PART 1: FILLING UP AS WELL AS POURING OUT
The New Year is a time when many people start thinking about resolutions for the year ahead, and plan to make changes in themselves and their lives. I definitely think it can be really helpful to reflect on goals. (Personally I would recommend an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy approach to identifying goals, that centres personal values ). But I’ve noticed that sometimes focusing on resolutions can feed into a tendency to think about ourselves in terms of outputs. We think about what we want to get out of ourselves in terms of behaviour, performance and outcomes.
Even when we do think about self-care resolutions, it can get sucked into the "output" framework. We can start to think of it as another thing to do - a task, obligation or outcome, to succeed or fail at as an individual. Self-care becomes something we can fall short at, leave undone, be bad at, or beat ourselves up about. I think something is lost when we start thinking of self-care as primarily another output or resolution, rather than as a process and practice with inputs and outputs.
SUSTAINABILITY
This year I’ve been thinking about self-care a lot in the context of sustainability. One question I’ve had on my mind is how we can live in a way that is sustainable emotionally and physically. Growing up I always wanted to do my best and give 100%. But increasingly I’ve realized that as a therapist it is important to do my sustainable best rather than my absolute best so that my practice can be sustained, consistent, grounded, and fulfilling.
That phrase “sustainable best” can be a little hard to envision. One image that helps me keep in contact with what it looks like is the idea of perpetual soup. I read about a possibly not entirely real medieval practice of having a pot of soup constantly topped up and simmering for a whole year, with things being added as they came into season. The pot is never allowed to dry out or burn down to the bottom, it just keeps going. I can’t help but think, in this age of burnout, that it might be helpful to take a perpetual soup strategy with our minds and bodies. That might be a path to sustainability.
WHAT YOU PUT INTO YOUR POT
So as a complementary New Year's activity to balance the seasonal emphasis on goal setting, I invite you to consider what you are putting into your pot, and what you would like to put in your pot this coming year.
Is your pot running out of soup or overflowing?
Are you pouring out more than your pouring in, or pouring in more than you are pouring out at this moment?
What have you and others already put in it?
Have you got what you need in your soup?
Is the balance of ingredients working for you or is it a little off?
Is there anything your soup needs more of?
What do we need a little dash of and what do we need a whole lot of at this moment in time?
What ingredients can you not get hold of (especially in lockdown), and what substitutes would work instead to keep you fed?
I don't think the answers to those questions are always immediately obvious. Most of us aren't taught how to figure out what the ingredients for a flourishing self are.
I imagine that the ingredients for a flourishing self are different for everybody, and depend on the kind of soup you want to make, and what’s already in your pot. I imagine some things we add will change over time, while some things stay the same.
I invite you to think about the ingredient you might need at the moment and in the coming year as you make your soup – the inputs you need to achieve the outputs you want in the year ahead. I believe that as you identify and add as many of those ingredients you can, with the help of those around you if possible, you set ourselves up to succeed more sustainably than you otherwise would. Providing yourself with the ingredients you need to thrive can be a way to pursue your goals without damaging your mental and physical wellbeing in the long term.
FIGURING OUT THE INGREDIENTS THAT WORK FOR YOU
Depending on your self-parenting style, it can be hard to think about the inputs you need and want, rather than the outputs you expect or demand. If you aren’t used to considering what you need and what helps you, it might take a while to figure it out.
These are some questions to consider as you compile your list of ingredients:
What nourishes your body?
What gives you energy?
What inspires you?
What do you find comforting?
What helps you clear some space in your head?
How do you find new ideas and new ways of doing things?
How do you play?
What feels like an adventure?
What sustains you?
What allows you to pause?
What helps you release tension?
What helps you feel safe to explore and be curious?
What helps you feel comfortable to express yourself?
What gives you confidence to create?
What helps you to switch off?
What helps you feel more connected to others?
What kind of support can you receive and use?
What makes you feel rested?
What helps you get unstuck?
If it is hard to answer those questions, or you are just curious about another perspective, it might be helpful to read the next section. The section explores what Gilbert, an expert on compassion and its relevance to mental health, describes as the “Three Circles Model”: three interacting embodied systems of emotional regulation that operate within us.
PART 2: A SYSTEM-BY-SYSTEM APPROACH TO FIGURING OUT WHAT TO ADD
Understanding a little bit more about how our mind operates can give us new ways to reflect on the kind of ingredients it needs to flourish. I have found it helpful to use Gilbert’s Three Circles model to think about what I need. Gilbert in trying to integrate psychotherapeutic ideas and the insights of neuroscience, identifies the following three systems of emotional regulation:
Threat and Self-protection System:
This is the system that is involved in our fight-or-flight response and it can help keep us alive and safe.
The function of this is to pick up on threats quickly and then give us bursts of feelings such as anxiety, anger or disgust. These feelings will ripple through our bodies alerting us and urging us to take action against the threat, to self-protect. (Gilbert)
Trauma can have a profound impact on how this system operates. Stress, difficult life circumstances, and anxiety can lead to it being often activated.
Incentive and Resource-seeking System (The drive-excitement system):
The function of this system is to give us positive feelings that guide, motivate and encourage us to seek out things and resources that we (and those we love and care about) will need in order to survive and prosper. (Gilbert)
This system is primarily an activating and ‘go get’ system. A substance in our brain called dopamine is important for our drives. (Gilbert)
This system can fuel our ambition and help us keep those all important New Year’s resolutions. It can make us feel energised, excited, and focused.
When balanced with the other two systems it guides us towards important life goals. Imagine what life might be like without it: you’d have little motivation, energy or desire. (Gilbert)
But it can also lead to frustration, discontentment, racing thoughts, and difficulty switching off or letting go. In some forms of mania, for example, this system can be overactivated. This system can also be vulnerable to hijacking. Activities that give us a dopamine-kick, like winning or drugs or praise, can be very addictive; and that hook can distract us from other equally important, or more important, goals that we might have.
Soothing and Contentment System:
This system, when activated, helps us to rest, recharge, refuel and feel restored.
This system enables us to bring a certain soothing, quiescence and peacefulness to the self, which helps to restore our balance. When animals aren’t defending themselves against threats and problems, and don’t need to achieve or do anything (they have sufficient or enough), they can be content. Contentment is a form of being happy with the way things are and feeling safe, not striving or wanting; an inner peacefulness. (Gilbert)
This is quite a different positive feeling from the hyped-up, excitement or ‘striving and succeeding’ feeling of the drive-excitement system. It is also different from just low levels of threat, which can be associated with boredom or a kind of emptiness. (Gilbert)
Engaging this system makes it easier to sleep, eat and bond. This system is interesting because while it is in some sense internal, it also has a particularly relational quality. As infants, the way our parents relate to us can help to soothe and calm us. Some of our first experiences of being soothed may be the result of being comforted, picked up and held, or nursed. Kindness and our contentment system are closely linked. Gilbert describes the role of a “hormone called oxytocin which links to our feelings of social safeness and affiliation. This hormone (along with the endorphins) gives us feelings of well-being that flow from feeling loved, wanted and safe with others.”
ACCESSING AND HARNESSING THESE SYSTEMS
Each of these systems has useful functions and positive emotions associated with it, but they all also have certain pitfalls and limitations. They can each get out of balance – some can be highly stimulated and activated, while others are crowded out or under-engaged.
If you were to draw three circles on a page to represent each of your systems, how large would they be relative to each other?
We flourish more easily as each system becomes more accessible, manageable, and harnessed in a direction that feels right to us. Things can go wrong when one system is silenced, shunned or ignored, or another system gets to run the show all on its own without the feedback of the other systems.
Complete harmony between the systems might be elusive, but observing the systems at work with a curious and compassionate attention can help. It can help to recognise that they all have a function, and to acknowledge that how easy or hard they are to activate is not necessarily something you chose or within your control in a given moment.
All you can do is help them work together as well as possible. That brings us back to inputs, or ingredients for perpetual soup.
If you are feeling stuck imagining inputs you might need, it could help to consider each system in turn.
Is it larger or smaller than the others? Is it loud or quiet? Overactive/overstimulated or underactive/understimulated?
Are its workings confusing or clear to you? Does it feel misdirected or aligned?
Does it feel accessible? Can you tap into it when you need to?
What conditions would make it easier or harder to access?
What triggers, engages or activates it? What feeds it? What gives it permission to speak? What helps manage it?
In light of that, what would help you to be able to access, activate and direct it in the way you want?
WHAT DOES EACH SYSTEM NEED
Reflecting on each system in this way, can help you, over time and probably with some experimentation, to identify the particular inputs you need to harness your three circles in a way that supports your flourishing.
Just like outputs (goals), the inputs we need can vary depending on where we are in our personal journey and the nature of that stage of our lives. There may be times when socialising, or alone time, learning more, or letting go may become more or less important, given where we are and where we want to go. It might be that certain ingredients prove elusive. Just as I imagine medieval peasants cooking perpetual soup had to do, we may need to be creative and seasonal in our use of ingredients when certain things we need are scarce. And like them, as we make the best of what we are able to find, we may end up with an entirely unique kind of soup - never quite the same as any other soup, or even to itself a day ago.
RESOURCES
If you would like to learn more about the Three Circles Model check out this free resource:
Conmpassion Handout: www.getselfhelp.co.uk/docs/GILBERT-COMPASSION-HANDOUT.pdf
Or you can purchase The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert.
If you would like to find free ACT resources to help you clarify and follow through with New Year's Resolution, there are many available on Russ Harris' website.