therapy - mindfulness

• Main components - gaining control of thoughts


  focusing on the present and being aware of incoming thoughts and feelings to gain control over them.

  ignore worries about the past and future

  this process allows one to question automatic negative thoughts and become more reflective.
• Main components - meditation and mindful breathing

  meditation is clearing the mind by paying attention to sensations, thoughts and emotions while accepting thoughts and letting them come and go without judgement
• Informal practices of mindfulness

  Making the conscious decision to focus on present task, paying attention to surroundings and breaking from your normal processes and habits. eg. when walking noticing nature.
• related similar therapies

  MBCT - mindfulness based cognitive therapy

  Teasedale - patients with recurring depression had reduced relapses after a 1 year later check up

  MBSR - mindfulness based stress reduction

  Reibel - Patients with chronic, disabling or terminal illness had decreased anxiety and depression from an 8 week program with mindfulness everyday
• Effectiveness - integration with other therapies

  MBCT and MBSR are methods combine positive and cognitive techniques. other integrations with established therapy are becoming more prevalent within psychology offering a new and alternative perspective.

  MBCT for example, helps to change the process of thinking not just the content of thoughts, demonstrating mindfulness' effectiveness.
• Effectiveness - group settings

  Mantzios and Giannou - group mindfulness being used for losing weight - group lost more weight and lowered their levels of cognitive behavioural avoidance - like avoiding social activities.
• Effectiveness - length of time

  Reibel (MBSR) over an 8 week period depression and anxiety went down even after a year - doesn't take very long, but has good long term effects - even quicker than drugs due to its possible instant effect versus the weeks long period of time that drugs can take to work.
• Ethics - compliance of practitioners

  there are no regulations for mindfulness practitioners

  training can range from 1 day to 12 week courses. this variation effects the quality of the therapy provided
• Ethics - avoids past trauma


  focuses on the present

  rather than other therapies like dream analysis where the therapist aims to dig up and process past buried traumas, mindfulness focuses on your present tense and bettering your today.

  BUT could mean you just sit and ruminate in bad thoughts and past traumas instead.