| One of the major symptoms of depression and anxiety is self-absorption. When we are depressed and anxious we think about how we feel a great deal, to excess, our low mood and our anxiety becomes everything to us. In a way, we become addicted to these feelings, because we stop being able to give them up. When we detect any sort of sadness or anxiety we begin to ruminate on it, projecting it into the future and letting it contaminate all our activities. This in turn increases our sadness and anxiety.
In contrast to getting in touch with and dwelling on negative feelings, practicing mindfulness based cognitive therapy helps create the absence of negative feelings and a loss of self-consciousness, whilst producing total engagement with what is going on. Mindfulness begins with the observation that mindlessness pervades much of human activity. We fail to notice huge swathes of our experience, most often acting and interacting automatically, without much thinking. And this includes not thinking about how we can change the way we think about ourselves!
Mindfulness dispels negative self-absorption and the more we have the feeling of flow that mindfulness produces, the less depressed we feel. Mindfulness is when we are doing whatever task - however simple or complicated - intentionally, placing our full attention and awareness directly on what we are doing. Doing something mindfully allows us to see the present moment anew; it allows us to shift perspective to make a stale situation fresh and change the way we see ourselves and the world in which we all share.
If you have any questions about this information please raise them with your psychologist. < Previous | Next > |
