Victoria Psychotherapy
For me, mindfulness is the practice of being aware. Being aware of who you are, where you are and what you are doing. I think the goal of being mindful is to experience regular daily activities as if they are a new experience. For example, to eat a grape as if you have never tried one before. You could look closely at the grape, notice the colors, the texture, the shape. Then, you can put the grape in your mouth and notice the texture and shape again in your mouth. There are tons of mindfulness exercises to try. You can check them out at The guided meditation site or at the blog All Considering or find free downloadable guided ones here.
My personal favorite is this one:
Take a deep, slow breath and
Notice 5 things in the room you are in, anything that catches your eye
Deep breath
Notice 5 sounds in the room, beyond the room, outside, in your body
Deep breath
Notice 5 internal feelings (ie. hungry) or touch (ie. my glasses sitting on my face)
Deep breath
Notice 4 things in the room
Deep breath
Notice 4 sounds
Deep breath
Notice 4 feelings
Deep breath
3 thing in the room
Deep breath
3 sounds
Deep breath
3 feelings
Deep breath
2 things in the room
Deep breath
2 sounds
Deep breath
2 feelings
Deep breath
1 thing
Deep breath
1 sound
Deep breath
1 feeling
Deep breath
The beauty of it is that anything you do can be a practice of mindfulness. You can sit on the beach and watch the waves, listen to the sound of the seagulls and the ocean crashing, and feel the sand beneath your feet.
This brings me to the topic of therapy. I think therapy is innately mindful. Let me say that again in another way. It is impossible to not be mindful while in therapy. It is one of the reasons therapy is hard. It makes us feel and become more aware. And, we are typically in therapy to work on difficult material.
One of my goals in working with a client is to help increase awareness. So, let’s say a client tells a story. It can be any story but for the sake of this post, let’s say a woman seeks therapy after the death of her brother by suicide. I would likely encourage describing a lot of detail around the relationship she had with her brother and the details about what she remembers when she found out he died. I ask her about her feelings. Something like, “What do you remember about how you felt when you found out he had overdosed? How are you feeling right now? What are the tears expressing?” All of these are designed to help her increase her awareness about her feelings and the impact that this event has had on her.
Or, say this same client comes in for therapy complaining of feeling irritable and angry. So, we start by looking through her history and seeing when in her life she has felt this way. We discover that the anger significanatly increased after her brother committed suicide. After more discussion, she is able to express that she is angry at him for leaving her and giving up on life. She has, in some ways, become the sibling with the problems. Our work together is to help connect these feelings with the original source.
In both of these examples, awareness will help this client in many ways. She will benefit from recognizing when and why her feelings are being triggered and will hopefully be able to grieve the loss of the relationship and what her family looks like without him. She can perhaps even find ways to honour his memory.
So, mindfulness and psychotherapy go together very well.
I did not intend to use any real person’s story or life history in this example. Any coincidences are just that: coincidences.