How does awareness of our ever-changing emotions affect daily life? A woman I know who is a meditator, and the mother of a ten-year-old boy, sheds some light on the question.
"Sometime late in the afternoon my son, Danny, got antsy and began to run around the living room. Fairly soon I heard my daughter cry. Danny had tripped her. After a mild rebuke, I tried to divert his attention by suggesting that he play a game on his Xbox. You would have thought I told him to eat worms! He stomped and screamed at me, and before I knew it, I was screaming back at him. In my effort to calm him down, I became as out-of-control as he was.
"If only I had remembered to watch my emotions rise, manifest and fade instead of grabbing on and riding them like a bucking bronco. I got thrown and trampled in the process!!!! How I wish I had watched that bucking bronco instead of hopping on!"
This Mom responded to her son's fleeting mood as if it were a mighty force that had to be conquered. In so doing she pumped lots of energy into that late afternoon fiasco. The good news is that she was aware of it and so not completely lost. I wonder what would have happened if she had, as she wished, stepped aside and simply observed her own upset.
What happens for you?
4/12/2007
The Psychotherapist's Corner
A meditation-inspired psychotherapy offers people a way of understanding their problems as well as a way of healing them... This full day retreat offers an opportunity to engage in learning mindfulness psychotherapy.
"The approach to working with others that I advocate is one in which spontaneity and humanness is extended to others."
---Chogyam Trungpa Rimposhe
Confusion, though uncomfortable, is a healthy state of mind. That's because it creates a great need for calm and clarity.
Psychotherapists can teach depressed people to become aware of their internal talk. This leads to the insight that thoughts are simply thoughts - nothing more. It also teaches that the person is bigger than his or her thoughts or the depression that comes with them. The result is a greater capacity to cope.
Meditation is a method for moving beyond the isolating tendency of the thinking mind.
Whether in a psychotherapy office or sitting on a cushion, we are practicing awareness. In the psychotherapy office our awareness is trained on the past and on the future. In meditation it is trained on the experience of awareness itself.
Narcissism is a double-edged sword; individuals suffering from narcissism either idealize or devalue themselves and others. Buddhist psychology blunts both sides of this sword by declaring that there is no solid and lasting self. Meditative exercises allow individuals to personally discover that they are ever changing, impermanent, and in the flow of life.
Meditation increases the psychotherapist's capacity for single pointed awareness. Relating in this way to a person who comes for help is an act of deep caring. It heals.
Strange how people come into our offices feeling guilty for trouble that is well beyond human control.
Letting go is a skill that can be taught.
"The approach to working with others that I advocate is one in which spontaneity and humanness is extended to others."
---Chogyam Trungpa Rimposhe
Confusion, though uncomfortable, is a healthy state of mind. That's because it creates a great need for calm and clarity.
Psychotherapists can teach depressed people to become aware of their internal talk. This leads to the insight that thoughts are simply thoughts - nothing more. It also teaches that the person is bigger than his or her thoughts or the depression that comes with them. The result is a greater capacity to cope.
Meditation is a method for moving beyond the isolating tendency of the thinking mind.
Whether in a psychotherapy office or sitting on a cushion, we are practicing awareness. In the psychotherapy office our awareness is trained on the past and on the future. In meditation it is trained on the experience of awareness itself.
Narcissism is a double-edged sword; individuals suffering from narcissism either idealize or devalue themselves and others. Buddhist psychology blunts both sides of this sword by declaring that there is no solid and lasting self. Meditative exercises allow individuals to personally discover that they are ever changing, impermanent, and in the flow of life.
Meditation increases the psychotherapist's capacity for single pointed awareness. Relating in this way to a person who comes for help is an act of deep caring. It heals.
Strange how people come into our offices feeling guilty for trouble that is well beyond human control.
Letting go is a skill that can be taught.
