by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

Let’s say your client is prone to feelings of inadequacy and can’t sustain much sense of worth. Or she’s anxious and isn’t feeling safe, or is depressed and can’t feel pleasure. Or it’s a couple rebuilding their connection, but new experiences of closeness don’t "stick to their ribs."

It’s the same core problem: how to develop internal resources like resilience and a positive mood. That entails addressing the brain’s survival-(but misery)-promoting negativity bias; it’s like Velcro for painful experiences and Teflon for positive ones.

One key solution is taking in the good in four essential steps:

1. Turn positive events into good experiences. Look for good news about the world and yourself (e.g., a flower blooms, someone is nice to you, you get something done) and actually feel it when you see it.
2. Savor the experience. Let it become as intense and long-lasting as possible.
3. Sense it sinking in. Imagine and feel it soaking into your body and mind.
4. Sense current, positive experiences sinking into, soothing, and eventually replacing old, negative ones. Have the positive experience be powerful and prominent in the mind while the negative one is dim and in the background.

The aim is not recollection of specific events but the reshaping of implicit (emotional) memory.

Clients can use this taking-in-the-good exercise both in and out of your office. Most of what they take in will be little stuff: gratitude for the smell of an orange, a compliment from a friend, a moment of being kind, the recognition of a task finally completed.

But bit by bit, day by day, they’ll be weaving new, positive resources into their brains and their selves.

Also by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.