Why Mindfulness Infiltrated the Counselling Setting
Mindfulness is a ‘buzzword’ that has been floating around the health and wellness space for years. The fact that mindfulness is often linked with meditation practice has only increased the sense of mystery about what mindfulness actually is, and even more so how or why it has a place in a therapeutic counselling setting. Increasingly, studies are finding that mindfulness and associated practices create a positive impact on a person’s mental and emotional well-being and have a positive therapeutic effect on conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia and compulsive disorders.
In its most basic sense, Mindfulness simply means ‘paying attention’. And we might use various mindfulness based techniques such as body scanning, breathing exercises and noticing thought patterns to increase our awareness of how we might be thinking, feeling or behaving in the moment and also to develop an understanding of where those thoughts, feelings and behaviors may have stemmed from.
When used along-side other types of therapy such as Cognitive-based Therapy (CBT) or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Mindfulness based practices provides us the tools we need to overcome the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that might be inhibiting our lives and gives us the opportunity to respond to these aspects of ourselves in an open and non-judgemental way.
The overall results being a greater level of self-awareness, compassionate understanding and increased sense of ease and general well-being.
You do not need to be good at meditation in order to work with yourself in this way. And the beauty of this kind of therapeutic practice is that it can be tailored to suit each individual and their specific therapeutic needs. It is not prescriptive but rather responsive to the individual, which makes it a powerful tool when used in a therapeutic setting.
To find out more about how Mindfulness can help you, you can book in a session with our Registered Counsellor.
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