Balancing and soothing

Is your life in balance? What does a good balance look like? While I believe it's up to each of us to find our own answer to this, over the years many clients have found it helpful to explore three broad states of mind during therapy.

In the integrating Brainspace...
...we have ups and downs but can think pretty clearly, our different emotions are calm enough and contained enough and wise awareness is spending lots of time in the driving seat. This ever-changing, integrating zone is your window of tolerance, or as I call it, your purple Brainspace.

When life gets too much...
...we leave this integrating space. In the conflicted red zone, our inner world gets too hot/fast. Caught in powerful and painful emotions and thoughts, we probably need to weather the storm and slow/cool down our mind. In the collapsed dark blue zone, life can seem too cold/slow. In this numbed-out state, we may need rest and gradually increase our energy to speed/warm things up.

It’s natural to keep moving in and out of balance all the time. Problems can arise when we spend too much time outside our window of tolerance in our conflicted red and dark blue zones. Therapy aims to increase your Brainspace so you can better integrate your thinking and feeling which in turn gives you more inner resources to work through difficult experiences.

A lot of people that I work with find it helpful to develop a good understanding of the above, and related, aspects of the human condition. After all, if we know where we are in our psychological mindscape, this experience-based understading can often help us navigate the ups and downs of life more effectively.

Cultivating inner peace
All counselling activities have the potential to soothe and balance your mind and so support calmer feeling and clearer thinking. However, you may find the following activities especially balancing.