Acknowledgment is a key to reducing stress. When we experience difficulties in our lives, our default mode so often is to say NO, NO, NO! to them. We decide that our difficulties shouldn't be happening, look for someone to blame (often ourselves), and find any way we can to distract ourselves from our problem. Yet denial certainly leads to stress and dis-ease. However, when we say YES to our experience, honestly acknowledging what's here without judging ourselves, our difficulties often lose their hold on us and we can start to breathe easier.

We spend so much of our time during our daily lives on automatic pilot. We race around getting things done, forgetting to tune in to what’s really happening inside of us. How does your body feel right now? So often we don’t have a clue about places of tension, stress or discomfort in the body. What sensations are present in your body? Are they pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations? And how’s your state of mind? Is the mind clear and still, or is it agitated and cloudy? And what emotions are present? Sadness, happiness, anger, fear, joy, anxiety, jealousy? And what thoughts may have accompanied the emotions, either as triggers or as followers?

Sometimes we can spend days, weeks, months, or even years in a state of constant denial about these things. This means that the forces and compulsions that drive so much of our behavior sink beneath the surface of awareness. Unknown and unacknowledged, these forces have their way with us — we become manipulated by their unexamined agenda. Since our unacknowledged thoughts and emotions are hidden beneath the surface of our awareness, they exert remarkable control over our lives. Because these painful things inside us need to be recognized, they will do everything they can to make themselves known to us — but they’ll do so unconsciously. And this is why they are dangerous.

Instead of acknowledging that we are afraid of not having enough money to make a living, we get an asthma attack. Instead of allowing ourselves to grieve over a departed lover, we routinely go to the corner bar and get drunk, then waste the next day recovering from a hangover. Instead of recognizing that we are jealous of a colleague, we find ourselves bad-mouthing him and alienating others. These are all ways that we hurt ourselves by refusing to recognize what is actually here.

The good news is that we can transform these negative patterns of thought and emotion through the practice of mindfulness. When these challenging experiences are denied, they have a destructive effect on us. When they are acknowledged, the truth they reveal begins to have a healing effect on us. When we hold strong emotions, judgments or mind-states in awareness, we can investigate their nature with a kind attention and see that they do not define us. If we observe them long enough, we’ll also see that they are impermanent. That they often wax and wane depending upon external triggers in our environment. When we have trained ourselves to step back from these difficult experiences, we realize that we are less identified with them, and that there is a larger part of our experience — our awareness — which isn’t touched by them at all.

The simple act of acknowledgement does so much to heal our minds and bodies. Acknowledgement is one of the seven attitudinal foundations of mindfulness. To practice acknowledgement is also to practice the other six attitudes. When we acknowledge we are also practicing non-judgment, we are being patient, we are letting the experience be for now, we are letting go of striving for the next thing, we are trusting ourselves to hold the experience as it is, and we are looking at our problems with the freshness of beginner’s mind.

So the next time you feel stressed out, see what happens if you simply acknowledge what's here.

Bill Scheinman

info@stressreductionatwork.com
(415) 820-1533