With early childhood trauma we rarely get a chance to develop well in every aspect of our being, that includes mental processes. We usually struggle to separate inside and outside reality and to tell the difference between:
- our sensations and reality, what we perceive seems to be all there is
- our thoughts and reality, believing everything we think
- our emotions and reality, believing everything we feel
- our inner pictures and reality, thinking that what we imagine is real
- our memories and reality, therefore being stuck in TraumaTime
- our fantasies and reality, making things in the future look better or worse than they are
- our judgments about others and reality, allowing our trauma mindset to influence our relationships
- our Inner World and outside reality, getting confused and stuck in trance logic
A mindfulness tool that can help us to learn how to differentiate is the Awareness Continuum.
In this exercise we use short sentences to describe the experiences that are happening inside at the moment. We don’t see the world the way it is, we see it the way we are. Looking at the Awareness Continuum can help us separate between our inner process and the outside world so they won’t get mixed up and feel overwhelming.
We start by saying the word ‘I’,
just to make sure that we know that this is what we are experiencing, probably not how others experience it. It is limited to us, not a global truth.
Next we say ‘am aware of’
That way we express that we are being mindful and that the things we are observing are happening within our awareness. Knowing that something is in our awareness creates a distance to the pure sense of experiencing it. We are not the experience, we are aware of it.
Next we name a sensation, emotion, image or thought + what it is about.
Sensation means everything we can perceive with our senses.
For example ‘I am aware of the sensation of seeing a black car in the parking lot’ or ‘I am aware of the sensation of hearing my alarm clock ring’.
Emotion includes feelings and moods, urges, impulses and desires.
For example ‘I am aware of the emotion of sadness’ or ‘I am aware of the desire to have ice cream’.
Image refers to memories (past) and fantasies (future) and ‘mind-reading’ (imagining what is going on inside of other people). It addresses mental images, not things we look at in the present, those are covered in Sensation.
For example ‘I m aware of the image of the time when B bought flowers for me’ or ‘I am aware of imagining that you think I am pathetic’.
Especially labeling our mind-reading as ‘I am aware of imagining’ can make a huge difference when it comes to self-conscious feelings. Becoming more aware of images can help to reduce the effects of maladaptive daydreaming
Thoughts just address the cognition in the current situation.
For example ‘I am aware of thinking that I need to buy bread.’ or ‘I am aware of thinking nothing at all’.
We practice for a couple of minutes, no more than 5, and pay attention to our awareness. We can start speaking aloud what we are aware of. We only use one kind of realization in one sentence but we add more and more sentences as new things pop into our awareness. We just follow the awareness continuum and speak to ourselves what we are noticing.
For example
I am aware of the sensation of seeing a woman walking down the street towards my house.
I am aware of imagining that she might come here.
I am aware of the feeling of annoyance and rejection.
I am aware of the thought that I am judging too fast.
I am aware of imagining that she is my mother.
I am aware of thinking that this is impossible.
I am aware of the sensation of seeing her more clearly.
I am aware of the thought that I don’t know her.
I am aware of the emotion of relief that she is not my mother.
I am aware of the sensation of relaxation.
We practice in neutral situations first. Later we can use the awareness continuum for situations where we need some distance to our experience, either because we imagine terrible things or because our emotions become overwhelming or our thoughts seem to be stuck or circling. Whenever it seems like reality is overwhelming who we are, we need to create more distance. It is actually not reality that is so distressing, it is the over-identification with our experience.
(This is adapted from RO-DBT, Lynch)
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