Mindfulness
There is ample room for debate on whether the people who introduced me to "Mindfulness" in context with "Transcendental Meditation" were therapy supporters or sexual predators. For sure, it was their guidance which enabled me to seek and embrace psychotherapy in an era (late 60's) where cultural denial made throwaway kid camps and child sex trafficking as invisible as the mobs of third world beggar kids are to the cultural elite. Psychotherapy was not really fit for the evening news, much less Prime Time Tv. Decent folk don't talk about such things. Get busy dressing your altar to honor the parents who ? ? ? are larger than Life? Still. . . Perhaps exactly half a century later, I am eternally grateful to the name-forgotten misfits who guided me down the psychotherapy path. This might be the closest I have ever come to speaking the ominous thought that I donae even begrudge them the sexual barter of that guidance. During the serene moments of my comfortable retirement, I think that might have been the soundest investement I have ever made. Perhaps. How do I say that without sounding like I am endorsing the exploitation of children?
Sorting. . . My neuro gaurds are on red alert for the mining activity so near the battle zone, but. . . The evolution of "Mindfulness" within my own broken life whispers through my recent meditations like a gem worth the risk of mining for.
Small steps, big faith and lots of prayer. Let God lead the expedition.
Replies
Huge hug Arf…… It makes a lot of sense to me that you struggle with what and whom to trust when you were betrayed so badly for so long sweetie.... Another hug of support..... Small steps and faith in God are the way that helps me as well...xo
Certainty unavailable, but I does believe that it is the growth and strength of Mindfulness within both pro and pop psychology which causes me to risk remembering those horrible years more closely. Maybe. . . I still don't know if I have regained enough of my childhood memories to know what demons might be bubbling to the top of my psycho pot. My mind is still not real safe neighborhood to travel alone.
Sorting. . . Small bytes and long chews.
I've never been involved with mindfulness but I've heard really good things about it.... Small bytes sounds like a good plan sweetie.... Big hug.....xo
During the last of my VA sessions (2012), Mindfulness workshops were well respected within their PTSD therapy programs. I have since come to swear by the techniques I picked up in those workshops. This thread has been niggling me ever since.
Don't wanna complain, but it still sucks to be this afraid of my own mind.
Breathing. . .
The jungalow seems to be enjoying my channeling exercises. Caulking of the main room is done. Time to get back to the painting.
I’m still on the fence about “mindfulness”, although I have experienced it’s benefits. I think there’s a fine line right now between therapy mindfulness and trendy mindfulness, which is getting thinner everyday.
I’ve had some issues with mindfulness and it’s many variations as it becomes more and more a trend and less a therapy. But I am reading a very interesting book right now on “trauma sensitive mindfulness” that has helped me realize my issues I have had aren’t isolated. There have been a couple occasions when practicing mindfulness triggered flashbacks or extreme states of dissociation where I got lost somewhere between the exercise and tapping out.
The book is called “Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness” by David A. Treleaven if anyone is interested, who is a psychotherapist & written more for professionals than as a self-help guide but it’s been very interesting and helpful in helping sort through some of my issues with DBT and Mindfulness.
Just my thoughts though.
Hugs, support and love Arfie as you sort through this.
In the early 70's, words like, "Mindfulness" would have won you a supervised pee test. Even as recently as those early 2k workshops, I seldom used the word and when I did, I still had to explain it to most. Lately? ? ?
Pick me up a pack of smokes and a bottle of mindfulness, would ya. . . No, silly, not the Narcoleptic stuff. PTSD, all the way. . . You know how damaging it was when my parental units didn't buy me that I-thingy.
I am kind of growing to strongly dislike the term “mindfulness”, I have to admit. Sometimes it gets misused to disguise selfishness and other times selflessness. I don’t think the American language is set up like ancient Egyptian where a single symbol can mean many words and is more conceptual than literal. There too much misunderstandings with words like “mindfulness” and “triggered” that now it’s a fad.
Shortly after the flashbacks started last year & I went into crisis mode, I went to a teeny bopper store with my daughter and found a button pin that said “triggered”, so I bought it but for a specific reason. I have a cap it’s on that I put on when ever I’m in PTSD mode as a warning to my family members. Still the fact that I found it as a button in a store speaks volumes about how misused & trendy such terms have become. It’s as if it’s fashionable now to have PTSD or some mental illness.
But then again..., it’s just random thoughts.
It comes from required sleep deprivation for an EEG and not being able to take anything but my allergy medication until after the test was done. So if you like, just ignore me. I ignore myself all the time, lol.
Hugs, Arfie.
Yea, I think it was the fashion kiddies (of whatever age) who have --at least for now-- driven me out of the PTSD forums. It all to often seems to reduce my pain to, "So and so disagreed with me and it gave me PTSD. Now whenever someone disagrees with me, it triggers me to total cunt hood and it's not my fault. Agreement now mandatory, Peon. Kiss my PTSD and buy me my new XBox controller. Now, Peon. Be mindful about it. Pretty pink, if *I* please."
Mean girl bully flashbacks in progress. . . Plying therapy tools. . . Girl howdy, mean girls (of whatever age) can and do bully, especially other females from tragic circumstances. It's kinda sad how many of them never seem to outgrow it. I think recovery might have easier when "psych anything" was a taboo word set. Is, "Hey baby, what's your Psychosis?" become a barroom pick up line yet?
Still. . . I'm not going to let fashion divas deprive me of 40 odd years of recovery. Mindfulness is too valuable a tool to reduce to a fashion accessory.
I can agree with that summary, Arfie.
As of yet, I refuse to let my abhorrence of pop trends ruin therapy and treatments for me, even if it is now a major irritant underneath everything else that I can shake.
I don’t know if I am ready to go back to the “taboo” times but if the trend keeps up, I’ll be quite tempted. It’s just taken so long for mental illnesses to reach a level of serious recognition but that recognition is now in jeopardy of become trivial and dismissed because society has turned it into a new fashionable accessory.
Next we’ll get “Project Runway” and “New York Fashion Week” to riddle the pages of every fashion magazine with the latest psychosis to give extra pizzazz to you personal style. Rather than ads for latest cosmetics, purses, shoes and other fashion must haves, it will be advertisements for therapist to custom design a psychosis to fit every occasion.
Cynicism at it’s finest. Let’s pray it never goes that far but some times I seriously wondering if that’s where mental health is heading.
Pop psychology was already pretty big when I went to my first therapy session in 1972. I loved it enough to be one of the irritating ones who was trivializing it with ? ? ? do we have a word for that yet? A nice one?
Perhaps the most unified opinion I heard from ALL of my early therapists was that I needed to quit reading it, much less buying into it. It's good to have an open mind but not so open that my brain falls out. Which state did I lose my adolescent brain in? Sigh. . . Freaking thing wasn't working so good, anyway.
My mom made a suggestion to me last night..., “Freud is an F word” as a slogan.
Does that work for a name for it? We can just use the F word.
Hm-m-m-m. . . I wonder what Freud would think of 21st century pop psychology.
I thought the new F word was "Faith." Faith sure do get allot of people morally indignant, especially Atheists. Insert HG Wells here. "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."