Day 2121: Making noise

Is making noise making things better or worse? Today, I’m making noise about the fact that some news columnists are speculating that how the USA opposition party is making noise might be hurting their chances in the upcoming midterm election.

Lately, I’ve been making noise in my therapy groups, inviting people to be making noise when we do a mindfulness exercise that focuses on listening.  This is the noise I’m making when I introduce that exercise:

In this mindfulness exercise, we’re going to focus on the sense of hearing. After you hear the sound of the chime, do your best to listen to all the noises in the room. Feel free to make noise to make the exercise more interesting for other people.

That’s my attempt at making it safer for people to be making noise, since many of us can be self-conscious about the noises we’re making, especially when other people are listening.

I’ll be making noise soon with these Right & Wrong Buzzers:

fullsizeoutput_33fd

fullsizeoutput_33fe

Even though I’m often making noise about letting go of  unhelpful concepts of wrong and right, I’ll be making noise to encourage people to change old habits of thinking (including the cognitive distortions described here).

It’s okay to be making noise or to be silent about the other images I captured yesterday.

Because the wind was making so much noise yesterday, I didn’t go for my usual walk. Instead, I was making noise by making ukulele chords for  my latest original song “I’m Mad About You.”

With that song, I’m making noise about anger (especially towards politicians).

It’s time for me to be making noise about gratitude, so thanks to all who helped me create this “Making noise” post and — of course! — to YOU, for all the noises you’re making.

IMG_0508

Categories: cognitive behavioral therapy, group therapy, original song, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Post navigation

11 thoughts on “Day 2121: Making noise

  1. I’m glad to hear you out before I head to work this Monday morning, Ann.

  2. Knowing when to make a noise is the key

  3. This is from the song “Things Are What You Make Of Them” by Bishop Allen:
    Well I met up with my common sense
    And I knew her by the rose in her hair
    She said: Son, if you don’t make a noise
    God will never know you’re there.

    I think that’s a more poetic way of saying the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

  4. I enjoyed your thoughts on noise and which comes at a time when I’m rendered almost mute! I think I’ve hit my “noise” wall. I definitely would enjoy participating in your mindfulness group. I do love the listening exercise! 🙂

  5. I want those buzzers!

  6. Pingback: Day 2528: Resistance | The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: