Mindfulness is the practice of conscious awareness of the present moment. You can be mindful of your environment, your emotional state, or a felt sense in the body. The practice of mindfulness can ease depression and anxiety and other mental health concerns.
Heal depression and anxiety
The opposite of mindfulness is autopilot. You are probably very familiar with this concept. Imagine you are driving down the road and realize you haven’t paid attention to the last few exits. Your body is on autopilot. Your brain is extremely good at doing things it has practiced. It can get you to your destination while your conscious mind drifts and daydreams. The unconscious mind can process more than 40,000,000 bits of data every second. Your conscious mind is much slower. It can only process about 40 bits per second. Since the unconscious is so much more efficient, we tend to rely on it between 80 and 90% of the time. Being mindful allows you to be more aware of the mundane aspects of life.
The unconscious mind is programmed mostly by repetition and your perception of the messages you received when you were a child. This means you were told something, probably for with your best interest in mind, and you interpreted that information in a way that you still use to this day. If it was helpful, it is still helpful to you. But, if you were given messages that were not helpful, or worse, maybe they were abusive, you interpreted them and incorporated them into your self-concept. Once that self-concept is in place, it very hard to change. Depression and anxiety can become a way of life. Becoming more mindful is one of the tools to reduce that.
When you practice mindfulness, you are staying conscious about your thoughts feelings, and behavior. You are paying attention to the present moment and not allowing your “autopilot” unconscious to take control. When you’re alert and in control, you have a much better chance of implementing the goals you’ve set for yourself. To learn more about me and the therapy I offer, click here
