Mindfulness Counseling For Depression




Depression is a common condition that affects most of us at some time in our life. For most of us, these depressive episodes pass through like a rainstorm, but eventually they resolve themselves and we bounce back to our normal state of balance. For some, the patterns of anxiety reactions do not lift so easily and the same negative thoughts repeat over and over like a broken record player. This reliving and re-experiencing emotional agitation and pain is a major source of stress and leaves us feeling exhausted and unable to cope. We become apathetic and feel our life energy draining away.
Depression and other anxiety disorders have an internal structure in the form of habitual cognitive reactions to which we have become blindly attached through the process of identification. The negative thought arises and then we become the thought. A worry-thought arises and we become worried. Anger arises and we become angry. Fear arises and we become afraid. This process of becoming happens quite automatically and is sustained by the fact that we are unaware of the reactive process of becoming. The thought arises and literally grabs hold of us and pulls us into a predetermined state of consciousness against our will or choice. Habitual reactions thrive on our unawareness of them and will continue indefinitely so long as we remain unaware. So, clearly the very first step in overcoming depression requires that we reverse this process and train ourselves to become aware of our negative emotional reactions. As the saying goes, "no consciousness, no choice; partial consciousness, partial choice; complete consciousness, complete choice." In mindfulness psychotherapy this is called awakening to our reactivity.
We may think that we are aware of our thoughts and emotions, and this is true up to a point, but the issue is that we are seldom aware of our reactions in the moment that they arise, only after the fact when we are consumed by becoming the reaction. Our awareness is not immediate and direct, but delayed, and the delaying factor is unawareness. Mindfulness is first and foremost a deliberate effort to change this and awaken to our reactions as soon as they arise. In fact, we learn to recognize the impulse to react that precedes the thought form itself. Each moment in which we become mindful of our impulse to react creates a space, a brief interval in which there is freedom and choice. Sometimes this is all it takes to interrupt the reactive process altogether and we are able to choose to think or act differently.

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