In Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: A Four Part Series, I discuss important ways you can save time and money in psychotherapy, including mindfulness.
What is Mindfulness?
Before I go any further, I will explain to you what mindfulness is. One of my teachers I resonate with, Rob Fisher, describes mindfulness as, “paying attention to your present moment experience with great kindness and generosity.” Many therapies focus exclusively on thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness therapy can help you access an exponentially greater number of experiences, including feelings, body sensations, tensions, images, impulses, memories and beliefs. The latest neuroscience research has found that mindfulness builds more grey matter in the brain to think clearly and regulate our emotions, so that we are less likely to become overwhelmed and flooded by them. I was in session with a client who said he cares too much about what others think of him. As he said this, he started to stretch his arm out to in front of himself. I encouraged him to notice the experience of his arm movement as he talked about this. He said that doing this helped him experience the effect of over extending himself, which made him feel more empowered to decide how he wants to be in relation to others in his life.
You might wonder, why should I bother being mindful? You might even feel like it sounds like a waste of time. Perhaps there are thoughts that the time in therapy is ticking away, and by the time you get more mindful, you will inevitable loose even more precious time. In reality, the slower you go the faster you go. By going slower, you notice the unconscious mental and emotional elements that underlie your experience. This is true for several reasons. If you are feeling at all stuck or bogged down by an issue, mindfulness can help get additional space and perspective so that you can take more of a fresh look at what going on. Earlier I said that mindfulness can increase and expand your awareness. With this additional spaciousness, it may help you bring more awareness to not only what you are doing about the problem, but how you are doing it. For instance, one of my clients Bob talked about a conversation he had with his partner Frank after getting home from work. He said that he was upset because he felt like Frank became distant when he was talking, and felt as if his Frank was tuning him out. As Bob explored this experience in Mindfulness, he realized that he was complaining to Frank, and hadn’t realized the affect his communication style was having on Frank. Using mindfulness can also be used to help you take a moment, as your are arriving to your therapy session to see what feels most important to talk about. You might realize that there are many things pulling for your attention. The ability to be mindful can give you greater access to your present moment experience, so you can decide which direction feels best for you. Becoming mindful isn’t something you have to do alone. I, as your therapist will help to guide you into a mindful state. The majority of your job at this point is to just notice.
How Mindfulness Saves Money
In order to save time and money in therapy there are some things you can do as a client. These include your ability to enter into a mindful state, to start studying your experience and stay with it, to be able to talk about what stops you from being mindful, and your willingness to talk about your relationship with your therapist.
Staying With Mindfulness
Once you start to notice something in mindfulness, you will get much more out of the therapy process if you are able to stay with it. Take Mike for instance: As he is getting mindful he feels a longing to be listened to and as a result has a thought that he is needy and weak to have such a strong desire. This judgment might in turn made him want to shut down, stop talking, and even consider leaving the room. Mindfulness was able to help Mike expand his awareness to include various parts of yourself. Mindfulness was also able to help him set aside the part of himself that judges and then notice what was underneath the judgment. He was able to remember times when he felt judged by his parents and teachers. He realized these experiences lead him to usually being the one support others, and rarely asking for support himself. He realized this was his way to avoid re-experiencing this vulnerable and painful pattern. Staying with this issue in mindfulness ultimately helped Mike to be more compassionate towards the parts of himself that had been hurt: being able to do this created more space which helped Mike to see what had happened to him as a story of experiences rather than who he truly is at an identity level.
What Stops Mindfulness
Sometimes however you as client may feel as you start to get mindful that something stops you. An example of this might be what happened to Mike. Rather than feeling compassionate towards himself, he alternately got triggered and started to feel too vulnerable and judged himself for being weak. By staying with the judgments he had a chance to see where they came from. Mindfulness means extending warmth and curiousity. The longer that you are able to stay with experience, the more information becomes available from your psyche. Sometimes, people pop out of mindfulness and return back into ordinary states of consciousness. When this happens, they often will lose focus or clarity with the theme of this session. So, what’s useful at this point is to be able to return again to a mindful state. One of the things that will often help you return to mindfulness is your ability to talk about what stops you.
Sometimes people don’t feeling comfortable talking about the relationship that’s happening between them and their therapist. An example of this happened with my client Anne who tended to feel put down by people. She was talking about how many people care about her. and how she must be a lovable person. We started to study this in mindfulness and a different part of her said part of her said, “that’s not true, you are not lovable.” She then started to get critical of herself for not feeling lovable and starting thinking there was something wrong with her. When I asked her what was happening, she became silent and distant. After a moment she said that she felt patronized when I had asked her what was happening. She also said that she wasn’t sure that this had anything to do with me or us. With the new information she provided, we were then able to do an experiment where she could study in mindfulness, the effect that these words had on her. I repeated the same words, “what’s happening,” and she returned to a memory of her mother asking her what was wrong in what felt like a patronizing way. In a state of mindfulness, she was able to have more compassion towards herself and her experience and feel more of her strength and depth as a person. By exploring what was happening between us, we were able to sort through how she was hearing criticism from people even when it was not there.
Read part one: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: How to Be a Client
Read part three: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: Talking About the Therapy Process
Read part four: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: Resourcing Clients
