These are some of the most common problems people seek therapy for, and there are several methods therapists teach to address these, such as meditation and mindfulness. It takes practice, but they have a lot of potential to help with intrusive, snowballing thoughts. You can practice anytime and mostly anywhere, but doing it is the hard part.
Do you happen to have a good source for learning these? I’ve looked into it in the past but everything I find about meditation and mindfulness is riddled with nonsense that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Set a short time limit if you’re a beginner (e.g., 5–10 minutes).
Focus on your breath and notice bodily sensations.
Gently return your focus to your breath when distractions occur.
With body sensations, you can focus on the taste in your mouth for a minute, then switch to sounds you hear, how your fingertips feel etc. I usually close my eyes to better focus on each sensation. Just relax and gently observe what you experience right now.
One common misconception about meditation is that meditation is and end goal, not a practice. That to meditate is to sit down and have your brain be quiet, and if you can’t do that, your session was a failure.
But that’s like saying weight lifting is about deadlifting your body weight, and any session you don’t manage do that was a failure. That is something you might be able to do after years of training. But you start with the smaller weights, learning form and technique, setting reasonable goals, and find a practice that you can make a habit out of. Because a five minute walk every day beats a day at the gym/retreat once a year.
For these ones I don’t really have control over that. My brain gets itself all worked up before I have any say in the matter.
These are some of the most common problems people seek therapy for, and there are several methods therapists teach to address these, such as meditation and mindfulness. It takes practice, but they have a lot of potential to help with intrusive, snowballing thoughts. You can practice anytime and mostly anywhere, but doing it is the hard part.
Do you happen to have a good source for learning these? I’ve looked into it in the past but everything I find about meditation and mindfulness is riddled with nonsense that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Just a simple example I googled:
With body sensations, you can focus on the taste in your mouth for a minute, then switch to sounds you hear, how your fingertips feel etc. I usually close my eyes to better focus on each sensation. Just relax and gently observe what you experience right now.
One common misconception about meditation is that meditation is and end goal, not a practice. That to meditate is to sit down and have your brain be quiet, and if you can’t do that, your session was a failure.
But that’s like saying weight lifting is about deadlifting your body weight, and any session you don’t manage do that was a failure. That is something you might be able to do after years of training. But you start with the smaller weights, learning form and technique, setting reasonable goals, and find a practice that you can make a habit out of. Because a five minute walk every day beats a day at the gym/retreat once a year.
I agree 100%. It’s a shame, because pretty much everyone would benefit from just trying to meditate once in a while.