Mindfulness

[chorse_70]

This is what I'm learning in DBT hope you enjoy reading it.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the ability to be aware of your thoughts,emotions,physical sensations and actions in the present moment without judging or criticizing yourself or your experience.

Why Mindfulness?

Mindfulness helps you focus on one thing at a time in the moment, which helps you gain better control and soothe your overwhelming emotions.

Mindfulness helps you learn to identify and separate judgmental thoughts from your experiences. Judgmental thoughts fuel your overwhelming emotions.

Mindfulness helps you develop the ability to make healthy decisions about your life based on both your rational thoughts and your emotions.

How to be Mindful

Many people find mindfulness through simple life experiences such as hearing trees blowing in the breeze or the sound of rain hitting the window pane. Simple sounds we often take advantage of can bring a tremendous comfort and strong "center" to our existence.

Practicing Mindfulness

Conscious Living: Being aware and paying attention to your everyday activities.

Example: Conscious Eating; For the purpose of this example lets assume you are eating a apple, observe the color and the shape. Now feel the apple, is it smooth, is it heavy, is the stem rough?

Smell the apple, does it have a sweet or tart fragrance? Is your mouth starting to water, are you feeling hungry? Take a bite of the apple, notice the texture, the snap as the bite comes loose, the juiciness. Chew slowly and notice the taste and how it evolves as you chew. Keep track of your tongue and your teeth and how they work together as you chew.

Now swallow the bite, sense how your muscles work.

Continue eating noticing all the physical sensations and tastes.

Practicing Continued

Sitting Practice: Being aware and paying attention; just be in the moment.

Example: Noticing Practice; Find a comfortable place to sit, take a few slow breaths, either close your eyes or find a spot to focus on. As you sit you may have other thoughts enter your mind, accept them and then return your focus to your breath. as you sit notice the weight of your feet and legs resting on the ground. Notice the weight of your arms and hands resting. Notice the weight of your head resting on the top of your neck. Mentally scan your body from head to toe and notice any sensations you feel. Continue this for a few minutes.

Mindfulness Instructions

Tell a personal story

1) Place the practice in the context of daily life

2) Evoke emotion

Make the exercise simple

1) Pick one thing as the focus

Anticipate and give instructions on "wandering" attention

1) Wandering is normal and OK

Use a mindfulness bell

1) The bell serves as a cue to begin and end

Lead the practice

Ask for feedback

[chorse_70]

This is word for word what our main DBT Therapist has wrote and I honestly don't understand some of it myself and find some of it rather silly but I'm hoping everyone will give it a look and tell me what you think?

[Maeon]

I think thats fab C, thank you for posting. Hopefully we can chat about it soon, its a very powerful tool indeed :)

[hummm_mabbe]

Hi C Horse

I learned about mindfulness probably about 2-3 years ago, and I thought it was very gimmicky at first. Even once I picked it up and started to try to use it, it took a very very long time for it to begin to make sense. For me, learning how to do it has meant reading a lot of books and online resources, because the attitude you bring to it is fundamental in whether it works or not. If you are trying to use mindfulness to feel better, paradoxically it will not work. If you try to "be good at" mindfulness, it will not work. In a way this is liberating - there really is nothing to strive for or attempt to achieve, and mindfulness it pretty much the opposite of that. Its about "accepting in" whatever is here at this moment, whether good or bad.

The simplest form of it, the one that is taught clinically, is about pure awareness, letting yourself feel the feeling, and bringing an attitude of acceptance. That is very hard to do when the thing you are trying to be aware of is pain - but you literally have to let that pain in and be with it. This is not an idea that comes naturally or quickly, and I'll be honest in saying that for me mindfulness has taken almost 2 years to really make any real emotional sense to me. Even then it is not yet the catch all cure all that it is sold as, and sometimes I find myself getting angry with modern psychology for pushing it this way. Buddhists (mindfulness is a buddhist practice appropriated by western psychology) spend a lifetime trying to reach enlightment, and I find it a little annoying that pop psychology books sell the idea that it can being total freedom from psychiatric paroblems in a matter of months - I do not belive it can, though it is an extremely useful addition to other things.

That said, lately it has been helping me - I am coming to see that most pain can be more quickly moved through, that I dont have to hold onto it. For example, when a thught or feeling comes up, say a shameful or self-attacking thought, rather than engage with the thought and fight back or feed it with anxiety or anger, I can try to just focus on where I feel the sensation in my body. It might be painful, but when I bring acceptqance and awareness to that feeling it tends to peak and then subside - something it will not do if I start chasing off after the thought or let it just run away on its own as worries and so on tend to do. I think one of the reasons it takes so long to help is that when you startt becoming mroe aware of your body and thoughts and their link, you will be forever noticing new depths to it, parts of you you hadnt noticed before. Of particular importance is noticing any aversion or pulling away from feeling that you experiecne, and being aware of this too. Noticing that aversion helps to stop its pull on the feelings that are already there - you need to give into the feelings, whatever they are, but with an attitude of acceptance and self compassion, as opposed to depressed resignation. This is an attitude that itself takes time to cultivate, and has such depth because you will notice how many feelings ABOUT feelings you have.

What your psych has written there is kind of vague IMO, and to really learn it you will need some better resources than that. There are many good books out there now on mindfulness, titles things like the mindful way through depression / anxiety, or the titles by Jon Kabat Zinn (the ones by Thich Nhat Hanh are just too airy fairy and meaningless to be of practical use IMO). I personally found some parts of these books frustrating, because you get the impression they have been written for people with far less serious issues than personality disorder, but the methods they describe are the same as the ones used in DBT.

Lately I have been using mindfulness as a form of distress tolerance - I dont like the idea of distracting and all that, it seems like avoiding pain which only prolongs it - after all you have to face it eventually. For me I prefer to simply face it as and when it arises, and mindfulness is definitely helping with that. However right now, I only find that it slightly smoothes me out - I have so many automatic attacking, worrisome thoughts and memories that right now the mindfulness is more of a management technique than something that is liberating me from them, and as such I rarely actually feel happy or relaxed as a direct result of using it - rather it returns me to a baseline. I just feel less tense than if I wasnt doing it. I dont actually yet do 'sitting' meditation as I know I should, maybe that would help. I tend to use mindfulness in the 'going about my day' way. Its also awesome for getting to sleep and getting back to sleep if I wake up.

I am hoping this will change and get better with time, especially as even this level of progress IS progress over where I was. There IS something in it, but for me it has not been the rapid global fix that mindfulness tends to be packaged as. I blame western commercialism and the need to sell books/ have some psychologists peddle a 'brand', for that.

A useful, non commercial site that talks about mindfulness is www.audiodharma.org . It has many recorded talks, and you could do worse than listen to one of the intro to mindfulness / meditation type ones. Start with the page on guided meditations maybe (body scan) or listen to intro to meditation on the Gil Fronsdal talks page.

Ross

[hummm_mabbe]

A very comprehensive book on mindfulness, and its counterpart compassion, is "The Compassionate Mind". It has a ton of exercises to do and things. I am working my way through it, and find a lot of it very frustrating as sometimes he seems to oversimplify things or feels dismissive. But sometimes I find if I come back to it in a different state of mind, it doesnt feel quite so bad. I guess Im taking from it what currently feels appropriate and trying to dismiss anything for now that annoys me.

For example he talks about how to face bullying with assertiveness, and he says "try not to get upset or show that you are nervous or they will focus on that". This to me is utterly ridiculous because the reason I bought the book is precisely because I CANNOT avoid showing my nervousness or upset, so that to me was extremely naive and simple minded.

On the other hand though, he covers a massive amount of extremely good science and useful exercises for cultivating the different attitudes to bring to mindfulness. I have been trying the compassion exercises and have noticed some litle shifts.

IMO this is how mindfulness goes - in small, subtle shifts over time. That kind of fits my whole view of therapy so for me, this is ok. Others may not feel the same though and grow tired of its lack of immediate soothing.

Ross

[pain-dance]

I've "tried" mindfulness in the past, but was in too chaotic a mental state to engage with it, and just ended up frustrated and near to laughing.

However, I had a recent session at an Oxfordshire Mind day centre and thoroughly enjoyed it: I could genuinely feel my heart and brain working (both of which are nerve centres), and an awareness of my inner self and composure in relation to my depression. The woman leading it told me that, if you're in a severe mental state, it won't work because you have to be in a position to engage with it seriously and constructively.

My view is that, rather than for the control of a mental illness (which comes under the remit of your doctor), mindfulness is ideal for maintainance of both mental and general health.

[suzieq]

I have first hand experience as have attended a controlled Mindfulness course about 18 months ago. I was asked by my Psych if I would like to take part in the first pilot study in Southampton. Having nothing to lose I went for it.

Pain-Dance is absolutely correct in that you need to be reasonably stable before they will accept you. I was at the time of the offer but the course didn't start for 8 months by which time I had deteriorated.

Even with that in mind, I found the course and idea of Mindfulness enthralling. It is a completely different way of looking at things. Ross is right in that you have to look at things "in the moment" and accept your feelings/thoughts with open arms, realise it is only a thought and accept it and move through it. It is not easy for the first couple of times you try but it does get easier. The relaxation exercises are all part of the whole process, Body Scan, Sitting Meditation, 3 Minute (quick fix). Just don't do what I did and fall asleep during group therapy whist using the "Body Scan" (I wasn't the only one btw) (great to help you sleep at night however)

To be of any real use, you really need to use the skills on a daily basis (easier said than done). No it is not a cure for depressive ilness but it can help to control your darkest thoughts and feelings. Right now it is of no use or interest to me because I am in a very deep dark place and have not used the skills I learned properly, but I know that once I climb out of my current hole in the ground I am going to seriously embrace the concept again.

I personally found that after many attempts at talk therapy, counselling and CBT, Mindfulness (for me personally) is what will help me the most BUT you do need to practice it daily for it to have any real beneficial effect.

The Jon Cabot-Zin book mentioned is probably the best one (get from your local library), he is one of the founders of the idea of Mindfulness. Book should come with a CD of excercises.

I have the CD here but am no bloody good with computers. If anyone would like a copy, just tell me how to upload it and it's yours!!

[Amybaby23]

iv JUST completed a 3 month stint in CBT and mindfullness training , and i have the body scan therapy CD....however iv been so disconnected from my physical self for so long now im still struggling to connect so its a daily habit u have to make urself do , id recommend too cos a few of the other ladies with me benefited HUGELY from it ...I especially liked the mindfulness bubble bath and candles session that u do on ur own i certainly learnt how to connect to the bath itself enjoying it and relaxing =D..x