Insights from mindful therapy

[Vixine]

I started therapy with a practitioner who uses mindfulness to inform her work. I have been to two sessions and it has been really helpful already. One thing I have identified through mindfulness is that I have this exhausting tendency to always be planning and having this idea of turning over a new leaf, starting fresh, etc - kind of like New Year's resolutions all year long, which of course nearly always fall flat and leave me with a sense of failure.

My therapist encouraged me to scale my intentions down to very short term - daily, or even partial day. To get up in the morning and decide what I will try to focus on, or be aware of, just for that day. Not to plan ahead, not to try to get anywhere with this in one month or two month's time. Just to do it today.

I think this was a great insight on her part and it has been really liberating for me to scale things down like this and, when it comes to my mindfulness practice at least, only focus on what I will do TODAY. Somehow it finally clicked for me that it is possible not to strive for more than that or for something different in the future.

One by-product of this is that I decided that I need to back off a little from the 8-week course, use it only as a very loose guide, use the guided meditations sometimes but other days practice with silence. I think the course is a really great thing but just for me personally, it feeds in a little too much to my tendency to plan, strive, and look towards accomplishing something in the future rather than today. So I may join in occasionally on the threads for those of you doing the program, but I won't be following it exactly.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share in case this seems meaningful to anyone else. Wishing everyone the best on their journey!

[JonW]

"I think the course is a really great thing but just for me personally, it feeds in a little too much to my tendency to plan, strive, and look towards accomplishing something in the future rather than today."

Hmm.
That's interesting.
Do you mean that you find yourself striving? Looking upon mindfulness as something you "need" to do in order to "get" somewhere? Perhaps in the way that someone would drag themselves to the gym in order to maintain a fitness regime?
Or is it something different?

[Vixine]

Oh, yeah it's all about me striving - not anything that comes from the course itself.

[Bitterballen]

I think Vixine does raise an interesting point that I notice the authors covered in Chapter 1 (I think) of the Williams and Pelman book. The idea that whilst learning to be mindful will in many ways teach us to learn that 'missing' (for lack of a better word) certain goals and commitments we have set for ourselves in daily life (then beat ourselves up for it) is ok, the actual process of carrying out the 8 week course does require a certain level of dedication and commitment if it is to produce the desired effect. I found that when I missed my 6 of 7 days in a week I tried to go back and repeat the week but without any self judgement, I just tried to accept that for one reason or another I missed a day and to give it another try.

It reminds me (a little bit, in quite an abstract way) of a debate I read about 'faith' in Buddhism. With one side arguing that 'faith' is not needed in Buddhism, that the idea is to practice first and see the results for yourself...the other side aruged that a certain degree of 'faith' was needed in order to actually commit to the practices and then be able to properly evaluate the results.

Happy practicing, whatever way you do it