Mindfulness Training Psychologist

[crimson74]

My doctor yesterday made a appointment for me to see a mindfulness training psychologist in a few weeks time
Does any one have any idea what one of these psychologist do and are they any good. my doctor just reckons that this therapy along side of my meds will work really well. what does everyone else think?

 

[Hope4Now]

I have not heard of a mindfulness training psychologist, but I know that mindfulness meditation is essential to full healing. You can google it to check it out. There's a bazillion things about mindfulness available on the internet. There's a woman named Tara Brach in the US who is a psychologist and has a website with meditations and talks if you want to get a little taste of it. The purpose of mindfulness is to get you connected to your body in the present time, and to learn how to manage thoughts and feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. A lot of people who don't understand meditation think that it has to do with religion because it talks about spirituality, but you can meditate whatever flavor of religion you are, and if you don't believe in any god at all.

Good luck with the appointment! I hope you like the person and find it helpful. It takes short daily practice over a long period of time to feel any differences, so stick with it if you can.

 

[Wrknprgrss]

I've also not heard of a mindfulness training psychologist, but I have encountered mindfulness training as a part of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). AS a part of DBT, Mindfulness has three "What" skills and three "How" skills. I agree with what Hope said about the purpose of mindfulness and then maybe add that it helps you to learn to manage your thoughts and feelings by teaching you control what you pay attention to as well as how long you attend to something. The idea is that you have to KNOW what you are experiencing in order to know if you want to accept your experience or if you want to change it. It's meant to help develop a lifestyle of awareness that will help with impulse control.

The possible difference with DBT, is that DBT sees mindfulness as one of four sets of skills. After mindfulness, DBT goes on to teach Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness skills. I hope you find the mindfulness training helpful!

 

[Recovery4Me]

:tup: Solid direction! Yes, often in Psychology Today Magazine as well as various other sites there are T's listed for Mindfulness Therapy.

Here is a site listing some of the scientific benefits with Meditation and Neuroplasticity:
http://meditation-research.org.uk/2014/03/meditation-and-neuroplasticity-five-key-articles/

Here is a meeting at the Google Company with Jon Kabt-Zinn:

Basics on Mindfulness:
http://www.mindfulnesscds.com/

As well my son & I love this therapy!

Have fun in awareness training!:hug:

 

[Anarchy]

Mindfulness is a universally useful skill, medically it is used to help with chronic pain, depression, PTSD, "borderline"...

In clinical trials mindfulness is at least as effective as medications at lifting depression and better than medications at preventing it reccuring.

A friend linked to a copy of the audiobook of "mindful way through depression" which Jon Kabat-Zinn was a co author of, up on youtube (it keeps popping up various places and getting taken down again). It really is good.

Ignore the word "depression" in the title, it has far wider applicability than just depression. It's well worth getting started on your own, that way you can be up and running within minutes, and you can get even more value out of the appointments when you finally get to them.

 

[Seasounds]

Good info above. I think that a psychologist who specializes in mindfulness would be helpful in developing many skills to manage PTSD.

Mindfulness seeks to optimize a person's sense of freedom and choice, by dealing with moment to moment experiences in new ways, and by promoting self-care.

Moment to moment, Mindfulness can::

• With your bodymind as your home base, mindfulness creates greater self-awareness. As you become more aware of subtle tensions, and as you can trace the tensions to their source, and you can choose to engage with yourself (your thoughts) and others, in constructive manners. This can decrease depression, and decrease daily tensions in relationships.

In self-care: Mindfulness can:

• Give you options in relaxing. You have tools to stay calmer during stressful situations, and you may sleep better.
• Help you become a lot more aware of your body's feedback, sooner, so you can make changes (e.g. In your thoughts, with your actions or words, etc.) to keep yourself comfortable and to help you navigate your world better (e,g, safer-away from people and situations that trigger you.
• Provide you with easier access to your feelings, and provide you with practical ways and means to manage your feelings.

Mindfulness has helped me so much, through the years. I use it everyday, in the ways that I mentioned, above. I use Mindfulness in conjunction with other therapy techniques/tools. Mindfulness practices continue to open opportunities in my life, as it continues to give me skills to live with PTSD.

Hope you find it useful, too!

 

[Friday]

Fair warning, though, on the off chance you're already ADHD... Mindfulness is the exact opposite of helpful for most (ADHD) people / can* make things exceptionally difficult/worse... As one is already constantly aware of everything and the struggle is to filter all the incoming messages. Not track down even more!

The parallel is a radio. If a neurotypical (or straight up PTSD, depression, etc.) person can only hear something of an annoying whine, mindfulness teaches people to turn the volume up... So they can actually hear the song. For someone who is ADHD, the 'annoying' buzz is the blissfully muted sound of 50 stations playing at the same time, that one has to expend rather a lot of energy on a daily basis to ignore. Turning up the volume on all 50 stations? Puke. ADHD meltdown cometh. Or total disassociation storm.

ADHD is only present in something like 4-6% of the population, so the likelihood of Mindfulness being a problem instead of a solution is slim. It will probably be a benefit to you. I just like to periodically throw out there, that while certain things can be hugely beneficial to most, little or nothing is beneficial to all. ADHD peeps generally* should avoid mindfulness like the plague (like gymnasts & yoga), etc. Ballpark numbers, but on average if 80% of people respond 1 way, there will be a number of groups hat make up the 20% that respond the opposite or in oddball ways. Just like taking meds. Ideally, the mindfulness psychologist will be aware of any exclusion groups that don't respond well to their paradigm. If so, don't fret. It's nothing personal. Just human nature, and the dizzyingly divergent ways in which we are all different :)

* I use words like generally, can, tends to, most, etc... Because scientifically there really are outliers in every group. I know hundreds of ADHD people who have tried mindfulness, and loathed it (for the exact same reasons) and a small handful who love and adore it. <Chuckling> Which just loops right back into the "nothing is true for everyone" theme of this public service announcement.

 

[Recovery4Me]

@FridayJones ...it is hard with our ADHD, I will give you that!

But I am trying to use the breathing like we do in the arts and their body scanning (chi movement really) seems the same. I will let you know how it goes. So far doing dual focus in the center & then trying to dampen the fields (as you said with the other 49 stations ).

I may be delusional in hope & yet- how many times have we blown up someone's stats on us already? Be cool to win one more time for the Gipper. Wish me luck.:nailbiting: