Today's topic is mindfulness/mindfulness meditation.
Being mindful and ruminating
You may have heard of being mindful, as in being mindful not to scratch someone's car on opening your car door whilst parked (I notice a few people aren't mindful of watching out for this).
In a psychotherapeutic sense a mindful exercise may involve noticing the things around you when you are walking along, such as the trees or a dog chasing its own tail. Things you may not consciously notice. I think the idea is that your attention can be developed by transferring it from what you are preoccupied mentally with to something different. This should be a more positive/interesting or at least neutral thing (such as the dog chasing its tail). It is helpful to be in a situation where there are visual cues such as the scenery (trees), objects that can be noticed (buildings) or people. Something you can pay attention to.
It is important in my view if you have the habit of ruminating to divert your attention from the rumination topic and mindful activity is one way you can try. Of course, in the abscence of any visual or aural stimuli to focus on or pay attention to (nice psychological term) once a ruminitive 'trigger' thought occurs it can be observed as such but from then on no attention should be paid to it.
A technique thought-wise could be to transfer your attention to more interesting and pleasant thoughts, as my therapist suggested. My therapist suggested 'ladies in bikinis'. I, in turn, and after some consideration agreed this was indeed pleasant and also interesting thought material.
Rumination and mindfulness part 2
But going back to mindfulness, developing the habit of awareness of something other than your thoughts that seem to be food for rumination or worry is a habit worth developing. A goal would be to transfer the attention away from the ruminative thoughts and therefore weaken or diffuse the habit of rumination. This could be visualised as keeping the traffic (thoughts) flowing as opposed to creating or being involved in a traffic jam (rumination).
I can rememeber a thought like "Have I left the gas on?" preyed on my mind as this initial 'trigger' thought precipitated a chain of rumination because as part of my OCD behaviour an element of doubt appears even when I was certain all was well. Because I responded to this thought emotionally (fear) this precipitated the ruminative behaviour and increased anxiety. The false belief was that it was problem solving and not rumination.
The technique of diffusion was useful here as introducing some element of humour seemed to do something against the rumination. I tried to make light of the situation by thinking, "I know I turned off the gas today but I will probably be roasted by my partner because I know I didn't pay the gas bill as it's still on the kitchen table."
It is reassuring that people I know who do not claim to suffer persistent OCD-type of behaviour or thoughts can occasionally be plagued by worrying thoughts such as the above. I found this reassuring and more than a small crumb of comfort as it proved to me it was not so unusual to think or feel like this and not the preserve of those who may have been labelled as obsessive compulsive. But back to our topic of mindfulness.
A mindful exercise can also involve inspecting objects as well as developing awareness in our surroundings, perhaps to achieve much the same effects. One example I remember was looking at a pine cone closely. I believe the exercise was to notice all of the little intricacies in its formation and appearance. Doing so focuses your attention to it for a while. I believe this 'while' serves as a gap where distraction and a chance to 're-focus' away from ruminative mental behaviour.
Mindfulness meditation is related to this, as the refocus of attention is the common element here. As always, you can look this up specifically on the Internet but if you are interested in trying mindfulness meditation it may be better to seek out someone who can explain and guide you on how it's done. You may learn how it can help you and also if it's recommended that you should do it. Perhaps ask your therapist? It was recommended for me by mine and I feel having been guided on how to do it was much more useful than just reading about it and trying to follow it on my own.
If a picture from the 1970s TV series 'Kung Fu' starring John Carradine appears in your mind when I mention meditation then that's OK, as it also evokes this kind of image to me, which I find to be just the right association and put me in the mood to do it. I would guess in popular imagination meditation of all varieties conjures up images of ashrams, the lotus position or the the summer of love in the 1960s. But if this image or concept doesn't appeal, you don't need to picture yourself as Grasshopper or imagine you are residing as a Tibetan monk in an ashram. No philosophy has to be adopted if you are concerned about this.
I guess Thich Nhat Hanh
brought Mindfulness meditation
to the Western world, sometime in the 1960s. Later on, Jon Kabat-Zinn's work in the late 1970s with Mindfulness based stress reduction plus his books in the 1990s gave it more of an airing as a use
in the world of therapy and psychotherapy. It has also recently become more widely mentioned and practised in the UK as the NHS are using it as a form of aid to psychotherapy for some of its clients.
My experience has found that like other forms of meditation a sense of quietness and relaxation occurs. I believe this has been reported by most people who practice it. The attractive thing about it for me was that no 'forced' effort is required as it would probably be counter-productive. You just ease yourself into it and relax, man, and let the looseness slip into your bones and your brain-banana (Sorry, I couldn't resist an attempt at talking the summer of love talk here.)
Focus your attention - but gently, mind
No forcing yourself to 'quiet the mind' is required in the type of mindfulness meditation I do. One intention of it, I believe, is in some way a gentle re-direction or focus of your attention in order to achieve some kind of internal peace. I think this is an important element which is also found in attentional training therapy. I can see how this may be useful if you have OCD types of ruminations or preoccupations as you are almost training your attention or focus on something other than the topic of rumination.
An attention therapy exercise I know of asks you to focus the attention on various sounds you can hear, alteranting between the ones on your left side and then your right, for instance. Attention training therapy is perhaps something you may have encountered but I am not sure if it's widely used in therapy.
Relaxation exercises
For anxiety or OCD sufferers I would guess that any form of relaxation will be welcome and beneficial. I found differential relaxation where muscles are tightened and then relaxed to enable the contrast to be felt helps generally with helping me maintain or restore a sense of calm. It was put to me that a relaxed state is the obvious inverse of a tense, anxious state, which I guess is fairly obvious.
It would be more accurate to describe what I do as a mindfulness of breathing meditation. A large part of it is on noticing your breathing. There's also a claim that this type of meditation can 're-wire the brain', if this kind of image is helpful for you to imagine. I always knew my brain's internal printed circuit board needed a good re-soldering and some new cable putting in - too many dry joints! Perhaps those neural networks can somehow restore themselves with this kind of mental 'exercise'?
If you are interested in mindfulness meditation or relaxation exercises perhaps it is something you can ask your therapist or GP/doctor about.
Compliments of the season to you :)
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