Mindfulness is at the center of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It’s a simple but powerful skill you can learn. Many therapists use mindfulness in their anxiety counseling sessions, because mindfulness and meditation help improve mental health overall. More specifically, mindfulness therapy helps with lowering stress, coping with difficult situations, and improving your sense of clarity and confidence.
Mindfulness is More than Meditation
There are many ways to practice mindfulness. The most well-known is sitting meditation. However, yoga, tai chi, and other forms of exercise can be meditative. So can sports, running, or other physical activities. Even washing the dishes or taking a shower can be an opportunity to practice mindfulness.
No matter what form your mindfulness practice takes, there are a handful of basic concepts that are useful to remember. These concepts help hone your ability to connect with yourself on a deeper level.
Five Skills to Practice Mindfulness:
Become aware of the present moment
Developing the ability to notice the present moment is a skill for mindfulness. This means increasing our awareness of what is going on in the here and now. Noticing the present moment includes internal experiences like thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. It also includes external experiences happening around us.
In mindfulness practice, we build the habit of checking in with our current experience. You can do it right now--ask yourself how you feel emotionally. Look at what physical sensations are happening in your body, and what’s happening in your mind. Notice these experiences, then move on to the next one. Tune in to what’s around you in the room, and what sounds you hear right now.
Congratulations, you just practiced mindfulness! You tuned into your present-moment awareness to take stock in what’s happening right now. Over time, this practice helps us step out of our natural habit of ruminating on the past and future or getting lost in imagined scenarios or worries. Instead, we pay more attention to what’s right in front of us.
Practicing Non-Judgement through Mindfulness
Our minds are very good at judgment—in fact, they do so every day, all the time, without us having to try. Our mind reflexively wants to label things as good or bad, right or wrong. In mindfulness, we practice letting go of these judgments rather than hanging on to them.
In practice, a thought appears in our minds and we notice and acknowledge it. We see that we’re having that thought. However, we don’t get hung up on whether it’s a good thought or a bad thought. We simply watch it and allow it to pass. A good metaphor for this is watching clouds pass by on a summer afternoon.
Remember--don’t judge yourself for judging. Practicing non-judgment is difficult since our mind so naturally slips into judgmental thinking. It’s far more comfortable with things fitting into categories. So it labels and categorizes thoughts and experiences. When you notice your mind making judgments, make sure to accept that experience with an attitude of non-judgment. This gets easier with practice.
Acceptance as a piece of Mindfulness meditation
Related to non-judgment, acceptance is the practice of letting things be as they are. This means regardless of our internal experience, we allow the experience to occur.
This means that we don’t try to remove discomfort or escape pain. It is an acceptance that sometimes our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are unpleasant. We make room for these experiences rather than trying to change them, destroy them, or escape from them.
To use anxiety as an example: when feelings of anxiety arise, we accept that we are feeling anxious and that this anxiety has a place in our experience. This may seem backwards, but it can help make the feelings of anxiety less intense and intrusive. We find that, sure, we feel anxious. However, we’re less controlled by those feelings and less bothered by them.
Acceptance is the acknowledgment that sometimes humans feel discomfort and pain. Trying to escape the feelings you are sure to have only creates more pain and discomfort
Staying open to new knowledge: ”Beginner’s Mind”
Another quirk of the human mind is that often we approach situations with very closed-minded attitudes. We do things in the way we always have, never considering alternatives. We ignore things that we judge to be unimportant even if we lack experience. We get bored or distracted from learning new things.
A beginner’s mind is an open mind. It assumes that things are naturally complex, that there are many possible explanations. It knows what it knows, but it is aware that there is always more to know.
Practicing mindfulness is a way to learn more about yourself and the world around you by looking at it without judgement. If we do so with what we think to be true and expecting what has always happened, we miss seeing what's actually true.
Depression can fill us with assumptions about ourselves and others. When depression tells us that we’re failures or worthless, it can be hard to see any other version of reality.
Beginner’s mind helps us to be open to any experiences we may have and helps with mental clarity. It helps us see things as they are. This helps us to respond to our experiences more skillfully and effectively.
As an example—many people go to the ER thinking that they’re having a heart attack. They then find they're actually having a panic attack. Obviously, the way of handling a panic attack is very different from how you might handle a heart attack. Being able to know the difference changes your approach. When you’re able to see reality clearly, you’re able to deal with it more effectively and productively.
Become your own best friend
Are you a good friend to yourself? I’m guessing you might try but often struggle. It’s easy to be too critical with ourselves. It’s easy to be impatient and have nearly-impossible expectations. Most of us are our own worst critics. If we learn to develop compassion for ourselves, this can improve our lives.
Mindfulness teaches us to practice being a better friend to ourselves through patience and compassion.
We learn how to be patient with ourselves. We understand that some things are difficult and need a huge amount of effort to do. Some things can’t be accomplished, and failing at these things does not reduce our worth as people. It is important to accept our mistakes and our shortcomings and give ourselves a break.
Mindfulness, Meditation and Self Love
We learn to have more realistic expectations for ourselves, and not expecting perfection. It is important to give ourselves enthusiastic praise and encouragement when we succeed. As well as providing support and validation even when we make mistakes.
Most importantly, mindfulness teaches us to honor all the parts of ourselves. We make space for both the things we deem positive and those we call negative. We learn to love ourselves more fully.
You might find that when you cultivate this kind of self-love, it’s easier to love others in the same wholehearted way. You may find that even if life doesn’t get simpler, it gets more full. So there’s more joy to be found; even in the face of hardship.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Tulsa, OK
If you are interested in learning more about mindfulness-based therapy and how it can help you through depression or anxiety, follow these three simple steps:
Email me or call/text me at 918-552-0657
Schedule an intake call
Learn how a mindfulness practice can help you through depression or anxiety.
Other Mental Health Services at Gray Matters
My Tulsa, OK therapy office provides a variety of mental health services, including anxiety treatment and depression counseling. I practice Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which has it’s roots in meditation and mindfulness. I work with a variety of communities, including a focus on counseling for men, therapy for the LGBTQ community, and counseling for millennials. Call today to learn more about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in Tulsa, OK.