Tag Archives: mindfulness

Using Mindfulness to Navigate the “Holiday Blues”

Posted on by

From Asheville Insight Meditation

For many, the Holiday season is one of great joy, sharing and togetherness. Along with joy, however, this season has also been known to set up the perfect conditions for darker and more difficult moods to emerge. It is well-known that this season tends to bring up a lot of confusion and stress for many, whether from current obligations, or from conditioned mind habit patterns resulting from previous family/life experiences. Put all of this together and for many, the Holidays become a period to “get through” or “endure”.

Lonely_L

For those of us who experience emotional swings, difficulties, or even depression during this season, it can be helpful to see this time as great fodder for our practices. So how can we work skillfully with these difficulties?

For those of you who choose to boycott the holidays and not participate, even if you don’t experience the same stress during this season, it is safe to assume that you are still subjected to some of the collective’s energetic response during this period. After all, people all around you are probably acting quite differently than you are usually accustomed. As part of your practice, it may be helpful to see if your withdrawal from participating in this holiday is the result of your harboring any underlying beliefs, resentment, or negativity towards any particular traditions, persons or society? If so, this doesn’t make you bad or wrong, but any such resentment or negativity is something you can know, acknowledge, feel, and work with without adding any extraneous narrative. On the flip side, you may want to look and explore if you have any feelings of pride or superiority around your choice to withdraw. If so, this is just one more thing to work with, as skillfully as possible.

holidaybluesOnce we start to experience the “holiday blues” or difficulties, the first things some of our minds tend to do is to help us by trying to understand or contextualize the origins of these downers. By doing so, the mind collects data from past and present scenarios to weave intricate stories which explain or support the “blues”. When told regularly to ourselves, these stories actually energize, worsen, and/or prolong these difficult states – it’s as though we are adding fuel to already blazing fires.

Others minds help their hosts deal with the Holiday Blues by denying or avoiding the downer moods. Unfortunately, as many of us know, the more we attempt to deny or avoid something, the stronger it rears its head to become known, ultimately growing stronger over time. Many avoiding minds are motivated to use alcohol or other addictive substances to appease or avoid this growing unpleasantness. It’s easy to see how our helpful minds can actually be quite unhelpful.

Payday-Loan-Holiday-Blues

The middle and most helpful path to take is to use our mindful awareness to be present with and acknowledge the Holiday Blues or emotional frustrations that may arise during this time period. The trick here is to acknowledge difficult states without energizing them with explanations or story lines. Even though they may be based on reasonable facts (like my Aunt Sharie talks constantly without seemingly taking a breath), it is still most helpful to stop energizing already difficult situations with our stories about them. Acknowledge only the pain, sadness, frustration, impatience, judgment, worry, indigestion, or whatever is arising at the moment.

buddha

Another important inquiry is to see if we have unrealistic expectations of ourselves or others to “be” a certain way. If so, drop these expectations and accept ourselves, family members, and friends, just as they are. After all, your brother who has told really corny jokes each year for the past 30+ years (that he thinks are hilarious) will most likely continue telling corny jokes that you find no humor in. Then again, he may stop telling jokes, period. As long as the people in your life are not intentionally trying to harm others, you will experience a lot more peace during this season if you stop expecting, and start accepting.

After we acknowledge and accept our present situation, the next most helpful thing to do is bring our mindfulness to our experience without judging it. We mindfully explore our emotional, mental, and physical sensations related to this difficulty. In this way, we give the difficult state the time and space it needs to be known and felt, without making ourselves bad or wrong. It sounds easy but in practice can be quite challenging. Just keep practicing acknowledging, accepting, and opening mindfully to our present circumstances, and eventually difficulties will begin to lessen and fade into the background.

156490078-1024x725

There are many obvious triggers – like the loss of a loved one, or being alone – that can make the holiday season much more challenging. During such difficult times, it is important to surround yourself with a network of caring and supportive friends and/or family. It is imperative to be patient with yourself during this process, while also giving yourself the love, care, and compassion you so greatly deserve. If these blues get too severe to handle, please reach out to someone who cares, possibly even a CRISIS Hotline.

Whether you typically get the Holiday Blues or not, it will be very helpful to continue to practice being mindfully aware of your present experience of each moment. With regular practice, you will start to see how mindful attention can bring a deep sense of peace, joy, wisdom, and acceptance to the variety of life’s ever-changing ups and downs.

2010-11-27-Canon-40D_IMG_1403

Source: http://www.ashevillemeditation.com/using-mindfulness-to-navigate-the-holiday-blues-652

Contact me if you are feeling the holiday blues and would like to talk to someone who can help you. I offer a free 20-minute phone consultation, if you have any questions about my style of therapy or to see how I may benefit you. Call 323-920-9278.

Follow my blog and feel free to share it, if you are interested in learning more about healing, psychology, mindfulness, and all things related to helping you feel good about yourself.

Are You Excited or Scared?

Posted on by

Translating Our Feelings

by Madisyn Taylor

Sometimes the feelings of being scared and excited can elicit the same physical response in our bodies.

feelings chart

When new challenges and opportunities show up in our lives, we may diagnose ourselves as feeling scared when what we really feel is excited. Often we have not been taught how to welcome the thrill of a new opportunity, and so we opt to back off, indulging our anxiety instead of awakening our courage. One way to inspire ourselves to embrace the opportunities that come our way is to look more deeply into our feelings and see that butterflies in our stomach or a rapidly beating heart are not necessarily a sign that we are afraid. Those very same feelings can be translated as excitement, curiosity, passion, and even love.

There is nothing wrong with being afraid as long as we do not let it stop us from doing the things that excite us. Most of us assume that brave people are fearless, but the truth is that they are simply more comfortable with fear because they face it on a regular basis. The more we do this, the more we feel excitement in the face of challenges rather than anxiety. The more we cultivate our ability to move forward instead of backing off, the more we trust ourselves to be able to handle the new opportunity, whether it’s a new job, an exciting move, or a relationship. When we feel our fear, we can remind ourselves that maybe we are actually just excited. We can assure ourselves that this opportunity has come our way because we are meant to take it. 

Framing things just a little differently can dramatically shift our mental state from one of resistance to one of openness. We can practice this new way of seeing things by saying aloud: I am really excited about this job interview. I am really looking forward to going on a date with this amazing person. I am excited to have the opportunity to do something I have never done before. As we do this, we will feel our energy shift from fear, which paralyzes, to excitement, which empowers us to direct all that energy in the service of moving forward, growing, and learning.

Source: http://www.dailyom.com/articles/2014/45518.html

This article is printed from DailyOM – Inspirational thoughts for a happy, healthy and fulfilling day. Register for free at http://www.dailyom.com

Contact me, if you are interested in working with a therapist trained in Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). I offer a free 20-minute phone consultation to discuss any questions you may have and to find out how I may benefit you as your personal therapist.

Follow my blog and feel free to “Like It” and “Share it,” if you are interested in learning more about healing, psychology, mindfulness, and all things related to helping you feel good about yourself.

 

Understand more about Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dan Siegel

Posted on by

The Limbic System- where “Flight, Fight, Response” occurs

“Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is just a fancy way of saying that the brain is a social organ of the body… Relationships are our life’s blood, and this is what gives us resilience, not only as individuals, but as a collective community.” — by Dan Siegel

 

TEDxBlue – Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. – 10/18/09 (24:20)

Incredibly uplifting video on the possibilities of creating an integrated brain and how teaching mindsight and mindfulness as early as in preschool, has the potential for a kinder and more compassionate world.

Uploaded on Nov 12, 2009

Dr. Daniel Siegel explores the neural mechanisms beneath social and emotional intelligence and how these can be cultivated through reflective practices that focus on the inner nature of the mind.

Daniel is a child psychiatrist, educator, and author of Mindsight, The Mindful Brain, Parenting from the Inside Out, and The Developing Mind. He is the Founding Editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, co-director of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute.

About TEDx, x=independently organize event
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-
organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.
At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep
discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized
events are branded TEDx, where x=independently organized TED event.
The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but
individual TEDx events are self-organized.*
(*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

 

Dan Siegel, M.D. – Discussing the science of mindfulness (21:02)

Fantastic video and introduction into benefits of mindfulness to brain development, including children and adults.

Published on Apr 14, 2013

Room to Breathe is a surprising story of transformation as struggling kids in a San Francisco public middle school are introduced to the practice of mindfulness meditation.

Visit roomtobreathefilm.com for more information.

 

Dan Siegel – Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain (Family Action Network) (1:22:44)

http://youtu.be/kH-BO1rJXbQ

Published on Nov 16, 2013  (note video file size was too large to be uploaded here, please click on link above)

Siegel illuminates how brain development impacts teenagers’ behavior and relationships. Drawing on important new research in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, he explores exciting ways in which understanding how the teenage brain functions can help parents make what is in fact an incredibly positive period of growth, change, and experimentation in their children’s lives less lonely and distressing on both sides of the generational divide.

Find links to recent Dan Siegel’s books on my Resources page.

Contact me, if you are interested in working with a therapist trained in Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). I offer a free 20-minute phone consultation to discuss any questions you may have and to find out how I may benefit you as your personal therapist.

Follow my blog and feel free to share it, if you are interested in learning more about healing, psychology, mindfulness, and all things related to helping you feel good about yourself.

 

 

Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness

Posted on by

By Emily Nauman | March 10, 2014 | New research shows that mindfulness may help us to stop comparing ourselves to other people.

Many of us feel great about ourselves when we focus on how much success we’ve had in comparison to others. But what happens when we don’t succeed? Self-esteem sinks.

Our Mindful Mondays series provides ongoing coverage of the exploding field of mindfulness research.

GreaterGood.Berkeley.edu’s Mindful Mondays series provides ongoing coverage of the exploding field of mindfulness research.

New research shows that developing mindfulness skills may help us build secure self-esteem—that is, self-esteem that endures regardless of our success in comparison to those around us.

Christopher Pepping and his colleagues at Griffith University in Australia conducted two studies to demonstrate that mindfulness skills help enhance self-esteem.

In the first study, the researchers administered questionnaires to undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course to measure their mindfulness skills and their self-esteem. The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem:

  • Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions;
  • Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self;
  • Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future;
  • Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.

The results, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, support the researchers’ predictions: students with these mindfulness skills indeed had higher self-esteem. However, this study did not clarify whether mindfulness causes self-esteem, or whether those with mindfulness also had higher self-esteem because of some other factor.

In order to find out if mindfulness directly causes higher self-esteem, the researchers conducted a second study. They instructed half of the participants to complete a 15-minute mindfulness meditation that focused on the sensation of their breath. The other half of participants read a 15-minute story about Venus fly-trap plants. All of the participants completed questionnaires that assessed their level of self-esteem and mindfulness both before and after they completed the 15-minute task.

Consistent with the researchers’ predictions, those that participated in the mindfulness meditation had higher scores in mindfulness and in self-esteem after meditating, while there was no change in these dimensions for those that read the Venus fly-trap plant story.

Because the only difference between the two groups was whether or not they participated in a mindfulness exercise, these results suggest that mindfulness directly causes enhanced self-esteem.

The authors write that because the effects of the mindfulness exercise on self-esteem in this study were temporary, future research should examine if mindfulness interventions can lead to long-term changes in self-esteem.

However, these findings are promising. The authors write, “Mindfulness may be a useful way to address the underlying processes associated with low self-esteem, without temporarily bolstering positive views of oneself by focusing on achievement or other transient factors. In brief, mindfulness may assist individuals to experience a more secure form of high self-esteem.”

Article from:

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/feeling_self_critical_try_mindfulness

Emily Nauman is a GGSC research assistant. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College with a double major in Psychology and French, and has previously worked as a research assistant in Oberlin’s Psycholinguistics lab and Boston University’s Eating Disorders Program.

verified by Psychology Today

Follow my blog and feel free to share it, if you are interested in learning more about healing, psychology, mindfulness, and all things related to helping you feel good about yourself.