I’m feeling calmer today and it is all thanks to a single raisin . . . not a whole pack, not even a double dose of desiccated grapes. One . . . solitary . . . raisin . . . oh and a pinch of mindfulness.

Since last weeks coping skills session I have been more aware of my emotions, which is the first step to controlling them. As I mentioned in last weeks post, “OCD & Emotions”, emotions are full system reactions that we have for a number of reasons. This is all well and good, but acknowledging that you feel crap isn’t going to help you feel better if you stop the process there.

Enter mindfulness and my little squidgy brown friend.

Mindfulness is about recognising your feelings and emotions and then taking a step back. It is purposefully paying attention to the present moment in a non-judgemental way. It’s not about trying to get anywhere, but simply being aware of where you are, and allowing yourself to be where and as you are. With respect to emotion, it is about becoming more aware of the emotions you experience as you experience them.

We spend most of our lives on “automatic pilot”, not really being aware of what we are doing. By practising mindfulness it can help us to become more grounded, more fully aware and present in each moment of life. As you can imagine this makes life more enjoyable, interesting, vivid and fulfilling.

It is important to remember that mindfulness also means facing up to difficulties, as in the long-term this is the most effective way to reduce unhappiness.

The idea is that mindfulness reduces stress as we are no longer on auto pilot. This means we don’t react negatively to events, thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations triggering old habits of thinking that are unhelpful, potentially leading to worsening mood or symptoms of stress.

By becoming more aware of our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations from moment to moment, we increase the possibility of responding to situations with choice, rather than act automatically.

I was aware of this theoretically as I spent a lot of time reading around mindfulness and Buddhism last year (a page on mindfulness will be added to the resources section of OCD World soon), but it has been a while since I seriously practised it. How long? Well the last time I can remember was four months ago on a brake water in Stiges thirty four kilometres southwest of Barcelona, Spain. Pretty specific huh?

Seriously though, today reminded me that I defiantly need to get back into this calming, yet energising habit. Unlike my Hispanic dusk time beach session, most of my recent half-hearted mindfulness attempts have resulted in a short nap (naughty Chris!).

While I found today’s traditional mindfulness of breathing exercise useful, it was the raisin task that really ensnared me. We all looked puzzled as the group leader dished us each a solitary shrivelled blob. We were then instructed to mindfully observe our new prune friend with all five of our senses (yes I too was surprised that a raisin could make sounds!)

That was it.

Just me and a raisin.

A raisin and me.

For around five minutes.

The wonder of this exercise will only hit you if you try it for yourself, and I thoroughly endorse it. Go on . . . . head to your kitchen and grab a dried grape, sultana or current. Then just observe it. Focus your undivided attention on it. If your mind wonders, forgive yourself, then bring it back to the task at hand. Look at it, touch it, squidge it around by your ear to make sounds, smell it and finally after a few minutes taste it.

For all those people too lazy to do that, I will describe my sensory journey.

First of all it sat in the palm of my hand. I just stared at it sitting there. Stupid raisin. The traffic is quite load outside, I hadn’t noticed that before . . . drats I’m not thinking about the raisin.

There it is, just sitting there in my left hand. Actually I can’t really feel it, it’s so light. I give it a poke, and feel the sensation of it rubbing along my skin. Wait . . . are raisins usually this wrinkly, it looks really dishevelled.

I poke it further around my skin in bursts. Within moments on me stopping, it feels as light as a feather (well apparently as light as a single raisin). We studied this effect in biology at Uni, that your sense adapts to constant pressure . . . wait back to the raisin.

It seems to be leaving a little shiny trail of grease on my palm. Poke, poke, poke, stare.

I’m just gazing at it now, really observing is texture and dark browny faintly orangy colour. I wonder how many calories are in it, I want to eat it . . . back to observing with my eyes rather than my mouth. Stare . . .stare . . . stare.

My hand raises it up to my ear and I give it a squidge. Each time I squeeze and rotate with my fingers it gives off a little sludge. I have never heard a raisin before!!!

The tips of my finger and thumb grease up. I move them towards my mouth and bite the raisin in half. A burst of flavour hits my tongue, reminding me simultaneously of porridge breakfast and cake snacks. I pop the remaining half into my mouth.

Does one raisin usually have so much flavour? I could start a dietary  revolution that involves playing with and fondling your food . . . back to the palate. Wait it feels slightly gritty in between my teeth as its skin brakes up unleashing a jelly like centre. I gulp it down, leaving a slightly sandy feeling and taste that lingers.

Wow. One raisin, five minutes and a new outlook on mindfulness.

By purposefully paying attention to the present moment, in this case a raisin, and allowing myself to be where and as I was, everything else began to fade away. I felt lighter yet more grounded in reality.

I’m sure to be practising mindfulness more often in the coming weeks, and sharing tips in the resources section right here in OCD World.

Today I attended a “Coping Skills” session on Emotions. Maybe I could make a regular weekly item of reviewing the sessions, as we work our way through the fourteen week course, covering mindfulness, crisis survival skills and attending to relationships. May be I won’t. Anything is possible and nothing is probable in OCD World.

As a side note I am really enjoying playing around with the OCD World project, throwing plenty of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I have a feeling over the next few weeks I will be exercising my creative muscles, and I’m sure I will be showing off my artsy guns right here on the OCD World Blog.

I once read that a great way to improve as a student is to teach the lesson you have just received to somebody else. When entering the lesson, knowing that you will be acting as teacher as well as pupil, you retain more of the information. When your health is at stake, that can only be a good thing. With that in mind, you better pay attention throughout the rest of this post, and then go and tell somebody that you cherish all about emotions and how brilliant ocdworld.co.uk is.

As the topic of today’s session was “Understanding and Acknowledging Emotions”, we kicked off by naming as many emotions as we could think of  and put them all on a flip chart. Like all the exercises into days class, actually taking an active role in the discussions really helped the lesson hit home.

This was only the second session (the first was just icebreakers and admin) although like last week it’s fair to say I felt excited and optimistic about the skills we were going to learn (Excited is an emotion, did you spot it?).  

Once we had a rap sheet of emotions we went on to learn how emotions are full system reactions that also affect our bodily sensations, thoughts, non-verbal behaviours and actions. We picked on the emotion of anxiety and wrote down all of the thoughts, behaviours and bodily sensations that are associated with being anxious.

You can probably see where I am going with this, but seeing it all in black and white really brought it to our attention just how much goes on physiologically and mentally just from one piddling lone emotion.

So we have emotions and they affect us a lot. What next?

I’m glad you ask.

In future sessions we will cover how to manage our emotions. For the remainder of todays class we looked at what are emotions for? Why do we have emotions in the first place?

As emotions serve a purpose, once we have recognised them, we should acknowledge them and work out what they are trying to tell us. What actions are they trying to prompt?

So the first purpose of emotions is to prompt and organise us for action. When a certain emotion is triggered, your whole body goes on a sort of alert to be ready for action related to that emotion.

Secondly emotions give us important information about what is going on in a given situation. They are like a warning system telling us something is happening in our environment that we should know about. We need to pay attention to our emotions as they may be telling us that we need to modify our behaviours.

Emotions are also for motivating as they get you going to do things and can save time in taking action in important situations. If an emotion is particularly strong it can help you overcome obstacles between you and something you want.

Finally emotions are used to communicate to others. They may prompt us to say something about how we are feeling to another person, or they may get the message across through body language. Communication of emotions influences other people, whether we intend to or not!

Essentially emotions are little “helpers”, guiding you through life notifying you to change your behaviour to become more effective at meeting your needs or improving your relationships.

As we neared the end of the session we looked at the differences between primary and secondary emotions. They will have to wait for another day as it is getting late and I am looking forward to playing around with some watercolours and reading a good book.

I have enjoyed passing on the message of the world of emotions so I’m sure I will keep you posted with the other topics from the session as well as cover the difference between primary and secondary emotions.

I was blown away when I was presented with the reading: “a person many years your junior can teach you something profound and life changing”. I was perched on my pew in the congregation of a Seven Day Adventist Christian Camp. An undercover atheist, I felt like bloody Louis Theroux.

Ok so my quote isn’t verbatim and it’s not as succinct as the original source, however the words that struck me that day, summed up concepts already bouncing around in my head.

Just because somebody is an “expert” in their field, it doesn’t mean they have all the answers. They don’t necessarily have the best solutions or the most efficient way of doing things.

There are many ways to skin a cat, and without fresh blood coming up with game changing ideas there would be no progress or innovation.

“Experts” are often single minded in their approach to an issue, whereas newbies look the problem with their fascinated fresh eyes. Labelled novices and “moronic simpletons” aren’t bound by the dogma, so they are free to draw from their own unique sets of experiences and individual maps of life. Who knows what pearls of wisdom are locked up in their brain box’s from there accumulated existence?

These invaluable inputs can often act as catalysts of great transformations and paradigm shifts. But somebody has to unblock their ears, engage their open minds and listen first.

In a similar vein, I believe respect is earned, not just given because you’re older and assumed “wiser”. Fledgling fools tend to grow up into elderly fools. I have met some great youngsters, who have their heads screwed on more than most fifty year olds, and I’m sure you have all had the experience of meeting an old dude who keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Respect shouldn’t be granted just because you have grey hair and more wrinkles than my ball bag.

As we mature we should creep closer to enlightenment. When you devote more time to a problem, you should uncover more of the answers. This isn’t always the case, as we get stuck in ruts and limited ways of thinking. In theory there should be increased wisdom with age, but not all those that have racked up the years are knowledgeable.

Next time you are faced with a dilemma, open yourself up to advice from people of all walks of life, not just the elderly gurus and authorities. You never know what diamonds are hidden within an infant’s nappy.

I have always loved doing a good snappy snap. Even as an ‘ickle nipper with my wined on super snaps camera I could not get enough. My poor parents mused have hated me grinning up at them while handing over another film to get developed (this was pre-digital, and we could capture everything our trigger fingers could handle).

Back then I collected a menagerie of hard copy bendy things you could hold in your hand, filled with colourful shots of animals located right in the centre of the image. Looking back at my old albums (remember them, the hard copy ones!) I kind of regret not taking more photos of the people around in my life. There are only so many sheep you can look at before you start skipping whole chunks of film, looking for you and your mates pratting around aged eight at Pentre Celyn Commer outdoors activity camp.

I never did pursue my passion for capturing life in all its beauty with my box of magic. I specialised in learning the nitty gritty intricacies of the universe and the miracle of life housed in it. Somebody else could capture the splendour of it all, while I did the mechanics.

I complete turned my back on this passage from the amazing film Dead Poets Society:

My affair with the arts flickered out of existence shorty after my Fine Art GCSE pieces where  displayed in Theatre Clwyd. University was calling me and it was time to get serious about getting the spanners out and really tinkering with the nuts and bolts of Biology. Had I known Einstein loved playing around with his Violin so much, maybe I would have made some different lifestyle choices.

My problem is I want to do everything, I spread myself too thinly then burn out. While in recovery, I am thrilled to just still be alive, get all excited and the cycle starts again. While in hospital from my latest episode I rediscovered my love of the arts. Upon reintegrating myself into society (you know that place where everyone has a job and does stuff to keep the economy going) I joined a ground of like minded folk who for a couple of hours a week, pootle around making pictures.

I am gripped again by my pocket sized dream capturererer, pointing it at everything I find interesting. I only have a Canon Power Shot A3000 IS (it’s really not impressive, look it up), but my theory is the great photographers of the years gone by didn’t have all this new fandangled technology that is banded around today. I hope to share more of how I view the world in the near future, but for now I have attached a selection of my snaps below for you viewing pleasure. If this kind of thing is your bag feel free to check me out on Flickr.

Happy Snappin’.