“Depression is not an emotional disorder at all! How you feel is of no more causal relevance [to depression] than a runny nose is [to having a cold]. Every bad feeling is the result of your distorted negative thinking… Intense negative thinking always accompanies a depressive episode, or any painful emotion for that matter.”

     – David D. Burns, M.D., Feeling Good, p.28

Remember: Thoughts are never wrong – they are either helpful or unhelpful. Don’t shame yourself for thinking negatively, but become aware of the fact that problems can be viewed differently, in a way that is more helpful to you and contributes to finding a solution!
Contents

One: All-or-Nothing Thinking
Two: Overgeneralization
Three: Mental Filter
Four: Disqualifying the Positive
Five: Jumping to Conclusions
Recap

One: All-or-Nothing Thinking
The Problem

Also called dichotomous or black-and-white thinking, this refers to your tendency to evaluate your personal qualities and circumstances in extreme, absolute categories. It forms the basis for perfectionism (‘I’m a total failure for missing this deadline.’ or ‘My entire life of hard work is ruined’ when getting a B on an exam as a straight-A student). It causes you to fear any mistake or imperfection because you will then see yourself as a complete loser, having failed yourself, your family, or even everyone around you. As a result you will feel inadequate and worthless constantly, going as far as being demotivated from working entirely.

Evaluating yourself or the world in absolute terms is both unrealistic and unfounded. Finding errors and fault in things by appealing to an absolute standard is self-destructive and a fundamental cause of unhappiness. No one is perfectly happy, no one is completely attractive, and no room is perfectly clean and organized. Conversely, no one is absolutely miserable, no person is completely ugly, and no situation is irredeemably bad. Our world doesn’t allow for perfection and doesn’t deal in absolutes – only in our minds do can we take countless shades of gray and categorize them in black and white.

If you try to hold yourself or your experiences to an absolute standard you can only ever end up discrediting yourself and your life endlessly, reaching for an ideality that can never become your reality, because whatever you do and whatever happens in your life will never meet your exaggerated expectations.

The Solution

Understand that imperfections do and will exist in every person, in every situation, and in every attempt you will ever make at anything you want to achieve. Understand the difference between idealistic and realistic expectations, and become aware of your thoughts often falling into the former category, rather than the latter. Try to change things you want to see changed in yourself or your life more broadly, but only after accepting that things currently are as they are, and that things that happened in the past (even in the immediate past) have already happened, and feeling regret over it will not change the situation nor help you change it.

Place your negative cognitions (N.C.’s) in perspective, and realize that they are necessarily not as grim as you make them out to be. In doing so you will allow room for acceptance of what is, and find more clarity and peace of mind to find possible solutions to your problem and change what will be in the future.

Example N.C.: “I completely botched that presentation. I will never become successful as a public speaker. I am worthless.”

Example P.C.: “I made quite a few errors in that presentation. To prevent the same thing from happening of the future, I can now analyze these mistakes and learn from them. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.’”

Two: Overgeneralization
The Problem

Overgeneralizing means you arbitrarily conclude that one thing that happened to you will occur over and over again, or has been happening over and over again. It also means that you will unfairly assume that a person will repeat something they did more often in the future. Since these things invariably pertain to things that are negative for you, you will feel upset, and anticipating more reason to be upset, you will become even more upset.

You will start extrapolating these events to other events (‘Why do these bad things always happen to me?’) and even other people (‘All men are untrustworthy.’). This will cause you to not only exaggerate the frequency with which these things happen to you, but also cause you to feel more strongly about them when they do happen (‘See? I told you they were all out to get me!’), or even cause these things to happen (e.g., a woman fresh out of an abusive relation has learned to think of all men of abusive, meaning she might be more tolerant of abuse at the hands of her next partner, because it meets her expectations for what all men do).

Generalization is a necessary tool for processing all the information our brains take in every day, and is generally a benefit to your mental well-being. The more you can generalize, the more heuristics your brain can use, the less straining a situation becomes. The problem with overgeneralization isn’t just the incorrectness of these generalizations, but the way too broad extent of your generalization and the emotional impact of having these thoughts.

When first you overgeneralize a trivial situation (for instance, dropping your cup of coffee on a particularly stressful morning, and thinking ‘Why am I always such a damned klutz?’), you’re establishing a dangerous precedent not just for a future repeating and amplification of that situation (‘Why can’t I do something as basic as holding a damn coffee cup? Geez!’), but also things that evoke a similar feeling (for example, imagine your being late for work after having to clean up that coffee cup, thinking ‘A klutz and a failure!’ as your boss starts yelling at you).

In the end, none of this is even remotely fair or realistic!

The Solution

Stop making such harsh and rash judgments, especially when doing so only causes you to feel bad! Understand that no small number of things that happen, and especially a single negative event on a bad day, is indicative of anything larger than ‘what just happened, happened’! See these situations for what for the isolated events that they are. Don’t allow yourself to make them bigger than that, and don’t allow these events to make you feel any worse than you’re already feeling.

When trying to overcome jealousy or rejection, which is fundamentally a self-esteem issue of which overgeneralization and black-and-white thinking are always at the root, it is important to understand that not only is the rejection you’re most fearing not permanent (i.e. not general over time), meaning that a rejection by a single person now doesn’t necessarily mean he or she will always reject you, but it’s also not general across people, meaning that one person’s rejection does not mean that other people will also reject you in the same way. There is simply no reason to believe this, nor is there any use in doing so.

Example N.C.: “My co-worker is rude and abrasive to me, and that’s just how it goes. People just always seem to find a reason to be annoyed by me.”
Example P.C.: “My co-worker was rude and abrasive to me. I didn’t deserved that, so I’m sure he had his own reasons – probably a bad day or something. If it continues, I’ll have to step up and say something, but I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

Three: Mental Filter
The Problem

Also called ‘selective abstraction’, when your mental filter is active you tend to pick any negative detail of an event or person and dwell on it incessantly, and by making the focus something entirely negative you end up contaminating the entire event or person.

By shifting your focus to a negative aspect, or even conjuring one because your mood or state of mind compells you to, you end up with an entirely negative perspective that can chronically devastate your mood. Good things become bad, bad things become unbearable.

By not being aware of this ‘filtering process’ that blocks out the positive aspects of an event (‘I got an A+, sure, but I still made 17 errors, which just shouldn’t happen.’) or person (‘Sure, this guy is great and he obviously likes me, but he’s too richer — he’s bound to find someone prettier.’), you end up with a mindset that doesn’t allow for anything positive in your life, leaving you in a cycle that is not as much vicious as it is inescapable. You’ll conclude that everything is negative, adding to the belief that things are generally bad (see Two).

The Solution

Only noticing the negative aspects of a situation that can be almost entirely positive is a matter of attention first and foremost. To overcome it, you can list the all the good and bad things about a situation or a person and award scores to each thing listed. In doing so, you are accomplishing two things:

To make this work, force yourself to look at the good things, or even invent good things to fill up your list. This distracts you from the bad things and makes you more attuned to finding the good.
By awarding an arbitrary number to each good and bad attribute of this sum, you are forcing your brain to both accept and properly credit the positive. As seen in the game of life, simply crediting something is enough to have it effect change in your way of thinking.

You can also rethink each individual bad part, neutralizing them, or you can simply distract yourself by focusing in on the good things. If you choose the latter option, make sure not to try to block out the bad thought, but simply let it be and prioritize consciously thinking about the good over the bad.

Example N.C.: “This girl wasn’t very enthusiastic when she said goodbye. She basically ignored me. She must not like me at all, or be embarrassed about being seen with me. She’s never like this when we’re alone.”
Example P.C.: “She was very lively in the conversation we just had. She was very happy about seeing me, brief as it was. And since she was very energetic and really needed to get that energy out of her system, I can see her being a bit distracted as she went away. After all, if she really didn’t like me, why would she be happy to stay as long as she did?”

Four: Disqualifying the Positive
The Problem

Far more wretched and damaging than just a negative Mental Filter, disqualifying the positive is a persistent tendency to take neutral or positive aspects of something and warp it into something negative. This distortion doesn’t just make you ignore the positive, it enables you to take even the most blessed experiences and turn them into a mental hell. As David D. Burns puts it, you become a psychological alchemist capable of ‘transforming golden joy into emotional lead.’

For every negative assumption you can make about yourself, e.g. ‘I am worthless’ or ‘I am incompetent,’ you are already quite capable of your attention to facts that confirm those assumptions, and favor those facts over facts that refute those assumptions. When your mental filter focuses in on these negative facts, it can be enough to simply divert your attention to the positive ones. But what happens when you teach yourself to cleverly turn all those positive things into negative ones? You end up with a depressive mindset that can turn even the most soothing thoughts into the most paining punishments.

For instance, suppose you just got fired from your job. The statement ”I am a failure.” is on replay inside your head, and every negative point only serves to reinforce it, e.g. ‘Without this job I lost my chance at a successful career,’ ‘I just threw away ten years of my life’ or ‘My parents will be so disappointed in me.’ Your friends come over and list some positive things in an attempt to console you, like ‘This gives you a chance to explore other career opportunities,’ ‘Your boss always had it out for you, so now you can find a more pleasant welcoming workplace,’ and ‘You were the most successful marketer they had.’

Which all are reasons to feel at least a bit of relief in being freed from that hostile work environment. But, as a skilled self-persuader with a spiteful agenda, you manage to refute each and everyone of these arguments. ‘Explore other career opportunities, so I can fail at those at well? That is, if I even get a chance to fail horribly at them, which I’m sure I will.’ ‘If my boss had it out for me, that’s completely my fault. If I had been likable I’m sure I wouldn’t have so easily be replaced.’ ‘I was top salesman and I was still let go just like that. Only goes to show how horrible I am to work with.’

Even Aristotle couldn’t argue his way out of that level of misery.

The Solution

Stop being so needlessly cruel! Seriously. No situation is irredeemably bad! The situation isn’t  the problem – ever! In our previous example, you could have been let off with a full early retirement and that still wouldn’t have been enough  for you to stop beating yourself up about it. If you manage to convince yourself that there is nothing positive worth considering about a situation, even those things that are unmistakably positive, then you are being needlessly cruel to yourself. Not only are your thoughts extremely harmful, they are completely dishonest. You are lying to yourself.

You don’t even need to deny or ignore the negative aspects of something, but you shouldn’t let them hurt you, either, and you definitely should not be ignoring the positive alternative explanations that are equally valid, if not more so. Even when the list of negative things seems so vast that you don’t believe there is a way to talk yourself out of believing that something is beyond hope, who are you helping by rejecting the positive things that are equally real?

Example N.C.: “That was a complete mess. Stuttering constantly and failing at something as simple as small talk, it just turned into the most embarrassing show ever. And she could see my embarrassment, which possibly makes it even worse. I should just give up at even trying to be sociable. The fact that I got dressed up and walked behaved up until that point only serves to show what a fake I am.”
Example P.C.: “Well, I was looking quite sharp, and I think I can forgive myself the occasional screw-up. I at least got her to laugh, so at least one of us got some fun out of it. Even the smoothest talkers stumble at some point, and hey, maybe she’ll think I just stumble over my words when talking to her. Really, that’s kind of a compliment. Plus, if I try better next time, we can even poke fun at it together. Persistence is key, and I have that in abundance.”

Five: Jumping to Conclusions
The Problem

You tend tend to jump to negative conclusions that are not justified by the facts of the situation. You fill in gaps, and no matter how good you believe your reasons to be, you conclude something from a point of uncertainty and nearly always to your own detriment. There are two primary examples of this:

Mind reading: Making an assumption about the intent, beliefs or opinions of someone else, without bothering to verify with that person of whether or not your own assumption is correct.
Fortune telling: You predict the outcome of a decision or the occurrence of a future event, which is ultimately a miserable prospect that leads to more misery now, whether or not it will actually come to pass. You imagine something bad to happen and take this prediction is fact (and suffer the emotional consequences as if it had already happened) even though it is not based in reality at all.

By trying to predict the opinions or behaviors of another person, you are causing unnecessary tension and influencing your own mood and behavior negatively. This in turn leads to strained communication on your part, or evasion of the other person, leading good events being avoided for risk of things ending badly. Invariably, these will strain the relationship and your own mood further, leading to a vicious cycle of negativity that completely fabricated by your own unwanted thoughts. By imagining a bad outcome to a future event or an undertaking you’re considering, you will create an aversion to experiencing that event and try to avoid it, even though your expectation of failure or disaster is completely unrealistic.

In both these cases you are preventing yourself from finding out whether you are actually right in your assumptions (note: you never are), and so you can do nothing to rid yourself of a mental anguish that is undoubtedly much more severe than the discomfort you would feel if your imagined threat turned out to be real after all.

Some examples of Mind Reading:

It’s your first day working a new job, and a new co-worker is particularly abrasive and rude to you. You think to yourself, ‘He must not like me at all.’
While giving an excellent presentation, you see someone in the front row who is yawning and falls fast asleep a few minutes after. You tell yourself, ‘This audience thinks I’m uninteresting. They are bored out of their minds.’
You meet a friend at a gym you both go to, and when you finish your work-out routine together he leaves without so much as a word of goodbye. You conclude, ‘He must not like me much anymore.’ Afterwards, your friend doesn’t respond to any of your various Facebook messages during the weekend. You now fully resign to the ‘fact’ that he must not want to talk to you anymore.

None of these claims have any solid basis for believing them (and if they did, they still wouldn’t need to be a problem), but you still might suffer the consequences of thinking them. Stress, feelings of worthlessness, or being offended. You might respond by ignoring the person, withdrawing yourself from communicating with them and meeting them, or by launching a counterattack. Because of this, your self-defeating behavior- and thought pattern might become a self-fulfilling prophecy and create tension and negativity in a relationship without any proper justification. This is often the illusory cause of jealousy and mistrust.

Some examples of Fortune Telling:

Panic attacks work much in the same way. You tell yourself ‘I’m going to pass out or go crazy,’ and even though it is impossible to actually pass out during a panic attack, you inadvertently cause your panic attack to occur, while nothing would be amiss if you hadn’t worried about getting in a worrisome situation in the first place. Additionally, these predictions are unrealistic because you’ve probably never gone ‘crazy’ once in your life – so how could you possibly have just cause to make that prediction?
Depressed people often make the prediction that they will not improve, and the resulting hopelessness and stress will serve to worsen their emotional state and ‘confirm’ their suspicion. However, during therapy they will often improve regardless of whether or not they change that belief, indicating that the belief is completely unfounded. Getting that insight plays a major role in recovery from any type of emotional or anxiety disorder.

The Solution

First of, most of your assumptions are simply wrong. Further, the validity of your own assumptions isn’t even important to the situation at hand, and isn’t conducive to feeling good about that situation. So if you are going to make a prediction, make sure it is both positive (to feel good about it) and without expecting a certain positive thing (to not get hung by disappointment).

If you find yourself jumping to these conclusions, realize that as much as they might seem real in your head, there is nothing realistic about them, and continuing to convince yourself otherwise from that point on is a choice that you can decide against.

As a final example, take the situation described earlier, where your friend didn’t respond to your texts after he hastily ‘abandoned’ you at the gym:

Example N.C.: “He doesn’t want to talk to me. I best not message him anymore, as he’ll just think I’m obnoxious or pushy if I keep bothering him. I’ll only make a fool of myself. I best avoid him from now on.”

Example P.C.: ”He is probably busy. If he can’t respond right now, that’s fine. I could probably send him another message to see if he got around to reading my other message, and then I best leave it at him. I don’t know what’s going on in his life right now, he could just be busy for all I know. I will get an answer eventually.”

A few days later, your friend texts you back saying that he was away for the weekend and his phone wasn’t responsive when trying to text back. All the worry you could have had would’ve been completely pointless!

Recap

1. All-or-Nothing Thinking: Categorizing things in absolute terms, as either entirely good or entirely bad. When you or your experience fall short of your ideals, you consider it an abject failure.

Correct this distortion by becoming aware of the ideal that you are comparing yourself or your experience to. Imperfections are a fact of life, and trying to get around that fact is self-destructive, and counterproductive to changing things for the better.

2. Overgeneralization: You take a single negative event or behavior and extrapolate it to other events and behaviors across time (this always happens) and across people (everyone does this). You overestimate the frequency and the emotional severity of normal occurrences.

Correct this distortion by isolating that event or behavior and treating it as an incident. Use that awareness to prevent occurrences in the future, but don’t assume that future occurrences are inevitable and unavoidable – they aren’t.

3. Mental Filter: You pick out one or a few negative details and focus exclusively on those. You ignore the positive details, preventing them from weighing in emotionally in your evaluation of your experience.

Correct this distortion by placing these negative details in perspective. They are part of a vast amount of details, most of which are neutral and positive. Divert your attention to these positive things, and prioritize them over the negative ones. If necessary, make a list of all positive, neutral and negative details and value them with arbitrary scores.

4. Disqualifying the Positive: You reject the positive details entirely and insist that they ‘don’t count’ in your experience, or even transform them into something negative entirely. In doing so you can maintain self-destructive beliefs even when they don’t conform to your day-to-day reality.

Correct this distortion by accepting the positive things as well. Resist your urge to waiver the positive things or transform them into something worse. Valuing things positive or negative is a mental process, and whether or not you decide to accept positive things or interpret things in a positive light is under your direct control.

5. Jumping to Conclusions: You make negative assumptions based on baseless (mis)interpretations of your experiences. You do this while there is no definitive evidence that supports your conclusions and the severity of those conclusions.

Correct this distortion by reserving judgment and fact-checking. If you think something is off, confirm it! And, when you notice that you were unreasonably quick to judge or assume, acknowledge it! Only by becoming aware of your rash, unfair and unreasonably negative assumptions can you prevent yourself from  causing yourself more unnecessary pain and stress in the future!

Remember: Thoughts create emotions, and so how you feel about your experiencies is determined only by how you choose to look at them!
Also remember: Resist the urge to defend yourself! You don’t have to convince anyone that you’re right or justified in feeling how you feel. Of course you are! Your feelings are your feelings, and they can never be wrong! However, since you are right regardless of whether you feel good or bad about something, you have to ask yourself only the question: Is thinking and feeling this way helpful or unhelpful!
If you enjoyed reading this, please check out the part two of this article, and if you want to support us, please Like us on Facebook and join our community!
Thanks for reading, and best of luck in becoming a better you!

The post 10 Cognitive Distortions – Part One appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

This is a technique adapted from a technique put forward by Psychiatrist David D. Burns in his book Feeling Good and adjusted to be suitable for any and all wishes for improved motivation and self-esteem.

Step 1

Buy a simple wrist counter, or download any app that allows you to count with a button press – a notepad will also do fine, if you can have one on hand at any given time.

Step 2

Now, whenever you do anything noticeable – related to your eventual goal or not – tap the counter once. Become fully aware of what it is you’ve just succesfully achieved, however small – verbalize it and give yourself a little cheer. A simple ‘Good job, me, for doing x’ will work wonders to instill that feeling of achievement and train your brain to feel it more often. Fist pump for an added satisfaction.

Step 3

Every 10 counts, congratulate yourself on your success. Write down a sticky-note with a compliment and paste it somewhere in your house where you’re bound to walk into it on some occassion. Give yourself a hug once in a while.

Note that these successes include _everything you didn’t need to do, but did anyway_. You brushed your teeth. You drank that glass of water. You took a five minute break from life to relax yourself on the couch. You smiled at that stranger on the street. You were full of worries all day, so reward yourself for paining through those bad feelings. Anything goes.

4) After you’ve understood just how to notice and reward everything and anything, occasionally shift your focus to things related to the goals you want to achieve. Treat them as an extension of your other activites. Reward every small step, even the act of planning out these steps.

5) Optionally, become aware of your negatives/nagging thoughts and emotions using a separate counter. Congratulate yourself on your self-awareness and -acceptance each time you log a negative sensation.

Stop them from becoming a problem by noticing them and reducing them to a simple number on a counter; visualize this process. At the start, from day to day your negativity counter will go up before it goes down a few weeks later down the line – that is normal, as you’re becoming more aware of what’s going on inside your head.

6) Tally your scores daily and notice if and when they increase/decrease, and why. Whenever possible, focus on things that make your positivity/activity counter go up, distract yourself from things that add to your negativity counter. Tallying the two also will help you to see the ratio of your positive sensations vs. your negative sensations.

What This Will Accomplish

As you keep using this method, you’ll start noticing more and more just how many things worth doing you’re already doing each day, and as the counter increases, so will your sense of self-efficacy, your self-esteem and your motivation. You will feel more worthwhile, more competent, and more able to complete even larger tasks. It’ll train you to be more positive.
In a few weeks, you’ll be a lot more satisfied with yourself and your life, and you’ll notice a decrease in both the frequency and the intensity of your negative thoughts and emotions.
Most importantly, your internal reward mechanism will become fully activated and much more effective, and you’ll start being able to generate motivation at will.

Remember, to see why and how it works, please read the theory behind the Game of Life.
That’s all there is to it! Thanks for reading, and best of luck becoming a better you!

The post Motivation Technique – Using a wrist-counter for endless motivation! appeared first on Social Engineering Blogs.

Introduction: What makes breathing so important?

I shouldn’t really have to explain what makes breathing on its own important. Breathing is life. Breathing is the first you do and the only thing you do continuously from the moment you are born into this world, and so too does your life end with your last breath. It is your proverbial lifeblood, and it is close enough to physical lifeblood as you can get.

A better question might have been: What makes breathing so important that I’d spend the entirety of a week compiling every bit of useful information I can find and make it the first Mastery Section?

That question is best answered by referencing the varied professionals and guru’s and specialists that taught me the value and the art of breathing: Martial artists, Yogi’s, self-help guru’s, prophets, spiritual leaders, scholars and scientists.

It is no surprise that so many teachers of such varied disciplines can be named, because that is precisely what makes breathing so core to any serious effort or aspiration of self-mastery, self-control, and fulfillment. It is at the core of mindfulness, at the core of martial arts, and at the core of every physical state and emotion of everyday living.

Nothing is more important than breathing, precisely because it’s the only thing that applies to every other discipline and every other aspect of life.

Breathing is a completely free tool in your self-improvement arsenal. One that is intuitive to use, has utility in every situation at any time, and can be immediately learned to use by anyone for immediate benefit.

And because of it’s far-reaching effects, Nothing is more important than breathing for self-control, stress management and tension release, improved health and happiness, increased physical comfort and comfort during physical exercise – and through all of these it’ll be invaluable in maintaining and improving your social presence by eliminating discomfort.

Discomfort and anxiety are the bane of a charismatic and sociable person, because it eliminates your presence. When working, they takes away your attention. When emotionally discomforted, they can absorb you completely and lead to further anxious and depressive thoughts.

What you need to know about breathing:

Breathing is not just a mechanical process, it’s a complete physiological and psychological process. You will use it to control and regulate your body, your mind, and the synergy between the two.
At its core, learning to control your breathing is meant to strengthen you psychologically and allow you to suffer minimal impact from your unconscious breathing while maximizing the impact of your controlled breathing during stressful situations, as well as
Enabling you to relax, energize, reduce fear and other negativity, or motivate and empower yourself at will through your breathing.

By mastering breathing, you’ll be:

Understanding how breathing and posture can be used to manipulate hormone balances in your body and evoke comfortable or energetic physical and mental states.
Learning how to move and behave in a way that requires less energy and prevents injury, by tuning into your body’s natural way of regulating its own movement.
Learning how to use simple tension exercises to locate and release tension instantaneously and diminish negative emotions in a targeted way, and energize and awaken your body.
Utilizing simple physical exercises to maximize your breath capacity, lung capacity, your ability to control your breath, and your psychological condition.

Science of breathing:

Fear is primarily controlled by two organs: our hearts and our brains. When we hold our breath, the brain takes most of our bodies’ oxygen and makes our bodies very tense – that is when fear enters the body and later turns to panic, restricting the body further. We start breathing more hastily to get back that oxygen, and as our bodies fill with oxygen our fear diminishes and we become more relaxed.

– As with posture, remember the evo-background of breathing in heavily: breathing in through the lungs makes you bigger (threat) and serves to prepare you for battle. This means that breathing in through the chest will fill you with the appropriate hormones, primarily adrenaline (fear/anger/energy) and cortisol (stress), as well as dopamine (reward and confidence) and testosterone (confidence).

– However, only one of the two between cortisol and testosterone can have the upperhand, and in many situations stress is more present than testosterone. As such, breathing in this way will negatively affect you much of the time. Short puffs and chest-breathing will make you feel anxious and this may develop or encourage panic or other forms of anxiety, particularly during exercise.

– Breathing into your diaphraghm/belly will cause you to be filled with more oxygen, and requires you to relax all muscles that needn’t necessarily be tensed. It gives you benzodiazepines and calms your nerves.

Powerful Breathing

Correct Breathing: Breathing Principles

Continuity Principle

Continuity Principle: Your breathing should not be interrupted at any time.
There are two reasons why this is essential:

First, breathing usually halts when we experience a sudden shock or a certain higher level emotion. As a result, our breathing is constantly interrupted during our daily lives. Whether we’re ardently working, or biting our nails in anticipation; whether something of interest catches our eye, or because we are under immediate threat – whether we feel anger, sadness, fear or stress, or pleasant excitement, our breathing interrupts as stress takes our attention and breath away.

By focusing on continued breathing, we aim to become aware when our breathing stops, to mitigate the impact of the emotion we would be experiencing. Additionally, it will make it so that the emotion is not being repressed or buffered (which is the cause of halted breathing), and can successfully be processed without being intensified. [[Wiki] Synthetic Obsession: Unwanted/Intrusive Thoughts]

Remember the [[Wiki] Embodiment-Principle]: One of the fundamental rules of our biology is that the body (whether it be in facial expression, or posture + 2 links) will start to elicit the sensations and feelings that would be natural given what state it is in. If you smile genuinely, you will feel happiness, regardless of whether or not you’re sad. [[Wiki]State Reversal] If you slouch or sit with your face in your hands, you will feel fatigued or depressed.

So, by forcing ourselves to continue breathing (and continue breathing as if calm), we are forcing our body to diminish the sensation that was stopping us from doing so in the first place. Psychologically, that will cause us to not only lessen the impact of the situation and give us a greater ability and sense of control, but it will also mitigate the association between halting breathing and panic or other forms of excitement.

2. Your body has a perfect capacity to understand its own physical limits, linked entirely to breathing. By continuously breathing you can prevent any injury that would occur as a result of physical stress/exercise.
This is a capacity of which the usage we typically unlearn as we develop ourselves during our lives and learn ourselves synthetic rather than natural approaches to performing certain acts. To illustrate, take for instance the simple act of standing up from a chair:

Generally, you, me – we, as people – will start by inhaling and keeping the air trapped in our lungs, putting our arms on the chair rests, stretching our arms while moving forward with our bodies, then pushing ourselves up with our legs before finally standing up and stretching our bodies upright entirely. Then – and only then – we continue breathing.
This is what we see being done everywhere around us, growing more omnipresent as the people around us increase in age and decrease in physical capacity.

On the surface, it seems normal – but normal doesn’t mean natural, and indeed, the body’s natural way of standing up, using the least effort and resistance, and putting the least strain on any individual body part, is entirely different – how can that be? Well, let’s first describe exactly how the natural way of standing up would proceed.

Demonstration exercise

Before I explain, I want you to try standing up from wherever you’re now sitting (and if you’re not sitting at this moment, it would make sense to first sit before attempting to stand up), using the method I’ve just described. Keep in mind the continuity principle, and ___keep breathing___ while you make this attempt.
What do you feel? If your body feels strained or if the act of standing up as you normally would while inhaling seems stressful or unpleasant or more difficult than it usually would be, that’s because it is. The fact is, actions done while holding one’s breath are more difficult .

If this is your normal way of standing up, please repeat the exercise and try to work out what the more natural of standing up would be. When you keep breathing, can you feel your body indicate what would be a more comfortable method? Remember that while people unlearn to use natural methods of standing up, but fortunately, people don’t unlearn their natural way of doing things, and a body can very quickly be retaught to use itself properly again.

Demonstration exercise

Now, try doing things the more natural way. First, assume a natural sitting posture before standing up: sitting up with back straight, bent over somewhat to allow for deep breathing with as much ease of breathing as possible, while having your hands resting on your legs (or a desk). While still breathing you start standing up by leaning forward a bit more (with a slight forward rocking motion for momentum), while the feet initiate the push the legs will provide.

In Systema (a Russian martial art whose fighters use the Systema breathing system) the importance of using momentum and the whole of your body in unity is greatly emphasized, and the sole reason for this is the fact that it’s what your body wants to do.

It might take a few tries, but by tuning in to your body’s motions during your standing up, and following the laws of physics rather than your own programmed routine, you will discover that the movement will become a lot easier and a lot less stressful, both physically and mentally.

Though this is a regularly minor act of movement, it is one we perform often, and it gives a good indication – at least psychologically – of the limitations and failing of our own learnings, some of which we may have been using our entire lives.

A less minor act of movement is one of the most dreaded weight lifting exercises – the deadlift. One of the most core and essential exercises of any work-out routine, and one of the most often avoided. With good reason: the movement seems impractical, it’s easy to learn and perform incorrectly, and it is very likely to lead to injuries, the very least of which is a regular few day’s back-pain.

People get discouraged from the deadlift because it feels so abnormal and unnatural. Which is ironic, because the way we deadlift in our daily lives is the unnatural, damaging one, and the precise reason why the deadlift exercise often ends in misery.

The deadlift can be one of the most rewarding to do, and one of the most empowering to boot. And again, the solution to its problems is built-in to your body. When breathing starts your physical effort is very adaptable. You will not allow your body to overexert itself and you will be forced to move properly. Your breathing is your failsafe!

While breathing, your deadlift will invariably not work if you attempt to lift it via your arms or your back – it just can’t and it won’t. However, when you inhale and exhale, leaving your supplementary muscles relaxed, and you squat down properly, it will feel only natural to arch up your back and lift from your legs first and foremost.

You will also not be able to lift any more than is safe for your body, as moving and exercising in a way that is natural and intuitive to your body will make sure you can’t overexert or injure yourself.

So, remember this as one of the most fundamental principles of self-regulation: Never stop breathing!

Nose and mouth principle

Nose and mouth principle: Without exception, you should inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth.

Regulating body temperature
You keep relaxed, the fear cannot enterExhaling through mouth releases stress and tension. (With progressive relaxation you will tense then release.)

Principle of sufficiency

You should only take as much air as needed for any particular exercise or effort.
If you do need more air, don’t hold back or wait – breathe in as much oxygen as you need.
Take as much air as you can without the tension in your upper-body coming in.

Demonstration Exercise

Stand up, and try to familiarize yourself with how much air you really need. Breathe in regular intervals, say 6 seconds (3 in, 3 out), and breathe in less and less air each time until the point comes where you can no comfortably sustain your breath. That is your lower limit.

Principle of relaxation

Too much air cannot help you. It traps your lungs and restricts upper-body movement. It makes you slower and less mobile and flexible. It limits our ability to physical function.
Relaxing all non-essential muscles (which are a lot more than people realize in practically every movement) means that there is more room for movement, additional stress and breathing room.
In general, breathing in your belly will make you less stressed, which in turn means less tensing, which means less stress, and so on.

Demonstration exercise

Stand up, breathe in as deeply as you can, filling your entire belly and chest with air. Then, try to rotate your upper body from side to side. Notice how heavy it is and how restricted your movement is. Then, exhale and relax the muscles completely, and rotate your upper body again. Feels a lot more comfortable, doesn’t it? You can now move freely.

Tension exercises
About tension exercises

Tension exercises train you bodily and mental control through recognizing tension, activating the involved muscles further while inhaling, and releasing that tension while exhaling. Segmented tension, or the tensing of one muscle or a group of related muscles, is a good tool for learning body control and body awareness.

Wake-Up Exercise: Progressive Activation

Before you move or get up, keep lying down and inhale and exhale smoothly. After a few breaths, speed up your breath. This way, you are preparing your body and raising blood pressure. This way, your circulatory system won’t be damaged. To activate your muscles, inhale and tense up your whole body. Try not to miss anything. Hold it for as long as possible and then release while you exhale. This invigorates your body and energizes you really quickly.

When used as a part of a tension exercise, use this to tense up and release any negative thoughts you may have while lying there while waking up.

Resolving stress

Lots of cognitive tension causes mirroring physical tension in the head, chest, hands and/or feet. Tensing up specifically those muscles that accompany negative thoughts or emotions, and subsequently releasing that tension, will relax you physically and mentally. It is a very powerful tool against the stress of intrusive and unpleasant thoughts, moods and situations.

Progressive relaxation

By going through all muscle groups progressively, you can activate your body and relax to resolve all tension and relax more profoundly and more quickly than you otherwise would be able to. More on this will come when the article on [Wiki: Progressive Relaxation] is written and released.

Standing tension exercise

While standing upright, tense up all muscles individually, and see how tensing and relaxing everything from a standing position influences the manner in which you can manipulate and control your muscles. This will give you a deeper understanding of the way your body works and give you a greater sense of control over their movements.

Principle of Breath Leading

The next exercises are listed as physical exercises, but understand that all these exercises first and foremost are breathing exercises, so they should be performed with that kept as the focus. Throughout all exercises and regular activities, they all begin with breathing, and breathing pushes the activity. However large your exercise or physical effort, your breathing exercise is always more important and has a larger scope. This is the Principle of Breath Leading [the exercise].

Using these easy-to-learn and short exercises, you’ll be maximizing your breath capacity, your lung capacity, your ability to control your breath, and your psychological condition.

Physical exercises

People tend to treat physical exercise as if the priority is muscle effort, going as far as holding their breath during the entirety of a physical exercise, like a push-up. Through-out these exercises we’ll be using push-ups to learn breath control, though it is possible to substitute it with any physical exercises (including cardio). As is remarked in ‘Systema Breathing’: “People pay so little attention to their breathing that quite often their face is already red before they’ve even done a single push-up.”

When learning to control breathing during physical exercises, make sure to keep breathing. When an exercise is too difficult for you to sustain comfortable breathing, this will hinder the psychological learning process, which serves primarily to remind you that any activity without sustained comfortable breathing is not an activity your body is really capable of doing. Keep in mind:

During the push-ups, keep a straight line head to toe, as this will allow for optimal air intake.
It is not necessary to do full push-ups. Push-ups against the wall, or with support, or any other lighter variant will work just as well.
When first attempting these exercises, breathe audibly
Breathe out any residual air trapped in your lungs before starting each exercise, as that will allow you to control your air intake with greater ease.

Physical Exercise 1

Basic pattern: Do 10 push-ups where you inhale while lowering yourself, and exhale while pushing out. This is the typical breath pattern of most athletes, martial artists and weight-lifters during exercise.

Physical Exercise 2

Reverse Basic Pattern: Do 10 push-ups where you exhale while lowering yourself, and inhale while pushing out. This is to learn your body to recognize your breathing as being independent from the exercise.

Physical Exercise 3

Holding breath, inhaled: Do 10 push-ups, or however many are possible for you, while holding your breath. Exhale when you finish, but continue staying in your exercise working position.
The Principle of Continuity is broken on purpose here, to train our bodies consciously to become aware of what would happen unconsciously throughout the day while holding our breath. That same physiological process that would otherwise cause fear is now being trained to have less of a response.

Physical Exercise 4

Holding breath, exhaled: Do 10 push-ups, or however many are possible for you, while having just exhaled all air in your lungs.

It is very important psychologically to understand what happens physiologically when you run out of breath. By purposely and consciously holding your breath you train your body, in a very safe and comfortable situation, to no longer feel that panic. This will also prevent you from inhaling too much air as a result of fear, which will cause tension that harms the exercise and through it your body.

When we run ‘out of breath’ or even have the sensation of running out of breath, like during an anxiety or panic attack, or even during exercise, we start to feel sorry for ourselves and feel like we can no longer continue bearing the stress that our bodies are feeling. By allowing ourselves to breath calmly and deeply when this happens, we are essentially telling our bodies that they are fine.

This will serve as a powerful psychological training tool in virtually any situation that would otherwise cause panic or other heavy emotions, and allow us to get a more full control over our minds and our bodies, and the way they react to sensations.

Physical Exercise 5

Tension release: Sit up on your need and feel any tension that you have as a result of your previous exercise. Tense those muscles and relax them. Breathe in as you focus on the tension, and breathe out as you relax those muscles. Learn yourself to relax those muscles that aren’t vital to the exercise more deeply and keep those relaxed during the next sets of exercises.

Exercise 6

Single slow push-up with burst breathing: Lower yourself as slowly as you can, while continuously taking very quick inhalations through the nose and exhaling sharply through the mouth. The slower you do the push-up, and so the greater your effort, the quicker your bursts (up to 10 times a second is feasible, but aim for around 4 times a second until you learn to burst effectively).

Don’t let your feelings of fatigue get a hold of you. They only serve to make you feel sorry for your body. If you’re continuously breathing, provided your muscles can hold you through the exercise, then that negativity will be pushed out of you.

How to take these further

There are a lot of possible combinations of these and more breathing patterns, but let me repeat that “at the core these exercises are meant to help you strengthen yourself psychologically” and that enabling yourself to relax, energize, reduce fear and other negativity, and motivate and empower yourself at will through your breathing is the intended goal.”

As such, I would recommend trying out all these exercises with the intent of finding what each one teaches you individually, and then using those that work best for you to train those areas of self-control that are most important to you.

You can vary these exercises by mixing them from push-up to push-up and within push-ups, e.g. Burst-breathing a slow push-up on the way down, inhaling twice and exhaling once on the way up.

After this, you can expand this to other exercises entirely, or even regulate and mix your breathing during other activities, such as meditation or while working.

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