Stress and Anxiety are everywhere these days – always have been I expect but maybe not with Capital Letters and so much media emphasis.  Clients certainly bring it with them into our counselling room in Glasgow.

Even from the Park Bench, I can sense them, Monster Stress and Giant Anxiety doing their damnedest to wreck the blossom and make the sun go in, taking things to extremes as usual.

Can we find ways of living that enable us to feel relaxed and comfortable with ourselves?  One effective technique is to learn to live in the present.  If I said to you, “Now, I’m going to give you a present”, you might imagine flowers, chocolates or a ticket for a show but the ‘present’ I’m talking about is a huge gift which you can use every day till you die, the gift of the ‘present moment’.

If we stop to think about it, how much of our Stress and Anxiety relate to the past and the future?  In terms of the past for instance, we blame ourselves for our negative experiences as children and we say, “If only such and such had never happened….”  In terms of the future, we worry that because things turned out badly in 1988, they are going to be bad in 2008.  We say, “If I were to try such and such it wouldn’t work because….”

But what about this moment you are living through sitting at your computer just now, the one that just turned into the next one?  How did you cope with it?  Still here?  Did you manage to breathe, keep your balance, feet on the ground?  If you did, you have the key to the present already and just need to become fully conscious of what you are doing. 

Whatever happened, take a moment – this one! – and allow yourself to be conscious of your breathing, your immediate surroundings, the softness or hardness of your chair, the floor beneath your feet, the sounds around you, whether they are traffic, birds or children, the stillness of objects – this lamp, that book.  If you do this you will become aware of yourself as an alive being existing in the universe at this moment and importantly, you will be connected to the energy of the universe.

If after doing this you feel more relaxed, it will be because you have created a space for yourself in which you can be yourself.  You now know how to make the connection and you will find you can only truly make it in the present.

But what you may ask are the benefits of living in the present?  Here is one, though there are an infinite number .(See the book, “The Power of Now”).  One benefit is that it’s the only place from where you can successfully view reality.  If you are here in the now, with a real problem/difficulty, you will get to grips with it better from here.

Let’s take a worst scenario but using the present as our vantage point:  Jean’s mother who is seventy-eight, has fallen in the bath and broken her hip – apart from nearly drowning as she went in and out of consciousness over the two hours before someone found her.  In order to visit her in hospital, Jean needs to make different childcare arrangements, arrange to be off work which is complicated because she and her partner run a franchise on a shop.  Also she needs to find the best way of getting to the hospital which is in Ayrshire.  Her mother moved there last month.  And she’s just heard that the car’s in the garage because her partner went into the back of someone on his way home.

In this story there are both facts and feelings.  If Jean dwells on the feelings she is likely to become overwhelmed with “What if mother had drowned?” “If only Paul hadn’t damaged the car!” I always get lost if I go on a bus”.

But suppose she stays in the present with feet on the ground, stays with ‘what is’? Mother is still alive and actually quite comfortable in the hospital.  Jean can phone her aunt and ask her to take the children.  She could use a hire car, even though she hates driving strange vehicles.  She can ask the girl who works on Saturdays to do some extra shifts in the shop.

Even though the answers to these problems may not be as simple as people just saying “Yes, of course”, asking the questions are actions she can take which are well within her control.  If her sister tells her to go to hell, she will have to think of a Plan B but she will have eliminated a possibility and therefore be further on.

In other words, the more she stays with what is possible, the nearer she gets to a place of calm.  What is possible is in the present.  If she strays into “What if” that’s when she becomes overwhelmed.  Furthermore, she stays with the reality of the present: her mother did have the accident – there is nothing to be gained by imagining otherwise.

Of course, using this technique is not as easy as talking about it but practising makes it easier.  It’s worth experimenting.  (See the book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”).

And we must not forget that your feelings have their place: the shock of hearing what happened to your mother is very real, the fear of not finding solutions, self-pity – why did it have to happen to me? Today?

If your feelings become too much, breathe and be aware of your feet on the ground and allow the feelings to flow.  It has been said that no feeling held consciously can be sustained for longer than forty seconds. – It may change into another feeling but it won’t remain the same.  You could test this out!

Now I am hearing a cuckoo.  Now it has gone.  On to the next moment….

Recommended books:  “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle”.  Hodder Mobius. £7.99p. ISBN 0-340-73350-0 and “TheSeven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R Covey.  Free Press 1989.  ISBN 0-7432-6951-9