Year: 2023

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Mindful Acceptance: Letting Go with Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy

mindful acceptance

“Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.”

— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

One of the most powerful skills in mindfulness-based ecotherapy is mindful acceptance. Mindful acceptance is the art of letting go of unnecessary suffering while remaining fully present with life as it is. Unlike some approaches that focus only on changing thoughts or managing symptoms internally, mindfulness-based ecotherapy (MBE) emphasizes reconnecting with the natural world, the body, the senses, and the present-moment experience as pathways toward healing and resilience.

Mindfulness-based ecotherapy differs from many traditional mindfulness practices because it does not view mindfulness as something that occurs only inside the mind. Instead, MBE recognizes that humans are part of an interconnected ecological system. Healing happens not only through awareness of thoughts and emotions, but also through restoring a relationship with the earth, the body, community, and the rhythms of nature itself.

The skill of mindful acceptance teaches you to recognize the difference between what you can change and what you cannot. Once you have done everything realistically within your power to address a problem, continued anxiety and rumination no longer serve a useful purpose. At that point, mindful acceptance asks you to loosen your grip on the stress attached to the situation.

Mindful Acceptance Doesn’t Mean Giving Up

Importantly, letting go of anxiety does not necessarily mean giving up on solving the problem.

Suppose you have a car payment due and you do not currently have the money to pay it. Naturally, this situation may trigger fear, worry, and stress. You may brainstorm solutions, ask for help, reduce expenses, or search for additional income. However, once you have taken every practical step available in the present moment, the constant cycle of worry becomes emotionally exhausting and often counterproductive.

In mindfulness-based ecotherapy, one of the twelve core skills involves learning to observe your thoughts and feelings nonjudgmentally while grounding yourself in sensory awareness. You might sit outdoors beneath a tree, feel your feet on the earth, notice the movement of the wind, or listen to birdsong while observing the anxious thoughts moving through your awareness. Nature becomes an anchor that reminds you that life continues unfolding even during uncertainty.

Unlike purely cognitive approaches that may focus primarily on changing thought patterns, MBE integrates embodied awareness and ecological connection. The natural world helps regulate the nervous system by drawing your attention away from repetitive mental loops and back into the present moment.

Mindful Acceptance, Observing, and Describing

Another essential MBE skill is mindful observing. Instead of immediately reacting to anxiety, you learn to notice it with curiosity. What does the anxiety feel like in your body? Is your chest tight? Is your breathing shallow? Are your thoughts racing toward worst-case scenarios? By observing rather than fighting the experience, you create space between yourself and the anxiety.

This space allows you to make conscious decisions rather than reacting automatically.

The same principle applies in relationships. Imagine you feel disconnected from your partner because they rarely spend time with you. You suggest activities, initiate conversations, and communicate your feelings honestly, yet nothing changes. Many people respond to this situation by escalating their efforts to control the outcome. They may criticize, plead, withdraw emotionally, or become consumed with resentment.

Mindfulness-based ecotherapy approaches this differently.

Self-Compassion and Mindful Acceptance

One of the MBE skills involves recognizing the limits of personal control while strengthening self-awareness and self-compassion. You cannot force another person to change. However, you can change how you respond internally and externally. Practicing mindful acceptance means acknowledging your sadness, frustration, or disappointment without allowing those emotions to dominate your life.

In ecotherapy, the natural world often serves as a mirror for this process. Seasons change without resistance. Trees release leaves when it is time to let go. Rivers flow around obstacles instead of endlessly struggling against them. Nature teaches flexibility, adaptation, and resilience.

This ecological perspective is one of the major ways MBE differs from other mindfulness approaches. While many mindfulness practices emphasize internal awareness alone, mindfulness-based ecotherapy intentionally uses nature as both teacher and therapeutic partner.

Another of the twelve skills of MBE involves reducing rumination through present-moment sensory grounding. Rumination occurs when the mind repeatedly replays fears, regrets, or imagined future disasters. The more mental energy you feed into these cycles, the stronger they become.

Mindful acceptance interrupts this process.

You may notice the anxious thought arise, acknowledge it compassionately, and then redirect your awareness toward immediate sensory experience: the smell of rain, the warmth of sunlight, the sound of leaves moving in the wind, or the sensation of breathing deeply in fresh air. These practices help regulate emotional overwhelm by reconnecting you with the physical world instead of remaining trapped inside mental narratives.

Anxiety Has a Purpose

Mindfulness-based ecotherapy also recognizes that anxiety itself has a purpose. Anxiety evolved as a protective system designed to alert us to danger. In mindful acceptance, you are not trying to destroy anxiety or suppress difficult emotions. Instead, you learn to relate to them differently.

You might silently say:

“Thank you, anxiety, for trying to protect me. I am listening carefully, but I will also trust my own wisdom.”

This compassionate inner dialogue reflects another MBE principle: developing a collaborative relationship with your emotions instead of waging war against them.

Finally, mindful acceptance teaches that mistakes are not evidence of failure, but growth opportunities. In nature, growth rarely occurs without struggle. Forests regenerate after fires. Rivers carve canyons through persistence over time. Ecosystems adapt continuously to changing conditions.

Human beings are no different.

Every mistake contains information that can deepen wisdom, resilience, and self-understanding. Through mindful acceptance, you learn that healing does not require perfection. It requires awareness, compassion, flexibility, and the willingness to remain present even during uncertainty.

Mindfulness-based ecotherapy reminds you that while you cannot always control life’s circumstances, you can learn to live more peacefully within them. By reconnecting with nature, practicing mindful awareness, and letting go of unnecessary struggle, you create space for healing, growth, and inner balance.

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The Skill of Mindfulness: Learning a New Way of LivingThe Skill of Mindfulness

skill of mindfulness
skill of mindfulness

The skill of mindfulness is much like learning any other ability in life. At first, it may feel awkward, unfamiliar, or even frustrating. That’s because mindfulness often asks you to do the exact opposite of what you have been conditioned to do for years. Instead of reacting automatically, mindfulness encourages you to pause. Instead of avoiding difficult emotions, mindfulness teaches you to notice them with awareness and compassion. Instead of living on autopilot, mindfulness invites you to become fully present in your life.

Because of this, practicing the skill of mindfulness can initially feel uncomfortable. Many mindfulness exercises may seem strange simply because they are different from the fast-paced, distracted, and reactive habits most people develop over time. But “different” does not mean bad. It simply means new. Every meaningful change in life begins with stepping outside familiar patterns.

Practicing the Skill of Mindfulness

One of the most important things to remember about the skill of mindfulness is that it takes practice. You probably will not feel completely calm, centered, or enlightened after trying mindfulness once or twice. In fact, many people become discouraged because they expect immediate results. Mindfulness is not a quick fix or magic solution. It is a gradual process of retraining the mind and learning healthier ways of relating to thoughts, emotions, and experiences.

Patience is essential. Growth often happens slowly and quietly. Just because you do not notice a dramatic change right away does not mean mindfulness is not working. Like planting a seed, the benefits develop over time with consistent care and attention.

There is an old saying often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Whether Einstein actually said it or not, the idea contains an important truth. If your current habits repeatedly lead to stress, anxiety, emotional pain, conflict, or dissatisfaction, then continuing those same habits will likely produce the same outcomes. Familiar behaviors feel comfortable because they are known, even when they are unhealthy.

The skill of mindfulness offers another path.

Observing with the Skill of Mindfulness

Mindfulness teaches you how to step back from automatic reactions and become more intentional in the way you live. Rather than immediately reacting with anger, fear, judgment, or avoidance, you learn to observe what is happening internally before responding. This simple shift can create profound changes in relationships, emotional health, and overall well-being.

For example, many people spend much of their lives worrying about the future or replaying painful memories from the past. The mind becomes trapped in cycles of regret, fear, shame, or anticipation. Mindfulness gently guides attention back to the present moment. The present moment is where life is actually happening. When you become grounded in the present, you may notice that many worries lose some of their power.

The Skill of Mindfulness: More than Meditation

Although meditation is often associated with mindfulness, the skill of mindfulness is much more than sitting quietly with your eyes closed. Mindfulness is a way of approaching everyday life. You can practice mindfulness while walking, eating, listening to music, washing dishes, driving, or having a conversation. Any moment can become an opportunity to practice awareness.

Mindfulness also encourages greater self-compassion. Many people criticize themselves harshly whenever they struggle or make mistakes. Mindfulness teaches you to notice those self-critical thoughts without becoming consumed by them. Instead of attacking yourself for being imperfect, you learn to approach yourself with patience and understanding. This shift alone can be deeply healing.

Learning the skill of mindfulness is similar to learning music, painting, sports, or any other craft. Nobody becomes an expert overnight. Leonardo da Vinci did not paint the Mona Lisa the first time he picked up a paintbrush. Great skill develops through repeated practice, persistence, and willingness to learn from mistakes.

Permission to Practice Imperfectly

The same is true for mindfulness. Some days you may feel calm and focused. On other days, your mind may wander constantly. That is normal. The goal of mindfulness is not perfection. The goal is awareness. Each time you gently bring your attention back to the present moment, you are strengthening the skill of mindfulness little by little.

Over time, mindfulness can help you become more emotionally balanced, less reactive, and more connected to your experiences. It can improve relationships, reduce stress, and help you cultivate a deeper sense of peace and acceptance. Most importantly, mindfulness helps you live your life more fully instead of merely rushing through it on autopilot.

Permit yourself to practice imperfectly. You do not need to master mindfulness immediately. Simply begin where you are. With time, patience, and repetition, the skill of mindfulness can become a natural and meaningful part of your daily life. It is a skill that requires practice. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa the first time he picked up a paintbrush. Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa the first time he picked up a paintbrush. Likewise, you probably won’t be able to jump right into a ‘mindful awareness’ mode of being without a lot of practice. That’s okay. Permit yourself to practice once in a while. The more you do so, the more mindful you’ll become!

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Learning to be Mindful: The Fisherman and His Son

fisherman and his son

The Fisherman and His Son is a parable that illustrates how to be mindfully intentional. It’s been said that the definition of insanity is “Doing the same thing in the same way and expecting different results.” In other words, if what you’re doing isn’t working, doing more of the same isn’t likely to work either. It may be time to do something different.

Mindfulness is a way to do something different.

When we commit to change, it sometimes feels strange at first. If you think about it, this only makes sense because if it didn’t feel weird, you’d probably already be doing it. Sometimes you have to think outside the box to get the change you want. This parable illustrates the concept of being open to trying something new, even if it feels strange at first.

The Fisherman and His Son: A Mindful Parable

A fisherman and his son were at sea, going about the daily tasks of catching enough fish to make their living. It was a beautiful spring day, and they were both enjoying the ocean. They were having a particularly good day. They had caught many fish, and they were ready to turn for home and make their way back to the shore when the fisherman noticed a tiny leak at the bow of the boat. The boat was slowly filling up with water. While the leak wasn’t a big one, they both realized that the boat would be full of water before they could row back to shore.

The father and son began to panic as they thought of the prospect of losing not only their boat, but the fine catch they had made that day. In his panic, the father suddenly seized upon an idea. He grabbed the oar and punched a hole in the side of the boat.

The son thought his fisherman father had gone mad. “What are you doing?” the son shouted.

The father replied, “I’m punching a hole in the bottom of the boat so the water can flow out!”

They both watched in horror as more water rushed into the boat the father had made. Seeing that his idea had not succeeded, but had only made things worse, the father began to furiously punch even more holes in the bottom of the boat.

The son, upon seeing this, yelled at his father, “Will you please stop it? Can’t you see you are only making things worse?”

But the fisherman said, “No, my idea will work! I just didn’t have enough holes in the boat! If I keep punching holes in the boat, the water will eventually flow out!”

The son watched helplessly as the father, in a frenzy, continued to batter more holes into the hull of the boat. Finally, the boat overflowed, sinking to the bottom of the sea and taking the catch of the day with it. The father and son had to swim to shore.

Upon arriving at the shore, totally exhausted, they both realized that they had not only lost a fine catch, but they had also lost their means of making a living. With the boat gone, they could no longer be fishermen. With great sadness, they turned to make their way home, wondering about what they’d do to survive in the future.

To think about…

What solutions to problems have you been trying that only make the problem worse? How could you make it better instead? If what you’re doing isn’t working, could it be time to try something different?

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NEW Course: Orientation to the Mindful Ecotherapy Center

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Click here for our FREE course: Orientation to the Mindful Ecotherapy Center
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Negative and Positive Thoughts

negative and positive thoughts

Human beings, in general, are very good at getting caught in negative thought processes.

You might try this activity sometime to illustrate the point: Buy a bag of marbles and carry them in your pocket all day. Every time you catch yourself having a negative thought during the day, take a marble from the bag and drop it loose into your pocket. Every time you have a positive thought about yourself or another person during the day, take one of the loose marbles and put it back into the bag.

At the end of the day, if your bag is empty, you’ve ‘lost all your marbles.’ To start the next day with all the marbles back in the bag, you must say one positive thing about yourself or someone else for each marble you put back in the bag. Try this sometime and see if you ‘lose your marbles.’

negative solution-focused therapy

This exercise is designed to make you conscious of your negative and positive thoughts. Do your negative thoughts outweigh your positive thoughts? If so, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most people have more negative thoughts than positive thoughts. There’s a reason for this: Negative thinking has survival value.

Imagine you’re a primitive man or woman living in a jungle. One day, you decide to take a walk through the forest. If you assume that a tiger is lurking behind every tree (a negative thought pattern), then you are constantly on alert in case you have to fight or flee. So if you’re always on the alert, you have a better chance of surviving if you have to fight or run away.

The only drawback here is that if you’re constantly stressed out about tigers lurking behind trees, you’re going to be tense and nervous all the time. Tense and nervous people are more likely to be victims of their own emotional aggression. So if the chances of a tiger attack are slim, but you’re stressed out all the time, you’re obviously wasting energy that could be put to better use.

Negative thoughts work in a chain reaction. One negative thought leads to another, and another, until we find ourselves caught in a downward spiral of negativity that can lead to depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, and emotional aggression. When we find ourselves stewing in our own negative thoughts and feelings, we are said to be ruminating.

This ruminating over negativity is sometimes called snowballing because one negative thought or feeling leads to another, and another, picking up speed and momentum as the ruminating process continues. If you’re standing at the bottom of a hill and a 30-foot snowball is speeding at you at 70 miles per hour, it’s going to be very difficult to stop. It’s much easier to stop such a snowball at the top of the hill when it’s still tiny and moving slowly.

Mindfulness is a way to stop the ruminating, snowballing cycle before it picks up speed and momentum. It’s a way to recognize the beginning of a ruminating cycle so that it may be stopped before it gets too large to handle.

Mindfulness helps you to set aside negative thought patterns by paying attention only to the moment. It’s not about avoiding, resisting or ‘fixing’ unpleasant thoughts, moods and emotions. Instead, it is a way of stepping outside of the thought stream for a moment to realize that the person you are is not defined by your thoughts. It is a way of accepting that you don’t have to ‘buy into’ these negative thought streams about yourself and others. Mindfulness reminds us that thoughts and feelings are not facts.

In a 2011 study Lazar and Holzel demonstrated that practicing mindful relaxation techniques can actually change your brain’s wiring. Just as working out with weights can build muscles, ‘working out’ with mindfulness can increase cortical thickness in certain areas of your brain. This increased thickness translates into better judgment, better impulse control, and better tolerance of unpleasant emotions and thoughts.

Ultimately changing your thoughts is just a matter of practice. The more you’re able to practice the idea that thoughts aren’t facts, the more you are able to realize that your negative thoughts are just things the brain does.

When you gain practice with that, you can change your thoughts. When you can change your thoughts, you can change your world.

Hölzel, Britta, Carmody, James, Vangela, Mark, Congletona, Christina, Yerramsettia, Sita M., Garda, Tim, & Lazar, Sara W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191 (2011) 36-43.

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Living in the Moment

living in the moment

Living in the moment is a key skill of mindfulness.

We all have things that make us anxious. Think about some things that cause you anxiety or stress. Now ask yourself, “How many of them have to do with worrying about events that happened in the past?”

It doesn’t matter how recently the event took place. It could have been five years ago, five days ago, five minutes ago, or five seconds ago.

Now, how many of them have to do with anxiety over an event that may or may not happen in the future? Some events that cause you stress might involve both the past and the future, because you may be disappointed or angry about something that happened in the past and concerned that it will happen again in the future.

Do any of your worries have to do with anything that is occurring right now, at this very moment? Note that some things may have their root causes in the past, but you may be worried or anxious about them in the present. In such a case, the event that led to your present anxiety is still in the past. It’s your choice in the present moment whether or not to pay attention to the memory of that event.

Think about the things that cause you stress in your day-to-day life. As you do, ponder the fact that unless someone invents a time machine, you cannot go back and change anything in the past. The past no longer exists except in your memory. Since the only place the past exists is in your memory, you are in control of it. You can choose which memories to pay attention to and which to ignore.

Likewise, the future does not exist except as an extrapolation of the mind. When we anticipate anxiety-provoking events in the future, we are engaging in crystal ball thinking. It’s as if we imagine we have a crystal ball and we’re trying to predict negative outcomes for the future. Trying to anticipate what may or may not happen in the future is just a mental exercise, and nothing based in reality. You might think that some things are likely to happen, and some things are less likely to happen, but unless you have a crystal ball or a time machine, the only way to know for sure what will happen in the future is to wait and see.

living in the moment

The key point to remember here is that feelings are not facts. Moods are not facts. Thoughts are not facts. Moods, thoughts, and feelings are just processes of the mind. If you are stressed or depressed over past or future events, you have the choice over which feelings and moods to pay attention to, and which thoughts and feelings to let go of.

A benefit of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is that when we leave Doing Mode and enter Being Mode, we stop worrying about the past or stressing over the future, if only for a moment.

Note that this doesn’t mean that leaving Doing Mode and entering Being Mode makes bad moods go away. It just means that by entering Being Mode, we allow ourselves the choice of not giving energy to those negative moods.

By living in the moment, we create some space between our True Selves and our thoughts, moods, and feelings. This space allows us some breathing room. It also allows us to come to know that we are not our moods. We are not our feelings. We get to choose who and what we are.

This all happens by living in the moment.

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Process Addictions

process addiction and emotional aggression

Emotional aggressors can sometimes become addicted to their gaslighting behaviors.

The three major symptoms of an addiction are withdrawal, tolerance, and loss of control. In substance abuse, “withdrawal” manifests in physical and psychological symptoms upon abstaining from the drug of choice. “Tolerance” means that it takes more and more of the same drug to get the same effect. “Loss of control” means that as a person becomes addicted to a substance, they start giving up other things in pursuit of the next “high.”

People with addiction issues lose control over their behavior to the point that their drug of choice is the only thing that matters. They’ll forsake family, friends, work, school and any social interaction in pursuit of their drug of choice.

With emotional aggressors the “high” comes from manipulating others emotionally. For the emotional aggressor, withdrawal manifests as getting irritated, upset or angry when they can’t control you. Tolerance shows up as needing more and more control over the emotional states of others to get the same “high.”

Eventually this leads to loss of control. The emotional aggressor becomes more and more abusive over time, losing control of their ability to respect appropriate boundaries. Over time loss of control means that the gaslighting behaviors have become automatic. They don’t have to think about it and may not even be aware that they’re doing it.

Sometimes these automatic emotional processes can become what is known as process addictions. Robert Minor (2007) defines process addiction as:

“A process becomes an addiction when the process becomes the center of life, the most important reasons for living, when a person becomes dependent upon the process for mood-altering relief from the rest of life. For someone addicted to a process, the process with all its using activities substitutes for taking actions that would change the circumstances of one’s personal life and society that demand addictions to relieve the distress.”

What this means is that emotional aggression can become a conditioned response to a given emotional situation. If emotional aggression is consistently used as an anxiety-management strategy in your interactions with others, then you may be in danger of developing a process addiction. Conversely, if your partner or loved one seems to go on auto pilot whenever there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, they might have a process addiction.

How do you recognize a process addiction? If you’ve ever found yourself interacting with your partner or another friend or family member in a predictable pattern, there may be a process addiction at work. This is especially true if you are using emotionally aggressive responses in such a situation.

Suppose you’ve had an argument so many times that you can predict what your partner is going to say, and your partner can predict what you’re going to say. In other words, you’ve had this argument so many times that it’s almost as if there is an unwritten script somewhere that dictates your responses to each other. You keep going through the motions of this argument, but nothing ever gets resolved. Does this sound familiar?

I call such arguments Index Card Arguments, because it’s as if you’ve both written the argument down on an index card somewhere. You know that if you say this, your partner is going to say that, and your partner knows that if they say that, you’re likely to say this. If you could agree to write these arguments out on index cards and number them, you could both save yourselves a lot of time by saying, “Okay, we both know how this argument is going to turn out, so let’s just skip the argument and say that we had Index Card Argument #45, and take it from there.”

If you find yourself constantly having Index Card Arguments, it could be a sign that there is a process addiction occurring.

If nothing ever gets resolved from these repetitive arguments, then ask yourself honestly why you continue to engage in them. Do you feel better afterwards? Do these arguments cause you to feel more keyed up and anxious? Do they change your emotional state in any way? Are they taking your mind off of anxiety, depression, or bad feelings?

If you or your partner are using emotionally aggressive arguments as a means of managing your mood, then you may have a process addiction.

Minor, Robert N. (2007). When Religion is an Addiction. Humanity Works, St. Louis, MO.

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How Gaslighting Works: Characteristics of Manipulation

how gaslighting works

Last week, we talked about what emotional aggression is and how emotionally aggressive people often use gaslighting to achieve their goals. Today, we’re going to talk about how gaslighting works. We’ll also discuss some common statements used by gaslighters who are being emotionally aggressive.

Origins of the Term “Gaslighting”

The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1938 play, Gaslight. This was made into a film in 1944. The premise of the movie is that a husband is trying to convince his wife she is insane so he can gain control of her assets. He leads her to believe she’s stealing things without realizing it and hearing noises that aren’t really there. Because of his manipulations, she begins questioning her sense of reality. The term “gaslight” comes from the fact that the husband goes into the attic at night to turn the gas lights on and off in hopes of making his wife question what she’s seeing. In other words, he’s trying to make her doubt her sense of reality.

When someone is being emotionally aggressive, the goal is to make you question your own sense of reality and to instead rely only on what they’re telling you your reality should be. Gaslighting confuses the victims, making them question their own judgment, sense of self-worth, ability to recall the past, and eventually their own sanity.

Characteristics of Gaslighting

Here are some of the techniques emotionally aggressive gaslighters use:

Lying to You

People who engage in emotional aggression by gaslighting are habitual liars, and they’re usually so good at it that eventually you start to believe them. They eventually make you start second-guessing yourself. They say things like, “You’re making things up,” “That never happened,” or “You’re crazy.”

Discrediting You

Gaslighters like to try to turn others against you or to convince you that others are against you even when they aren’t. They will use those near and dear to you to accomplish their objectives. They will only tell you the negative things others say about you, and if others aren’t really saying negative things about you the emotionally aggressive person will invent things. Comments a gaslighter might make to discredit you would be things like, “Your family agrees with me…you’re crazy,” or “The kids think you’re being ridiculous.”

Distracting You

Emotionally aggressive people love to distract. This usually takes the form of “whataboutism” in which, whenever you bring up a problem, they say something like, “Oh yeah, well what about this problem instead?” This sometimes takes the form of “You do it too!” Regardless of whether or not you do it too, it doesn’t address the initial question of the gaslighter’s behavior.

Minimizing Your Thoughts and Feelings

One way that a gaslighter will use emotional aggression is to use your own emotional states against you. They might say things like, “Calm down,” “You’re overreacting,” or “Why are you so sensitive?” The goal here is to minimize how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking while trying to force you to be responsible for their emotional state instead.

Shifting Blame

Blame-shifting and blame-storming are other common gaslighting tactics. Every time you try to have a discussion with an emotional aggressor, they twist everything into making it your fault so that you feel you are to blame. Whenever you try to discuss how their behavior towards you makes you feel, they say things like, “We’d get along just fine if you’d see things my way,” or “If you acted right I wouldn’t have to treat you the way I do.”

Denying Wrongdoing

Emotional aggressors are notorious for denying that they did anything wrong. They make poor choices and then refuse to take responsibility for them, preferring to blame others. Denying the feelings of others in this manner can leave their victims feeling unseen, unheard, and unloved. Over longer periods of time victims develop “learned helplessness,” which is a state of giving up and losing hope that things will change. Gaslighters might deny wrongdoing by saying things like, “I never said that,” or “You’re just overreacting” or “Stop imagining things.”

Using Compassionate Words as Weapons

Emotional aggressors are very good at mixing lies with the truth to keep you off-balance. Sometimes they’ll through in positive reinforcement just to confuse you. They know that keeping you off-balance makes you easier to control. They might say something like, “You know how much I love you. I would never hurt you on purpose,” or “I only criticize you because I love you and want you to get better.” The most abusive form of this is when domestic violence offenders say things like, “I only hit you because I love you.”

Rewriting History

Gaslighters and emotional aggressors love to change the details of events to their favor. If your partner shoved you against the wall, and then you bring it up later, they might say something like, “What really happened is that you stumbled and I tried to catch you.”

The Goal: Making You Doubt Reality

All of these tactics are used by gaslighters to make you lose your own sense of reality. Emotional aggressors try to control others so they don’t have to learn how to control themselves. If you have a partner or a loved one who is trying to make you responsible for their emotional states, or who is trying to tell you what you should feel and should not feel, you’re probably a victim of gaslighting.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be talking about how to address some of these issues. We’ll also be focusing on how people who use emotional aggression and gaslighting as their primary coping mechanisms can learn less maladaptive behaviors.

What Is Gaslighting and Signs It May Be Happening to You, Very Well Mind
By Sherri Gordon Updated on April 12, 2023

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Emotional Aggression and Gaslighting

emotional aggression and gaslighting

One of the concepts we frequently talk about in Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is emotional aggression.

Emotional aggression and gaslighting usually go hand-in-hand. Gaslighting is used to perpetuate a perpetrator’s emotional aggression.

What is Emotional Aggression?

Emotional aggression is the aggressive use of our own emotional states in an attempt to manipulate or control others, or in an attempt to make others responsible for our moods.

If I hold others responsible for my emotional state, I am being emotionally aggressive. Likewise, if I attempt to control the emotional state of others against their will, I am being emotionally aggressive. The Emotional Aggression Questionnaire allows you to assess whether you are prone to acting in emotionally aggressive ways. Some statements emotionally aggressive people might make include:

“I won’t be happy until you do _ for me.”
“It’s your fault that I feel this way.”
“You made me feel …”
“You just need to stop feeling this way.”
“We’d get along just fine if you’d do things my way.”
“You have no right to be angry at me.”

People who are being emotionally aggressive usually rely on gaslighting to manipulate others with their emotions.

What is Gaslighting?

People who have been gaslit often feel anxious or depressed. Victims of gaslighting can develop mental health problems, including substance abuse issues and even thoughts of suicide. For this reason, it is important to recognize what emotional aggression is and to be familiar with its dynamics when working with patients and clients.

Some of the signs of gaslighting include:

emotional aggression and gaslighting
  • Doubting that your feelings and your reality are accurate or valid
  • Feeling that you’re just being too sensitive
  • Believing that you have no right to feel the way you do
  • Questioning your own judgment and choices
  • Questioning your own perceptions
  • Being afraid to speak up because it might cause conflict with someone who is being emotionally aggressive
  • Emotional cutoffs – shutting down in conversations about emotions because you don’t feel heard or valued
  • Feeling vulnerable and insecure
  • Feeling you’re always “walking on eggshells” when dealing with a person who is being emotionally aggressive
  • Feeling isolated and powerless
  • Doubting your own sense of self-worth and instead believing what an emotionally aggressive person is telling you about yourself
  • Being disappointed in yourself and who you have become – this is especially true if you fear disappointing an emotionally aggressive person
  • Feeling confused most of the time when talking to an emotionally aggressive person
  • You’re always “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” expecting something bad to happen all the time
  • You feel like you are never good enough, and you’re always apologizing
  • You second-guess yourself and find it hard to make decisions
  • You assume others are disappointed in you and never seem to be able to give yourself the benefit of the doubt
  • You wonder what’s wrong with you
  • You eventually give up on making your own choices and instead leave the decision-making to the emotionally aggressive person

If you recognize any of these signs, you may be dealing with an emotionally aggressive person who uses intimidation, manipulation, criticism, guilt, or emotional pressure to control conversations and relationships. Over time, this behavior can leave you feeling anxious, emotionally drained, confused, or constantly “walking on eggshells” around them.

Emotional Aggression and Gaslighting

Emotional aggression is not always loud or obvious. Sometimes it appears through sarcasm, passive-aggressive comments, silent treatment, blame-shifting, or repeated attempts to make you doubt your own feelings and perceptions. Learning to identify these patterns is an important step toward protecting your emotional well-being and strengthening healthy boundaries.

At the Mindful Ecotherapy Center, we believe mindfulness, self-awareness, and supportive relationships can help you reconnect with your inner sense of safety and confidence. Next time, we’ll explore some of the most common statements emotionally aggressive people use and discuss healthy, grounded ways you can respond to them.

Grampian Women’s Aid: Coercive Control: 10 Signs It’s Gaslighting
http://www.grampian-womens-aid.com/newsevents/gaslighting-10-signs

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Radical Acceptance

Radical acceptance means that you learn to accept yourself and others without judgment. It is a skill that can be learned in an afternoon, yet take a lifetime to master, especially in Western cultures where we are conditioned to strive for certain ideals of perfection. We are told by the media that if we don’t drive the right car, wear the right clothes, eat the right foods, vote for the right political candidate and wear the right perfume, we will not be accepted by others. This conditioning must be overcome in order to achieve radical acceptance.

The first step in radical acceptance is to meditate on the assumptions we have created for ourselves.

Examples of these might be, “I’m not handsome enough,” or, “I’m not smart enough,” or, “Nobody likes me.” Radical acceptance recognizes such thoughts and feelings without making value judgments about them, and without trying to deny or affirm them. For example, the thought, “Nobody likes me,” is not true, but the goal of radical acceptance is to simply note the fact that this thought is present in the observer’s psyche, and not to make a truth value judgment about the contents of the statement. It can be accepted as a thought process while not having to be incorporated into the observer’s sense of identity.

From this perspective, we are less concerned about whether or not the thought or feeling is true as we are about whether or not it is helpful. Is it effective to have these thoughts or feelings? If not, can I let them go?

Case Study: Juliet
Juliet has had a series of relationships. Every time one of these relationships ends, she goes into a downward spiral of emotional self-abuse, telling herself that she’s not good enough to have a relationship, asking herself why she’s such a “loser,” and panicking at the thought of being alone yet again. This panic causes her to leap right into yet another relationship and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Implicit in all these thought and feeling cycles is the theme, “What’s wrong with me?”

By learning to radically accept herself just as she is, Juliet could come to realize that “This is the way I deal with emotions.” Eventually she may even be able to accept herself with unconditional love, and see this quirk as just a thing she does, and not as a character flaw. When caught in these cycles, Juliet could ask herself, “Is it true that there is something wrong with me? Is it helpful or effective to think that there is something wrong with me?”

Additionally, Juliet could learn that thoughts and feelings are not facts. They’re just things the brain has sometimes been conditioned to do in response to certain situations.

The irony is that by learning to accept these thoughts and feelings as a part of herself, it may lead to the realization that there is nothing wrong with her. Even if she never comes to that realization, she will be able to accept it as just a thing she does from time to time. It is perfectly natural to wonder “Is there something wrong with me;” however, such a question is just a thought, and not a fact.

Radical acceptance is the ability to see clearly the thoughts and feelings that are going on within us, as they occur, and to be able to accept them with love and openness. It also means coming to realize that thoughts and feelings are not facts.

When Juliet began to practice mindful meditation, she came to understand that the panic produced by losing a relationship was caused by her desire to find the “perfect” man for her. By finding this idealized individual, she hoped to prove her own self-worth. In her mind, if she could find the perfect man, he would help her to become the perfect woman. As Juliet came to recognize that her idea of perfection was just an arbitrary standard she had imposed on herself, she was able to accept and even love herself, even with all of her perceived “flaws.” This diminished need to be “perfect” allowed her to actually move towards loving herself just as she was. This renewed self-confidence allowed her to enter into a relationship that later led to a happy and successful marriage.

Juliet credited the success of her relationship on the fact that, “I learned to be responsible for my own happiness and well-being. In my previous relationships, I had put the responsibility for my happiness on my partner(s), and this impossible situation eventually drove them away. Once I learned to accept responsibility for my own happiness, I found someone with whom to share that happiness.”

Radical acceptance is about minimizing avoidance as much as possible. By meeting life head-on instead of trying to avoid certain aspects of it (such as unpleasant thoughts and emotions), we are able to live life more fully.
According to Hoffman & Asmundson (2008), “Patients are encouraged to embrace unwanted thoughts and feelings – such as anxiety, pain, and guilt – as an alternative to experiential avoidance. The goal is to end the struggle with unwanted thoughts and feelings without attempting to change or eliminate them.”

Baer, R. A. (2003). Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 125–143. Introduction to Special Issue 183

Cordon, S. L., Brown, K. W., & Gibson, P. R. (2009). The role of mindfulness-based stress reduction in perceived stress: Preliminary evidence for the moderating role of attachment style. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly, 23(3), 258–269.

Dimeff, L., & Linehan, M.M. (2001). Dialectical Behavior Therapy in a Nutshell. The California Psychologist, 34, 10-13.

Hofmann, S. G., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (2008). Acceptance and mindfulness-based therapy: New wave or old hat? Clinical Psychology Review, 28(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2007.09.003