There are many types of memory. Let’s talk about two of them: Implicit Memory and Narrative Memory. Implicit memories are memories about specific events. What did you have for breakfast this morning? What outfit did you wear yesterday? Which people did you talk to today? The answers to these questions are implicit memories.
Narrative memories are memories that try to make sense of our various experiences on a day-to-day basis. Narrative memories integrate our implicit memories into a coherent whole. While implicit memories are the ‘what,’ narrative memories are the ‘why.’ Suppose I don’t usually eat eggs for breakfast, but today I decided to have scrambled eggs. The memory of having scrambled eggs is an implicit memory that answers the question, “What did I have for breakfast?” Further suppose that I was having breakfast with a friend who knew my eating habits, and my friend commented that I don’t usually eat eggs. If I search my own mind for a reason why I chose eggs for breakfast on this particular day, the reason I come up with will be the ‘why’ of narrative memory.
Our lives are made up of implicit memories of our daily events. In order to make sense of our lives, we link these events together in a narrative that gives our lives meaning. These stories that we create about our life experiences are our narrative memories. We all write our own autobiographies every day of our lives. This process of autobiography writing is our narrative memory fitting the pieces of our implicit memories together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Integrating Memories
For most of us, most of the time, our stories make sense and everything runs smoothly. But sometimes we get a bunch of implicit memories that we just can’t seem to fit into our own narratives. It’s as if, while working this jigsaw puzzle, we somehow grabbed a handful of pieces from another box. When this happens, we have to ‘change the picture’ of our life stories to incorporate these new puzzle pieces. This process of fitting the new pieces into the puzzle is called integration.
If we are able to successfully integrate all of these implicit memories, then there’s no problem. If we have difficulty making some of the pieces fit, it usually means that we’d have to change our worldview and re-write our own narrative in order to fit those pieces into the puzzle. This can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes that frustration manifests in emotional aggression.
Living a life of consistency means finding a way to make all of the pieces fit without getting frustrated or without having to act out in emotionally aggressive ways. By learning to integrate our True Selves into the story of our lives, we fit all of our implicit memories into a new narrative memory that creates this new paradigm. When all of these pieces have fit together, we are living at the core of our True Selves.
Mindful Walking utilizes mindfulness and ecopsychology as emotional regulation skills. This is especially true if you are able to do this exercise outdoors. Mindful walking may be used to de-fuse potential emotional aggression. If you feel that one of your triggers has been activated, and you can take a break, go outside and do a little mindful walking!
The goal of a mindful walking exercise is to increase self-awareness by focusing on the sensations your body experiences while walking. Your brain takes in about 2 billion bytes of information per second. Of all this information being taken in, you are usually only conscious of about 4000 bytes of this information. This Mindful Walking exercise helps you to learn to become more consciously aware by learning to focus on only one thing at a time. By being present in the moment, we learn to let go of worries about the past, and anxieties about the future.
It is preferable to do this exercise outdoors if possible, but if necessary you may also do the exercise indoors. You may wish to make a recording of it for your mp3 player so that you may take it with you while you walk, or you can watch the video below to get a good idea of the process. the video below is for the Coyote Walk Meditation, a type of mindful walking that we use in our Ecospirituality Program.
Mindful Walking Instructions
Read over the instructions below, then try it on your own:
Start by standing with your feet about shoulder width apart, with your weight evenly distributed. Your hands should hang loosely and freely by your side. Gaze at the ground about five or six feet in front of you. Don’t focus your eyes on anything…just allow your eyes to relax.
Center yourself before beginning to walk by taking a few deep breaths before beginning to walk. Don’t begin to walk until your attention and intention are focused on the moment. Shift from Doing Mode to Being Mode.
When you are ready, slowly lift your right leg in preparation for taking the first step.
As you step, focus on feeling every muscle in your leg. Note what each muscle is doing as you move. Don’t hurry the step. Just allow yourself to experience all the sensations that your leg is giving to you. Step forward until your right foot makes contact with the ground. Notice how your foot makes contact with the surface.
Did your heel touch first, or was it your toes?
Did you feel the pressure of contact first with the inside edge of your foot, or with the outside edge?
Now as you begin to bring your left foot forward for another step, notice how the weight changes on your right foot. Is it changing from heel to toe, or the other way around? Where do your feet feel the pressure? Can you feel the pressure move across your right foot as you make the next step?
Now as you bring your left foot forward to make contact with the ground, repeat the procedure. Note how the pressure and weight change over your left foot and leg as you prepare to make another step with your right foot.
Continue on, walking in the same manner, paying attention only to the way your body moves as you continue to walk. Focus only on the sensations your body continues to give you.
At times you may find yourself becoming distracted. If you notice a fragrance on the breeze, or if an animal crosses your path, or if you hear a bird singing, your mind may wander from the sensations of walking. If this happens, simply stop walking until your attention returns to you.
Sometimes the distractions are not in the environment, but in your mind. If thoughts and feelings take your mind off of the walking, then once again, stop walking until your mind returns to focusing only on the walking.
Remember that the goal of this exercise is to practice paying attention to only one thing at a time, and one thing only. If you feel tempted to begin thinking about the past or the future, stop walking until your thoughts and feelings return only to the sensations of the walking.
As you continue to practice Mindful Walking as part of your daily routine, your mind will become more calm and relaxed. Mindful walking is something that you can practice at any time during the day whenever you need a quick break from doing.
As you continue to practice focusing on only one thing at a time, you we gain more control over your own thoughts and feelings. You will become less prone to periods of overwhelming emotions and thoughts. You will also learn to experience the joy and the happiness within you.
Continue your walk, directing your attention only to the sensations of your walking. As you come to an end to this mindful walking meditation, slowly take your last step, and come to a stop, resting comfortably where you stand.
End the meditation by taking a few deep breaths and expanding your awareness to the environment around you. You may wish to do a mindful meditation during your mindful walking exercise as well.
Use the Mindful Walking meditation whenever you have the opportunity to take a quick break; especially if you find yourself experiencing anxiety or depression. Strong emotions can lead to emotional aggression, and you can de-fuse such ruminating cycles by shifting from Doing Mode into Being Mode. Mindful Walking helps you to do this by taking energy out of the thinking cycle and shifting it into the sensing cycle.
If someone has the ability to anger you, then that person just controlled you.
If you allow others to ‘make’ you feel angry, you have relinquished control over your own emotional well-being.
Similarly, anger is often the result of failed attempts to control others. By analyzing our beliefs about control, we learn to manage our moods so that control is no longer an issue.
Once there was a sculptor who was famous for his carvings of animals. Of all the animals he carved, his elephants were the most lifelike and inspiring. One day an art student came to him and asked him the secret to creating such beautiful elephants.
“The answer,” he said, “Is simple. You just get a block of marble and chip away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”
When difficulties arise in a relationship, it’s usually because we’ve set out to carve an elephant, but we suddenly find ourselves carving a bear or a donkey or some other animal instead. When this happens, we’ve gotten caught up in the details of living, and we have lost sight of our original goal, the elephant.
Go over your list of standard arguments with your partner, and decide for yourselves which ones will lead to a happier relationship, and which ones involve side issues (i.e., arguments that are not ‘carving the elephant.’) You may disagree with your partner over which ones are which, and that’s okay too.
Maybe your version of the elephant is slightly different from your partner’s version. Just remember that by sharing your vision of a happier relationship with your partner, you can both come to agreement on what sort of elephant you would like to carve together.
The first step is agreeing that you will focus only on those actions that lead to the end result you both want. Once you’ve agreed on that end result, you can both begin to ‘chip away’ anything that doesn’t look like the relationship you both want to share.
Remember to keep it focused on solutions. You can talk about the problem all day if you wish, but that doesn’t do anything to actually solve the problem.
If your intention is to have a happy, healthy relationship, then anything that doesn’t promote that is irrelevant. It’s just marble to be carved away. If you find yourself constantly discussing problems, and never reaching resolution, ask yourself, “What is my intention?” or perhaps, “Is this the elephant I’m trying to carve, or is it just excess marble?”
If both you and your partner have the same intention, then the rest is just details. You’re working towards a common goal, and all that remains is to resolve how you both approach the common goal.
If, on the other hand, you both have different intentions, then you both have different goals. This is the source of a lot of friction in relationships.
Always remember that you can only control your own intentions, and not your partner’s. Use your mindful communication skills to find common ground and to avoid the temptation to try to control others.
`“If it’s never our fault, we can’t take responsibility for it. If we can’t take responsibility for it, we’ll always be its victim.”`
-Richard Bach, author
Internal Validation is the art of validating ourselves. We all like to be validated. It’s why we have relationships in the first place. We enter relationships so that others can support us emotionally. This can become a problem if we come to expect that others are responsible for validating us. Emotional aggression happens when we try to force others to validate us.
While others can choose to validate us by acting in emotionally supportive ways, we can also choose to validate ourselves. If others are validating us, then that validation is external because it is coming from someone besides ourselves. If, however, we are able to meet our own emotional needs, we are internally validated. It’s nice to have both, but there may be times when others cannot satisfy our emotional needs. In those times, it helps to be able to meet those needs ourselves.
The only healthy way to be emotionally validated by others is when others are willingly granting us such validation and support. If we attempt to force such support from others, we are acting from emotional aggression.
If we engage in fault-finding in an attempt to seek validation, we are projecting blame. Projecting blame is emotional aggression, because we are abdicating responsibility for our own emotional validation by attempting to blame, shame, or guilt others into emotionally supporting us against their will.
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a guilt-trip, you know that it is not a pleasant experience. If you’ve ever been the victim of a guilt-trip, ask yourself, “Is trying to make me feel guilty more likely or less likely to make me emotionally validate you?”
Now turn that around and put the shoe on the other foot. If you’re projecting blame onto your partner by trying to shame them or guilt them into doing what you want, do you think that such behavior is more likely or less likely to get the results you want?
If others are not meeting your emotional needs, and you are seeking external validation by behaving in emotionally aggressive ways in an attempt to get them to submit to your desires, do you really think you’re going to get the results you want? If the other person was doing it to you, would you be willing to respond in the way that they wanted?
Internal Validation is Loving Yourself
One way to avoid the tendency to engage in emotional aggression is to learn the art of internal validation. To be internally validated is to accept responsibility for your own emotional needs. The way to do this is to learn to love yourself.
Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that loving ourselves is somehow selfish or egotistical. But think about that for a moment. If you don’t love yourself, is it really fair of you to expect anybody else to love you? Not only that, but if you don’t love yourself, and you’re in a relationship with someone who loves you, eventually you might find yourself thinking along these lines, either consciously or unconsciously:
“I don’t really love myself, yet this person loves me. If I don’t love myself, yet this person says they love me, then there must be something wrong with him/her! How could a ‘normal’ person love someone like me, when I can’t even love me?”
If you don’t really love yourself, then you can’t really expect others how to love you in the way you’d like to be loved.
To learn to love yourself, first ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” Be as honest as possible when answering this question. In future weeks there will be an exercise to recognize some self-defeating beliefs and replace them with self-affirming beliefs.
For now, think about ways you can learn to love yourself and be happy in your own skin. It might help to talk these things over with your partner or with a friend or family member. A good way to start is to find out what others like about you.
If you feel uncomfortable asking others what they like about you, you could get the ball rolling by making a list of things you like about others, and sharing it with them. I’m willing to bet that they’d be likely to return the favor.
The more you are willing to do so, the more you’ll be able to self-validate as well.
A fun way to practice mindfulness is the “Don’t Lose Your Marbles” exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to become aware of how many times throughout the day we have negative thoughts about ourselves and our families. As we become aware of that pattern of negative thoughts, we can replace them with positive, more compassionate thoughts. Those positive thoughts lead to more positive expectations of ourselves and our families.
Don’t Lose Your Marbles Exercise
Here’s how it works:
Go to the toy store and buy a bag of marbles.
Put the marbles in your pocket or purse so that you have them with you all day.
Every time you catch yourself having a negative thought, take a marble out of the bag and put it in your pocket or purse, or just set it aside somewhere where it won’t get lost.
Every time you catch yourself having a positive thought, put a marble back into the bag.
At the end of the day, if your bag is empty, you’ve ‘lost all your marbles.’
To get the marbles back into the bag, you have to say one positive thing about yourself or your family for each marble you return to the bag. Don’t go to bed at night until all the marbles are back in the bag! The marbles are a physical representation of our inner thought processes. Use this exercise to help change negative self-talk habits by giving yourself a physical reminder of how often during the day you have negative thoughts.
Over time you can change your thought habits. The first step is recognizing that they’re there. This exercise will help you make that connection.
Successful mood management comes from successful emotional regulation. Emotional regulation means recognizing patterns of emotional aggression and stopping the cycle of emotional aggression before it starts. This means becoming aware of and attuned to your own cycles of emotions.
Before you can become attuned to your own cycles of emotional behavior, you must first be able to identify your emotions.
Society often teaches us that there are acceptable emotions to display in public, and unacceptable emotions to display in public. Those emotions that we feel safe displaying are our secondary emotions. In situations where people tend to become emotionally aggressive, there are underlying emotions driving these secondary emotions.
These underlying emotions, called primary emotions, are emotions that we do not feel safe displaying or discussing in public. If we suppress these primary emotions for long enough, it is possible that we may eventually forget what these emotions are and what they feel like. When this happens, the first step to emotional regulation is to identify these lost emotions.
By using the mindful skills of observing and describing, you can distract yourself from drowning in unpleasant emotions by simply identifying the emotions and describing their characteristics to yourself. As you step outside of the stream of feeling by distracting yourself with the process of observing and describing, it may help to name these emotions to yourself.
For example, if you’re feeling angry, repeat to yourself, “That’s anger.” As you begin to ponder this emotional state, trace it back to its origin. Are there any primary emotions driving the anger? Could it be that you are angry because you fear losing someone or something? Are you angry because of a fear of being inadequate in some area of your life? Are you angry because you are frustrated at a personal failure? The feeling behind the secondary emotion is the primary emotion.
Ruminating Cycles and Emotional Regulation
As you use your skills of observing and describing, you will not only be distracting yourself from fully experiencing the negative aspects of the mood. You will also be exploring the primary roots of the secondary emotion being experienced. As you observe and describe your emotional states to yourself, you become more emotionally aware of their origins. The more aware you are about the origins of those emotions, the more you are able to choose which emotions to give your full attention, and which emotions to let go.
A ruminating cycle is a cycle of thought or emotion. There are positive ruminating cycles and negative ruminating cycles. Such cycles consist of the self-talk we engage in as we go about our daily business.
Let’s look at a couple of scenarios involving ruminating cycles. These cycles are from Joe and Jim. Joe’s negative ruminating cycle might look like this:
“My wife just frowned at me. I wonder what she’s upset about?” “What have I done wrong this time?” “Can’t I ever do anything right?” “Why is it so hard to please her?” “Maybe I should just divorce her and get it over with. She’s never happy.” “I’ll show her! I’ll give her the silent treatment!”
Jim’s positive ruminating cycle might look like this:
“My wife just frowned. I wonder if she’s upset?” “Maybe she’s just having a bad day.” “I wonder if there’s anything I can do to help?” “I’m happy that she trusts me enough to share her innermost feelings with me!”
Joe’s negative ruminating cycle assumes that his wife’s frown was personal in that Joe believes that his wife was frowning at him. Jim, on the other hand, simply noted that his wife had frowned, without assuming that the frown was directed at him personally. Joe also assumed that his wife’s frown was indicative of a pervasive problem: That Joe cannot ever do anything to please his wife. Jim, on the other hand, recognized that this was just one incident, and not a pervasive problem. His response to his wife’s frown was, “Maybe she’s just having a bad day.”
Finally, Joe’s ruminating cycle assumes a permanent problem: That Joe can’t “ever do anything right,” while Jim doesn’t see it as a permanent problem. He’s even willing to try to change the situation by wondering if there is anything he can do to help his wife.
Try this: The next time you find yourself in a ruminating cycle, whether it is a positive cycle or a negative cycle, begin talking out loud. Verbalize your thought and feeling patterns by observing and describing them. Look for any permanent, personal or pervasive patterns of thinking and feeling.
Be on the lookout for all-or-nothing thinking. You can usually identify such patterns of thought by looking for words like always and never. The good news about thoughts like, “Things have always been this way,” and “Things are never going to change,” is that you only need one example to disprove them. If Joe has ever done a single thing to please his wife, then he cannot say, “I can never do anything to please her.”
If Joe can find just one example of where things have gone well, then he can’t say, “I always do the wrong thing.” He might do the wrong thing 99,999 times, but if there’s even one case in which he did the right thing, then he is not justified in saying, “I always do the wrong thing.”
If Joe can think of a single time when he was able to do the right thing, then it means that it is possible to do the right thing. If it is possible to do the right thing once, it is possible to do the right thing again. All that remains is figuring out what made it possible, and repeating the conditions that made it possible.
The key point to remember about ruminating cycles is that they are self-reinforcing. Emotions like to hang around once they’ve shown up. Research has shown that once a ruminating cycle of emotional aggression gets started, we tend to act, think, and feel in ways that perpetuate the cycle. We’re conditioned to believe that when we have strong emotions, we must immediately act upon them.
Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy teaches us that we do not have to act on those emotions, and we don’t have to dwell on them. We can simply observe and describe those emotions without feeling the need to react or respond.
It may help to remember that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ feeling. What may be considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is the behavior that comes after the feeling. So the problem is in the behavior, not the feeling itself. One of the behaviors that can be labeled as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ or ‘positive’ or ‘negative,’ is the ruminating cycle itself.
It works in this way: You have a negative feeling (anger, hostility, sadness, etc.). You then activate a ruminating cycle by continuing to dwell on the feeling. As you continue to dwell on the feeling, the negative emotion feeds off of the ruminating cycle and the emotion causes you to become more and more emotionally aroused, until you act out with emotional aggression.
You can change this behavior in this way: When you note a negative emotion, simply observe it and describe it, while recognizing that you do not have to dwell on it. The feeling itself is not ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ It simply is. You can decide not to give it power over you by disengaging from the ruminating cycle. In doing so, you don’t feed the negative emotion, and it eventually subsides.
When you have mastered this, you will be well on the way to managing your moods.
“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.
Share Your Thoughts About Mindful Acceptance!
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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?
Share Your Thoughts About The Fisherman and His Son!
What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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:
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.
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
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