Mindfulness
Way back in March, I was in Oxford town centre and spotted a stand where some researchers from the University of Oxford Department of psychiatry were trying to find people who'd be interested and able to take part as guinea pigs in a trial they're running.
I walked past it once, thinking they were trying to sell something, but on the second pass, something caught my eye, so I stayed for a chat and got more details off them.
The trial is about testing the effectiveness of two different types of treatment for preventing the recurrance of depression: Cognitive Psycho-Education programme (CPE) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Trial subjects are randomly allocated to either one of the therapies or a control group of people who aren't getting treatment (but will have their choice of treatment when the study's over).
Long story short, it sounded like a good thing to do to me, so I signed up for it. I got assessed and met the criteria and got randomly assigned to the MBCT group. And now I'm 6 weeks into an 8 week course on mindfulness meditation.
If you've been depressed once, you're likely to be depressed again. I think of it like there's a switch in your head - when it's flicked down, you're depressed, when it's up, you're not. The first time it takes quite a serious amount of effort the flick the switch down - life changing sort of effort. Then you get better and the switch goes back up. But each time the switch is flicked down, less and less is needed to do it, so eventually even just a normal bad mood can have you in that downward spiral into depression, simply because of associations and habits that have been built up in previous episodes.
Now, bad things will always happen - that's the way life is. We can't do anything about the weather (f'r instance) but we can do something about how we react to the weather (like take a raincoat). We're all free to make choices about how we react, but in order to do that, we need to be aware of what's going on within ourselves first.
That's what mindfulness is all about. It's all about being present, here, now, in this exact moment, aware of everything that's going on in your head and in your body.
Before I started the course, I really hadn't got a clue that I spent most of my life running half an hour ahead. And if I wasn't planning what'd happen in the immediate future, I was reliving memories (and not the good ones either). So much of our everyday life is simply habit - it's quite scary!
It's not an easy course - along with the 2 hours of classes once a week, there's home practise to be done and exercises like noticing things, and being aware of how you feel during pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The hardest part for me is finding the 40 minutes a day for the guided meditations (on cd) - my life is pretty darn busy at the best of times, so finding 40 minutes to sit and meditate can be hard (especially at the beginning of the course, when it felt like meditation == sitting doing nothing).
But it's helped me learn a lot about myself. Some things I knew intellectually, but the meditation helped me to really feel it physically and understand it in a way I didn't before. Some issues keep coming back, time and time again, and I'm learning to recognise them like old friends, but to not get involved. They can take a seat in the waiting room in my mind while I get on with breathing and experiencing the way things are right now.
I'm learning to treat myself with kindness, and to care for myself. I'm learning that thoughts are not facts, and that thoughts are just thoughts (even when they say they're not). I'm learning to experience things as they are in a moment, without trying to change them.
I'm learning acceptance, and I'm finding peace. I'm re-programming my brain, and it's bloody hard work. But even though the course isn't over yet, it's aready made a difference.
I walked past it once, thinking they were trying to sell something, but on the second pass, something caught my eye, so I stayed for a chat and got more details off them.
The trial is about testing the effectiveness of two different types of treatment for preventing the recurrance of depression: Cognitive Psycho-Education programme (CPE) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Trial subjects are randomly allocated to either one of the therapies or a control group of people who aren't getting treatment (but will have their choice of treatment when the study's over).
Long story short, it sounded like a good thing to do to me, so I signed up for it. I got assessed and met the criteria and got randomly assigned to the MBCT group. And now I'm 6 weeks into an 8 week course on mindfulness meditation.
If you've been depressed once, you're likely to be depressed again. I think of it like there's a switch in your head - when it's flicked down, you're depressed, when it's up, you're not. The first time it takes quite a serious amount of effort the flick the switch down - life changing sort of effort. Then you get better and the switch goes back up. But each time the switch is flicked down, less and less is needed to do it, so eventually even just a normal bad mood can have you in that downward spiral into depression, simply because of associations and habits that have been built up in previous episodes.
Now, bad things will always happen - that's the way life is. We can't do anything about the weather (f'r instance) but we can do something about how we react to the weather (like take a raincoat). We're all free to make choices about how we react, but in order to do that, we need to be aware of what's going on within ourselves first.
That's what mindfulness is all about. It's all about being present, here, now, in this exact moment, aware of everything that's going on in your head and in your body.
Before I started the course, I really hadn't got a clue that I spent most of my life running half an hour ahead. And if I wasn't planning what'd happen in the immediate future, I was reliving memories (and not the good ones either). So much of our everyday life is simply habit - it's quite scary!
It's not an easy course - along with the 2 hours of classes once a week, there's home practise to be done and exercises like noticing things, and being aware of how you feel during pleasant and unpleasant experiences. The hardest part for me is finding the 40 minutes a day for the guided meditations (on cd) - my life is pretty darn busy at the best of times, so finding 40 minutes to sit and meditate can be hard (especially at the beginning of the course, when it felt like meditation == sitting doing nothing).
But it's helped me learn a lot about myself. Some things I knew intellectually, but the meditation helped me to really feel it physically and understand it in a way I didn't before. Some issues keep coming back, time and time again, and I'm learning to recognise them like old friends, but to not get involved. They can take a seat in the waiting room in my mind while I get on with breathing and experiencing the way things are right now.
I'm learning to treat myself with kindness, and to care for myself. I'm learning that thoughts are not facts, and that thoughts are just thoughts (even when they say they're not). I'm learning to experience things as they are in a moment, without trying to change them.
I'm learning acceptance, and I'm finding peace. I'm re-programming my brain, and it's bloody hard work. But even though the course isn't over yet, it's aready made a difference.