If You’re Struggling, Try Finding Moments of Beauty in Your Day

Image by Juliandra Durkin

Anyone who has ever been depressed knows that it’s a terrible thing. At its worst, depression can completely knock the stuffing out of you, making it impossible to leave the house, or even your bed. You might feel completely exhausted, finding the smallest task utterly daunting.

You may well struggle with sleeping, either lying awake for hours, with dark thoughts swirling round your head; or go to the other extreme, sleeping for long periods (and no wonder – I often tell my clients who sleep a lot that nothing helps us avoid painful thoughts and feelings better than sleep). And eating can go the same way, either completely losing your appetite and struggling to eat a mouthful, or comfort-eating junk food all day.

When depressed, your thoughts will probably be extremely negative and hopeless. People tell you that what you’re going through will end, or you will get better, but you probably don’t believe them. And rumination is a central feature of ‘depressogenic’ thinking, which is those thoughts that go round and round your head like, ‘I am so pathetic. What’s wrong with me?’ or ‘My life is a complete mess. How did it get this bad? And why did I make all those stupid mistakes?’

Asking these kinds of negative, existential questions is rarely a good idea, as there are no good answers, are there? And sadly, the more you ruminate, the more depressed you feel, which makes you ruminate more, which makes you more depressed…

More right with you than wrong

Sorry if this is all getting a bit gloomy, especially if you’re struggling with depression or low mood right now. It’s important to recognise just how awful depression can be, but let’s think about it a bit more positively, starting with this wonderful quote from a towering figure in the treatment of depression and other psychological problems:

‘As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel’

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dr Kabat-Zinn developed the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme in the 1970s. He later inspired a group of psychologists to develop mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which has helped millions of people both recover from and prevent future episodes of depression. And a key idea of both MBSR and MBCT is that where you place your attention – especially what you think about at any given moment – has a powerful impact on determining your mood.

As we saw with rumination, if you spend hours each day going over and over what’s wrong with you, your life, your choices, and so on, your mood will inevitably sink. It’s just common sense. So, rather than obsessively chew over all the negative stuff you perceive in your life, learning that you can choose where you place your attention and what you think about is a simple but potentially life-changing insight.

Finding moments of beauty

I should say here that I struggled with depression for many years, so I don’t say any of these things lightly. I know how awful it is. I understand only too well how hard it can be to shift your attention from the gloomiest subjects, the darkest thoughts, the seemingly hopeless future. Trust me, I have been there, many times.

But I’m also glad to say that I don’t get depressed any more. My mood can be low, from time to time, but that’s only human – and is a world away from the prolonged bouts of depression that used to floor me for days and even weeks at a time.

And one of the key parts of my recovery (apart from a lot of therapy) was taking the MBCT course myself. That course was so profound for me. It helped me start meditating and continue that daily practice for over 12 years now. It deepened my love of Buddhism, which is a wonderfully rich, compassionate and insightful system of philosophy and psychology.

MBCT also taught me to look for moments of beauty throughout the day, even when I’m struggling. One example: it makes my heart so happy to see little kids walking up the road, hand in hand with their parents. Because (and check this out for yourself) little kids never just walk! They do little skips and jumps, or dance, or sing a silly song. They weave along the pavement, skirting imaginary obstacles (crocodiles, lava, icy crevasses). It never fails to put a smile on my face, because they are so full of joy and completely un-self-conscious.

You are a walking miracle

Another example: do you ever stop and think, just for a moment, what a miracle it is that you’re actually alive? Think about the mind-boggling fact that you are, quite literally, made of stardust (every atom in your body originated from some star, billions of years ago, exploding and sending raw materials like carbon streaming out into the universe). Without those stars you, I and every other living creature on our planet would not exist.

How about the fact that your ancestor (and mine) was a single-celled amoeba, floating around in the primordial soup of Earth’s newly formed oceans, around four billion years ago. From a simple amoeba to the magnificent complexity of you, purely through the wonder of evolution and a trillion tiny moments of chance and good fortune that enabled you to exist.

Or all of the millions of life-preserving processes happening in your body, right now, allowing your heart to beat and lungs to breathe and blood to flow and food to digest… And we just walk about, eating sandwiches and playing Candy Crush, completely oblivious. The daily miracle of life, which we all take for granted.

And don’t get me started on cherry blossom, or sun shining through fresh spring leaves, or puppies, or the light of a full moon, or hugs, or the first juicy bite of a nectarine, or your football team scoring a 90th-minute winning goal… So much joy, beauty and wonder, if we just let ourselves see/feel/taste it.

Again, I know that none of this is easy, especially when you’re down. (And if you’re struggling with depression – especially if you are having suicidal thoughts – please do contact your GP or a mental health professional right away.) But it will help, I promise, if you can just shift the spotlight of your attention from all of the bad stuff (real and imagined) in your life to those moments of beauty, or everyday miracles, which are right under your nose.

I hope that’s helpful. And sending you love, strength and hope, whatever you may be struggling with right now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Listen to My Guided Mindfulness of Breath Meditations on Insight Timer

Image by Hari Nandakumar

Mindfulness of Breath is the core meditation practice in both Buddhist and Western, secular mindfulness traditions. When you have established a regular meditation practice, it’s beneficial to sit in silence, mindfully focusing on your breath, sounds, thoughts, body or any other point of focus. But if you are a beginner, it’s a good idea to listen to guided meditations first, as sitting in silence for long stretches of time can be challenging (and will quickly introduce you to your busy, restless mind!).

That’s why I have recorded a series of Mindfulness of Breath meditations for Insight Timer: five-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute and 20-minute versions. All of these practices are free (as are tens of thousands of meditations by myself and other teachers on the InsightTimer app), with optional donations if you so wish.

You will also find Loving-Kindness practices, a Body Scan, a Safe Place Imagery, Box Breathing and Compassionate Breathing techniques, a Four-Stage Self-Compassion Practice and much more. I will continue adding to my collection of meditations on the app – including trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices. I hope you find these and my various other Insight Timer meditations helpful – use the button below if you would like to listen to them now.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How Mindfulness Can Help with Chronic Pain

Image by Joyce McCown

If you suffer from a medical condition that causes you chronic pain, life can be gruelling. Nobody likes being in pain, so over time it can really grind you down. Musculoskeletal problems like hip, knee or lower-back pain, arthritis and other ongoing, hard-to-treat conditions can sap your strength and energy over time, making it hard to stay positive or hopeful that a solution will eventually be found. Dealing with pain can make you stressed or depressed, as the ongoing struggle – unsurprisingly – causes sadness and low mood.

But if you or someone you care about is struggling with a painful condition, it's important to know that there is very good evidence for the impact that psychological treatments can have – in particular, cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation.

Of course, thinking differently about your problem, the core strategy in cognitive therapy, will not take away the pain (although it can significantly decrease the amount of pain you are in). Instead, it will help you stop thinking so negatively about the problem, which will boost your mood and stave off the risk of depression. 

The mindful approach to stress

Since the 1970s, mindfulness – in particular, mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR – has been used to help people with a wide range of psychological and physical ailments. MBSR's founder, Jon Kabat-Zinn, developed his revolutionary approach to help people who had been failed by traditional Western medicine.

He worked with patients suffering from treatment-resistant spinal problems and even terminal illness – and had a remarkable success rate at lowering their stress levels and improving the quality of their daily lives.

As with all forms of suffering, whether emotional or physical, the mindful approach is to change our relationship to the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, enabling us to stop fighting or resisting them and – counterintuitively – accept them, even if we do not want them to be there.

Over time, we find that this stance of acceptance is an extremely powerful one, allowing the 'aversive' experiences to come and go, so they don't get stuck or morph into other forms of suffering like self-criticism or anger.

I want to be clear: I am not minimising how hard or upsetting it can be to live with chronic pain (as someone with ongoing back, hip and other musculoskeletal problems, I know that only too well). But being human inevitably means dealing with stressors, large or small; and, if we cannot free ourselves from them, we must find the best possible way to live with them.

Warm wishes,

Dan

How Mindfulness Meditation Helps with Anxiety and Depression

Image by Greg Rakozy

Mindfulness is a real buzzword at the moment. It's hard to pick up a newspaper without coming across an article extolling its virtues. Mindfulness meditation programmes have been introduced into corporations like Google and Facebook, as well as schools, government departments and a whole host of other settings – it feels like everyone has suddenly switched on to the power of meditation.

But what exactly is mindfulness and how can it help with psychological problems like depression or anxiety? The first thing to say is that, although we in the West are only learning about mindfulness now, in the East people have been using mindfulness techniques for 2,500 years. Mindfulness is a cornerstone of Buddhist practice, used to calm and focus the 'monkey mind' (which normally just jumps around from one thing to the next).

Mindfulness was first introduced into the medical mainstream by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s – he developed an eight week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme, to help people with chronic pain and other serious medical problems. This proved so successful that a team of psychologists adapted it to help people with psychological problems, especially recurrent episodes of depression. They called this new programme mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and it proved equally effective.

The key idea in mindfulness practice is learning to focus on your moment-to-moment experience, rather than being swept away by the storms of anxious or depressive thinking that drive psychological problems. As with both cognitive and schema therapy, we have a large body of evidence showing that mindfulness works.

On a personal note, I have had a daily meditation practice for years, and absolutely vouch for its power to calm and centre me for the day ahead. I have also taught many clients to meditate and seen the huge impact it has had on their problems with anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness of breath meditation

Here is a simple sitting meditation you can try right now:

1. Switch your phone off, then set a timer for 10 minutes, so you don't have to worry about how long you’ve been meditating.

2. Sit in a straight-backed chair, cross-legged on the floor or lie down. Try to relax your body, letting your shoulders drop and face muscles soften.

3. Close your eyes and become aware of your breathing – the flow of air over your lips and nostrils, in and out. Don’t try to change your breathing in any way, just breathe naturally.

4. If your mind gets bored and gets distracted (as it probably will), don't give up or get frustrated. Every time you notice your mind has wandered gently turn your attention back to your breathing until the timer goes off.

5. Once you feel able to meditate for 10 minutes, extend the time to 15 minutes, then 20 minutes, and so on. And remember that, like anything, the more you practice meditation the easier it gets.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Bibliotherapy on Mindfulness

Image by Aiden Craver

'Bibliotherapy' is an important part of cognitive therapy, either to run alongside a course of therapy or as a self-help tool. I often recommend books to my clients, partly because there is only so much time in a session, so it's much more useful for them to read up about their particular issue and for us to discuss their findings next week.

But I also find that many people like to understand why they might be having problems and find their own strategies for solving them – another important idea in cognitive therapy, because ultimately I want my clients to be their own CBT therapist.

In this post I will focus on mindfulness, an ancient Buddhist practice that, since the 1970s, has been adapted by Western psychologists to help treat a range of physical and mental difficulties. The idea is that you can read one or all of these books, depending on which appeal to you. And you can read the whole book or dip into the chapters that seem most relevant to you.

1. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This beautifully written, wise, eminently readable book is one of my favourites. Kabat-Zinn is, more than anyone else, responsible for introducing mindfulness to the West. He started using mindfulness techniques to help people with chronic stress, physical pain or serious illness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the '70s, which paved the way for other practitioners to use mindfulness either as a standalone technique or combined with other approaches like cognitive therapy.

The author explains with great clarity exactly what mindfulness is and how you can integrate it into your life, either with 'formal' practices like sitting or walking meditation, or 'informal' practices such as being completely mindful of whatever it is you're doing, from washing the dishes to gazing at a glorious sunset or preparing and eating a delicious meal. If you're new to mindfulness or meditation in general, this is the perfect place to start.

2. Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. Another good beginner's guide, this introduction to mindfulness theory and practice is written by Mark Williams, a clinical psychologist and one of the UK's leading mindfulness teachers, and Danny Penman, a health journalist and author. It offers a clear, easy-to-follow path through all the basic mindfulness techniques, and includes a CD of guided meditations by Williams – who has an incredibly gentle, soothing voice.

As an aside, if you ever get the chance to see him speak, grab the opportunity. He is an excellent speaker who really embodies the calm steadiness that regular meditation can bring.

3. The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn. If you want to take a mindfulness course for issues like stress, anxiety, depression or chronic pain, there are two basic formats: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT).

Both run over eight weeks, with a combination of meditation, guided imagery, yoga and other exercises in the class and at home. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the MBSR programme first (see above) and in the early '90s the other three authors began exploring the use of mindfulness to treat depression, especially repeated bouts of depression which can be hard to treat.

They combined elements of Kabat-Zinn's MBSR programme with cognitive-behaviour therapy to come up with MBCT, which has proven extremely effective at treating recurrent bouts of depression – as effective as antidepressants, in fact.

This is another warm, rich, wise book, which leads you through the steps of an MBCT programme, while explaining why we get depressed, what we now understand about depression and the brain from MRI scans and other research into its physical make-up and functioning, and how psychologists around the world are now exploring the meeting point of Buddhist psychology, neuroscience and cognitive therapy, with intriguing results.

It also includes a CD of guided meditations by Kabat-Zinn, which I use as part of my daily practice, so can thoroughly recommend.

Warm wishes,

Dan