Mindfulness. Is it for real?

[orangeandemons]

So attended a session today...we spent 15 minutes looking at a raisin.

I feel really really uncomfortable with it. I do not want to share anythIng with the other group members, although they all seem happy with it. I don't want to lie down in front of complete strangers. I hated it. It seemed really really pretentious and up your own bum. Is this how it is meant to be?

It's worked for Buddhists for 1000s of years so there must be something in it.

Try the Head Space website and/or app (you'll know it's the right one if it's got a cartoon figure with a big orange circle for a head). It's mindfulness in easy chunks of 10 or 20 mins and is really relaxing, plus there are no raisins in sight! I find myself being more mindful in everyday situations now, and I've not been doing it for long. I'm also having CBT for OCD-type issues and social anxiety.

I've done mindfulness at home, but no, I couldn't do the group stuff. An OT once tried to do relaxation therapy with me, but I couldn't stop laughing.

Its horses for courses. Some people thrive in a group setting and doing exercises like the raisin one. Others do better alone. I'm in the latter group and it sounds like you may be too.

Neither way is right or wrong. It just comes down to how you are and what I couldn't take seriously with a group of people worked well alone.

Orangesandlemons, I did mindfulness mainly on my own suggested by a CBT therapist but just checking in with him each week to let him know how I was getting on.

I am doing the group now and the woman leading is.. to be frank... a bit up her own bum. She isn't doing the best job of being non-evaluative and non-judgemental!

One of the things I've found helpful is that it has taught me how random my mind is and all the really random things I think, like weird memories of waiting to get into a second year lecture at university on a completely normal day and things like that. It's made me realise how often what you think is just triggered by a very tenuous link to the current context and it makes you realise you have millions and millions of thoughts every second but you screen a lot of them out... whereas when you are depressed or anxious you tend to train your thoughts exclusively on negative or worrying thoughts, or safety thoughts, and it drowns out all the other stuff.

It has taught me that the mind has a life of its own and actually it's a bit flighty and half the stuff it generates is completely irrelevant if it's not workable in your life or getting you where you want to go.

I don't believe you HAVE to have a 45 minute daily formal practice BUT I am noticing I am much calmer if I have given myself time with and by myself to let my head settle and realise I don't have to follow the old habits and get caught up in thinking. I listened to the Jon Kabat Zinn stuff first and I HATED it, I thought he was a pretentious New York wanker, overprivileged and ripping off other cultures. Now I really like his stuff.I think it's just such a different mindset that it takes a while to get into but I've had recurrent depression since my teens and more therapy than you can shake a stick at and extended CBT and this has been BY FAR the most successful thing I've ever done. It feels like a gamechanger to be honest.

But I don't understand how it prevents depression.

Well basically depression is either overthinking your negative thoughts or burying them, each of them makes you buy into them as such: "I'm so fat/ugly/useless/miserable/a failure" or whatever your particular tune is. I didn't think my thoughts were that negative because I was really defensive within myself even, I spent a lot of time justifying myself to myself if that makes sense and to everyone else too. It takes up energy and means you can't concentrate and things seem hopeless etc. That is the essence of depression.

So mindfulness is about getting you to realise that you are not your thoughts and they're not that important (or even real a lot of the time, they're just random noise/junk floating on by and you can let them go).

Let go of the thoughts or at least don't spend your life chasing and asking why do I feel this, what did I do to deserve this, I can't bear this, I need to be better now etc and you realise that moods can and do pass through and it all seems a hell of a lot more manageable.

Hey presto, relief. It took about six months for me but it has really helped. If you read "The Happiness Trap" which is an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy it explains the science behind it behaviourally in a pop science way.

Going to bed now, but will try to find you a good quote tomorrow from Jon K-Z to explain why it prevents depression, stress etc.

It's great that it works for people. I do meditation in my church circle and it's amazing how it relaxes me. We did it tonight and just after it a man starting being an arse which almost spoilt but I still managed to stay somewhat chilled.

Can I ask OP why you joined the group in the first place as it doesn't sound as if it was a good idea? Did a professional suggest it? Just curious. It sounds like following the course alone may suit you better? Best of luck. I suffer from anxiety if I don't take my meds and it's the pits.

What if the depression is chemical though? There are different sorts of depression so surely it can't work for all?

Juniper It depends if the chemical imbalance causes the depression or is the depression alters your brain chemistry, no-one knows and that may be different from person to person.

My psychiatrist friend tells me that the idea of depression being endogenous (chemical) or reactive (caused by circumstances) is outmoded as there is no way of telling what came first.

Yet some families seem to have more depression than others? As if it can be genetic.

Even if it were chemical by definition it involves relentless negativity and a difficulty seeing positives as well as appraising yourself as worthless... so it doesn't much matter what caused it, everyone with depression can benefit with taking a rest from and getting distance from negative thoughts and mindfulness is a way of exposing yourself to them without getting hooked by them which disempowers them.

For me, mindfulness is a way of shutting off thoughts. So I'm sitting there worrying about the driving test tomorrow or something, I will then distract myself by really keeping myself in this moment of time. Say I was worrying while I was chopping carrots, I wouldd start concentrating intently on the carrot chopping, observe and take in every detail of the knife, the board, the carrot. If I found my thoughts wandering back to the upcoming test or whatever, I would adknowledge that thought and then bring my attention back to the carrot chopping.
For me, it's about being totally in the moment, not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow but focusing solely on where I am and what I am doing. I find it very very effective.

I am totally lol-ing at your posts, orange, as that's how I started off! Not the raisin - "mindfulness" hadn't been invented yet - but all the hate sharing, hate woo, where's the bloody point, get on with it you load of pretentious wankers! (Haha, I just had to add wanker to my spellcheck.)

You wouldn't bloody recognise me now. Not only am I more insightful, wiser, and significantly more laid back, but I haven't raged or lost my temper once in 12 years and am no longer late for everything. I don't get into a frenzy about looking awful. I've got a loooong way to go yet, but I am bloody going there, believe me

Everything about your intolerance, impatience and judgementalism is what causes your depression. Trying to summarise it quickly, you're fixated on doing things in certain ways; having certain attitudes, which aren't working right for you. When they don't work right for you, you judge yourself by those same standards and it all goes round in an extremely depressing circle.

Mindfulness is meditation lite. It teaches you that it's not necessary to act on your emotions. It's okay to have the emotions, feel what they feel like and even ponder on what gave rise to them. But, fuck it, they're just emotions. They come and go. That's what they're for. So we learn to let 'em do that. It's quite astonishingly easy when you've found it out.

Btw, I didn't have to stare at raisins, but I was sent on walks where I had to choose a leaf or something to examine. I also had to hug trees - think yourself lucky! I must have got quite the reputation around Tooting Common.

The sharing is so you get to see how amazingly different the insides of everybody's minds are. That kind of knocks the judgementalism on the head :)

Can anyone recommend a book or dvd on Mindfulness?

Nooooooo tree hugging. Never ever would I do that.

I was referred by the mental health service where I live as I have continuing relapses and almost chronic anxiety and depression. Cbt didn't work for me, although I liked the factual approach of it, and although I understood it intellectually, I was unable to apply it when feeling down. After 3 attempts at cbt, I was then referred for mindfulness. I had reservations about it at the time, but tried to go in with an open mind.

But it was horrid, I hate the group setting of it

I will try again after reading the last post. However aside from mindfulness I am unusually tolerant and quite patient. I am very judgemental though....

www.amazon.co.uk/Mindful-Way-Through-Depression-Unhappiness/dp/1593851286
This is the 8 week course, do it yourself with a book style. There's meditations you can access on a website with a password from the book included.
I must admit I like the American Buddhists. So here's some names: Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach (who are both psychotherapists as well) Sharon Salzberg, Jon Kabat Zinn obviously and Dan Siegel, who is a neuroscientist and does a lot around parenting.

I suffer with depression, anxiety and now CFS/ME. In my group therapy sessions for the latter we have talked about mindfulness and acceptance. We did some exercises where we just had to sit with our thoughts and observe them, and notice what our senses were telling us.

This is a real challenge for me - I have had MH issues since I was very young and was sexually abused around 4 so I learned very early to distract myself from bad thoughts. My brain is constantly a million miles an hour so to suddenly try and allow my mind to just 'be in the moment' was a bit scary at first.

When we spoke about it after, I said I hadn't done very well because my mind kept wandering - the psychologist said "No, you haven't failed, because you noticed it wandering!" :)

The anxiety in my life has been overwhelming, to the extent that a psychiatrist recently decided I have OCD (awaiting further assessment...). If I am anxious about something I have to run through all possibilities, replies, scenarios etc, it is exhausting. Mindfulness has helped me to stop going so fast. So for example when sitting on a crowded bus - and worrying constantly that somebody will tell me off for not offering an elderly person a seat because they can't see that I am too unwell to stand (I don't look disabled IYSWIM) - instead of getting panicky and telling myself I am pathetic for being anxious, and trying to rationalise it all at once, I just let the anxiety 'be there'. I accept that I am anxious about this issue and that it is not my fault, it's just part of who I am. It helps a lot!

I am going to be having CBT which in a way is the oooosite of mindfulness, because there are a lot of things I need to work through to do with abuse mainly, but mindfulness is really helping me when I get lost in a swamp of bad thoughts and it makes sense because of the idea that striving for constant happiness can actually make you more unhappy. It is ok to be sad or worried too, it's all part of being human.

Opposite, FFS, not oooosite (sounds like a ghost!)

I didn't go in thinking it was going to be a load of shit, I went in curious and wondering what was going to happen. However by half way through the second session I just felt instinctively very very uncomfortable. It came from nowhere consciously, it just appeared