Feeling anxious, worried, or depressed? Do you experience stress-related issues with your sleep, diet, work, or relationships? If so, you’re in the company of over a billion other people whose lives are negatively impacted by stress every day–and the problem is growing worse over time. And as stress feeds a host of emotional, mental, and physical problems, it’s important to find easy ways to slow down and de-stress.

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Alexander Ross, a fascinating, London-based NHS psychotherapist, medical doctor, lecturer, and meditation expert who will offer us key insights into the art of stress reduction and self-healing with compassion, goodwill, and calm. Dr. Ross helps us see that we can face life’s big stressors more easily when we cultivate little habits that feed internal peace and calm. Topics discussed include mindfulness, breathing exercises, breathwork, meditation, NHS, psychological care, support, stress, mental health issues, depression, anxiety, suicide, suicidality, emotions, distress, mental health support, joy, psychotherapy, relationships, connection, cortisol, stress response, habit change, neuroplasticity, and self-development.

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert in this (or any episode) is offering medical or psychological direction; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/
https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Dr. Alexander Ross:

Website: https://www.arosspsychotherapy.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dralexanderross

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Reduce BIG Stressors with LITTLE Moments of Mindfulness

Using Mindfulness and Meditation to Reduce Stress & Improve Well-Being

Feeling anxious, worried, or depressed? Do you experience stress-related issues with your sleep, diet, work, or relationships? If so, you’re in the company of over a billion people around the world whose lives are negatively affected by stress every day. The problem is growing worse over time. As stress feeds a host of emotional, mental, and physical issues, it’s important to find easy ways to slow down and de-stress.

I am joined by a fascinating London-based psychotherapist and meditation expert who will offer us key insights into the art of self-healing with compassion, goodwill, and calm. We’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “I’m writing to you to get some help. I had some medical test results come in. My doctor gave me two prescriptions. He said I need to reduce stress in my life. I told him that’s ridiculous because everything in my life is stressful, from my kids to paying bills. I doubt you can help me, but my wife asked me to write in to see if you have suggestions for reducing my stress.” With that issue as the focus of this episode, I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly. This is Imperfect Love.

I’m joined by a delightful special guest, Dr. Alexander Ross. Dr. Ross is a medical doctor, psychotherapist at the NHS, lecturer at the London South Bank University, and author. Dr. Ross will be sharing his expertise on meditation and healing from mental distress. Welcome to the show, Dr. Ross. It’s such a joy to have you with us.

Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Thank you. Before we get going and dive into this lovely topic that I’m sure almost every reader can connect with on some level, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you, you?

It’s the culmination of that professional and personal experience that makes us, us. I suppose I’m here from a professional point of view, but you can’t get away from the personal, can you? It’s the culmination of all those different experiences, building up from childhood onwards, that makes us, us. What makes me, me will be all of those things, all coming together. I could talk for the entire show about what makes me, me, but maybe just saying a little bit about me is that I work as a psychotherapist in London, in the UK.

I work in public health. I work in private practice as well. Alongside that, I do some writing as well, which is what brought me to you. I write about meditation specifically for psychotherapists, for those people working in a mental health professional capacity, and how meditation might help people who are psychotherapists, who are working in mental health, to be able to bring about those mindsets and ways of working in that specific way. I suppose personally, what makes me, me, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out a bit more by being around me. It’s a bit hard to say, isn’t it?

I often speak to people, especially when I work with them as a psychotherapist. I work psychodynamically, which means that maybe they don’t know too much about me. I don’t disclose too much. They’ll say, “I don’t know you.” I’ll say, “You know how I am.” Sometimes, how someone is is probably the most important thing, more so than who they are, what they’ve done, or what accoutrements they have around their lives. How they are is the most important thing. How am I? I could bring lots of adjectives to describe myself in a positive light. Maybe as we go through our time together, we’ll get a better idea of what that might be.

I can’t help but lean into this for a moment. Let’s pretend I’m a client. I say, “Dr. Ross, I don’t want to know who you are. I want to know how you are.” I’m just meeting you. What would you tell me? How are you?

How am I? I’d like to say that I’m quite calm. I’m a keen listener. I’m very interested to hear about how other people are. I’d probably leave it at that. If a client comes to me and they’re most interested in hearing about me, I would like to know where that’s coming from as well. A lot of those things are ping pong back and forth. I’ve had people who find that easy. Some people find that difficult, but that’s the nature of things. We’re always trying to discover where that’s coming from. As one person once told me, “You’re a bit like a politician, aren’t you?”

I think it was a bit of an accusatory message towards me. These things bear out in time. You discover things about people the more time you spend with them. In terms of my clinical work, I’d like to think that I’m warm. I’m quite calm in their demeanour, inviting, and interested, but in a way that’s not very threatening, if you see what I mean. It allows people to open up, even if they’re struggling with things that they’ve never told anyone in their entire life and with things that they’re embarrassed or ashamed about. I can hopefully be this type of person who they feel comfortable enough to share that without it feeling too worrying.

How Dr. Ross Became A Gentle And Easygoing Soul

That’s a beautiful description. I do get that energy from you. That all makes sense. I have a question for you. Were you always calm, non-threatening, and this gentle, easygoing soul, or have you done a lot of self-work to bring out that part of who you are?

I was, as a very young person as a child. Different things happen to you when you’re growing up. By the time I was a younger person, and some people tell me I’m still young, but maybe I’m nudging into the middle aspect of my life, somewhere along the road, things got much more difficult. I have had periods of deep distress, deep anguish, and deep difficulties. Yes, as you hinted at, it has taken a lot of work and a lot of change to be able to get back in touch.

That’s how I’d like to think of things, getting back in touch with how I was when I was a lot younger with those more playful aspects of myself, which can get extinguished by the day to day, by the challenges that we have throughout life, and by the difficult things that many people encounter in their lives, and be able to move past that or move through it. It’s not something that we ever leave behind us, as I often remind people I work with when they say, “I want to get back to how I was XYZ time before all these terrible things happened to us.”

We have to remind ourselves that those terrible things make us who we are. Yes, we can work through them, but we’ll never get back to how we were before. Having done a lot of work on myself and with others, relying on others, and taking support from others have helped me to get to a point where I’m working towards somewhere I would like to be. We’re never the complete product, the finished point. We’re always working, changing, and shifting. I’m definitely much further along the way on that road than I was several years ago, when things were a lot more challenging and difficult.

Thank you for being so vulnerable and honest. I appreciate everything you said, particularly the part where you said that it is about getting in touch with those playful elements of the self that were extinguished when life challenges came along. I love that. It reminds me of my first book, Joy from Fear. I talk about and have talked about, as I’ve worked more with joy and fear over time, my belief that we are born with this joy inside of us, this little light, and this little votive.

There’s this light. Life’s challenges come along. People are unkind to us. We are unkind to ourselves. Things happen. This soot builds up around that glass container. The little candle of who we are is in. That’s joy in there. We get depressed and confused because there’s more and more soot. Things look dark. They feel dark and stressful. This is for me the healing journey.

We learn to wipe off that soot, to notice that it’s there, the hurt, the sometimes cruelty that’s occurred, all of those things, and the resentment, and learn to do that as a practice, whether we use meditation, which is an important practice. I’d love to talk more about that in just a moment. I do think that that practice, whatever someone finds, whether it’s psychotherapy, meditation, a combination, or journaling, helps you remove the soot to get back to that part of you or those playful parts, those joy-filled parts that were there before. Sometimes, life’s brutal challenges affect that core.

If you spend much time with babies, then you see those very young babies. My training was an infant observation where one went once a week to observe, usually the mother, but whoever was caring for the baby for an entire year. You see how that baby grows and changes. Sometimes, something that I like to do when I work with people who potentially can exhibit quite challenging behaviors, maybe in more forensic environments, or whatever that challenging behavior, maybe aggressive or whatever it might be, is this. When it can be hard to get in touch with that compassion towards somebody, it is to imagine they were babies once.

You can think of them as a baby and mother or their caregivers’ arms, and those very innocent, pure moments early on, just before they start with all the difficulties that everyone has to grapple with as a baby and onwards. We were all babies once. How beautiful and how important that is, and how it helps to brush off some of that soot that you mentioned, helps you to maybe get in touch, and brings in the possibility of being compassionate towards and with someone who it might be quite challenging to be around. Just to remind ourselves of where we have all come from.

Thank you for focusing on that. That’s so important because that intersects with parts work. I don’t know if that’s a thing in the UK as much as it can be here. We do have these different parts in the self. They all play a part. Sometimes, the part that they’re playing is trying to protect us. It’s trying to defend us, but it gets big and can be scary and harmful.

Communicating With People In Intensely Aggressive States

It is learning to work with those parts and allow them not to take over the personality, to know that they have different capacities now to handle life’s stressors, that there are other parts. I would love it if we could take a pivot now. I do have a question for you before we pivot back to the listener’s question. When you were talking about the forensic situations that you’re working in, can you say more? It sounded like you often see a lot of aggression in that setting.

Sometimes, forensic. I’ve worked in prisons and things like that in previous work before I was a psychotherapist, but in that mental health environment. Maybe I was thinking alongside aggression. I work with people on a daily basis who reach points in their lives where they would like to end their lives, or they think that they would like to end their lives. They’re in suicidal states of mind or pre-suicidal states of mind.

That is a very aggressive state. We might not think of it because it’s not being aggressive towards others, but the idea that you would like to end your life or you wish to hurt yourself, self-injure in a particularly significant way, there’s a lot of aggression there. Perhaps that aggression isn’t turned outwards. It’s definitely turned inwards. To be able to speak to someone around that, one has to speak in a specific way, in a way that’s warm enough but also straight enough to talk specifically towards it.

People often might think that speaking directly about suicide is going to encourage someone or inspire them to take action. As we know, it’s very much the opposite. The more that we can speak about those more aggressive states of mind or challenging states of mind that people are going through, the more we can help to calm down and reduce that risk and those ideas, so that people will have different ideas about suicide and aggression.

You might hear someone say, “I want to end my life.” What’s underlying that? What are they thinking about? What are the ideas they have? It might be something about, “I want to end feeling like this,” “I want support, but I don’t know quite how to get that. If I do this, then something else might happen.” “I might want to join someone else who’s died recently. If I die, then I will join them.” “I have a lot of hatred towards someone. I’ll get back at them if I end my life.” They might not consciously be thinking of these ideas, but they might be very deep, underlying this siren that is sounding, which is, “I want to end my life. I want to do something aggressive towards myself.”

By getting in touch with those underlying aspects that might be outside of our awareness, it helps to open things up, open conversations around aggression, open conversations around anger, open conversations around things that might have been done to someone, and help people to move away from that state of mind in a very different way than maybe, “Let’s not talk about this,” “You’re already wrong to think that,” or many of the other stigma-loaded statements that are pushed by society and just by historical reasons, generally speaking.

Thank you. I appreciate that we’re talking about this topic and the importance of being able to have conversations. I somehow connected to the listener’s inquiry that we’re focusing on. Before I dive into that connection, I appreciate that this individual chose to reach out, pressed to do so by the partner or not. It is being able to start a conversation, especially in those darker areas, those very lonely areas, such as suicidality, serious depression, chronic anxiety, deep stress, and sometimes getting a medical diagnosis.

How Mental Health Support Differs Between US And UK

It sounds now here where the listener’s question is, “I have this stress-filled life. I don’t see a way out. How am I supposed to reduce stress when I don’t have any other way out? This is my life.” That’s a pattern with most mental health issues, where the person doesn’t see a way out, and they’re afraid to talk about it. I don’t know if it’s the same in England. I know the NHS is very challenged in many ways, but I know in the US, if you can’t afford ongoing mental health support, you’re often out in the cold.

I had somebody reach out to me the other day who said if they’re not having a serious crisis, and I know what their healthcare provider system is, they cannot get the ongoing psychotherapy that they need and deserve to keep stress reduction going, to keep issues like what we’re talking about with suicidality at bay. Instead, they wait for the crisis and then try to lean into it instead of getting ahead of it. Is it much like that in the UK right now, or are they leaning more into prevention?

It’s a difficult environment. Things have degraded much over the last few decades. There’s a high threshold for getting support. Perhaps I would have seen people who were maybe under less pressure a long time ago. The wider challenges, wider economic issues, huge social changes around and coming, much like in the US and all the other social challenges that are around economically, other social challenges like racism, classism, and all these kinds of things that are so prevalent, all feed into this. It’s a very challenging environment to be in, such that people rely on ways of coping that are ways that have been used for generations, be that drugs and alcohol or managing things by not talking about them.

I’m mindful of your vignette that you started with. Maybe it’s just me being heteronormative, but wondering whether the person speaking about is male and how hard it can be for men to be able to talk about how they’re feeling, not just due to it being difficult, but because of those other social aspects that dampen down, add stigma, and make people think that talking about how you’re feeling is not the thing to do. One should plough on, keep going, and not address any of that. There is a huge weight on so many people of all genders, but especially so for men.

When I’m working with a male client or somebody reaches out to me with a question where it’s obvious that they’re coming from a place of, “I feel broken because I am reaching out for support,” I am so appreciative of the courage it takes, regardless of gender. I agree with you that men are particularly impacted by the messages that say strong men don’t need support, strong men don’t cry, and strong men don’t feel. Let’s get past that.

People of all genders have stress. They have internal pain and internal distress. It takes great courage to break out of that box and say, “I deserve support. I want support. I’m going to reach out for support.” I find that so wonderful. I applaud it because that person is not only impacting their life, but the lives of their partner, family, or kids. The more we do our work, the more we become that source of change and momentum that the world needs. Questions like this, I absolutely love because it gives us a starting place to spread more information about how normal it is to feel stressed and how many people are feeling stressed, challenged, anxious, and depressed.

Taking Care Of Your Wellbeing Through Meditation

There are ways as pure and available as meditation to use to start to combat the stress, even for someone like our reader who sounds like they work tirelessly and try to manage a lot. I get how difficult that can be. I’ve been there. Sometimes, I am there. Making time to meditate, to journal, and to engage in doses of self-care, if you can do that for even a few minutes every day, it will bring down those stress hormones. It will help you be more present and sleep better. You know far more about this than I do. I’m going to give the ball to you, Dr. Ross.

It’s such a wide topic, isn’t it? I do work in a particular way with people, but sometimes, they will ask me, “What can I do?” I’m not the kind of therapist who necessarily gives people things to do. It’s more like, “We’re doing it right now. We’re doing it together. It’s through talking.” When people do ask me, there’s a whole range of practices from those kinds of breathing exercises. People might call it breathwork, which is a bit of a buzzword now for breathing exercises or breathing meditations, short things that you can do. They’re immensely powerful for that moment if you’re feeling very panicked or anxious. I do it.

I am not much of a fan of talking in front of large audiences. Point me towards whoever is, and I might question them a little bit about that, but I am feeling anxious about that. My heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, the worries and the thoughts whizzing around, but how effective to be able to take a deep breath in, and then a slow breath out through the nose. Do that a few times. It taps, for a number of different reasons, into various physiological, neurological, and psychological pathways to calm things down a lot. Do something called box breathing, which I love to do.

Also, I focus on a physical thing in the room. It’s a grounding process. It brings you back into the room, back into your body, and away from wherever your mind has gone off to, about whatever it’s worrying about, wherever it’s going off to. There are relatively simple-sounding breathwork exercises that you can drill. I always tell people, “Try it when you’re okay, and then when you’re feeling worried, wherever you are, even if you’re on the bus, or whatever you might be doing, no one will know you’re doing it, because no one can see you’re taking a few breaths in and out.” It can be immensely effective in that moment to help with panic.

We go all the way off to the other end of the spectrum, to sitting somewhere in a specific place for a specific purpose for a much longer period of time, and immersing yourself in something which is much deeper, more poignant, and focused. It’s a very different experience, an experience of self-discovery and greater understanding of reality, but also of just what your mind is up to and how it’s going, and a real introspective moment where you can see what your mind is up to, less reactivity. You can notice yourself feeling angry, upset, joyful, or relaxed.

I’ve been having a stressful period of time. I had a bit of time to myself, a bit of time to do some exercise, and then to sit for about half an hour, which was a real gift to myself. It felt like a real moment to be able to sit for a longer period of time, rather than grabbing moments here and there, moments of mindfulness, moments of breathwork to keep yourself on a level, but a real period of time to immerse myself. It is a bit like a long bath or a deep swim in that mode of awareness. One can feel a lot calmer, generate a sense of deep awareness within the body, in the mind, and in the feelings, and use that to calm things down.

I emerged in that state where I’m like, “Why am I doing this every single day? Maybe tomorrow, I’ll meditate for an hour.” Life gets in the way. Other things get in the way. There is a difference between the longer-term, lengthy practice that one might be able to do, but then also those moments where we can tap back into that, know that we’ve been in that deep immersive bath, but be able to drop back into that just for a moment, notice, and be able to taste that again, in those times of that deep sigh or the box breathing. It’s there. If we practice enough in the longer periods of time, then we can dip back into that. It’s a life’s work, or many lives’ work. That gives you a bit of a taste of how I try and integrate it as I can.

How Box Breathing Can Change Your Life

Thank you. That’s all very beautiful and vulnerable for you to share that part of your life with us. When you talk about box breathing, I actually described that in my first book, Joy from Fear. If you would please walk us through a gentle glimpse of what that looks like in just a moment. I also want to thank you because this fits with the issue of the day, that idea that here you are busy. I also know that you have a newish little one on your hands.

Your life is very full and busy. You juggle a lot. You’re sharing with us, which I appreciate, that you, too, face times where you’re stressed, there’s a lot on your plate, and there’s a lot going on. The idea of finding 30 minutes for a seated meditation, sometimes, it’s like, “How can I even find ten minutes?” You also go to the other end. You say box breathing, whether you’re on a bus, waiting in a traffic snarl, in an airport, or in line.

It’s something you would do if you’re in line at the grocery store or waiting at the doctor’s office, learning some of these breathing techniques. Some people think it’s woo-woo, but they’re not. They work. You’re regulating your nervous system. You’re telling it, “I don’t have to be in stress mode right now. I can be here in the present.” Dr. Ross, would you describe box breathing for us?

We imagine a box, a square, or a rectangle. I like to do box breathing, whereby, as I said, we integrate it into our environment as well. It grounds us in where we are. It’s particularly effective for people who are feeling quite panicked. We can either do it with our eyes closed, or I like to describe to people to do it with their eyes open. We think, “Where can we see a box, a square, or a rectangle?” There are many rectangles around, unless we’re in the middle of a rainforest, even if it’s the back of your phone, a window, a door, or wherever it is.

The way that it works is breathing through the nose, because breathing through the nose, for lots of reasons, is generally more effective at calming ourselves down. If we can see a box or a rectangle in front of us, or we can just imagine one, we start with our eyes at the bottom left of that. We follow it around from bottom left to top left in a clockwise fashion, to top right and bottom right, and then back to the beginning. At each corner, we do something different with our breath. We slowly work our way around.

We start in the bottom left. Slowly, we take a deep breath in through our nose, as we bring our eyesight to the top left. We hold that breath in without breathing out for another four seconds as we bring our eyesight to the top right. We breathe all the way out through our nose as we bring our eyesight to the bottom right, nice and slowly. When all that breath is gone, we hold our breath out before breathing in as we bring our sight to the bottom left.

What do we know, we’re back to the beginning again. We go back around the square again, but each time trying to go slower and slower, because we’re trying to slow down our breathing, which in turn slows down our mind and helps to calm down our feelings. By integrating that with our environment, it helps to bring us back down to earth, away from those worries and panic. Lo and behold, everything is nice and calm down before we can get off that bus or back out of that traffic jam, before we hit that road rage again.

Thank you. I love your version. I was doing it as you were talking. I got this lovely sense of solidness, of feeling grounded. That was only with one pass. Readers, when you’re in a safe place, give that one a try. Safe can be in a supermarket line while you’re looking at the box in front of you. That wouldn’t be a can. Look for a box. Maybe it’s the window or something.

A can from that perspective is still a rectangle. I always encourage people, when you’re feeling all right, practice it a few times so that when you’re not feeling all right, then it’s in your muscle memory, in your mind. Many people will actually do that practice as their meditation. Once a day, 2, 3, 4, or 5 minutes a day, they’ll do box breathing. That’s sufficient for them as an entire practice that they will just do that. As simple as it might sound, it can be very soothing, help to focus things for those 2, 3, 4, or 5 minutes, and be effective. I know people around the world in all different environments use it because of its simplicity and its effectiveness.

I love how the way you describe it. It focuses on the visual element because that brings you deeper into the experience. That’s so important. If we take it to our reader or to any person who is saying, “I don’t know where I’m going to find the time for this. I don’t even have three seconds,” yet, if we pause to think of those moments in our lives, we’re waiting for a cup of coffee to brew. We are waiting for a cup of coffee to be made for us at a coffee go-to place.

If we are waiting at a doctor’s office, we are waiting for a prescription to be filled. We are waiting to pick up our kids from school. It is all of those places where you might instead turn to your phone and keep yourself distracted or busy with your phone. Instead, I can imagine turning the phone over so you’re not seeing its face and using that as your visual rectangle to prompt you, because so many people have their phones at the ready all the time. Instead of engaging with it, turn it over and use that as your box.

The phone is a horrible distraction. I do the same. You reach for your phone automatically. It is in my pocket attached to my keys because I’m a Buddhist. It could be anything. There’s a tiny little Buddhist statue attached to my key chain. When I go in for my phone conveniently or by design, I might hit that on my way in, feel it, notice it, and then realize not to grab my phone. Sometimes, we just need those little cues. That’s a lovely cue to turn the phone around to the other side. I am definitely going to steal that one as a means to be able to do that. Yes, we might have a more in-depth practice. That’s fantastic.

The key is to be able to tap into that. There’s the idea that we’re always breathing, so then we can always meditate. That might sound a bit silly. Sometimes, it can sound that way. There are these moments when you’re waiting in a queue. If we grab our phone, it’s just a distraction. It’s going to feed into that dopamine reward hunger addiction cycle. We all do it. We’re all stuck in it, but we can flip that a little bit. If this is one of the ways that we can do that, then so be it. It can be a good way to do that.

I loved that you briefly touched on the reward system because sometimes, we think we are broken, that we are now stuck in this cycle, and we can’t get out of it. It’s one of the beauties of our brains, neuroplasticity. Whatever habits you have had for as long as you’ve been doing them, they’ve been hardwired that way for that many years. If you start a new pattern and you forget to breathe, that’s okay. It’s just not hardwired in yet. I love, Dr. Ross, how you said you have that reminder of the little Buddhist statue on your key chain.

I know my screensaver is a reminder. It’s a reminder I created that reminds me to drop into a place of love and presence. Before I even opened my phone, I’m seeing that. After our discussion, I’m going to get a decal or something for the back of my phone to remind me, maybe just a little peace emblem or something. It’s often those visual cues that remind us to either be present, or which our phones are known for, they remind us to be distracted. That is what they’re designed to do. We’re designed to get drawn in, stay and stay, watch and watch, do and compare, and think that we’re not enough or we’re not doing enough. It costs more stress. I rarely have other people do my social media because I don’t enjoy it.

It’s interesting how you describe remembering and reminding yourself. The original idea of mindfulness is simply remembering to keep your mind on something. That’s what it was before a lot got layered on. The idea that you could remember to keep your attention on something is mindfulness. That’s the main part of meditation. A mind wanders off, and we’d remember bringing our minds back to it and how important that might be.

Striking The Right Balance Between Long And Short Meditation Sessions

I know that a big piece of the work that you do helps people create stronger self-awareness, how you work with teaching psychotherapists, and how to bring meditation in because psychotherapists are ultimately models. Anytime we are in a helping profession, a healing profession, we are models. Not that we intend to be models, but what we do is a model for other people. The more present we are able to be for the self and for clients, the more we’re able to connect in that authentic, calm way.

One of the things I often hear from people during sessions is, “I went to see my doctor. My doctor was aggressive, busy, or inattentive.” “My parent, somebody in my life, or my boss was busy or distracted. Their energy was very stressful.” We forget how important it is to be role models for ourselves. Start trying to create that sense of inner calm and ease. As you said earlier, which I thought was beautiful, and I so agree, all of this is a lifelong practice.

It’s one of the reasons I love my yoga practice. It is a practice. It is not perfect. Some days, it will be smoother and more natural than other days. That’s how life is. That’s how mindfulness is. That’s how stress management is. Some days, we’ll do better than other days, but the goal is to keep working toward that place where we have more breathing, more presence, more calm, and more compassion. When we do that, we naturally make less space for the more disruptive and dysregulating habits. What do you think?

Yes, very much so. For me, meditation alongside the psychotherapy that I’ve had myself as part of my training and as generally part of my life, and alongside the personal relationships I have, the three of those things have been the most important aspects in making me who I am. I often encourage people to take up a meditation practice. The other two are much more socially acceptable and acceptable to do.

Meditation, even though it has the mindfulness idea around it, is still seen as a bit of an unusual thing, especially for psychotherapists or any mental health professional, psychologists, or psychiatrists to take up and practice. In terms of personal development, it’s very much holding a mirror up to yourself, a way to work on a core facet of self-discovery. For that reason, as you put very well, it’s an important thing to be able to develop and to work on.

Thank you. You’re offering so much wisdom. One of my goals is to help normalize important basic strategies like mindful breathwork and meditation. They don’t necessarily have to have a religious or spiritual connection. For me, mine tends to be more spiritual as well as health-oriented. When I go on my morning, the first segment of my walk or run is spent entirely doing the loving kindness meditation.

It keeps me in the present. I’m feeling it. That feels very restorative and grounding for me. I’m not seated. I’m moving at quite a clip. For anyone who wants to find pockets, you can be meditative, not meditating, when you’re raking leaves, when you’re gardening. For me, if I love cleaning things like housecleaning, I can get into a real zone, even though I don’t have much time for it. I get into a real zone where I’m not doing it from a stressful place, but a calm place. Do you think that practices like that can be de-stressing in the short term and long term?

Yes, I think so. There are so many practices, as you said, which incorporate that mindfulness, remembering where to focus your attention. As well as that, there’s a balance to be had to do that, which is fantastic, but also to have that more formal space of sitting practice. If one only has one or the other, say you sit for five or ten hours a day, but then you don’t bring those lessons into your everyday life.

The other way around, if you’re always in your everyday life, trying to maintain that awareness the whole time, which some practices do, and then you don’t have that more formal space. There’s the idea of formal meditation. It’s a bit like driving a car around a parking lot, a car park, and trying to learn how to drive there. You could become the best parallel parker in the world in an empty parking lot, but then try to do that in a perfectly full one where someone else has their car down the road, and vice versa.

One has to have a balance between those kinds of practice. That’s something to be said about those deeper moments of longer practice when you could be sitting, but also to take that into your everyday life, whether that’s you going on a jog, raking leaves, waiting in a never-ending, interminable queue line in the supermarket, or waiting for the next person in line to be finished with their work. You can feel the anger and the frustration growing. That’s a very different environment and one that can be a fruitful practice. Keeping those two ideas and balance, there’s always a path through that.

I love the image of the parking lot, being able to do meditation in this one space that’s important, but also being able to have that part of real life where you’re out driving the streets as well, and being able to work the calmness, the ease, and the meditation aspect in those areas. When we look back at the listener’s question, and for a moment, at my husband, he’s stress-prone. When he’s at work, he finds it difficult to slow down.

This was years ago. I gave him some lavender essential oil. I gave him a little reminder that it was okay to close his office door for five minutes and just sit there and breathe. I don’t think he made it a practice, but he saw that it was possible. When we start things like that, what we can see is, “Maybe it would look odd to people that my office’s door is shut, and it says ‘meditation in progress’ or whatever it says.” That might seem odd to other people, but what other people find odd, that’s okay. What’s most important is that what you’re doing brings the reset to your life.

When I’m thinking of this listener, he can even do some resets when the kids are doing homework, or teach the kids to do some breathing exercises with him. They can sit on the floor and have five minutes together. Kids love exercises like breathing exercises. They love doing things with Mommy and Daddy. If you’re able to create those little pockets in a family environment, then the parts of life that you can’t control, like how much your job is paying you or that the bills are going to come, you can then approach them from a far more centered way. How stressed we are isn’t going to change the bills that are coming, but it will certainly impact how we can deal with the bills that come and the stressors that do come. Does that make sense?

Yes, we actually have very little control over our external environment a lot of the time. As you said, it’s not so much about that. Ultimately, it’s about how we react to it. If our minds are more capable, then we can respond to that. The idea of that metaphor of salt in a cup of water, the salt will still be there. If we can increase the capacity of the water and make the cup much bigger, then the salt will be less concentrated. We’ll be able to cope with that better. If we can increase the size of that water or that capacity, then to an extent, depending on the bills and the environment, whatever it is will help us to manage it more effectively.

Our health, if we’re taking care of it with practices like mindfulness and meditation, then we’re around a lot longer and in far better health to be with the kids and the other loved ones in our lives. It’s a win-win if we can take some of these practices and incorporate them step by step, day by day. As we’re winding up, I appreciate that quite a few times, you’ve focused on the importance of communication, supportive relationships, and the power of those to be de-stressing anchoring forces in life.

I appreciate that you brought that up and remind readers that even if you can’t access or afford psychotherapy, find places online, community groups, and friends, where you’re safe to talk about your feelings. You’re safe to talk about what’s going on for you. You’re safe to be heard and not judged for whatever is happening. That is so good for the body, mind, and spirit. That kind of connection is so good. If I could offer that reader anything, as well as the mindfulness and the breathing, I would encourage that support, connection, and communication that you’re talking about, Dr. Ross.

Thank you so much, Dr. Carla.

Get In Touch With Dr. Ross

Thank you. Are there any other final pieces that you would like to offer to our readers?

Not that I can think of. The conversation has been very well guided. We’ve covered a lot of ground.

We have covered a lot of ground. I so appreciate everything that you’ve brought. I know there’s so much more, but it is late where you are. I’m cognizant of that. Thank you. Where can our readers find you?

My website is ARossPsychotherapy.com. They can see my book, Meditation for Psychotherapists, if they are inclined. All the information is there.

Just one last question. Your book on meditation, could someone who’s not a psychotherapist find it engaging and informative?

It’s very much directed to mental health professionals. Anyone who’s a psychotherapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or someone interested in meditation or who works in the mental healthcare professions would get the most out of it. For your everyday layperson, there are so many titles and so many places that they can go to that they would get a lot more effective reading from.

I appreciate that. I know there are a lot of mental health professionals out there, as you said, of all types. Whatever your environment is, it’s so important to be able to learn to engage in practices that are self-care oriented, like meditation, so that you can be present for the people that you are there to help and support throughout life. Dr. Ross, thank you once again for sharing your time and energy and for staying up late to be with us.

Thank you very much. I’d love to come back at any time. It would be great to speak some more.

That would be wonderful. Thank you. To our readers, as always, I am so grateful for your time and energy and for being on this journey of love and life with us. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Dr. Alexander Ross’ Website
• Joy from Fear
• Meditation for Psychotherapists – on Routledge
• Dr. Alexander Ross on LinkedIn
• Meditation for Psychotherapists
• Continuous Worsening of Population Emotional Stress Globally: Universality and Variations – PMC
• NAMI HelpLine
• Mental Health and Relationships – MyHealthfinder
• SAMHSA – Find Help
• PTSD Hotline – Free 24/7 | 866-903-3787
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Dr. Alexander Ross

I have worked in mental health in the NHS, forensic services, the charity sector and higher education for over 13 years. In addition to my private practice in London Bridge and Greenwich, I work as a senior psychotherapist in the NHS as the psychological professional lead for a London borough’s community service. I trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Tavistock and within the NHS before this working as a medical doctor, qualifying in 2012. I am registered with The British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC), with the Tavistock Society of Practitioners and The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).I am an independent researcher most recently publishing a book called Meditation for Psychotherapists. I also lecture at London South Bank University on their Mental Health and Clinical Psychology postgraduate MSc course.