What is Mindfulness Therapy?
Mindfulness is defined as bringing direct, non-judgmental awareness to the present moment. Mindfulness therapy focuses on increasing awareness of the present moment while acknowledging, and accepting one’s thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. Mindfulness helps us to more objectively and open-mindedly see what is occurring in the present moment versus what our automatic thoughts or feelings may be telling us is occurring.
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
One type of mindfulness therapy is Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) which is a modified form of cognitive therapy that incorporates mindfulness exercises, such as present moment awareness, meditation, and breathing exercises, with principles of cognitive behavior therapy, such as the relationship between the way we think and how we feel. The aim of mindfulness exercises is to practice tuning into our direct in-the-moment experience rather than thinking about our experience. For example, take a minute to think about your feet. What comes to mind? Maybe you think about the shape and size of your feet, places they have taken you, or how you would like to have a foot massage. Now, take a minute to directly feel your feet. Wiggle your toes and/or press your feet into the ground and focus on the physical sensations. Do you notice a difference between the two prompts? The first is about thinking and the second is about directly experiencing.
Focus Your Attention
When we are not tuned into the present moment and on automatic pilot, our thoughts can take us places without our choosing and create problems: Rumination about the past may lead to depression, worry about the future creates anxiety, anticipating everything we “have to” do makes us feel burdened, exhausted, and stressed out. Mindfulness is about intentionally choosing where we focus our attention, on our direct experience in the moment, which can release us from the automatic, unhelpful habits of the mind.
Practice Mindfulness Exercises
Mindfulness also helps to change how we relate to our experience, particularly unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Most of us have the ingrained habit to avoid unpleasant or painful feelings. When an unpleasant feeling arises, our minds react to the feeling by trying, in one way or another, to avoid experiencing the feeling or the thing that caused it. For example, if a friendship of mine has ended and I feel sad each time I drive by my old friend’s house, I may avoid driving that route. Trying to fight against unpleasant feelings is what keeps us entangled in emotions like depression, anxiety, anger, and stress. We can’t stop unpleasant experiences, yet, we can choose how to respond to them, which can lessen emotional pain. Mindfulness is not about getting rid of unpleasant experiences. It’s about acknowledging them, approaching them with curiosity and non-judgment, seeing them as a [temporary] part of being human, and practicing simply having them. Essentially, mindfulness exercises allow us to learn that we have options for how we respond to our internal experience, and we are not our thought patterns.
Using the above example, I feel sad each time I drive by my old friend’s house, which triggers the automatic response of thinking, “I’m a bad friend and I don’t deserve to have supportive people in my life,” which creates more sadness, and I withdraw from others and spend the next three days alone on my couch. Mindfulness is a tool that helps us respond to our feelings and unhelpful thoughts with less reactivity, more compassion, and more helpful action. MBCT was initially developed as a treatment for recurrent depression and this TED Talk by one of the creators of MBCT, Zindel Segal, discusses its origins and central components.
If you are interested in learning more about mindfulness therapy, please contact us at CBTDenver.