Past, present and future are the three elements of our timeline that strongly influence our self, mind and our psychological functioning. Our sense of self is shaped by our past history, and our expectations and goals are a sort of compass that orientates our present. Our mind constantly navigates among past, present and future and most of the time we are not completely aware of this.

How many times have we found ourselves trapped by worry regarding the future? And how many times was that scary vision of the future not even close in time as it may potentially happen although we are not even sure when?

Or on the contrary how many times have we found ourselves ruminating over and over again on past episodes, on things that happened and that we would like to change, on our mistakes and people’s behaviours?

While worrying about the future typically leads to anxiety, rumination often causes low mood.

Beyond the negative consequences that this mindset has on our mood, it also involves a specific risk: missing out on the present moment – our today.

Being constantly focused on tomorrow or yesterday doesn’t allow us to be present in what is happening in the now hence to appreciate and enjoy the beauty of what we actually have or are experiencing.

Oriental philosophers have been the first to embrace this thought and to transform it into a real mantra for living, using meditation as a daily activity. In recent years, some principles of Eastern philosophy have been adopted and tailored to the Western lifestyle, and it comes with the name of Mindfulness.

Being mindful means being aware of the present moment, being in the here-and-now and it can be practiced through meditation or simply by asking yourself gentle questions in order to bring awareness to your senses.

Beyond the efficacy of stimulating a state of calm and awareness, mindfulness can be a powerful tool to fight and contrast our mind’s tendency to wander into the past or future when such activity is not needed or useful.

If you recognise yourself in this tendency to focus too much on the past or future instead of the present moment, working on being mindful through psychotherapy can be quite helpful in tackling such inclination.

Counselling and psychotherapy

Psychotherapy and counselling are talking therapies, based on the assumption that talking and reflecting about our own thoughts, emotions and experiences are powerful tools to feel better and change. In particular, the role of emotions is fundamental in our daily life and too often they are not considered, mistreated, denied or swallowed. Emotions on the contrary are our own individual compass that indicates how well we are dealing with our life and our goals. Paying attention and taking care of them is a way of assuring a balanced and mindful psychological life.

Emotions’ psycho-education

In cognitive behavioural psychotherapy and in counselling, if the patient happens to be confused, overwhelmed or simply not used to pay attention to emotions, one of the first steps in therapy is acknowledging them. This process is called “emotions’ psycho-education” and it implies getting to know each of our emotions, their role, aim and physiological activation in order to discover how our mind is functioning. This usually works by monitoring everyday our affective reactions and discovering which thoughts and goals are related. Therefore recognising and labelling the emotions we perceive is the prerequisite for regulating them in a healthy way. 

What scientific research is telling us?

Despite being a technique that has been used since the birth of counselling (and even earlier), it is only in recent times that scientific research has found the biological proofs of the powerful effect of labelling emotions. A research carried out by Lieberman et al. in 2007 clearly showed that affect labelling impacts the functioning of specific areas of our brain that are responsible for emotions’ processing and regulation. Specifically, translating feelings into words decreases the activation of a little region of our brain, the amygdala, that is responsible for automatic emotions activation.

On the contrary, affect labelling seems to increase the activity of a specific region of our pre-frontal cortex (the right ventrolateral area) that is responsible for a high-level processing of emotional information. A decrease of the amygdala’s activity and an increase of that specific aerea of the pre-frontal cortex help alleviating emotional distress.

If you find yourself in a period of strong emotional distress, you may consider talking it through in psychotherapy or counselling; talking therapies are an useful tool to better understand what is going on and to find different strategies to better deal with it.

References:

Lieberman M.D, et al., “Putting feelings into words: affect labelling disrupts amygdala’s activity in response to affective stimuli”; Psychol Sci. 2007 May 18(5):421-8.

Our mind often plays bad tricks on our discerning and rational abilities, without us being aware of what is happening.

Cognitive biases are a form of cognitive ‘errors’ or shortcuts leading us to evaluate situations, events or people in a distorted and almost irrational way in a very short period of time.

To read my entire article published on Counselling Directory, click here.