Homework Exercise

from the MBSR Workbook

If you do these this week and want to talk over anything that came up, we can hang out after for a few minutes and go over it.

Reflect on what works and what doesn’t in each scenario below.

Take a few minutes to sit with the questions silently, noticing any thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Just let whatever arises be without judgement. When you’re ready, write as briefly or in depth as you like.

1.

Sometimes difficult or distressing events you’ve experienced in the past can influence your current stress and anxiety. For example, many people have been wounded, physically or emotionally, in childhood. Likewise many of us have witness traumatic events or have experiences like being humiliated at work or not being accepted by friends

Take a few minutes to reflect on any past challenges that you might currently be carrying around with you.

2.

As you’ve journeyed through life, you’ve found ways to deal with stress, pain, or illness. For example you might talk with friends, exercise, meditate, eat healthy foods, or watch a funny movie.

In addressing your stress, what have you tried that has been helpful in the past?

3.

Sometimes you may have chosen unhealthy ways to deal with your challenges. Perhaps you overeat, work too much, watch too much TV, spend hours on the internet or engaged in email, or use drinking, sex, or drugs to excess. These strategies often feel like they help initially , but they don’t help in the long run.

In dealing with stress or anxiety, what have you tried that ultimately didn’t seem to help? If judgement is there, let it be and make a note of it.

4.

Hope can reduce suffering and support resiliency in the face of life’s challenges. It’s a strength that we all have inside.

What do you hope for? What do you hope will be different? What kind of life do you want to move toward?

Before you finish, take a few minutes to connect with your breathe and mindfully reflect on what you just wrote, compassionately acknowledging, validating, and integrating everything you learned from this exploration.

Ways we deny or avoid facing apprehensions and fears

from the MBSR Workbook

Recognizing Mind Traps

Mindfulness helps with stress by enabling you to observe the mind traps that may play a role in your stress or your reaction to stress. Mind traps are common mental habits that tend to exacerbate stress and pain.

Negative Self-Talk
Self talk refers to the way you talk to yourself as well as additional styles of thinking and how you automatically interpret events. Unfortunately, our inner monologue is often negative and can distort reality when we are anxious or stressed.

When a stressful thought pops into your mind, you can think of it as an event in the mind. You can become aware of it as it even as it arises and also notice as it eventually passes.

Habitual Styles of Thinking
It’s easy to get caught in habitual styles of thinking that leave you feeling stuck and moody. Because these often occur unconsciously, it’s helpful to become familiar with them so you can be mindful of when you might be falling into these traps.

• Catastrophizing
  Amplifies anxiety by automatically imagining worst possible outcome for challenging situations.
• Exaggerating the Negative & Discounting the Positive
  Positive experiences are downplayed or not acknowledged while negative details are magnified like following a positive comment with “but” leading to a negative statement.
  TIP: Experiment with replacing the word “but” with “and” to give both aspects equal weight.
• Mind Reading
  Convincing yourself you know what other people are thinking and feeling and why they act the way they do, without actual evidence.
• Being the Eternal Expert
  When being wrong isn’t an option, you’re continually on trial to defend your opinions and actions.
• The “Shoulds”
  Having a list of unbreakable rules for yourself or others. Experiencing guilt if you haven’t lived up to your own expectations and anger or resentment if others break these rules.
• Blaming
  Holding others responsible for your own pain or holding yourself responsible for the problems of others. If you perceive that solutions lie outside you, you deprive yourself the power to effect change.

Negative Interpretations
It isn’t unusual for an initial response to be a negative interpretation, and this often happens so quickly or unconsciously that we don’t realize we’re doing it, keeping you in a self-perpetuating cycle of anxious feelings and tense physical sensations. In reality, we never know when something that seems like a disaster will be a gift.

Notice if there’s any negative self-talk in your mind at this moment. you may hear thoughts like “this isn’t going to work for me” or “things will never change.” If so, ask yourself if there’s another way you can view the situation.

Take this practice with you into your daily life, looking for automatic negative interpretations and other mind traps.

Meditations

from the MBSR Workbook

Walking Meditation

Practice walking mediation outside for at least 10 minutes with no distractions (phones, dogs, etc.) a few times this week.

Mindful walking is an excellent way to get out of a stressful and anxious head and feel your feet on the earth. In everyday life, walking generally consists of going from point A to point B. You may feel that you’re almost constantly on the go and on your feet. Walking meditation is different. It’s deliberate and serves a different purpose than simply getting from A to B. With walking meditation, the point is to arrive in the present moment with each step.

Detailed instructions for walking meditations

Fifteen-Minute Mindful Breathing

This practice, a fifteen minute version of the mindful breathing practice from week 3, will support you in bringing yourself back to the present moment with greater awareness, compassion, and peace. As such, it’s a good antidote to all varieties of mind traps and therefore often serves as a starting point for the meditations we’ll cover in the coming weeks. Remember, at any point in time you can use the breathe as an anchor to come back to the present moment.