Uncovering the Benefits of Mindfulness

Hi, everybody, and welcome to Mindfulness for Happiness and Relapse Prevention. In this presentation, we're going to define mindfulness and mindlessness. We'll differentiate between mindfulness and purposeful action, identify how mindfulness can be used in practice, and explore several different mindfulness techniques and activities that you can use with your clients. So what is mindlessness? We're going to start there. Mindlessness is on autopilot. It's when you get up in the morning, you stagger into the kitchen, you make your coffee, you eat your breakfast, you take a shower, you go to work, you come home, you eat dinner, and you go to bed. And you really didn't check in with yourself to. To see how you were feeling, what you were needing, and if there was anything that you could do to actually perk up your day. So we don't want to be on autopilot. We need to reduce enough stress in our life or at least learn to focus and stop and smell the roses, or at least check in even if we're not going to smell anything. Mindlessness is also going with the flow. Being a yes man, just saying, sure, let's do it, go ahead. And not ever identifying what we really want and need. Mindlessness is also doing what has always been done, just because it's always been done. And sometimes you need to check in and go, you know what? That's not all that important. If you are one of those people who has to go through and bleach every bathroom every weekend. That's the way you've always done it. And it may still work for you, and you may have a perfectly good reasoning and desire to do it, and that's great. But maybe you're going through and bleaching the bathroom every weekend and you realize you're the only one living in the house anymore. Your kids have moved out, and three out of the four bathrooms don't ever get used anymore. So maybe you can not bleach those every week, maybe just once a month. So looking at what you're doing and identifying if it's needed or if you're just doing it, because it's always been done that way. Another example of it's always been done that way. From my personal experience, when I come home, and this is total autopilot mindlessness, I come home, I put my purse on the foyer table, I walk into the kitchen, I open up the refrigerator, and I find something to eat. Now, I've never stopped to check in to go, am I really hungry? Am I thirsty? Or is it just because I'm home. It's just what I do. So it's important in mindfulness to identify what you're doing and choose your behaviors, choose how you use your energy purposefully. Other examples of mindlessness, getting home and not remembering the drive. I think all of us have done it. We get in the car and we're kind of on autopilot, going home and we're totally thinking about something else. Eating without realizing it, or when you're not hungry. Sometimes people will just kind of meander into the kitchen and get something to eat and sit down and start eating and they're like, wait a minute, I'm not really even hungry. And having intense feelings or relapses come from, quote, out of the blue. These usually don't come from out of the blue unless there's been some sort of a trauma in your life. Most of the time, relapses, whether it's mental health or substance abuse, started a long time ago and you weren't paying attention to the fact that you were getting run down, that you were getting stressed out, that you were getting overwhelmed. So you get to this breaking point and all of a sudden the dam breaks and you're like, oh, where did that come from? Well, if you were paying attention, it started about six weeks ago. Mindfulness is having an awareness in the present. We stop, look, listen, feel, and interpret what is going inside us and what's going on around us. I encourage my clients to do mindfulness check ins at every meal because we usually eat at least two to three times a day. So that's a good anchor point for them to go, okay, before I eat, let me just stop, look around, see where I'm at, figure out how am I feeling physically, am I tired? Am I anxious, am I stressed out, am I hurting somewhere? And what's going on around you and how are you thinking? Once you figure out how you're feeling, how you're, whether you're comfortable, what the environment is, interpret where you are and what you need. Purposeful action means becoming mindful in the present moment and acting intentionally instead of reacting emotionally. If you are stressed out and you're exhausted and you're in the cafeteria of your office and people keep coming in and talking to you and just bothering you and you just really, really want some peace and quiet, mindlessly acting people would likely just continue to sit there until somebody comes up and you bite their head off. If you're being mindful, you realize, preferably before you even go into the cafeteria, that you're stressed out and you need some quiet time, so maybe you need to eat at your desk. So you're acting intentionally. Instead of reacting when the dam breaks, you want to intentionally choose behaviors and actions that are going to make effective use of your energy and help you achieve your goals. So again, just thinking about biting people's heads off or getting overwhelmed, how can you prevent that from happening if you're acting intentionally? If you do a mindfulness scan and you go, you know what? I'm really stressed out right now. I'm exhausted, I can't think straight, or what do I need versus what do I think I should do? Because what you need is going to lead you towards purposeful action and get you closer to your goals. How did we learn mindlessness as we were growing up? People have told us things like, do it because I said so. Don't ask why. This is always one of my big pet peeves when I'm working with other coaches or I'm working with clinicians in a residential setting or even in an outpatient setting. If they tell their clients to do something because they said so, that's a not respecting the client's autonomy. But it also doesn't help the client learn why so they can be mindful and make a purposeful choice about whether they want to do it or not. Suck it up. Communicates. Don't feel just do. You know, some mornings we get up, we don't want to go to work, we don't want to face the traffic, we don't want to take a shower, whatever the case is. Maybe all of the above. And sometimes we do have to suck it up. But if you do a mindfulness scan and I go, you know, all of those things are true. I just don't. I'm not motivated to do anything. I've got to decide in the big scheme of things what works best to help me achieve my goals. Sometimes it means suck it up, but it's important to check in with yourself and feel first, identify what you need, and then make decisions about what's going to get you closer to your goals. Nobody cares. Just ignore it. Means don't trust your own instincts and don't trust other people. We don't want to learn this again. When you go and tell your boss, I'm overwhelmed, I've got 16 things to do that are due on Friday, and I need to know which is more of a priority to you. And he says, you know, just go figure it out. He's not giving you any direction for being mindful or if he Says, I don't want to hear about how stressed you are. That means how you feel doesn't matter and you need to just go ahead and do it regardless of what's in your best interest. Now, sometimes that's going to happen in the workplace. You know, I'm not saying that we live in a utopia. It is, however, important for people to be aware of their own limits and boundaries to prevent burnout. And finally, that's what everyone does, so don't question it. Everyone else does this, so you need to do it too. And in reality, this is one of the biggest mindfulness trip ups ever. Always, always, always ask yourself, is whatever I'm getting ready to do getting me closer to or further away from my ultimate goals and where I want to be? Mindfulness can help us transition from reacting to acting. It can help us be proactive and prevent reacting, prevent blowing up, prevent burning out. It makes more efficient and effective use of energy by making the right decisions the first time. So, beginning with the end in mind, so to speak, what are my ultimate goals? Let's make the right decision about how to handle this situation to get me closer to my goals. And mindfulness encourages self awareness and compassion. So we want to seek first to understand ourselves and then to understand others. And when I say understand ourselves, it means what are we good at? What are our strengths, what are our weaknesses? What do we need, what do we want? And what are our ultimate goals? Mindfulness can help reduce inefficiency through planning and prioritizing. Instead of just kind of flying by the seat of your pants deciding, hey, I want to build a dog house, driving down to Home Depot, buying a bunch of lumber and a bunch of nails and going, okay, now let's figure out how to put this together that's kind of inefficient. Whereas you could save time by going online, getting a plan, which will have a list of all the supplies that you need, and then you can follow the plan, put up the doghouse and Bada Bing, Fido has a new home. Mindfulness helps balance and renew your resources, energy and health to create a sustainable, long term, effective lifestyle. Because it encourages you to ask yourself regularly, what do I need right now? And what options do I have to meet those needs in the present while still moving toward future goals. If you can even just ask yourself those two questions at breakfast, lunch and dinner and actually act on the results, not just go, okay, well that was a fun exercise. It will help you reduce a lot of stress and free up energy to accomplish the goals that you want to head, heart and gut honesty. I talk about this in a lot of presentations. In your head, this is your logic. What do you need in your heart? This is, you know, how you feel about something and your gut is kind of your spidey senses. And if something isn't right, your gut's gonna go, yeah, this is probably a bad idea. When you're behaving mindfully, your head, heart and gut are all in alignment. They're going, yep, this is what we need to do. Now, your head may be saying, this is gonna be hard, but we can get it done. Or your heart may be saying, this is not the most pleasant thing that I have to do, but it's the right thing to get me to where I want to be. Another activity you can do is the attitude of gratitude, also known as don't crap on the present. So having an attitude of gratitude about yourself, what are you grateful for? About your family, what are you grateful for with them? Your job and your life. Too often, because this is the way we've always been raised, we focus on the negative and forget to identify the positive. When in reality we should identify three positives for every negative. Try that. Three positives for every negative. Another activity is called the five minute focus. And this can be somewhat daunting at first. Go into a room for five minutes and again, it may seem like an eternity. Write down on a piece of paper everything you see, what you smell, what you hear, and how you feel emotionally and physically. This gets you into the habit or practice of being more attuned to your surroundings and being more aware of not only what's going on inside, but but also what's going on around you. Smells are the strongest trigger for memories. So if you walk into a room and you know, every time you walk in there, you just kind of feel chills go up your spine. Think to yourself, what does this smell like that is reminding me of something in my past? Or is the paint on the walls a color that reminds me of something? Am I triggering a memory? Being aware of what's going on around and inside is important because they work together. Vulnerability checklist. This is something I encourage people do every single morning. Vulnerabilities are things that, when unchecked, can cause low grade stress, making you more vulnerable to stronger reactions. So if you're under stress, if you're not getting it, proper nutrition, if you're not getting enough sleep, if you're in pain, if you're not sleeping well, when something happens, your emotional reaction, which would normally maybe be a 2, maybe an 8, because you're just kind of. You're over it. Your physical reactions can also be a lot stronger. Instead of just being a mild annoyance where you have a brief little adrenaline rush, you may get completely flat and go into a full grade panic attack. Socially, your reactions can be a lot stronger and you can be a lot. Either a lot more needy and a lot more seeking of external validation, or on the contrary, you might be a lot more withdrawing. When stress starts to build up, it affects your relationships. And when stress starts to build up and you start to become vulnerable, environmental things can also be a lot more powerful in triggering relapses and negative mood states. Yet another activity is called three Minute Thoughts. Take three minutes and write down or record on a voice recorder all of the thoughts that you have. Then review what you wrote down. How many of those thoughts were negative? How many were about the past, the future and the present, and how many were just totally irrelevant? This will help you identify what your sort of automatic thoughts are that are constantly buzzing around in your head. We want these thoughts to be positive and about the present and hopeful about the future. Irrelevant thoughts happen. You know, you may be driving down the road and you're like, oh, bunny rabbit. Totally irrelevant. But it's a thought, so it's something that you would want to record. Colors of emotion. Most colors evoke emotion in people. Most of the emotions are learned because color reminds you of a memory. So get a big crayon box and identify how different colors make you feel. Now, certain colors, they've done research. Yellows, reds and browns tend to make people hungry. So when you go into restaurants, you'll see a lot more yellow, red and brown blue. Certain blues can be calming, but certain blues can also feel institutional, like a blue gray or kind of a pea soup green. That may not be true for every single person though. So look at colors, look at swatches and just see. How does that make you feel? Does it make you feel calm, indifferent or sad? Increase the colors in your environment that make you happy. I like purple and blues and, you know, some of the bright, cheery colors. But I love just about every shade of purple and blue. So that's what I would use for accessories in whatever environment that I'm in. But I also like white because it's blank and that gives me a place, something that I can look at that's not overstimulating or under stimulating. It's just blank. Smells are one of the strongest memory triggers. So know your nose. What smells to you? Are calming and maybe nostalgic at the same time. It's getting to be fall right now where I'm at, and the fall smells and the fall air fresheners are coming out. And I love the smell of cinnamon and cloves and all of those things that you associate with campfires and apple cider and all that kind of stuff. It makes me nostalgic and it's also calming. There's not really a whole lot of smells that make me angry, except for maybe the smell of dog poop, because then I know I've got to clean it up. But, you know, some smells may trigger a memory of something, maybe a bad situation in your past, and it will make you angry. So be aware of those smells. Are there smells that make you stressed and are there smells that make you energetic? Now you can do all kinds of research on aromatherapy and see what scents are typically associated with certain feelings. That doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be associated with that feeling for you. So you still want to test it out. Personally, when I use aromatherapy with my animals in that are on my farm, I take down an array of different essential oils and I let them sniff them and if they like it, they'll sniff it again. If they don't like it, they'll walk away. My donkeys don't like lavender. They have no use for lavender at all. Now valerian, on the other hand, they tend to flock to a little bit more. So before the farrier comes out, I put a little valerian oil on their halter, which helps them be a little bit calmer when he's there. The ABCs, ABCs help you identify why you're getting upset about something. So the activating event, something happens, the consequences that you get upset or you get angry. But between those two things, which are like a split second, you have all these automatic beliefs. So something happened and you tap into schemas about this event, which are all your automatic beliefs, and it results in an emotion. Now what you can do is dispute these beliefs and say, you know, that doesn't really apply to this situation. Sometimes your beliefs are spot on accurate though. So then you've got to evaluate, is this worth my energy? Is my reaction useful? If you get cut off in traffic? And this is my favorite one to use because everybody gets cut off in traffic occasionally. If you get cut off in traffic, was it dangerous? Yeah, that's probably a very valid belief. But when I evaluate the consequence is my getting angry about it and, you know, trying to convince the other person, how wrong they were. Is that useful? My answer is no. You know, the other person may not even know they cut me off. But even if they do, they may not care. And likely they don't. So is it worth my energy and effort to follow up on that? Or do I just need to go? Okay, deep breath. Need to be a little bit more alert. Relapse warning signs checklist or the Black Swan? Relapses don't come from out of the blue. A black swan is something that is an unexpected event to occur. Part of mindfulness is learning about yourself from past experiences in the past. What has led up to a relapse in the past? What has triggered my depression? Relapse prevention means being aware of your status, how you're feeling, your vulnerabilities, and your wants and needs. So being aware of that, being aware of your swan will help you prevent the black swan. It will help you prevent a relapse from just showing up out of the blue. Developing a checklist of your relapse warning signs and reviewing it daily can also assist in preventing relapse. A Functional Analysis what Whys and Hows I like this one. Just because I tend to be more cognitive in my approach. What makes you angry, Resentful, or guilty? Anger is a protective feeling. It pushes people away or gives you power over them. Resentment is just another form of anger. Guilt. Interestingly, a lot of people don't loop it in here, but guilt is often anger at yourself for something you did or didn't do. So we're still dealing with anger. So what triggers your anger? What are you angry about? Why are you angry about it? And how can you get rid of this anger? Because being angry does. Nobody does. Doesn't do anybody any good. So figuring out how to deal with that anger and let it go. Fear Again. What's causing it? If you've got fear going on, what's causing it? Why are you afraid of this and how can you deal with it? Being stressed out or overwhelmed. Same basic principle. Now, happiness. Here's one that we don't usually question. Why would we question happiness? Why would we do a functional analysis on it? Because you can't be happy and miserable at the same exact time. So what makes you happy? Why does it make you happy? And how can you increase that in your life? Denial. Sometimes we have to look at Somebody tells me I'm in denial about something, so what is it they're telling me I'm in denial about? Why do they think I'm in denial about it? And how can I address it? And depression and isolation follows the same pattern. What is it that's causing it? Why do I feel this way and how can I deal with it? A daily planner can also be helpful. Each morning, spend 10 minutes being mindful of how you're feeling. Ten minutes can feel like an eternity, but do it while you're drinking your coffee. Maybe drink your coffee on the porch and watch the birds or listen to the frogs. Whatever it is that you do in the morning, identify all the things that need to happen or get done that day. Not that you want to happen or get done that need to. These absolutely positively have to happen. Go through the list and highlight the ones that must get done today. Maybe your electric bill is due today, so that's got to be done today. Identify anybody that can assist with the must dos and then get going. You can only sit there and think about it and dread it and ponder it and feel overwhelmed for so long before you just exhaust yourself. So you might as well use that energy to get going and start knocking things off of your list. Our culture promotes automation and mindlessness. Mindfulness means taking time to think before you act. Stopping to think takes time though, but it usually takes less time than making needless errors. So do you have time to do it twice or is it better to do it right the first time? Mindfulness means understanding your swan, your status, your wants and needs, and the what's whys and hows of your vulnerabilities so you can make the best choice of action to get you closer to where you want to be. Here are some mindfulness related resources that you can take a look at. They're all workbooks. They are very good. 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