought cycle. We’ll call this the ‘All or Nothing’ response:
“It has been a really, REALLY bad day.”
“The house is a mess.”
“Why am I such a bad mom?”
“Why won’t my kids get along?”
“Why can’t I just get it together?”
“Why couldn’t I get to all the things I wanted to do today.”
“How could my husband even deal with someone like me?”
“Am I stupid? I feel stupid.”
“EVERYTHING is falling apart!”
“I will NEVER be able to accomplish ANYTHING for myself again—stop dreaming.”
“My kids will NEVER get along.”
“I am a IRREPARABLE mess.”
“I will NEVER actually achieve my goals.”
Wow.
That took a turn for the worse, did it not? Does it sound even slightly familiar?
Here is what happened next. Joanne had previously spent many years privately and professionally studying mindfulness and meditation due to her natural tendency to live in a stampede of anxious thoughts juxtaposed with her career as a yoga instructor. That did not stop the ‘All or Nothing’ thought analysis downward spiral, but it did allow her to take a moment to consider a different response. So in that climatic, tearful, end-of-her-rope moment, she stopped. She took a few deep breaths, followed by another few, and then a few more. She slowed her thoughts. She didn’t stop them, she just slowed down her breathing and connected herself to her mindfulness practice.
Here was thought cycle #2, which we’ll call ‘Non Judgmental Awareness’:
“It has been a really, REALLY bad day.” Breathe
“The house is a mess.” Breathe
“I feel like a bad mom. ” Breathe
“I could not get to all the things I wanted to do today.” Breathe
Breathe, Breathe, Breathe.
“Today was just a bad day.” Breathe…
“TODAY is just a day.”
Done.
What mindfulness teaches us is how to bring a non judgmental awareness to our thoughts. It allows us the mercy to acknowledge the stimulus—the thing stressing us out—and then take a pause and breathe before we respond, engaging what is called the parasympathetic nervous system.
Let’s say, for example (hypothetically speaking, of course), you get a flat tire or a bad grade on a test or your baby smears peanut butter all over your kitchen. The sympathetic nervous system engages. This is when our nervous system starts kicking it up a notch. Your fear or anxiety are triggered, your heart rate rises, your pupils dilate, and your glands release adrenaline. We can take a moment between the stimulus that triggers the sympathetic nervous system and our response by breathing deeply several times and allowing ourselves to become non judgmentally aware. This means we take that time in our breathing to allow the moment to be what it is. We then are able to biologically trigger our parasympathetic nervous system, which is what helps our body’s processes to return to normal.
Practicing mindfulness doesn’t demand or even assume perfection—it allows for compassionate evaluation, acceptance, and growth. It allows Joanne's day to still be full of stressful triggers, but leaves it at just that: a stressful trigger. There is nothing wrong with having a bad day; in fact, having this non judgmental awareness gives us the ability to calmly evaluate the events of the day and grow from them, make adjustments for the future, and cope in a healthy way to life’s inevitable stressors.
Worried this couldn’t possibly work for you? Does it seem too abstract or like just a good working “theory”? There has been an exceptional amount of biological, analytical, and correlative data and research accumulated over the years giving valid and reliable evidence to the benefits of mindfulness.
It does take practice, ideally allowing yourself to set aside time daily to build the skill. How long? Short answer: anything is better than nothing. Psychologist Tal Ben-Shaher encourages people who don’t think they have time to set aside to practice mindfulness to at least take 3 deep breaths whenever they can. For example: while sitting at a stop light or while at your desk at work or even when you first wake up in the morning. You get the idea. Studies show practicing mindfulness for one or two 20 minutes sessions a day can cultivate a treasure chest of mental and physical benefits, such as reduced rumination and stress and increased working memory, focus, relationship satisfaction, and more.
Here is a great reference point to get you started on your journey to understanding and practicing mindfulness, acceptance, and avoiding the trap of the ‘All or Nothing’ thought cycle.
“Mindfulness is not about being positive all the time or a bubblegum sort of happiness — la, la, la… It’s about noticing what happens moment to moment, the easy and the difficult, and the painful and the joyful. It’s about building a muscle to be present and awake in your life.”
In case you were wondering, the next day, Joanne had a MUCH better day.