Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the basic ability of the human mind to be fully aware of the present, of where we are and what we are doing.  As defined by the American Psychological Association (2012), it is “a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement. In this sense, mindfulness is a state and not a trait.”  It a pretty straightforward word, but its meaning can do so much. It has its way of snapping us back to reality and to what we are feeling. 

Mindfulness helps divert your attention and purposely focus on what is happening at the present moment – accepting it without judgement. It is achieved when a person reaches a certain state where they become more aware of the present moment while acknowledging and accepting whatever it is that they are feeling, thinking, and the bodily sensations that is overflowing in their body. It heightens your sensations and lets you focus on it to more.

Benefits of Mindfulness

Helps you sleep

If you are having a difficulty sleeping at night, mindfulness is there to help you sleep without worries. The state of mindfulness needs you to clear or empty your mind and remove those wary thoughts that you’ve been keeping. Mindfulness brings you a relaxed state and helps  you create a mental space where you are able to welcome sleep.

Reduce Stress

Everyone experiences stress at some point of the day, whether it be at work, home or school. Mindfulness was proven to reduce the stress levels a person has by alleviating some of their worries. Practicing mindfulness gives you better control of yourself and makes you focus on the things that matter while preventing you from being distracted.

Improves self

At one point in your life, you may have felt lost and did not understand yourself at all. Mindfulness helps improves your perception about yourself and makes you aware of the current state of your emotions. Of course, other self-care habits should be done also to further improve yourself.

Depression

Depression is just one of the most common mental illness in the world and has killed thousands of people in a year. Depression is a silent-killer and usually people who suffers on it does not show their suffering. Depression not only affects adults, but children too.

Depression is a mood disorder that is characterized by a persistent feeling of sadness, loss of interest and disinterest in performing daily activities. People who suffer from depression may feel down from time to time or all day long. They are unable to cope and adjust to the struggles and setbacks that they have in life and succumb to their problem. By understanding depression and recognizing its symptoms, you may help yourself or another person to overcome their problem and feel better:

• Feelings of helplessness and hopeless as if nothing you do can improve your current situation.
• Loss of interest in performing daily activities. From taking a bath to going to work, you are no longer energized to do such tasks and prefers to be alone all day long.
• Loss of appetite leading to a significant decrease in weight.
• Lack of sleep or oversleeping. Some can’t sleep because of their problems while some sleep too much to not have time to think about their endeavors.
• Change in behavior like becoming easily angered or irritability.
• Loss of energy. Easily fatigued by performing simple tasks. The body feels heavy when doing even small chores.
• Strong feelings of worthlessness and guilt by repeated criticizing self for the faults and mistakes done.
• Unable to concentrate at school or at work and tends to have significant decline in performance.

If you have any of the symptoms above, please consult your doctor or a psychiatrist near you.

Can Mindfulness Cure Depression?

With depression taking a lot of people lives each year, one would be curious if there are other ways to cure depression. Mindfulness has been greatly studied by scientists and researchers to see if it has an impact in treating depression. Researchers were able to formulate a therapeutic program for patients who have chronic depression and anxiety called Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

MBCT is an 8-week mindfulness-based program that was based from cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy teaches patients on how to redirect their negative thinking and is the gold standard for treatment of depression. The combination of mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy is ideal as the former brings you to a state of awareness, specially your feelings, while the later teaches you to redirect these negative thoughts and countering them with actual positive event in your life.  

MBCT is performed only by experts and should not be attempted by anyone. MBCT in combination with proper intake of anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications will further improve a patient’s condition and lead to faster recovery a patient.

Mindfulness

According to the American Psychological Association (2012), it is “a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement. In this sense, mindfulness is a state and not a trait.” Mindfulness brings focus on a person’s experience through being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations when practicing it. It helps a person be one with the inner self and it brings peace in our chaotic lives.

We know that the goal of mindfulness is not only to make a person relax, but also to divert a person’s attention away from the stress and unpleasant thoughts that can be truly overwhelming sometimes. Mindfulness helps stimulate the emotional, mental and physical processes in our body.

Awareness and Acceptance

With the popularity of mindfulness practice in social media, many people seem to practice it. But people may not be doing it the right way. Mindfulness has two main components: Awareness and Acceptance. In order for you to truly be able to successfully practice mindfulness you need to consider these two. Awareness involves being aware and monitoring your experiences while acceptance means that you should be able to monitor your experience openly and without prior judgement. Implementing these two components are needed to better understand the practice of being mindful and get its benefits.

Study shows that people who practice mindfulness without the attitude of acceptance are not successful with it and has undesirable outcomes. People who paid attention to their experiences with a judgmental attitude has the poorest emotional outcomes. Research shows that they have high levels of depression, anxiety and even, emotional instability than those who practice it with proper awareness and non-judgmental attitude.

From this, we can surmise that without these two components, one can expect that mindfulness can lead to unwanted outcomes which can contribute in the development of emotional instability of a person.  

Unwanted effects of Mindfulness

As much as there are many benefits of proper practice of meditation and mindfulness, there are also factors that can cause unwanted effects which we cannot prevent. Here are some of the unwanted effects of Mindfulness:

It may stimulate negative thinking

A lot of people have this misconception that meditation promotes positive thinking, it isn’t always the case. Studies shows that some of those who practiced meditation experienced negative emotions such as delusions, paranoia, and having irrational thoughts. They also reported that they are unable to control themselves and has a remarkable change in their executive function as well.

People who are not in a good place and practice meditation are prone to stimulating these negative thoughts that is harmful than beneficial. It may trigger so many unwanted emotions that can even aggravate the emotional lability a person is experiencing. Mindfulness has different effects on people.

Meditation can also trigger emotions and memories that has long been suppressed. This can lead to the appearance of negative emotions and can be hard to handle for some people. There were reports that some participants were able to re-live their previous traumatic experiences or have flashbacks when meditating.

Sensory perception may be altered

Since mindfulness makes use of the senses to further improve awareness, it can alter these sensations too. A study found out that participants who meditated were able to experience increased sensitivity to light and noise, hallucinations, illusions and visions that weren’t there.

Some people also have this wrong thinking that they will have visions – like seeing the white light or flying like a free spirit – when meditating. This is a wrong reason to meditate as it can cause frustration and unproductivity once it can’t be achieved.

Can cause lack of motivation

Who doesn’t procrastinate? I think everyone does. I bet you’ve done it more than once in a month. Unfortunately, there are studies that supports the fact that meditation can actually aggravate your lack of motivation. It can actually cause you to lose interest in activities that has been previously enjoyable for you.

Physical side effects

Aside from its effect emotionally, mindfulness has some unwanted effects on our body too. Some of the symptoms identified were pressure, involuntary movements of the body, headache, fatigue, body weakness, digestion problems, and dizziness.

Feel Lost

Everyone goes through being or feeling lost in their lives more than once. But this is an unexpected effect of mindfulness. Mindfulness can potentially cause you to negatively look at yourself and if you are already in this state, it can make it even worse. Meditation not only bring awareness of the positives but also the negative aspects of your life. It now depends on the person on how it will allow itself to be affected.