Modern Cognitive Psychotherapy and Mindfulness Meditation

1
Modern Cognitive Psychotherapy and Mindfulness
Meditation

• Dr. Parker Wilson
• [phone]
• parker_at_amidenver.com
• www.amidenver.com

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What Is Psychotherapy?

• Psychotherapy is a dynamic set of cognitive and
  behavioral techniques used by professionals to
  systematically help clients become more tolerant
  of and learn to work with their own mental
  phenomena (thoughts, emotions, judgments,
  opinions, etc)
• Since our mental phenomena create the reality of
  our day to day lives, psychotherapy has a deep
  and profound positive impact on our day to day
  existence

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What Is Psychotherapy?

• Psychotherapy is a unique relationship in human
  experience
• It is a completely safe and legally confidential
  space (doctor-patient privilege) where a client
  can receive objective and powerful feedback about
  themselves and their lives
• How often to we get the chance to talk with a
  professional who is highly educated about the
  science of human psychology and human
  psychological transformation how often do we get
  into a relationship that is totally about us,
  where the overriding goal of that relationship is
  self-improvement, transformation, and the
  creation of our own happiness?

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Why Do People Come to Psychotherapy?

• Severe mental illness (major depression,
  personality disorders, chronic substance abuse,
  etc)
• Severe mental illness in private practice,
  however, is quite rare
• 95 of clients come to address one or more of the
  following common experiences in human life

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Universal Sufferings

• Birth (family disorientation with the inclusion
  of a new child, transitory post-partum, etc)
• Aging (mid-life crisis, identity crisis, grief
  and loss associated with transitioning from youth
  to mid and then old age. etc)
• Sickness (grief, loss and overwhelm after
  diagnosis with a serious illness, a family has a
  chronic illness, etc)
• Death (grief, loss, and overwhelm after a loved
  one has died or is close to death, etc)
• Negative Circumstances Beyond Our Control
  (someone we love abandons or betrays us
  unexpectedly, we lose a job we love, we are a
  victim of crime, etc)
• Separation from People, Places, and Things We
  Want, Crave, or Desire (fame, fortune, love,
  education, wealth, power, acceptance, etc)
• Impermanence (everything is transitory and always
  shifting, a chronic anxiety and fear spawned from
  the feeling that there is no ground under our
  feet in life, etc)

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What Are Your Exits Doors? What if We Learned To
Just Stay?
Materialism / Craving and Seeking (retail
therapy, buying bigger and better things,
over-spending, splurging, running up hopeless
levels of debt, we try to buy our way out of
suffering)
Mental Discomfort anger, irritation,
frustration, anxiety, fear, sadness, loss,
boredom, loneliness, depression, grief, shock, etc
Anger / Aggression (we yell, intimidate,
threaten, manipulate, pout, get weepy, silently
withdrawal hoping someone will follow, assault,
etc)
Numb Out (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, work,
gambling, romance novels, TV, Xbox, etc)
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The Eight Mundane Concerns of Mental Affliction

• Four Pairs of Opposites (left side is what we
  desperately crave, the right side is what we
  desperately avoid)
• Material / Material Loss
• Acceptance / Rejection
• Sensory Pleasure / Sensory Displeasure
• Praise / Blame
• How much of your time and energy in this life is
  spent negotiating between these four pairs of
  opposites? Have you ever lied, stolen, cheated,
  psychologically or socially harmed someone else,
  or engaged in unethical behaviors to gain one and
  avoid another? What has been the result of these
  expenditures in time and energy? Have these
  expenditures created increased happiness, peace
  of mind, and satisfaction in your life?
• When you are very old, and looking back on your
  life what will you regret? What will you be
  proud of and glad you did?

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What Is Mindfulness Meditation?

• Mindfulness meditation is an intentional
  willingness to stay with, observe, and explore
  your own mental phenomena without being all
  caught up in, hooked by, or lost in those
  phenomena
• From the courage to stay with your own mental
  experience comes the ability to work with your
  mind and thereby create (and re-create) the
  reality of your life
• The mind is a relative thing (ex. pool table, tea
  on a train), and mindfulness meditation is a
  control methodology (ex. taming a wild horse)
• Mindfulness mediation is an intentional,
  systematic, human activity. It is not about
  trying to go somewhere or become something. It is
  about cultivating a deeper, clearer, more
  insightful awareness of what you already are.

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Mental health begins with giving up all hope for
a better past. - Anonymous

• When we let go of superimposing expectations, and
  wanting something else to happen in any given
  moment, we move towards being able to encounter
  the here and now on its own terms without
  needing to add or subtract anything
• Letting go of exaggerated expectations, letting
  go of needing specific outcomes, ceasing to add
  to and subtract from our raw mental phenomena,
  this helps us stay with what is actually
  happening in each moment of our lives (ex.
  Jaguar)
• Having a focus for your attention (object of
  meditation) helps to keep you in the present
  moment
• Awareness of our breathing can be helpful
• Tune into the feeling of the the breath
  entering/leaving the body, not deep or forced or
  thinking just awareness
• There is something profoundly healing and
  purifying about the mind simply being stable,
  relaxed, awake, calm, focused, and still
• Like the human body heals itself (ex. MD and a
  cut), so does the mind all we need do is get
  out of the way

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"We are disturbed not by events, but by the views
which we take of them." - Epictetus

• A deep mindfulness practice means being truly
  awake far less sleep walking through life (ex.
  raisin) on the automatic pilot of ancient
  perceptions, beliefs, habits, and patterns
  everything gets easier with repetition good and
  bad (ex. Sex offenders and the Dalai Lama)
• Mindfulness is being present with what you are
  thinking and feeling in any given moment
  mindfulness is being present with the raw feed
  of your perceptions, thoughts and emotions
• Two Basic Approaches to mindfulness
• Observation mindfulness is labeling thoughts and
  emotions in their raw, unaltered forms, and then
  noticing how your thoughts create emotions, and
  how your emotions create thoughts
• Absorption and Concentration mindfulness is also
  about learning to release thought and emotion
  entirely thus allowing you to bring a still and
  calm mind to any object of meditation
• Once you have deeply learned how to grasp and
  release thoughts and emotions, you will see that
  your thoughts an emotions can not be intrinsic
  parts of you
• If you are not intrinsically defined by what you
  think and feel then what are you?

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The Positive Effects of Mindfulness
The balance and clarity of mindfulness
Rational, logical mind left hemisphere
Emotional, perceptive mind right hemisphere
Functional, cognitive overlap
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"One's real life is often the life that one does
not lead. - Oscar Wilde

• American culture meditation, and non-doing
  Why should I sit and do nothing for a twenty
  minutes??!! What will that accomplish???
• Allow yourself room for stillness and non-doing
• This helps to connect you into your own
  breathing, which then automatically allows a
  connection between mind and body in the present
  moment
• Mindfulness practice yields relaxation and
  stability in the body and mind this connection
  between mind and body then becomes the first
  source of both psychological relief and the
  ability to discern and work with afflicted
  emotions and thought processes

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The Positive Effects of Mindfulness

• Mindfulness practice has been clinically shown
  to substantially increase
• Mental and physical relaxation
• Mental awareness, clarity, insight, and balance
• Mental attention and concentration
• The creation of profound life satisfaction and
  happiness
• Mindfulness has been clinically shown to
  substantially decrease
• Rumination
• Obsessive thinking
• Compulsive and self-destructive habits and
  behaviors
• Lost in thought, Cant turn my head off

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Mindfulness Based Cognitive Psychotherapy (MBCT)

• Originally developed by psychologists and mind
  scientists at MIT and Harvard, among others
• Over the last two decades, MBCT has been proven
  clinically effective in treating all of the
  following
• Substance and alcohol abuse
• Major depression and dysthymia
• PTSD
• Generalized anxiety disorder
• Various personality disorders
• Various stress disorders
• Entrenched grief and loss
• Identity crisis and existential problems of
  living (aging, sickness, divorce, sexual
  betrayal, death, etc)
• Trauma, abuse, and victims of crime
• Chronic physical pain
• Your vision will become clear only when you can
  look into yourown heart.  Who looks outside,
  dreams who looks inside, awakes. - Carl Jung

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Cultivating Mindfulness

• Formal Mindfulness Meditation Shamatha (single
  point of focus)
• three foundational stages
• 1. Settling the body in its natural state
• 2. Settling the breath in its natural state
• 3. Settling the mind in its natural state
• Informal Meditation
• The color red
• Passing a stranger
• Mindfulness Based Cognitive Psychotherapy (MBCT)
  this is the all encompassing approach which
  combines informal and formal mindfulness with the
  power Western psychology and psychotherapy
• For more information about mindfulness,
  psychotherapy, or to listen to a recent seminar
  about Buddhist psychology and the cultivation of
  mindfulness, compassion, and equanimity, please
  go to WWW.AMIDENVER.COM or email me at
  parker_at_amidenver.com