Is it wrong to distract yourself?

[PeterFreeMindfulness]

Hi BioSattva - I agree with your thought processes around this. I think it is the use of language that makes this confusing, as you say what Mark appeared to be suggesting was distraction in the context of continuing mindfulness rather than choosing not to be mindful. His comment was in response to a question from the audience which related to experiencing extreme emotions or challenging thoughts and what to do about this, so in essence if we are trying to maintain a 'detached awareness' of something but are unable to do so it may make more sense to shift our awareness to something else to ground us - and perhaps from this distance we can re-establish a detached awareness of the initial object.

Again apologies for the ambiguous language - When I use the term focus I mean in terms of what you hold in the centre of awareness, where the 'spotlight' of your awareness is resting - so I am referring more to what we are choosing to attend to (e.g. the breath, the body, thoughts, sounds etc.) rather than the way in which we are attending. So the 'focus' might be on the arising and passing of thoughts, and we may be attending to this with the intention of maintaining a detached awareness and curiosity. In this way, if we are practising mindfulness of thoughts and a difficult thought arises, sitting with this with the intention not to engage would be the aim, but if we get too caught up in difficult thoughts and are unable to maintain detached awareness we might then choose to shift the 'focus' of awareness to something else in a mindful way.

[piedwagtail91]

when you've been practicing mindfulness for a while it's probably easy to say that you don't need to distract yourself(EDIT sorry that doesn't read well and is not a criticism of any one or any advice- oops!) BUT when you're still just learning and have spent a lifetime using certain coping methods it can be difficult to make the change and stop using them and be more mindful.
it's hard to break habits or ways of coping that we've used for a long time, it does take time and patience but it also takes a lot of kindness.
no matter how much you beat yourself up now, it won't change those two events, they're in the past.
it just makes you hurt all the more and for no reason.

probably a good meditation at times when things go wrong or you're giving yourself a hard time and struggling with difficult emotional responses to the thoughts around those difficulties is mark williams 'exploring difficulty'.
it takes you away from the direct thought and into the emotions attached to them, from there into the body and the sensations of those emotions.
it gets you (or your awareness)out of your head, which is important.
i suppose in some ways this could be seen as distraction that lets you remain very mindful.

i recently put together and led a practice based on his meditation but i blended it slightly with some kristin neff soften, soothe allow,
feedback afterwards was that stripping away all those layers of thoughts and focussing on the body sensations made the difficulty easier to deal with.
i don't have a recording of it yet or i'd link to it, all i have is a script.

i can't link to mark williams track because of copyright but there's a more compassionate one here http://www.self-compassion.org/guided-self-compassion-meditations-mp3.html (soften, soothe and allow) which is basically the same but more compassionate and 'cuddly'.
it may be an idea ,if you chose to listen to it, to just listen first without 'doing it' to see if it's for you.

go easy on yourself,
keep us updated,
mick

[JonW]

Excellent points, Mick.
While the Mark Williams guided meditations are copyrighted, it is possible to listen to them as a stream via his Finding Peace In A Frantic World website.
http://franticworld.com/free-meditation ... ndfulness/
He's a wonderful talker. These rank among my very favourite guides.
Just clicl on the title of the meditation to listen.
Enjoy!
Jon

[piedwagtail91]

Thanks jonw, I'll bookmark that link as well!

[Jenna]

Thank you all for your help. I had a breakthrough today when talking to my family. I had this sudden thought and realisation that I was "talking myself into depression"

I will write more later

[JonW]

It can certainly be the case that the landmines of fear and confusion in our lives are mostly figments of our own imagination. Meditation can help us to recognise that.

[piedwagtail91]

Thank you all for your help. I had a breakthrough today when talking to my family. I had this sudden thought and realisation that I was "talking myself into depression"

I will write more later

that's a major milestone, recognising the depression talking.

[JonW]

I guess there's so many different forms of depression that it's difficult to generalise about.
Personally, I reached a turning point with my depression when I realised that my attempts to defeat it were doomed. By looking at depression as something to beat, I was going to war with it. That only made it worse and prolonged it. When we make any pain the enemy, we solidify it. When we attempt to resist pain, our suffering is intensified. In his excellent book Being Zen: Bringing Meditation To Life, Ezra Bayda writes about seeing that we hold our suffering in place with fear-based thoughts that arise in reaction to pain and he says, "These thoughts are further solidified by our resistance to letting the pain just be."
Mindfulness has taught me to look at suffering as my teacher. I've learned to listen to it and be gently curious about it rather than fighting it or running away from it. It doesn't mean that I no longer feel sadness or anguish. It's that I no longer believe that these feelings are who I am. Whereas I used to react to those feelings with, "I can't stand any more of this," I now react with, "What is this?" What used to feel solid, heavy and threatening now feels more porous, lighter, more manageable.
Looking back, depression was part of my belief system, one of the ways in which I defined myself. But that's changed.
It doesn't happen overnight. We need to be patient and keep practicing. Change, as ever, keeps its own hours.

[Jenna]

Jon

Thank you. Funnily enough I thought earlier I need to work on accepting my depression and try to stop fighting it so much.

It is progress to realise I'm talking myself into a frenzy. Just hard to stop it

I'm also working on net beating myself up over stuff.

Jon do you still get depressed day?

[Steve]

I have a tendency to obsess over past (and future) problems and use mindfulness to distract me away from this.

One of my favourites whilst driving is to choose a colour and be aware of all the different things I see in this colour, all the different shades and the different uses the colour is put to - its amazing what you see and learn! This stops me mulling over problems and stops me driving on 'autopilot' - I made two 'wrong' turnings the other day ( I was going somewhere different from usual) before I realised that my mind was elsewhere and I should be in the present moment. Its far more pleasant (and safer!) being in the present moment than getting carried away by unhelpful thoughts about the past and the future.

'Acceptance' is a hard one for many of us to understand or master. I find the analogy with the weather helps me with this. We can't control the weather, it just happens and there is absolutely no point wishing it had been or is better (or different from what it is). One has to just accept it, appreciate the good qualities (all types of weather have some good features) and take decisions/actions appropriate to what the weather is actually doing (good, bad or whatever).

Whilst weather forecasts can give some guide to what might happen in the future, we all know that they are frequently wrong so, again, there is no point spending too much time on them or stressing over what might or might not happen - instead just be prepared to deal with whatever does happen as it happens. Its not so easy to apply this to the rest of life but if you see life as being like the weather, I find it a bit easier.

Steve