Information on using Mindfulness in therapy, east austin, texas

What is Mindfulness?

Maybe mindfulness is something you’ve heard of, but you aren’t quite sure what it means. Fear not! I didn’t either until I started going to therapy. It’s a term often associated with Buddhism and Yoga, but you don’t have to be Buddhist or a yogi to use it.

Mindfulness is, at its core, a way of looking at yourself and the world non-judgmentally and focusing on the present moment.

You might notice that through your day, you talk down to yourself quite a bit. “You idiot! I can’t believe you did that/said that!” or “oh my gosh, are you really going to eat that second dessert?” or “ugh you look like crap today.” We all do it. We are taught to be critical of ourselves, and many of us are under the impression that we have to be self-critical in order to improve.

The crazy thing?

No, you don’t. Actually, more successful people talk down to themselves less. Successful people are nicer to themselves. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any successful people who are self-critical, of course. But you don’t have to beat yourself up in order to “make it” in this world.

The first step in practicing mindfulness is to become more aware of your thoughts. Most people don’t sit back and notice all the thoughts they’re having—they just have them. That’s normal. During this first step, however, we try to create some distance from the thought. So you might still think “goodness, I can’t believe I just ate all those donuts; no wonder I’m so fat” but then you would think “huh, I just called myself fat again in my thoughts. That’s interesting.”

The goal of mindfulness is not to create even more judgment for ourselves. It’s easy to have an unpleasant thought, and then add on a “should” like “ugh, I shouldn’t be so mean to myself!” By adding the “should”, we’re adding even more judgment to our self-talk, and what’s the point of that? Instead, we can notice the thought. Acknowledge it. That’s it—that’s step one. Seems pretty easy, huh?

It might not seem like the simple action of noticing a thought would make much a difference, but it does. And you don’t have to take my word on it—plenty of research shows the overwhelming benefits of mindfulness. By noticing our thoughts, we create a degree of separation between ourselves and the thoughts we have. Just because we have the thought that we’re “incompetent” doesn’t mean that we actually are. Treating all of our thoughts as The Truth can be problematic and bad for our health.

The second part of mindfulness involves being more present in the moment. Often, when going through our lives, we’re focused on the future (e.g. what we need to make for dinner, buying a new house, inevitable death, etc.) or we’re focused on the past (e.g. lost loves, childhood abuse, mistakes made). Being mindful would mean noticing these thoughts without judgement, by using step one, and then turning attention to what is happening in the present moment. It might mean focusing on your breath, noticing something in the environment, or focusing on the people with you.

If getting some distance from your thoughts sounds like it might be helpful to you, I encourage you to look at the resources I’ve provided below and contact me to schedule and appointment today.

Resources and Readings: