My Love-Hate Relationship With Mindfulness

My Love-Hate Relationship With Mindfulness

by | Jan 17, 2018 | Anxiety, Mindfulness Meditation

My Love-Hate Relationship With Mindfulness… and why you should really, really consider practicing it

Mindfulness has been a buzzword in the health community of late. I’m hoping that after reading this, you’ll have a basic idea of what it is and why it helps.

Western culture is full of busy-ness – depression and anxiety are more common than they’ve ever been. Typically, I like to simplify depression and anxiety somewhat, down to past and future. Anxiety is the uneasiness and even fear of some future threat – generally, one that isn’t exactly easy to define. We might be really anxious about an upcoming presentation, but have a harder time nailing down where that comes from – perhaps it might come from baggage that we carry around from some intense public shame that we’ve felt in the past, and the risk of putting ourselves out there again heightens us to a degree that feels like it doesn’t even make sense (our bodies remember shame a lot more acutely than our minds do). Anxiety is often designed to warn us and protect us against the threat of more hurt like this.

Depression, often, is oriented in the reverse direction – maybe our past experiences have coloured our world in a way that joy is difficult to experience, and it’s hard to believe that we will experience anything different going forward. Depression tends to affect the innate and beautiful sense of curiosity and wonder that comes with being a human being (think of a young child you know interacting with the world around them).

Please understand that these are simplistic definitions, designed to give a basic idea of where mindfulness comes in. Often, depression and anxiety can keep our thoughts in the future or past, which is exhausting. Constant worry or feeling down can lead us to do a number of things that are very adaptive and reasonable in the moment (such as distracting ourselves from a painful experience), but they are exhausting in the long run. Mindfulness brings us to the present. It gives our brain a short break from the constant worry and just brings us into right…now. Young children (for example) are generally really good at being present in the moment.

 

Being mindful can help ease stress

Mindful meditation might involve focusing on our breath, the food we’re eating, the physical sensations in our bodies, or the sounds outside. It is inviting ourselves to experience the present moment for what it is – without judgment. I have a lot of tension on my shoulders, for example. I carry it with me everywhere, and I really hate having it around. But when I’m mindful, I’m not focusing on how much I wish it weren’t there. I’m just noticing it and training myself to be OK with it, just for a minute. Or, I’m noticing the sounds of the traffic outside, and I’m not thinking any thoughts at all – just experiencing the present for whatever it is. This is really hard – especially at first, and even more so when we are experiencing physical or emotional discomfort.

If you’d like to know the why behind things, I’d like to tell you about the work of two people I admire (who are just like you and me, and also happen to have a long list of impressive credentials that I won’t outline here) named Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dan Siegel. They’ve spent a lot of time researching and exploring mindfulness, and their work is very impressive.

 

Benefits of mindfulness

One of the main things mindfulness does is increase left forebrain function. This increased brain activity fosters that beautiful curiosity I was talking about. If we can notice and be curious when we’re stressed, we’ve already won. We start seeing ourselves from an outside perspective, with more grace and compassion (have you ever wished you could see yourself the way you see somebody you care about?). We can learn to calmly respond to things that otherwise would have sent us into a frenzy.

I could talk forever about this, but I’ll just give you a quick list of the amazing benefits you can find in mindfulness:

  • Direct help with physical symptoms such as chronic inflammation and pain
  • Reduced anxiety, stress, and depression
  • Improved immune system function and mood
  • Healthier coping – an increased ability to bounce back after one of the hard experiences that are so common in life

Sounds too good to be true, right? It is sort of. It’s not a pill – it takes the effort to be mindful. I hate it, actually. In many ways being regularly mindful is a primary component of my job, and I still suck at it. But, I’m getting slowly better – then worse – then better again. But even a little bit helps – if you can manage even 20 seconds a day, you will notice a difference.

If you want to read more about this, the works of Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dan Siegel are a great place to start. Jon Kabat-Zinn has a website and a variety of videos on YouTube that are really interesting. I’ve provided a few links below to get you started.

If you want to get started with a mindfulness practice of your own, there are quite literally endless free resources online in both video and audio format, but I recommend the Headspace app. It teaches you the basics and gives you easy, situation-specific guided meditations.

If you want more information on how to actually do the thing, here’s a Harvard blog that covers the basics pretty well:

https://www.helpguide.org/harvard/benefits-of-mindfulness.htm

Here’s Jon Kabat-Zinn on making what you already do in the morning into a mindful practice (this way, you don’t even need to learn to do anything new!):

https://www.mindful.org/jon-kabat-zinn-how-to-make-your-morning-routine-into-a-meditation-practice-video/

Lastly, if you want to fact check my claims, I have a resource list of academic papers I’d be happy to share with you. Here’s one I really like (you may need access to an academic database to read it):

Davidson, R. J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S. F., . . . Sheridan, J. F. (2003). Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65(4), 564-570.

I hope this has been helpful for you. Sometimes we love what helps, sometimes it’s aggravating; one thing is for sure – mindfulness helps us keep calm, be present, and cope. If I, or anyone else on the team at Alongside You can be helpful in working through this with you, please contact us and give us a call.

 

3 Simple Ways to Reconnect and Reduce Anxiety

3 Simple Ways to Reconnect and Reduce Anxiety

by | Jan 25, 2017 | Anxiety

These days anxiety is on the rise, thanks in large part to the increase of using numbing out, or disconnecting, to deal with strong emotions. It’s become somewhat of an epidemic, perhaps due to the now widespread use of screens and smartphones, for people to disconnect from their emotions and numb them out instead of soothing them or working through them. Disconnecting in and of itself is not a negative thing – it’s crucial to be able to disconnect from our emotions if we need to get things done, or if we’re not in a safe place. However, the temptation to stay disconnected is huge with so much to distract us, and this can prevent us from attending to and resolving our feelings, or even taking some time to self-soothe.

By being more intentional about connecting to our bodies and learning self-soothing mechanisms we can help decrease anxiety when it begins to rise in us and feel safer in general when navigating our day-to-day lives.

Here are three simple ways to help soothe and reconnect when anxiety arises.

  • The 1-2 breath – During times of higher anxiety, our bodies switch into a kind of a survival mode, where our sympathetic nervous system activates and causes us to breathe more rapidly, seeking to increase the oxygen in our bodies and make us “ready for anything,” so to speak. This is an exhausting state to remain in, and can leave us tired and irritable by the end of the day. In this state, often unbeknownst to us, our breathing patterns become more rapid and shallow, and the focus is on the oxygen-inducing inhale, rather than the carbon dioxide-releasing exhale. By paying attention to one’s breathing and focusing on establishing a pattern of shorter, expansive inhales, and longer, slower exhales, the body is invited into a state of relaxation and safety, and it naturally calms and regulates. This can be achieved by breathing into a count of “one Mississippi”, and out to a count of “one Mississippi, two Mississippi”. This is best done in a quiet, calm environment, and placing one hand over the heart and one hand on the stomach during this breath can help facilitate the connection, and help the body focus on slowing down and calming.
  • Grounding/Rooting down – When anxiety is quickly rising in our bodies it can be quite an intense experience, one that can even feel like an out-of-body experience, which is a very helpless feeling. Anxiety intensity is usually dominant in the upper parts of the body – churning stomach, pounding heart, racing head, sweaty palms, etc. In order to soothe this, it can be helpful to focus yourself on rooting down, moving yourself to a safe space if possible and focus on the lower, calmer parts of the body, the feet, the legs, the bottom or lower back – any place that is connected to something still and stable, like the floor or a chair. Breathing and getting heavy and focusing on those safe connecting points, even imagining one’s feet as tree trunks, rooting strongly into the ground, can help the body quickly cool down from the rapidly rising anxiety and help it to feel safer, more connected and stable.
  • Sensory tools – another thing that can help ground the body during rising anxiety is to have available a few sensory items that are relaxing and soothing. For those who find tactile items and the sense of touch soothing, keeping a piece of soft blanket or cotton balls, or even sandpaper handy can help – something to hold and focus on in the midst of rising anxiety. For those who find scent soothing – like something reminiscent of a mother’s perfume or a favourite baked item, they can keep a bottle of lotion, perfume, or essential oils handy for calming.

Likewise for those who find music soothing, having a certain song or meditation ready to play to help them breathe and cool down can be helpful. Even taste can help with soothing – having a piece of gum or a jelly bean of a certain flavour. Creatively seeking out things that help soothe the body and having them at the ready in a little, pocket sized “anxiety survival kit” can be a huge help when anxiety unexpectedly arises.

I hope this has been helpful for you and gives you some tips to help manage your emotions and anxieties. Often it helps to go through these with a professional, and sometimes our emotions and anxieties are beyond what we can manage on our own. If you’d like some help, please let us know, that’s what we’re here for!

 

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If you’d like some help manage your emotions and anxieties, we’d love to help. Please give us a call at 604-283-7827, send us an email through our website, or book an appointment online and one of our counsellors would love to help you out!