Blog 5
Building Insight and Applying Skills: Being Open to New Possibilities and Opportunities
The Mindfulness Response teaches awareness through meditative exercises. When people become more aware of themselves and their environment, they begin to see the world in a new way. This new way of seeing or perceiving is the world of possibilities and opportunities.
It’s important to consider different possibilities and opportunities that occur each day. Being open to them helps us realize that we have choices in life. The group members discussed how to build trust in yourself and others. Members discussed how conversations with a support person can help develop stronger trust in relationships. Reflecting on our daily routine and the small interruptions can help us recognize possibilities. Noticing your expressions, actions, and feelings, while remaining open can bring inspiration, creative ideas, and sparks of the imagination (Zander & Zander 2002).
The group was challenged to be open to fresh possibilities. They talked about being stuck with strong emotions or negative thoughts and trying to consider small changes to alter their mood. The group noticed how talking with a support person helped reduce suffering and painful emotions and how it can diffuse negative thoughts and intense feelings.
We make choices daily. Sometimes people can’t get out of bed, have low motivation and energy, and can’t do their daily self-care due to mental illness symptoms. Recurrent symptoms of depression can slow us down. These behavior patterns can become problematic and interrupt work, college, and family life.
A supportive person can help you become more objective about your symptoms and what you are experiencing. A therapist can help you manage your feelings and actions when you are slowed down. Doing this by yourself may be too difficult.
One participant told the group “I don’t know how to change my perceptions. I can’t change my mindset. I am frustrated with what happened and don’t know how to change.”
Challenging the desire to stay in bed, sleep longer, to avoid self-care is a way to escape feelings, but it doesn’t solve any problems; in fact, it creates additional problems. Understanding yourself and why you are doing this is part of the Mindfulness Response. Every day is another opportunity to try something new. Sometimes applying the Mindfulness Response includes challenging your current attitudes and beliefs and acting the opposite of what you want to do.
Skills are borrowed from other therapeutic models. There is no use in reinventing the wheel; when a skill is known and useful, try it instead of staying in bed and sleeping all day. This challenges your desire to avoid the feeling and presents a way to change your attitude by using “opposite to emotion,” a skill from DBT (Linehan 1993). This skill takes the courage to challenge current beliefs and move in a different direction.
The “opposite to emotion” skill challenges current thoughts, feelings, and actions and demands doing the opposite. Instead of staying in bed and sleeping, you get up, shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, and try to do something new. You don’t stay in bed all day and sleep.
Challenging yourself is part of the Mindfulness Response. To learn and grow you need to become open to change, new opportunities, and new possibilities. Group therapy participants talked about being afraid of change and trying to hold on to the old routine and the bad habits. The group members talked about how they got into a rut and needed someone to help them get out of it.
Making Plans
The group discussed possibilities and what to do when things don’t go the right way. Participants talked about the need to make plan B. Life changes can interrupt our routines any day. There are alternatives to find ways to make us happy, content, or satisfied. Participants talked about taking time to consider other possibilities.
The group discussed how there are interruptions in life and that they had to change their schedules. Things don’t always go as planned but that doesn’t mean that all things will fail. If we remain open to the possibility of a change, things can work out to be better than expected.
The group discussed being afraid to make changes. Being afraid to try new things in life is only fear. Participants talked about the fear that held them back from new opportunities, friends, and experiences. Being with emotions helped the participants understand them better.
The Mindfulness Response teaches us to disengage from the distress and once this is done, we can see alternatives. The participants talked about opportunities and options that always exist. The group practiced mindfulness to observe, notice, and acknowledge their feelings and negative thoughts about a situation and were patient with the results. The group discussed that it was better to wait for a while to clear their minds. Once this is achieved, participants find how opportunities can be created. Ideas from the group conversations are:
Possibilities to Change My Mood
Below is a list of ways that participants used to change moods or negative thoughts. There are times when we can’t do what we planned. Try to find an alternative. Make a plan B for when the original plan falls apart. What happens if you choose something different from your usual choices? Keep an open mind and go to a new event.
This may seem scary to do, at first. Take some deep breaths and use a DBT skill called “opposite to emotion.” Challenge yourself to do a new event or to go to a new place. If it causes a great deal of anxiety, try to go with another person.
Notice your feelings and thoughts and acknowledge them. Your feelings are real. Your thoughts may tell you not to go, but sometimes we have to challenge these thoughts to break out of old habits.
Possibilities to Change My Mood__________________________________
Item Good, Wonderful Next Best Thing
Colors: Wear a new color or style. |
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Weather: Observe clouds, a storm, and the effects. |
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Pets or animals: Take time to be with them. |
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Food: bake, prepare, or cook something |
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Hobbies: Explore and try or return to an old hobby. |
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Music: Try listening to a new type, sing or hum |
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Seasons: Notice colors and smells and walk outside. |
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Work or vocations: What is going right? |
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Friends, family: contact someone. |
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Classes: What is interesting in your community? |
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Events: Plan or help plan a holiday event. |
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Support groups: Who is a support? |
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Movies: Something inspirational? |
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Possibilities to Change My Mood
References
Linehan, M. (1993) Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
Guilford Press. (ISBN10: 0898621836)
Zander, R. & Zander, R. (2002). The art of possibility. Penguin Books, New York.
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