Therapy for
Addiction and Compulsive Behaviours
Bernadette Bustin CPsychol; AFBPsS
Chartered Psychologist
Counselling Psychologist
Meaningful Therapy for Enduring Change
Across the UK On-line; In-Person and Walking Therapy in Mid-Wales
Mindfulness
If you are considering having therapy with me, starting to practice mindfulness in advance will help you during your therapy. Additionally, it will be a useful skill for work in-between sessions. However, if therapy is not for you right now, developing a regular mindfulness practice will start to bring you greater calm and will give you more capacity to begin moving towards the changes that you want. Mindfulness is perhaps one of the most useful skills we can learn. Regular practice will slow down a mind that is too busy; enable you to see more clearly what thoughts and feelings are in charge in your inner system; learn to be more accepting and less judgmental about your experience and so develop less self-criticism, more self-kindness and greater wellbeing. Making time in your day to stop and take just three, slow breaths, that you pay conscious attention to, can be a great start to creating a bit of ‘mental space.’
If you feel ready to develop a more structured and regular practice of mindfulness, you will find an abundance of mindfulness resources on the internet. These are three websites that I would recommend to introduce you to the practice and help you to make it a routine part of your day.
The Free Mindfulness Project has curated guided mindfulness practices that have been provided by a range of skilled and experienced teachers. Their site offers a good range of practices of different lengths and types and all the downloads are completely free. https://www.freemindfulness.org/download
Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, two very highly respected mindfulness and meditation teachers from America, have compiled a 40 day course to help people to develop a regular, daily practice in mindfulness. This is offered completely free on Tara’s website: https://courses.tarabrach.com/courses/mindfulness-daily
Dave Potter of Palouse Mindfulness offers a complete Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course online. This is based on a world-renown course developed by John Kabat Zinn from the University of Massachusetts Medical School. It is an eight session course that you can complete at your own pace with the option of live Zoom calls to practice with others and ask any questions.