HEALING THE MIND, BODY & SPIRIIT

MINDFULNESS-BASED COGNITIVE BEHAVIOUR THERAPY

IN THIS PART

• You will grasp what purpose mindfulness-based cognitive behaviour therapy has and how it is used as a treatment tool. You will discover how it can enable you to tackle and live with problems, struggles and challenges.
• You will know and understand the importance of experience and of being in the present moment as central aspects of mindfulness-based cognitive behaviour therapy.
• You will understand yourself and the problems you face in your daily life, and get motivated to make real changes in your life for the better.
• You will learn how to use mindfulness-based cognitive behaviour therapy to let go of pointless thinking and to help you focus on the here and now.
• You will see the benefits of regular mindfulness-based cognitive therapy practice and prepare yourself for, and successfully personalise this voyage into mindfulness to suit you.

MBCT is based on an integration of CBT components with Eastern mindfulness meditations, as well as mindful movement skills.. It aims to increase your understanding about your particular difficulty (such as anxiety, chronic fatigue, chronic pain and illness, depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleeping difficulties, stress etc. For example in the case of depression, you are given information about the characteristics of depression to help you recognise your personal behaviours and thinking patterns peculiar to you - when you know the signals that indicate that you are slipping back into depression, so that you can correct these patterns. This pattern of behaviour is called rumination. When you are doing this the mind repetitively returns negative thoughts The core skill that MBCT develops in you is the ability to intentionally shift mental gears. It doesn't try to change the negative thought patterns, but it does encourage you to change them into more positive ones.

The key themes of MBCT include learning by experience and mindful movement and the development of an accepting, open attitude, where you deliberately face your problems and uncomfortable feelings.

Through increased mindfulness training, you become more aware, each moment, of your physical sensations and of thoughts and feelings as experiences rather than a truth. This helps you become less convinced and worried by your negative thought patterns, and allows you to notice earlier that you are moving toward depression.

Human beings are much more easily convinced of their flaws rather than funny or positive things, because the human mind is more inclined to believe negative suggestions.

MBCT is a practice for you to use in your own way and integrate into your personal life to help combat your personal demons. Whatever your background, culture, religion, esperiencem, age etc. MBCT can work for you. 

Basically MBCT is discovering how to let go of negative thinking and behaviour patterns. 
M - stands for mindfulness, which simply is the practice of bringing your awareness deliberately to the present moment in time and experiencing it without judgement or expectation. It isn't about intense concentration or effort. Adults usually lose the ability to be in the moment, mindfulness czn reconnect you with the enjoyable feeling of just being without the need to be busy or productive.
B stands for based, ("derived from" or "connected to").
C stands for cognitive, which means thinking, planning and measuring within the brain
T stands for therapy: the treatment of disorders and illnesses. 

Essentially, MBCT is about becoming more aware of how you think and behave in order to help improve your life.

MBCT does draw on techniques from Buddhist mindfulness meditation, Zen, yoga, Taoism and Christian mysticism, MBCT isn't a spiritual path in and of itself. It's a secular form of meditations and exercises aimed at reducing your anguish.

The goal of mindfulness is to observe your thought patterns in depth, in order to develop a profound insight into the unfolding of your life and the meaning it has to you. You need to observe your thought patterns deeply and regularly so that you are able to question what you find out - is it fact or fiction. When practicing mindfulness, do the best you can to observe everything that arises; experience thoughts without adding emotional memories from the past that could taint them as positive or negative; while be aware of the present moment as a timeline moving without being censored or interpreted, or held onto or pushed out of your mind.

Allow life to unfold itself moment by moment, when you walk, just walk don't plan the days activities or dwell on a fight that you had with a family member. Just appreciate the moment that you are in and notice how you are walking and where.

Although Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is often effective in treating anxiety and depression, one particular group continue to relapse. The more often a person experiences a major episode, the more likely they are to relapse. Clinical psychologists, Segal, Teasdale and Williams started searching for a therapeutic way to prevent or reduce these relapses. The result was an eight week MBCT course, that gives you the necessary skills to improve your wellbeing.

CBT's focus is on recognising your unhelpful thoughts and replacing them with helpful ones, which can give those thoughts unwanted power whereas MBCT focuses on the belief that thoughts aren't facts and therefore you don't need to focus on them more than necessary.

​CBT focuses on empathy, genuineness, respect, warmth and unconditional positive regard. The client and therapist work as a team to resolve problems and two way feedback is encouraged. Goals for change are identified and agreed upon. The client suggests solutions when their therapy gets stuck. CBT can be defined as an active, directive, time-limited, structured approach used to treat a variety of mental problems such as depression, anxiety, phobias, stress, pain etc.

CBT mainly focuses on the here and now, and the therapist accompanies the client towards chosen goals. CBT and MBCT are client driven and you choose what you want to work on throughout the whole therapy. For both of these you are advised to use a notebook to record insights in a journal. 

MBCT tries to show you how to focus your awareness on all your senses. You need an anchor, so that you don't end up thinking, planning, worrying or day-dreaming. MBCT uses meditation as one anchor, so that you can become aware of just how busy your mind really is, and how it tends to stick to negative thoughts.

By giving your mind this anchor for your attention, you can truly be in and experience the present moment.

People who practice mindfulness meditation have found that they are more calm and compassionate, and stress, anxiety and depression decrease. 

MBCT has managed to improve the lives of many people with diverse problems, such as: 
anger management,
bipolar disorder,
cancer,
chronic fatigue syndrome,
chronic pain and illness,
coping skills for parents and carers of children with autism
depression
eating  disorders
fibromyalgia
generalised anxiety disorder
health anxiety
psoriasis
psychosis
relationship difficulties
sleep disturbances
stress

Dealing with events from your past and expectations of fears of the future can be extremely difficult. These fears even have the power to hold you back from the life you want to lead in reality. MBCT can help you overcome and find a way of coming to terms with those unhelpful and behaviour patterns. MBCT helps you enhance your ability to be aware in the present moment. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the moment, but don't fixate upon it, because that is when you can create disappointment. 

Your past experiences shape you and your thinking. Some aspects of your beliefs about the world may have been formed when you were young. They may have helped you to survive at the time, but now they may have become obsolete and restrict you from enjoying life now.
Mindfulness can help you uncover these fears and the resulting negative beliefs and free you to start again in the present moment. 

Fear about the future is partially due to how the human brain evolved. The hindbrain or primitive brain is primed to watch out for potential danger. Mindfulness assists you to build pathways that enable you to be less fearful of the future and assist you in being able to truly live your life in the present.