hey there everybody and welcome to this brief presentation on
five tips for taming the monkey mind i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
let's start out with what is monkey mind well monkey mind is a term coined i believe by marsha
linehan i could be wrong here but when i think monkey mind i think dbt anyhow it refers to how
our thoughts often tend to jump around why do we have monkey mind you know why can't we just sit
down and focus well there are a lot of reasons for that and some people are blessed with the ability
to sit down and have extended focus but for the rest of us it's a process it's a learning process
sometimes we have monkey mind because we're hyper vigilant we don't feel safe in our environment for
one reason or another so our brain is constantly telling us about you know what's going on to the
left what's going on to the right what was that sound what's going on now that can be one cause of
monkey mind anxiety can be another cause of monkey mind the what ifs or i don't know if i'll be able
to cope if any of those things that feel like threats can trigger monkey mind because the monkey
is saying hey there could be something coming up here pretty soon you need to be prepared for it
noisy hecklers are another reason we have monkey mind and those voices those tapes
whatever you want to call it that we have in our head that tell us that we're never going to be
good enough or you should have known that this was going to happen can be deafening at times
and they contribute to monkey mind because you're trying to focus on something and that
heckler is going why are you even bothering remember all these times that you screwed up
and finally lack of training our mind is built to help keep us safe your
brain is programmed to keep you aware of the threats in real life or irl and in your head
or i-y-h i know i made that one up go figure um but sometimes the things that you are thinking
about sometimes the things your brain is trying to keep you aware of are simply thoughts based in
prior experiences not something that is going on right now in real life so what do we do about it
first get to know your monkeys one of the activities that i encourage people to do
just to try to be curious about their monkeys is an activity called three minute thoughts
and for three minutes guess what you write down all of your thoughts or you record them if you
don't want to write whatever but three minutes just free associating whatever you're thinking
to figure out where does your mind go who are these monkeys that are jumping around in your
head when you're finished you're going to go back through and categorize those thoughts
to see what themes might emerge are a lot of your thoughts surrounding fears of rejection
that can come from if failure you know if i fail then people will hate me or i won't succeed
um isolation and abandonment if people knew who i was then they wouldn't love me whatever so you put
those things under the rejection column then you have thoughts about loss of control or the unknown
what if this happens what if that happens you know thinking about the future things that you
have no idea whether they're going to come true or not but all of those what-ifs and physical
or emotional harm if this happens i don't know if i would be able to cope with it it would be
excruciating and just don't forget that this will be excruciating and sometimes we think about those
things that you know if someone were to die or if i were to lose my job or if whatever would happen
it would be it would be almost intolerable and those distress intolerant thoughts can keep us
in that monkey mind place because the monkey is getting progressively agitated it's saying
hey i'm telling you there's this problem and you're not doing anything about it
another category you have your threats category that we just talked about another category is
balls in the air and sometimes because we wear a bunch of different hats we may not manage our time
super effectively start getting overwhelmed and we're trying to keep track of all these
different balls that we're trying to juggle in the air and that can cause us to have monkey mind
so the first step to taming that monkey mind is knowing your monkeys you can't
tame them until you understand them the next step is to work with your monkeys don't just
lock them in a cage if and please don't just lock monkeys in the cage that would make me sad
but if you just locked a whole troop of monkeys in a cage they're probably going
to get rowdier if especially if you're not meeting their needs if they're hungry
if they are feeling threatened they are going to put out threat calls that's what monkeys do
go to any zoo you'll see it so let's work with the monkeys let's figure out how we can calm them down
first or one of the things you can do is to let go of perfectionism and shoulda coulda's instead
of beating yourself up because you didn't make an a on something or because you made a mistake
learn from it and use rational self-statements you can identify the reasons you made a mistake
you can learn from it but shoulda coulda i should have done this well you didn't
so what will you do in the future in order to prevent that from happening again
the next thing is to forgive yourself and others so you can take back that energy if you have a lot
of energy tied up in resentments then you're going to have those resentment monkeys bouncing around
you're periodically going to get triggered and start thinking about that person that you're still
angry at same thing for yourself if you are angry with yourself if you feel guilty about something
then that may continue to come up and you may continue to
beat yourself up for something that happened in the past you can't change the past so it's
important to figure out how to accept what's done is done learn from it make amends if necessary
and prevent it from happening in the future to the best of your ability
three manage your time it is
a huge reason for monkey mind when we're trying to remember to do too many things when you've
got to do things at work and you've got to remember to schedule doctor's appointments
for your kids and you've got to remember to give the dogs their heartworm medication and whatever
manage your time delegate where you can create reminders push notifications on your phone
whatever you can do so you don't have to remember it up here it's going to get fed back to you
and let the monkeys be heard and i know that sounds really weird but if the monkeys are trying
to tell you something if your brain is trying to tell you something then listen you can decide at
that point whether it's something you want to pay attention to or not so some journaling prompts
for this part of the presentation record your thoughts for three minutes and identify the themes
do this any time the troop in your head the group of monkeys in your head starts to get a
bit too noisy just spend three minutes writing down your thoughts and then try to figure out
you know is there a particular theme that is prompting them to act out today
take what's useful and leave the rest so of the thoughts that you had during that three minutes
which ones can be diffused by examining the facts a lot of times monkeys get upset based
on emotional reasoning not on facts because they're monkeys after all
they are not using that higher order cognitive processing so examining the facts and using
fact-based reasoning sometimes can diffuse the situation find exceptions if you're using those
all or nothing terms those extreme words i always fail or every time you try to do something you
you don't succeed then look for those exceptions and confront your monkey with those exceptions or
find alternate explanations maybe somebody gave you an attitude when you were at the gym today
and you're continuing to replay that in your head you're trying to focus and that
thing keeps coming back into your mind okay well let's try to think of three alternate
explanations for why that person may have acted that way that maybe had nothing to do with you
and all of those are tips for handling cognitive distortions if you want to go
and look at videos on addressing negative thoughts and unhelpful thoughts
and finally training that monkey mind you know i talked in the last slide about doing
the three-minute thoughts and that's just you know free association writing down your thoughts
now we're going to train your monkey mind and i want you to practice three-minute mindfulness
using either pictures or a partner so if you're going to practice this mindfulness with
pictures then you take a picture of wherever you're at whatever you're trying to focus on
and compare what you notice with what's actually in the picture to see what you missed
if you do it with a partner you can both make lists of what you notice and then compare them
gradually add time as you're able to stay focused so start with three minutes
when that becomes easy then maybe work up to five minutes or and eventually even up to 10 minutes
what can you focus on you can use your senses you can identify five things that you see five things
that you hear five things that you smell you get where i'm going you can do it with colors you
can identify as many things as you can find that are the color green or brown or you can do open
awareness and just try to spend three minutes in the moment noticing as many things as possible and
then compare them to either what's in the picture or what your partner noticed another activity is
to uh help is to set reasonable attention goals you're going to get really frustrated if you
jump the gun now think about training a puppy you know they can sit initially they can learn to sit
but they may only sit for about three seconds and then they want to come give you kisses with
monkey mind it's kind of the same way figure out where you are right now how long can you focus
and then gradually add time to that maybe a minute two minutes at a time and have those
micro successes as you move toward having a longer attention span and remember most people
can't focus for a solid hour at a time without you know getting distracted for a minute and when you
get distracted that's okay acknowledge the monkey and turn your attention back to what you're doing
increase your awareness of vulnerabilities and have compassion with yourself
not every day is going to be a good focus day and for me for example today is a really bad focus day
we were at the emergency vet until you know really really late last night and i didn't
get as much sleep as i usually get i'm worried about my dog and so i am not focusing as much as
i normally would okay it's important for me to recognize that trying to force myself to focus
as i would on a day when i got enough rest and i wasn't worried about my dog
is unreasonable having compassion with myself recognizing that i am i'm tired today
the next thing you can do is thought stopping and that's easier said than done i know the
first thing and i want you to continue to think about these monkeys as living little beings
go to the zoo watch some monkeys visit somebody who has a pet monkey and see that they tend to
be pretty active and the more stressed they feel often times the more active they get likewise the
monkeys in your head the more stressed you are the louder and more active those monkeys may get
so positive redirection can be one thing just like you would just do to discipline a child or
correct a child if the monkeys start telling you you need to pay attention to this this
is a problem pay attention you should have coulda woulda it's important to talk to them
and say all right well thanks for you know giving me the heads up however i can't change that or i
can't predict what's gonna happen how do you think i should handle it you know acknowledge the monkey
purge it from your head get it down on paper if you lay down to go to sleep at night and your mind
starts racing or if you're you know driving to and from work and your mind's all over the place
that's when you can purge it from your head when you're driving use voice to text
please do not be texting or writing while you're driving but at night keep a notepad by your bed so
if something pops into your head like oh i've got to remember to pick up that prescription tomorrow
write it down as soon as you write it down you've purged it that monkey goes to sleep
some people have a lot of anxiety and find it difficult to control their worry
uh and do this all the time one technique that some people find helpful is to actually schedule
in worry time so you can have those monkeys bouncing all over the place and you say okay guys
i hear you i hear there's a lot of stress i've got to focus on work right now we will deal with
this this afternoon at four o'clock i will allow myself 30 minutes of worry time at four o'clock
when when we can focus on this and i know that sounds weird but it can help some people to
defuse the situation and compartmentalize until they can address that worry and finally guided
imagery and this is most effective for helping you get to sleep and relaxation
guided imagery is not going to help you focus on your work but it can be a really useful tool
for quieting that monkey mind when you want to be quiet in order to do that you want to use as many
of your senses as you can and i use the general rule of five inputs a minimum of five inputs from
each sentence each sentence so five things you see five things you hear five things you smell
if you're walking down a path in the woods you know what are what are five things you see and
then as you go down the path you know there's five more things that you see and maybe five different
things that you hear but you want to make the experience as multi-dimensional as possible
partly because it's more fun that way but partly because when you are trying to think
of all those things your mind is using words your mind is using words to describe those situations
so it doesn't have the ability to also use words to focus on this other stuff if you
completely immerse yourself in that image then your your brain is basically going to be occupied
journaling prompt for this slide create and record a guided imagery script
using at least four of your senses and five inputs from each of those senses
additional resources on mindfulness meditation and guided imagery can be found on the youtube
channel at youtube.com all ceus education and search the videos because we have over 800
search the videos using the keywords mindfulness meditation and guided imagery