… & How Does it Compare to CBT?
Meditation has been around for over 2,500 years and it may not have caused so much interest except 40 years ago an American scientist by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn wanted to research its value in dealing with chronic pain.
Under the heading of ‘meditation’ you will find ‘mindfulness’. This has been defined (in MBCT) as
“the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, & nonjudgmentally to things as they are.”
The first Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, address stress and chronic pain.
Psychologists Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale, combined the principles of MBSR and CBT to design a programme primarily to prevent relapse in individuals with recurrent depression who wished to learn long-term skills for staying well. This became Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), now widely used all over the world.
The evidence base for MBCT is spread across a broad range of physical and psychological problems and is expanding at a fast rate. Research suggests it’s a helpful approach in a wide range of contexts (e.g. businesses, hospitals, workplaces, mental health professions and schools).
Evidence also demonstrates that regular mindful awareness practice of being in the moment, changes how our body and brain respond to stress, possibly strengthening connections in the prefrontal cortex and reducing reactivity in our limbic system, supporting self-reflection and self-regulation. These functions also play a critical role in our overall health and wellbeing.
The goal with CBT is to develop a consistent awareness of thoughts and reactions that may lead to anxiety and depression and uses cognition to help you notice when you are becoming triggered into negativity.
There is a difference between MBCT and CBT though in that MBCT doesn’t aim to alter negative thoughts. Instead, it helps individuals recognise that these thoughts are not facts and encourages a broader perspective. This approach allows people to fully experience their emotions in the present moment, teaching them to do so without falling into cycles of anxiety or depression.
Mental Health professionals, counsellors and therapists can integrate MBCT into their practice. They might introduce focusing on your breath, or the body scan where you observe sensations in your body as well as sitting meditation.
In this way, it can be a ‘feeling’ (or somatic) process. It can be seen as experiential, not just analytical, and although it still involves a lot of work with recognising thought patterns, it is much more ‘body-based’ than CBT.
The focus is on accepting thoughts as they arise.
An example of this could be switching from trying too hard to understand the thought, to just accepting the thought without judgement and letting it drift from your mind without attaching too much meaning to it. To focus on a feeling and learning to sit with it rather than avoiding it. One of the important aspects of MBCT is that it teaches us the best way to notice triggers that lead to stress and anxiety and to develop ongoing awareness and acceptance of the present moment.
Cognitive skills are the core skills your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they take incoming information and move it into the bank of knowledge you use every day at school, at work, and in life.
Mindfulness Will Help With:
- Attention: Helping you to stay focused for a sustained period of time.
- Memory: Helps you to recall long term information more easily and to retain that information for longer periods.
- Logic & Reasoning: Helps you to reason, form ideas and solve problems.
- Auditory Processing: Helps to analyse and segment sounds.
- Visual Processing: Helps you to think in visual images.
The greater and more consistent your awareness of the present moment, the more likely it is you will catch the negative thought spirals and choose to disengage from distressing moods or worries.
The EFT and Mindfulness Centre offers accredited training in MBCT and ensures all Trainers are trauma informed and follow ethical guidelines. You will learn how to manage difficult emotions, observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience. It also helps us to be empathic and compassionate towards ourselves and others. The course will also help you appreciate what you have and come to terms with struggles. Feedback from course participants revealed 98% have noticed positive changes in their life as a result of our training.
Further information on how to train and access research material, please visit the www.eftandmindfulness.com website.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is a psychological therapy designed to help prevent the relapse of depression, especially for those individuals who have Major Depressive Disorder (the principal type of depressive disorder defined by the DSM-5). It employs traditional CBT methods and adds in mindfulness and mindfulness meditation strategies.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy originally developed to treat depression, but which is now used for a number of mental illnesses. It works to solve current problems and change unhelpful thinking and behaviour (Beck, 2011).
Mindfulness has been defined, particularly for participants of MBCT, as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to things as they are” (Williams, Teasdale, Segal, et al, 2007).
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a mindfulness-based program designed to assist people with pain and a range of conditions and life issues that were initially difficult to treat in a hospital setting. It uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, and yoga to help people become more mindful and has been shown in clinically-controlled trials to have beneficial effects such as stress reduction, relaxation, and improvement to quality of life. Although it has roots in spiritual teaching, the program is secular (Greeson, Webber, Smoski, Brantley, Ekblad, Suarez, & Wolever, 2011).
Main – Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV
