Minding Our Mindfulness

Next Friday (November 20) the Mindfulness and Psychotherapy Study Group will be reflecting on the issue of the therapist's mindfulness. I thought I'd like to suggest that, between now and then, we might experiment with deliberately finding our mindfulness before we begin some of this week's therapy sessions. 

Here's a guide for a brief, pre-session mindfulness exercise for therapists.  In composing it, I've tried to touch on all of the elements of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy "hexaflex" model.  I've also remembered Shauna Shapiro's suggestion that we think of mindfulness as a matter of intention, attention, and attitude.

• Find the intention to take a few mindful breaths, and do it.
• Am I willing to be open to any experience being offered right now? (Actually check in with yourself:  What is your level of willingness?  Can you rate it from 0-10?)
  
• Why do I want to be mindful right now?
  
• What can I be aware of right now: in my body, in my thoughts and feelings, in my sense of pleasure or discomfort, in my experience of being in this room?  Am I completely open to having this experience?  If not completely, do I want to open up more, be more accepting?  Why? 
• What am I aware of about the person I'm meeting?  Am I open to "not knowing" much more than I actually know right now?  Am I willing to let go of what I already know in order to be open to whatever I am about to experience?
  
• What are my thoughts, judgments, and feelings about this person?  Am I aware of them as experiences I am having, rather than facts about this person?  Am I able to be fully accepting of all these aspects of my experience?
• What are my intentions in this particular meeting?

It might also be useful to get in touch with any overarching intentions you have, and articulate them briefly.  I sometimes find it grounding to remember the very traditional Buddhist dedication: "May all beings be happy, joyous, and live in safety."  Your own values or faith tradition might suggest a similar intention.

I'm looking forward to our discussion of our experiences on Friday!

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ACT and Personal Coaching

Many of the individuals and couples we see in our practice are dealing with life problems that transcend medically-based diagnostic categories. These issues are not symptoms of larger problems like clinical depression, but the natural expression of our complicated human lives. Most of the time, our problems are just the result of our efforts to get through life as best we can - efforts which have had both positive and negative outcomes.

Despite the differences between psychotherapy and personal coaching, we have found that our training and experience as clinicians can be a tremendous benefit to our personal coaching clients. Not the least benefit is the fact that effective psychotherapists know that a great deal of our suffering comes from the fact that we are simply participating in the human condition (remember the first noble truth?).

I recently ran across a quote on Kelly Wilson's website that nicely articulates the humanism and far-reaching egalitarianism that underlies Acceptance and Commitment Therapy:

ACT does not allow a neat division between people doing treatment and people needing treatment. It is hard to get what is important about ACT without confronting the fact that in a very deep sense, we are all in the same boat. This means that the principles are scalable. ACT addresses obstacles to effective living that transcend diagnostic categories and even the notions of "sick" and "well." ACT attempts to address very fundamental issues that affect us all.

I've always been impressed by the totally non-pathologizing basis of the ACT approach. Its basic assessment categories are about skills and abilities, rather than diagnostic labels. We have found that ACT techniques are a powerful addition to our personal coaching services as well as a basis for psychotherapy. Here are some of the principles that we believe are central to positive change in both psychotherapy and personal coaching, starting of course with:

Acceptance and Commitment. Our coaching strategies rely on this fundamental principle, which we have learned through many years of helping people in psychotherapy: Meaningful change always requires both a thorough acceptance of ourselves as we are, and a commitment to act in accordance with our deep personal values. This is the basis of the ACT approach to psychotherapy.

Positive psychology figures prominently in both our psychotherapy and our personal coaching program. We have learned that happiness is not really the result of things that happen to us, but can be cultivated in the way we engage our lives. We draw on the growing body of psychological research on this topic to help people live more satisfying lives and realize their potentials.

Mindfulness is what enables us to be in the present, the place in which all change occurs. In taking action which actualizes our most far-reaching goals, the only thing we can ever do is take one step from right here. It can be startling to realize how much of our time we spend in daydreams and preoccupations, completely out of contact with our real life. Mindfulness helps us orient to who we really are, and what we are really experiencing. With this perspective, the path to our personal and professional goals is much clearer.

We've written a bit more about Integrative Health Partners' Personal Coaching Program on our website. Feel free to visit and browse.

This Friday's Study Topic

Image by practicalowl via FlickrIn our study group this Friday (the last for the summer) I'd like to focus on the topic of cognitive defusion and to discuss our experiences integrating this concept into clinical practice. You might find these lectures by Jason Luoma on Cognitive Defusion an interesting way to begin reflecting on the topic.

Cognitive defusion is one of the ways in which mindfulness of thoughts has found a home in psychotherapy theory and technique. I'm looking forward to deepening our understanding of this topic through our discussion on Friday.