Each MCD Relationship Competency identifies 6 Skills, along with specific practices for learning each. For more context about MCD Relationship Competency 4: Self-Empathy, see Practice Self-Empathy: Skill 1: Identify the differences between self-empathy and other responses to your experience.

Skill 2: Identify at least 3 anchors / regulation strategies that you can use weekly or daily

ANCHOrs

First let’s begin by defining the term anchor as it is used in MCD.

Definition: An anchor is something you turn your attention toward in order to stabilize yourself in the expansive perspective. You can anchor to deepen an expansive state or  interrupt reactivity. 

It is specific, doable, has aliveness or meaning, is simple, and can be done any time and anywhere.  It could be physical, verbal, energetic, visual, or any combination.

Essentially, an anchor wakes up the parts of you that can access a bigger perspective, begin to calm your physiology, engage mindfulness, and use your skills.

When you use an anchor, you take your attention away from the situation at hand with the intention to come back to that situation with more groundedness, skill, and compassion. The intention to return to the situation  is what makes anchoring different from distraction or avoidance.

An anchor is helping you to get a little bit bigger than the reactivity you are experiencing. This doesn’t mean that reactivity goes away. It means accessing the choice to not behave from reactivity.

Anchors are strengthened when you practice them while things are going well. It is particularly effective to practice an anchor during meditation. Commit to engaging your anchor everyday or even several times a day.

Ideally, you have several anchors. Anchors are most effective when they match the challenge you are facing. For example, fear or doubt about others liking or accepting you could be met with an anchor that helps you access a sense of your own lovability. One student’s anchor for lovability is a memory of walking into her Grandmother’s house and seeing her Grandma’s face light up with love for her. As you identify and become familiar with patterns of reactivity in yourself, you can begin to connect anchors to each pattern.

For an anchor to be useful, you maintain your attention on it until you feel an expansive shift and your attention has stabilized in that larger perspective. The signs that this has happened include: a decrease in overall body tension, curiosity or desire to understand what’s happening, the ability to notice and name body sensations, emotions, and needs, an impulse to try something different in a given situation like a new skill or step towards connection, sadness that you are in reactivity again, and words or thoughts of acceptance like “Okay, I am going to be okay.” or “We’re disconnected now, but we can work this out.”

While it is ideal that an anchor already has the required power to light up the expansive perspective, you can also cultivate an anchor. This is like creating a positive habit of mind.  For example, every time you make a mistake, you could commit to relaxing your shoulders and face and saying “That’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes.”

There are two approaches to finding an anchor.

One, you can start with expansive experiences: Sit in mindfulness until you are settled. Ask yourself to bring up an experience in which you were exceptionally grounded in or connected to any of the following: love, expansiveness, peace, communion or unity with life, compassion, meaning, equanimity, solidness, flow; or any experience of deep nourishment around a particular need.

Two, you can start with Reactivity: Using your feelings and needs list or feelings and needs cards, identify all the feelings and needs alive for you in a particular moment or type of reactivity. Typically it’s helpful to bring some of that reactivity up by recalling a specific instance. Identify the need that is really at the core of this reactivity. That is, the need associated with the most fear, pain, or grief. Shake off the reactivity by literally shaking your body or engaging in some form or exercise. Enter mindfulness. Once you are settled, put your attention on the need you identified and ask yourself to recall a peak experience in which that need was met.

Whichever of these two methods you use to access an expansive experience, use the worksheet provided to write down every aspect of that experience. 

Then circle the most powerful and concrete elements in that experience. Use those elements to create an anchor.

Test your anchor by imagining the situation that brings up that reactivity and then engaging your anchor. Refine your anchor if needed, and test again.

Self-Regulation Strategies

• Soften your face, mouth, jaw, tongue, shoulders, back

• Wishes for Well-being

• Express a wish for the  well-being of yourself or others: May I feel peace. May she feel love. etc.

• Visualize something that immediately brings a sense of peace and calm.

• Imagine your energy extending out beyond your body.

• Orient to one of the five senses: sounds, light, color, scents, taste something or touch something that has a soothing texture

• Sing a soothing song silently or aloud

• Name parts of experience: thoughts, feelings, needs, impulses, etc.

• Direct energy through the soles of your feet into the earth. Visualize and sense this flow of energy.

• Put your hand on your heart, give yourself a shoulder massage, run your hand through your hair, rub your thighs, rub your feet back and forth on the floor, etc.

• Bring to your awareness someone you love easily and feel your love for them

• Chant or Repeat a mantra or meaningful phrase.

• Attend the cycle of energy that flows from your crown down through your centerline to your root and back up.

• Focus on three breaths following each inhale and exhale

• Attend to a long slow exhale to the bottom of the breath

• Bring a smile to your lips, in the middle of your forehead, your heart, and your abdomen.

• Ask yourself a question that directs you to your values. “What is really most important right now?”

• Cup your hands together and notice the energy flowing between your palms.

PRACTICE

Choose one of these regulation strategies to practice every day this week.