Emotions

Take Command and Control of Your Emotions

psyjdc 6 Comments

“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” – Daniel Goleman

 

Emotions are powerful forces that have profound effects upon the course of our lives. We strive to obtain and maintain positive emotions. We are driven by negative emotions. And we are bored when we lack emotions. To some extent we can become a slave to our emotions unless we discover means to effectively deal with them.

 

Mindfulness appears to help to deal with our emotions. It has been shown to improve emotion regulation http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/mindfully-get-a-grip/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/control-emotions-the-right-way-with-mindfulness/. It doesn’t block or prevent emotions from rising up. Rather it appears to allow us to recognize and feel the emotions but be able to control our responses to the emotions. So mindfulness appears to put us in control so we are no longer slaves to our surging emotions.

 

Mindfulness appears to act to improve emotion regulation by improving cognitive reappraisal

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/rethink-your-emotions/. It simply allows us to think more clearly about our emotions and interpret their source and meaning appropriately. So, rather than taking everything personally and interpreting our emotions as due to our own failings, we can see that they may be caused by the actions of others who are simply acting out their own issues that have nothing to say about us.

 

All of this indicates that mindfulness produces an overall improvement in our emotional intelligence http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/be-smart-about-emotions/. It improves our ability to recognize our own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, to use this information about the emotions to guide our thinking about them and the situations that evoked them, and to control our responses to them. It truly makes us smart about emotions and in control.

 

A number of mindfulness trainings have been shown to be effective in improving emotion regulation. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was developed specifically to help the individual cope effectively with emotions particularly depression. But, it can also create a positive emotional upward trajectory http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/15/spiraling-up-with-mindfulness/ where good feeling build on good feelings.

 

The cognitive component of MBCT is specifically designed to develop cognitive reappraisal of emotions, to help the individual better identify, label, and think about their emotions. This leaves open the question as to whether MBCT is effective because of the mindfulness component or the cognitive component or perhaps both.

 

In today’s Research News article “History of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is Associated with Increased Cognitive Reappraisal Ability”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1085514061472519/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4441334/

Troy and colleagues compared MBCT to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), without the mindfulness component, and to no-treatment controls. They found that the mindfulness component was crucial. Only the MBCT group showed increased cognitive reappraisal.

‘

This is quite surprising that Cognitive Behavior Therapy alone did not change cognitive reappraisal, but only did so when combined with mindfulness. This suggests that the focus on awareness of present moment experience viewed without judgment may be a potent practice to induce effective cognitive reappraisal. It suggests that being able to look at experience without judging it may be the necessary groundwork that allows the individual to look at the experience anew and appraise it optimally. By removing an initial inappropriate judgement about the situation, MBCT may make it easier to see the experience for what it is rather than have to overcome a wrong interpretation in order to rethink it. In other words it allows thinking to start from scratch rather than from error.

 

Regardless, it is clear that mindfulness gives you command and control of your emotions.

 

“To balance and control your emotions is one of the most important things in life. Positive emotions enhance your life. Negative emotions sabotage your life.” – Dr T.P.Chia

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Regulate Emotions with Mindfulness

psyjdc 1 Comment

 

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”  ― Jean Racine

Difficulties with emotions are at the heart of the majority of mental health problems. Depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorders etc. afflict hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Unregulated emotions create suffering for the individual and their families and can occasionally result in suicide. Mental health is estimated to account for nearly half of all health care spending worldwide. It accounts for the lion’s share of prescription drug use. But, the medications don’t always work, are costly, and frequently have troubling side effects. Needless to say finding safe and effective ways to deal with out of control emotions is badly needed.

Mindfulness practice has taken center stage in the psychological treatments for mental health problems in what has been called the third wave of therapies. This has resulted from the accumulating evidence of the effectiveness of mindfulness practices for a myriad of mental health issues. Mindfulness is a natural low cost method, with very few side effects, for dealing with a variety difficult psychological issues including those that involve difficult unregulated emotional states.

One of the ways that mindfulness appears to be effective in treatment is through increasing the individual’s ability to regulate emotions. That doesn’t mean that it eliminates emotions. To the contrary mindfulness brings emotions into full awareness. But, in doing so the magnitude and the impact of the emotions is mitigated. As a result individuals are better able to respond effectively to the emotions with reason and compassion. Mindfulness improves emotional intelligence http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/be-smart-about-emotions/.

In previous posts we discussed how mindfulness meditation increases emotion regulation by altering the activity of the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus (see  http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/mindfully-get-a-grip/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/18/control-thinking-and-feeling-with-mindfulness/.)

In today’s Research News article “Baseline and Strategic Effects behind Mindful Emotion Regulation: Behavioral and Physiological Investigation”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1071912202832705/?type=1&theater

Grecucci and colleagues explore the mechanism by which mindfulness practice improves emotion regulation. They found that emotions could be regulated by either of three strategies, mindfulness meditation, or a cognitive strategy where the reason for the emotion evoked by others is reevaluated, or by mindful detachment where the individual simply views the situation and the feelings with an attitude of acceptance and lack of judgment. All of these strategies were successful in reducing emotional and physiological reactivity.

When they had meditators apply the cognitive and the detachment strategies they found that the meditators did even better when employing the detachment strategy but not when they employed the cognitive strategy. It has been previously shown that mindfulness improves cognitive reappraisal of emotions http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/rethink-your-emotions/. These results suggest that mindfulness improves emotion regulation through both cognitive reappraisal and by mindful detachment, but that mindful detachment is the more important of the two. Mindful detachment allows the individual to simply view and not judge the situation and the emotions evoked and thereby react reasonably and effectively.

So, be mindful, view emotions with nonjudgmental detachment, and regulate your emotions.

“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” ― Oscar Wilde

CMCS

 

Be Positive with Loving-Kindness Meditation

psyjdc Leave a comment

There is a long history in psychology of a focus on mental illnesses and uncomfortable states. In other words, psychology was very much focused on the negative. Over the last couple of decades, however, a new movement has emerged in psychology to focus on the positive, to look for the effects of positive emotions and states and for ways to increase these positive states.

Meditation has been found to not only reduce negative conditions but to also increase positive states such as joy, love, and happiness. As a result positive psychology has become very interested in studying meditation effects.  Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) is specifically designed to develop positive feelings toward the self and others.  In LKM the meditator focuses on repeatedly wishing positive things, wellness, safety, happiness, health etc. for oneself and toward multiple other people from loved ones to enemies. (See http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/loving-kindness-meditation-and-the-disease-of-the-west/)

LKM has been shown to improve positive mood and improve social interactions (See https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1043326459024613/?type=1&theater

http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/loving-kindness-meditation-and-social-function/). In today’s Research News article “The interventional effects of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions and interpersonal interactions”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1069935599697032/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4450657/

He and colleagues demonstrated that a brief loving-kindness meditation practice increased positive emotions, interpersonal interactions, and complex understanding of others and decreased negative emotions in Chinese college students.

So, practicing Loving-Kindness Meditation can make you feel more positive toward yourself and others, can improve your interactions with others, and can even make you more understanding of the complexities of human nature. Once we develop compassion and kindness toward ourselves and others, which is the object of Loving-Kindness Meditation, it markedly alters not only our feelings towards ourselves and others, but also allows the cognitive understandings to grow and blossom.

These positive feelings and understandings of ourselves and others has wide ranging consequences. It appears to improve mental and physical health, increase longevity, change neural structures, make us better at coping with stress, improve social connections, and make us feel better about ourselves.

It’s quite remarkable that such a simple technique can have such profound consequences. This seems to support the old saying that “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”. You can get much more good things done by emphasizing the positive than attempting to fix the negative. Along the same lines, it’s long been known in psychology that learning occurs much more swiftly and permanently with positive rewards than avoidance of punishment. Once again positivity is much more effective than negativity.

So, practice Loving Kindness Meditation and be positive.

CMCS

Control Thinking and Feeling with Mindfulness

psyjdc Leave a comment

In a number of posts we’ve presented evidence and discussed the very positive effects of mindfulness on thinking, emotions, health and general well-being. The accumulated evidence makes a compelling case that mindfulness has a myriad of positive effects promoting physical and mental well-being.

It has also been demonstrated with neuroimaging studies that mindfulness training produces enlargement and increased connectivity of the frontal lobes of the brain. This area of the cortex has long been known to underlie executive function and emotional regulation. Executive function regulates cognitive processes, including attention, working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, and problem solving as well as planning and execution. Emotional regulation involves regulation of our experience of emotions, fully experiencing them yet preventing them from spiraling out of control and adversely affecting behavioral responses to the emotions.

It can be speculated that the effectiveness of mindfulness in promoting well-being results from the changes in the frontal lobes producing higher levels of executive function and emotional regulation and theses in turn produce the positive effects of mindfulness. In today’s Research News article “Trait Mindfulness in Relation to Emotional Self-Regulation and Executive Function.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1054045994619326/?type=1&theater

Lyvers and colleagues address this very question. They measured indicators of frontal lobe function; prefrontal cortex dysfunction, impulsivity, and alexithymia and correlate them to a measure of trait mindfulness. They find that the higher the mindfulness the lower the levels of prefrontal cortex dysfunction, impulsivity, and alexithymia, clearly suggesting that mindfulness is associated with heightened frontal lobe function.

Prefrontal cortex dysfunction indicates an impairment of attention and planning, impulsivity indicates impairments in controlling and restraining behavior, while alexithymia indicates an inability to identify and describe emotions, lack of emotional awareness, and difficulty with social attachment and interpersonal relationships. In other words, these are measures of the problems that arise with impaired executive function and emotion regulation.

Lyvers and colleagues further show that mindfulness is inversely related to negative moods, depression, anxiety and stress scores. This suggests that mindfulness improves well-being by promoting frontal lobe activity. This results in improved executive function and thereby improves attention and ability to analyze experience and realistically plan for the future, improving our ability to effectively deal with whatever experience we’re having.

The facilitated frontal lobe activity also produces improved emotion regulation with its consequent facilitation of the ability to identify and regulate emotions. Hence, all other factors being equal, negative moods are experienced less often or less intensely and responded to more appropriately compared to someone who has low levels of that emotion regulation.

So, practice mindfulness and improve your frontal lobe function and general well-being.

CMCS

Mindfully “Get a Grip”

psyjdc 1 Comment

Strong emotions often produce behaviors that can be damaging and are regretted later. We overreact to a perceived slight and hurt the ones we care about most. We overreact to a driving incident doing something dangerous in response. We overreact to attractive potential romantic partners, making fools of ourselves. We overreact to restrictions with rebellion. We overreact to a drop in stock prices and unnecessarily sell at a loss. The examples are almost endless.

It is obvious that we need to better control our emotions and our responses to these emotions. Mindfulness can potentially help. It has been well established that mindfulness is associated with improved emotion regulation. Mindfulness does not simply lead to less emotionality, or that mindful people experience less emotion, but rather through a present-moment awareness and acceptance of emotional experience.

Emotions are also important to our happiness. A blunting of emotionality is actually characteristic of depression. The good thing about mindfulness is that emotions aren’t blocked. They are felt and experienced. It just makes us better able to effectively work with them. This allows mindful individuals to detect emotions early on and stop them from spiraling out of control.

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study“

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1045341555489770/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040090/

Lutz and colleagues demonstrate a neural changes underlying the improved emotion regulation. They demonstrate that when dealing with negative emotions, mindful individuals have increased activity of the prefrontal regions of the brain. They also found that activity was reduced in the amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus.

The prefrontal area is associated with self-awareness and cognitive control, indicating that mindfulness increases our ability to be aware of the emotions and to exert control over them. Although mindfulness increased the activity in this area it was also found that the higher the level of mindfulness the less the activation. This seemingly paradoxical finding indicates that as people become more mindful they require less energy and effort to effectively regulate the emotion. In other words they get more efficient.

The amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus are involved in the processing of emotions. So, the reduced activity associated with mindfulness suggests that mindful individuals are less reactive to the emotion. It has been shown that mindfulness reduces the response of the sympathetic nervous system which is involved in producing the physical sensations in emotions. By holding down the emotion’s intensity both centrally and peripherally mindful people are less likely to be overwhelmed by and overreact to their emotions.

Mindfulness actually expands awareness of the emotion even though it tamps down its intensity. Mindful people are very aware of what they’re feeling. This allows the storm of emotions to take its course, feeling it completely, not suppressing or denying it. This allows the individual to effectively process it with reason and understanding and thus deal with it more effectively.

Mindfulness has also been shown to decrease rumination where we try to think our way out of the problem. Rumination is also called fixating, or obsessing and leads to repetitive thoughts such as “Why do I feel this way? What could I have done differently? I’m no good. I’m letting people down. What’s wrong with me?” These tend to amplify the emotion making it more difficult to control it. Being more attuned to the present moment can reduce this tendency making emotion less problematic.

The research findings clearly suggest that mindfulness better equips the individual to regulate their emotions. To experience them fully and process them fully, but react efficiently and effectively and then move on.

So, practice mindfulness and “get a grip” on your emotions.

CMCS

Rethink your Emotions

psyjdc 2 Comments

Our emotions impact our lives in many ways. They provide much of the pleasure and happiness in life. They also torment us with painful, unpleasant, feelings that interfere with our well-being and happiness. Many mental illnesses involve distorted or exaggerated emotions. So a key to our happiness and our mental health is the ability to deal with emotions effectively.

It is well established that mindfulness training increases the ability to control emotions and our responses to the emotions. This is called emotion regulation. It is a very important benefit of mindfulness and it has positive effects on many life situations from dealing with stress and depression, to assisting in recovery from cancer, to improving caregiver well-being, to being a better negotiator.

Since, the mindfulness induced improvement in emotion regulation is so important, understanding it becomes extremely important. There is a need to understand exactly what mindfulness does to improve emotion regulation and what intermediaries are affected that link mindfulness with the emotions. One aspect of this question is addressed in today’s Research News Article “State Mindfulness during Meditation Predicts Enhanced Cognitive Reappraisal”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1044275768929682/?type=1&theater

The study found that mindfulness was associated with emotional reappraisal which inferred that mindfulness promotes emotion regulation by enhancing cognitive reappraisal.

Cognitive reappraisal is a strategy that involves changing the direction or magnitude of an emotional response by reinterpreting the meaning of the situation that evoked the emotion. For example if you have to give a speech and you are overwhelmed with anxiety a possible cognitive reappraisal would be to ask yourself what’s the worst thing that could happen, your voice may quake and you may forget a few words. That’s not so bad. Then you focus on the positives for example how honored you are by the opportunity to speak to this group and the impact you will have on them. Note how the reappraisal diminishes the anxiety and replaces it with pride.

After a first date a lady does not hear from the gentleman again and becomes deeply depressed. Looking at the thought process involved the lady notes that the snub reinforced her feeling of worthlessness exacerbating her depression. A reappraisal strategy is to look carefully at the date and see that they were no really compatible and continuing dating would only lead to a dead end. Seeing it this way removes it from the problems with self-worth and reinterprets it as a good thing that he didn’t call. This Flips the situation it from a negative to a positive.

Mindfulness teaches us to look carefully at an emotion and experience it fully and not run away from it. This affords the opportunity to think about it and reappraise it. Mindfulness also relaxes the sympathetic nervous system which is highly activated with strong emotions. This makes the feeling less intense and not so overwhelming that the individual can take a look at the rationally and cognitively reappraise them.

So, practice mindfulness and better manage your emotions.

CMCS

Control Emotions the Right Way with Mindfulness

psyjdc Leave a comment

Sometimes we get carried away by our emotions. Anger is a frequent culprit. Road rage is a perfect example. But we can also get overtaken by many other emotions such as love, jealousy, fear, etc. When this happens we often engage in behaviors that are either harmful or that we deeply regret later.

How do we control these powerful emotions? Can we learn to regulate them so that they don’t overwhelm us? One strategy is to actively strive to suppress the emotion. This is difficult, requires immense self-control, and most of the time doesn’t work. In addition, repression of extreme emotions can lead to later psychological issues. It has long been thought that repression can be problematic as the emotions reemerge late often in disguised forms.

A better strategy is mindfulness. It has been demonstrated that mindfulness training leads to a decrease in emotionality and to an increase in ability to regulate and respond appropriately to these emotions. With mindfulness the emotion is experienced fully, recognized, and appreciated for what it is. Because the emotion is processed, its power to affect behavior is reduced allowing the individual to form a more appropriate response to the situation. This is the exact opposite of emotional suppression which attempts to eliminate the emotion.

In today’s Research News article “Neural Networks for Mindfulness and Emotion Suppression”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1043795708977688/?type=1&theater

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0128005

it is demonstrated that dealing with emotions with mindfulness or with emotional suppression operate through different neural pathways. Both strategies attenuated the response of the amygdala to the emotional triggers. This area has long been known to be a key neural structure for the production of emotions. It can be thought of as a final common pathway through which emotionality is produced. So, it is not surprising that both mindfulness and emotional suppression result in a decrease in Amygdala activity.

It was shown, however, that the two strategies work through different regulation pathways to affect the Amygdala. The mindful approach affects the Amygdala via connections from the Medial Prefrontal Cortex, which is an important region for emotional awareness and mindfulness, while emotional suppression uses connections with other regions including the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and an area called the Precuneus, which are involved in top-down regulatory processing and which therefore require more cognitive effort.

The neural systems involved in the two strategies make sense given what we know about mindful vs. suppressive emotion regulation. Suppression takes intentional effort and this can be seen in the activation of cognitive processing areas of the brain. Mindfulness doesn’t take such effort. It is much more laid back and effortless. The structures involved reflect this.

So, use mindfulness to help control emotions; it’s a better way and even takes less effort.

CMCS

Be Smart about Emotions

psyjdc 3 Comments

Emotions are powerful forces in our lives. They supply the richness and texture to life experiences, producing joy, surprise, love, happiness, elation, and satisfaction. But, they can also be troubling, associated with fear, hate, stress, anxiety, and anger. We are highly motivated by these emotions and in general seek the experience of positive emotions and try to avoid the experiencing the negative ones.

We should not view emotions as a problem and that our lives would be better without them. To the contrary, eliminating or blunting emotions is itself a problem. This is termed by psychologists as flat affect. People who experience this often comment that they have lost the “juice” in life and desire to return to the emotional ups and downs that seem to supply life’s richness. So, the emotions appear to be essential for humans to lead a rich full life.

On the other hand, when emotions become too strong they can overwhelm the individual and lead to maladaptive behavior. For example thrill seeking can lead to dangerous activities. Also, many mental illnesses are characterized by extremes of emotions. These include phobias, panic disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, etc. In addition, strong negative emotions can lead to violence and aggression.

We need to be emotional, but not too much so. We need to be able to have emotions, but not in the extremes and we need to not overreact or overly seek emotions. In other words we need to be able to be smart with our emotions and develop the ability to regulate our emotional lives. This is termed by psychologists as emotional regulation and the ability to do so is termed as emotional intelligence.

Mindfulness has been shown to increase positive emotional states and decrease negative ones. This is one of the reasons that many people practice techniques to develop mindfulness. It seems to make their live better by assisting them in dealing with emotions. It appears to increase emotional regulation and thus mindful people can be said to have higher emotional intelligence.

How this might work to improve an individual’s ability to cope with life is explored in today’s Research News article “Dispositional mindfulness and perceived stress: The role of emotional intelligence.”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1039391516084774/?type=1&theater

In this article Bao, Xue, & Kong explore how mindfulness might reduce perceived stress in life. They document that mindfulness is associated with lower levels of perceived stress and can do so directly. It appears to improve the individual’s ability to cope with life and be less stressed by the events in life. It is also demonstrated that mindfulness may reduce perceived stress by improving emotional intelligence, improving the individual’s ability to regulate and use emotions to their benefit and thereby reduce perceived stress.

Hence, the well documented ability of mindfulness to lower the individual’s feelings of stress in response to life appears, at least in part, to result from its ability to improve how well the individual can regulate their emotions. In other words, it appears to make people emotionally intelligent.

So, practice mindfulness and be smarter with your emotions; letting them enhance the experience of life while blunting their destructive side.

CMCS

Dealing With Major Depression when Drugs Fail

psyjdc 52 Comments

Mindfulness training has been repeatedly demonstrated to be an effective treatment for depression. It is so effective that the in the UK it is considered the treatment of choice for depression. But Major Depression is another level entirely. Very few treatments other than drugs have been effective.

Major Depression appears to be the result of a change in the nervous system that can generally only be reached with drugs that alter the affected neurochemical systems. Once under control with drugs, other therapies are helpful in assisting the individual to adjust to the new normal and to remedy the sequellae of years of depression.

But what can be done when drugs do not work which happens quite frequently. It is suggested in today’s Research News article, “Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy vs. psycho-education for patients with major depression who did not achieve remission following antidepressant treatment”

http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.shsu.edu/science/article/pii/S0165178115000736#

that Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) may be a solution. Patients with Major Depression who have not responded to drugs did significantly improve with MBCT treatment and the improvement was superior to an active control group designed to simulate many of the conditions of MBCT.

This is remarkable. A mindfulness based treatment is effective on a major mental illness, which is principally a physiologically based disease, even when drugs fail. How is this possible that MBCT can be effective when other therapies and even drugs don’t help?

One possibility is the emphasis on the present moment in mindfulness. Depression is often rooted in the past and the individual ruminates about the misery of the past. By shifting focus to the present moment, mindfulness can move the individual from being preoccupied with a troubling past to being focused on a safe and secure present. Mindfulness also stresses non-judgmental awareness of the present. There is a decreased tendency to be constantly judging what is happening and instead just accept it as what is, which is a difficulty in depression.

Another possibility is mindfulness’ ability to increase emotion regulation. That is mindfulness assists the individual in recognizing emotions as they arise and not over respond to them. It doesn’t prevent emotions. It simply allows the individual to better deal with them when they do arise. So when depression occurs the individual can recognize it, accept it, and then let it go and not respond to it. This liberates the individual to find new ways of responding to the environment and other people.

Still another possibility is that mindfulness produces a heightening of acting with awareness. The individual then is more aware of what they’re doing. For the depressed individual this can help in the recognition of how he/she is acting in response to the depression. This allows them to reprogram their responses to be more appropriate to the circumstances of the present rather than responding to the depression itself.

Finally, it is known that drugs are effective for depression by altering the brain. It is also known that mindfulness training produces alterations of the nervous system. Perhaps, they act on the brain in similar ways, producing similar changes that help to relieve depression.

Regardless, if you’re depressed, try mindfulness.

CMCS

Fascinating boredom

psyjdc Leave a comment

“When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Boredom is abhorred by most human beings. In fact, we’d much rather be stressed than bored. Its even been proposed to be responsible for thrill seeking and even pathological gambling. While People are more prone to boredom generally do worse in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy. In other words, boredom has negative effects on our lives and as such is a much more important phenomenon than general acknowledged.

But, what is it? Boredom is defined as “the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest.” In fact there appears to be five different types identified by Thomas Goetz, INDIFFERENT (appear relaxed, calm, and withdrawn), APATHETIC (show little arousal and a lot of aversion), CALIBRATING (thoughts wander and something that differs is desired), REACTANT (aroused and with a lot of negative emotions), and SEARCHING (negative feelings and a creeping, disagreeable restlessness).

Thus boredom would appear to be a very noxious state that is to be avoided. But, if we make it part of our contemplative practice it can actually be hugely beneficial and we can learn a great deal about ourselves and our minds.

When you’re feeling bored, look at it deeply and honestly. It is a pointer to your suffering. As we’ve previously discussed suffering results from a desire for things to be different than they are. This is exactly true for boredom. It results from us wanting things to be different. So, looking carefully at what is wrong with the present moment can be very revealing. A great sage once asked his bored student “what’s missing from this very moment?” Ask yourself this same question.

If we look deeply we will find that this very moment is rich and lacks nothing. What we will see is that boredom emanates from our minds desire for stimulation, as it appears to believe that happiness and joy are elsewhere. But looking closely we can see that they are right her, right now. In other words boredom can lead to a recognition of the wonder and happiness that is ever present.

So, be fascinated with boredom. Use it as a gateway to understanding how your mind is preventing your happiness.

CMCS