Feeling anxiety or depression? Having trouble sleeping? Illnesses getting you down?
I’ve been hearing a lot of friends on social media talking about how they’re struggling with illness, anxiety, depression and insomnia. With this in mind I’d just like to point you in the direction of mindfulness.
Now, I know, some of the more scientifically minded, and atheist and humanist, friends who find their way to my blog from my facebook account will by now be going “Bah! New age mumbo jumbo bollocks!” and be thinking I’ll be talking about energies and crystals next. But that’s not the case.
Just take a moment to look at yourself. Observe your body, thoughts and feelings. When was the last time you did that? I would guess that if you’re not a practitioner of mindfulness the answer to that would be never. In our daily lives we’re taught from a very early age that thinking is what we should do. Thinking is, after all, where ideas come from and without ideas we wouldn’t have breakthroughs and create wonderful inventions. However, nobody ever tells us to stop thinking and the mind just goes on and on and on and on in a never ending daily commentary. We think things like “I really must have that new item I saw online”, “I really must try harder to be successful”, “I’m too fat”, “I’m too thin”, “I should be more beautiful”, “I shouldn’t be ill”. We’re always comparing ourselves to others and everything around us, berating ourselves when we feel we’ve not done our best, praising ourselves when we feel accomplished, and wishing that we weren’t sick when we are. These thoughts buzz around in our minds and can can make us feel worse, leading to insomnia, depression, anxiety, self doubt, and a whole host of other nastiness.
There is a way to help quiet the mind and stop it nagging at us all the time, and that is mindfulness. Mindfulness, as described by Jon Kabat-Zinn above, is paying attention on purpose in the present moment non-judgmentally. But what exactly does that mean? Well simply put it’s choosing to pay attention to what you’re doing and feeling without judging or labelling things as good or bad.
For example one of the first mindfulness exercises you’ll come across is mindfulness of the breath. This usually takes the form of a meditation and it goes something like this. You sit in a comfortable position and you turn your attention to the coming and going of the breath as you breathe in and out. As you do this you will notice that your mind will wander, you may think about the past, future, what you’re having for lunch, homework, anything. You notice your mind has wandered, you label it (so if it’s something from your past you say in your mind “past”, if you suddenly feel angry you say “anger”) and you gently return your attention to the breath. And you just keep repeating this process for the duration (I usually do 10 minutes a day).
Please note that I said that you simply notice that the attention has wandered, you notice the thought, label it, and return to the breath. What you don’t do is notice the thought and then go “SHIT! That’s wrong!”, mentally tell yourself off and try to force it away. Forcing it away will not help, and may actually end up with you bottling up the thought or emotion, making it worse when it finally does erupt out. Also having a go at yourself for having the thought when you’re meant to be focussing on the breath just piles even more pain on you That’s not the way this works. If you’re mindful and you have a happy thought, you label it as what it is a happy thought, but you don’t label it as either good or bad. If you have a sad thought, you label it as sadness, but you don’t label it as either good or bad.
Mindfulness is not there the change you. You’re still you, I’m still me. I still get mad at people who jump the queue in the supermarket, and I still shout at the TV when my favourite sports start is losing. What it does do is help me to notice when I’m doing these things, notice the anger, pain, illness, or other emotions, and it allows me to give them space and allow them to subside on their own. And over time you realise that you’re better at dealing with situations.
This next thing may sound a bit odd, but it’s not the pain of the illness (mental or otherwise) that causes you to suffer It’s the feeling that you have this condition, illness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, anger, hatred, and the fact that you want to be rid of it (I don’t want to feel ill, I want to go to sleep, why can’t I feel happy?) that causes you to suffer. Mindfulness won’t make the conditions go away, but it can make them easier to deal with.
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