So what is Mindfulness?

Benefits

Here at Mindful Psychology we support individuals to maintain, change and flourish in their lives. We see disturbances within the mind as an over reliance on outmoded beliefs, attitudes and defence mechanisms that keep you stuck and fearful of change. Over the last two decades there has been a plethora of evidence based research that champions mindfulness as an important life skill in reducing stress, depression and helping you to relate to yourself with less criticism and judgment.     

Mindfulness is a key life skill and develops your ability to regulate and relate to your internal emotions less critically. Supporting you in quietening the emotional disturbances within the mind. Without this you become fixed in behavioural patterns and unfulfilling relationships, often repeating the same patterns over again. A life that feels stunted blocked with a sense of unease and burnout. You may want and seek change but cannot seem to access or sustain it.

For some, the suffering may take on serious health consequences and manifest as a history of depression, anxiety or a lifetime of self-medicating with alcohol or other addictive substances. Mindfulness is the first step in present moment awareness helping you to make sustainable change.

You may identify as being over invested in digital technology. In this ever increasing digital world we are forgetting how to relate to ourselves often seeking elaborate ways to avoid distract from our internal mind disturbances. Spending a phenomenal amount of time in external self-soothing and creating unhealthy relationships with our digital devices.

Here at Mindful Psychology we are experts in our field and we support you in gaining skills in emotional resilience. Whether you want to attend a group mindfulness course or individual therapy, we are here to support you every step of the way.

How does it Work?

We believe the ability to work through challenges and relationship difficulties depends on how you relate to yourself and the world around you. How you relate to the disturbances in your mind and the ability to self sooth is fundamental to growth and change. When you have limited access to your internal self- soother, you have less emotional resilience. For decade’s psychologists have studied the consequences of poor emotional regulation and under developed self-soothing.

Self-soothing is developed and nurtured in childhood. This developmental stage is crucial to building psychological resilience in times of stress. Psychologists often enquire about how securely attached to your care givers you were in childhood, for some the attachment does not reach its full potential. For the child this can often give rise to an inner critic and negative patterns of behaviour that continue into adult life.

Often reflected in over thinking, getting stuck in endless streams of thoughts, mind disturbances and a sense of disconnection and a fear of change. The remedy, you try to think your way out of stress and anxiety, but this just creates more worry psychologists call this rumination. Mindfulness helps you to break the cognitive feedback loops that creates rumination. This is achieved by stepping off automatic pilot, distancing yourself from your thoughts and relating to yourself compassionately.  It reduces impulsivity and worry whilst building insight and emotional resilience towards the disturbances within the mind.