Mindfulness-based Stress Management Online

ONLINE MINDFULNESS STRESS REDUCTION THERAPY

OVERCOMING EMOTIONAL STRESS REACTIONS

Emotional stress is something that we all experience when we have to cope with the many demands and responsibilities of home and work. Stress can be defined as an intense emotional and physiological reaction to a situation or the mental representation of a situation as a memory or anticipation. Chronic stress is produced when stress reactions do not resolve themselves and become habitual. The sustained physiological effects of chronic stress can have a serious effect on the body and lead to an increased risk of disease. The psychological effects of chronic stress produce fatigue, poor concentration and an impaired ability to perform tasks, which leads to more stress. Stress produces a general feeling of helplessness and negativity, both of which reinforce the stress reactions. This produces a lack of vitality, enthusiasm and creativity and many people describe chronic stress as a heavy blackness that covers everything and in its severe form, chronic stress leads to depression. Chronic stress can result in an increased chance of accidents as well as reducing work performance. Chronic stress also reduces our listening and learning skills and this reduces the quality of communication in our personal relationships and family.

Online Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

It is well recognized that stress reactions are learned and originate from the influence of our own mental outlook and from belief patterns acquired from our parents, family and culture. Stress always contains both an objective component and a subjective component and in most situations it is the habitual subjective emotional reactivity that generates the emotional tension and physiological characteristics of stress. There is pain and there is suffering. Pain is the objective component that is often inevitable or unavoidable, but suffering is a subjective reaction that we generate and add to the pain. The Buddha described this subjective suffering as dukkha and not surprisingly, mindfulness, which is one of the central teachings of the Buddha, was and continues to be very relevant for working with and resolving emotional stress.

The other major source of stress comes from unresolved traumas that result from physical injury, assault, domestic abuse and violence. In general this kind of trauma-related stress results from experiences and associated emotional reactions that we cannot process, because they are outside of our normal range of experience. These unresolved wounds become repressed and submerge into the subconscious mind where they continue to simmer and generate a generalized anxiety. This is described as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Occasionally, in severe cases of PTSD resulting from war or other intense situations, the stress reactions will erupt as nightmares and flashbacks in which the individual re-lives the trauma.

Whatever the source of the stress reactions, it is important to understand that each reaction has an internal structure in the form of negative thoughts and beliefs and associated emotional energy that gives power to these thoughts. It is often very helpful to examine these negative thoughts and try to change them. This is the approach taken in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Another approach is to change the emotional energy that empowers the thoughts and beliefs, because without this compulsive charge, the beliefs will have no power to generate stress. This is the approach taken in Mindfulness Meditation Therapy (MMT). Through careful attention and investigation of the emotion through mindfulness, we can uncover the internal structure of the emotion and discover what needs to change. As the structure changes, so does the emotion. Resolve this and you will neutralize the stress reactions.

OVERCOMING STRESS REACTIONS: THE FOUR Rs

Stress is generated by habitual emotional reactions to external events and internal beliefs. These patterns of negative thinking can be changed by the application of the four Rs, which are the primary focus of MMT. These are: RECOGNITION, REFRAMING, RELATIONSHIP, RESOLUTION.

RECOGNITION
All habitual emotional reactions rely on two key elements: ignorance and emotional energy. The first task in MMT is to learn to recognize our stress reactions as they arise in stressful situations. We train ourselves to watch very carefully for any impulse to react. This counteracts the automatic and mechanical part of what makes reactions habitual. The maxim of MMT is that all change begins with mindfulness and mindful-recognition is the first and most important step. You know what pushes your buttons. It might be in your personal relationships with your partner or with your children or perhaps with your parents. One of the most important steps you can take on the path of self-transformation is to take the initiative to examine what stressors cause you to react and to learn to recognize your impulse to react. This is very empowering and changes your attitude from being a victim to being a warrior. For most of the time, most of us react out of habit and have no awareness of what is happening while it is happening. We are simply seduced into the same automatic patterns of reactive thinking over and over again. Clearly, the first step is to break this pattern of ignorance and know what is happening as it happens. This is the fundamental first part of mindfulness. Mindfulness means to be present for experience as it is unfolding.

REFRAMING
Now you are learning to recognize anger reactions, disappointment and frustration reactions, fear and anxiety reactions as they arise in real-time. This new awareness can be very transformational by itself by simply making you conscious of what you are doing. It is a truth that what you don't see is what has the greatest power over you. Awakening to what is happening is therefore the first step to change.
The next step that paves the way for transforming the emotional energy that powers stress reactivity is to change your relationship to the emotion. Our usual response is to say I am angry or I am afraid or I am upset and we literally become the emotion. Contrast this to saying I notice anger/fear/upset in me. Now the emotion becomes reduced to an object, not me, that I can relate to with mindfulness. This simple reframing of how we perceive an emotional reaction - as me or as an object that has arisen in me is itself transformational.

RELATIONSHIP
However, what keeps a reaction alive is the associated emotional charge, without which the reaction would have no power to cause stress. MMT teaches us how to form a non-reactive relationship, the Mindfulness Based Relationship, with this underlying emotional energy that compels us to react. This is the RELATIONSHIP phase of MMT.
The mindfulness relationship is very important. This is where we allow ourselves to open our awareness and investigate the emotional energy, which is quite different to our usual reactions of ignorance, avoidance or aversion. We choose to be fully present with the inner feelings behind the stress reactions, rather than getting sucked into the content and story line. Just as in personal relationships, it is the quality of our PRESENCE, our ability to listen with an open mind and heart that is most important. Now we are learning to cultivate this same presence for our inner emotional stress. The nature of the mind is such that if you allow things to change, they inevitably will. If you allow things to change and unfold into this safe spaciousness of the mindfulness-based relationship, things will change in a beneficial direction that will transform and resolve the inner conflict and pain. It is the habitual reactivity that stops this natural healing and as we learn to disengage from the patterns of reactivity we create the right conditions in which emotional tension will resolve itself.

RESOLUTION
Mindfulness creates a therapeutic space that allows the emotion to unfold and undergo transformation. If you give it space it will change. This is one of the great discoveries made by the Buddha, 2500 years ago and which we are rediscovering today. It is not what we do that matters as much as how we relate to our emotional stress. When this relationship is based on the receptivity and openness of mindfulness, then we create the best possible conditions in which emotional tension can resolve itself.
Resolution can be understood as the process in which a stress producing emotion like anger or anxiety or disappointment undergoes a process of unfolding and differentiation. When we investigate anger with mindfulness, we begin to see that the anger is actually an assembly of more subtle content - the inner structure - in the form of feelings, memories, sensations and often some form of inner imagery that pulls all these parts together into the form of an emotion. The anger differentiates into feelings of sadness, emptiness, fear. With intense stress reactions resulting from trauma, we will likely notice vivid inner imagery. It is by uncovering the internal structure of the emotions and associated imagery that change becomes possible and mindfulness provides one of the best ways of cultivating a safe relationship with painful content by teaching you how to stay present and avoid becoming reactive to what you are uncovering.

Through becoming conscious of the inner structure of the emotions that power our stress reactions, the emotional energy will change and resolve. Without this emotional power, there is nothing to sustain the emotional reactions and life-long patterns of stress producing reactivity begin to dissolve, leaving you free from their compulsive grip. Like the petals of a lotus bud that were previously held and constrained so tightly, the mind begins to explore a new freedom with all its possibilities and choices. This is the freedom that the Buddha talked about and that is possible for all of us to discover through the practice of mindfulness. MMT teaches you how to apply mindfulness to resolve your patterns of habitual reactivity so that you can realize your full potential and enjoy your life and relationships to the full.

Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.

Besides therapy sessions in his Boulder Office, Dr. Strong provides an Online Counseling Service via Skype.

Visit my YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/pdmstrong 
 

Email inquiries about Online Therapy and Online Counseling are most welcome. Request an Online Psychotherapy Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.

You can purchase a copy of Dr Strong’s book ‘The Path of Mindfulness Meditation’ at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk and Barnes&Noble.com. A Kindle edition is also available.

Online Mindfulness Meditation Therapy for Stress Management

ONLINE MINDFULNESS THERAPY FOR STRESS

The single major cause of emotional suffering and stress in our lives comes from the accumulated habitual emotional reactions to life events that we acquire through unconscious learning. We become victims of recurrent negative thoughts and patterns of emotional reactivity that operate automatically in the mind, and that operate outside the sphere of conscious choice. We become prisoners of our habitual thinking and suffer accordingly. Therefore, it stands to reason that if we want to reduce our level of emotional stress and suffering, we must learn new strategies to counteract and neutralize our conditioned habitual reactivity, and regain freedom and choice in how to respond to the demands of life.

            Online Mindfulness Meditation Therapy teaches you how to work with your habitual reactivity through a series of exercises designed to help you recognize reactivity and then defuse this reactivity through mindfulness. Mindfulness is empowering, restoring freedom and choice, while creating the right inner space that allows emotions to unfold and resolve at the core level. Mindfulness training stops you from being the victim of conditioned stress reactions, and puts you back in the driving seat, allowing you to control how you want to feel, rather than simply falling under the spell of your habitual reactivity. The approach is relatively easy to learn and can be communicated very well through email correspondence and webcam sessions.

Online Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Therapy

Online MBSR

Stress Management Online

Stress

It is 8am and you wake up after a difficult night's sleep only to discover that the alarm didn't go off. This makes you very agitated as you realize that you will be late for work and your boss told you off for being late only last week. You tumble out of bed and rush down stairs for breakfast. No coffee. You become flustered at the prospect of starting the day without coffee, and you lose your temper with your partner for forgetting to turn on the coffee maker. Then you feel guilty about being angry, and that weighs heavily on your mind as you climb into your car. The car won't start. Now you are furious, because you recently paid a lot of money to have the car serviced. Being late, you hit rush hour and have to deal with all the frustrations of slow traffic, which increases your stress level to boiling point. Things are made even worse when a car cuts in front of you, and you explode with anger and yell at the driver. The driver turns out to be an old lady, and you feel embarrassed and guilty for your inappropriate reactions. Eventually you make it to the office, but there is nowhere to park, since you are late and you become even more dejected. Exhausted, you finally make it to the office, sit down at your work and begin a day doing a job that you don't enjoy in an environment that you hate and with people who do not seem to appreciate how hard you try. The boss says he wants to see you and panic sets in.

Does this sound familiar?

            For much of the time we live as slaves to the negative habitual emotional reactions of agitation, disappointment, frustration, anger, guilt, stress, anxiety and fear. The emotional suffering is not caused by being late or the difficult drive to work. These may be a source of pain, but are not sufficient to cause mental suffering. Suffering is always a product of the way we react to such events and these subjective reactions are something that we have learned unconsciously. As the saying goes,

“Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”

We learn to react with anger and disappointment when things don't go our way, in exactly the same way that we learn to be happy when our expectations are fulfilled. This is an important point, because although we cannot have complete control over external events, we can control how we react to them. If you remain attached to your reactions, then you will suffer as long as those attachments remain in place. This is what mindfulness is all about: learning to recognize your reactions and then responding to each of them with mindfulness, and through that process of touching each reaction with mindfulness, you learn to let go of your subjective reactions.

            Mindfulness is something that we are all familiar with at some level. We learn to be mindful when painting a picture or doing any activity that requires concentration. If we are wise, we will practice mindfulness when listening to our spouse or friend. We all know how important it is to listen with an open mind and be completely present. If you are not present, and lost in your own thoughts or lost in your own impulse to try and fix things, then your partner will probably feel that you are not listening, and communication will suffer. Being mindful, means being aware of what is happening right now, in the present moment. This means recognizing all that happens in the subjective world of your own reactions, as well as in the objective world of experience. In order to be fully present, you must be mindful of both internal and external events.

            In our usual unaware and unmindful state, we let our thoughts and emotions run wild, like unsupervised children, and this leads to confusion, disorder and emotional stress. Developing the skill of mindfulness means that we stop, look and listen to what is going on in the mind. We teach ourselves to recognize a thought when it arises and to see an emotional reaction when it arises. This is learning to recognize the contents of the mind and to respond to it with mindfulness. Now this is immensely important, because in that brief moment of mindful recognition there arises a moment of choice, before we become lost in the thought or emotional reaction. In mindfulness practice, we learn to recognize this interval and cultivate it so that it becomes longer in duration and stronger. With practice, we gain a completely different perception, and see the contents of the mind as objects, like the children in the classroom. We begin to see that we do not have to react, that we do not have to be dragged into reactivity by the thoughts or by the emotions that arise in the mind. We can learn to say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I choose not to react right now.” This is a completely different scenario than our usual impulsive reactivity, where we are compelled to react according to whatever content happens to arise in the mind.

            What we learn during Mindfulness Meditation Therapy is to make a fundamental shift in our identity from being identified with the contents of our mind, to being the knowing of the contents of our mind. Anger, disappointment, frustration, anxiety arise, but now we don’t identify with this content; we simply say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and remain mindful, observing and knowing what is present, but without the further reactivity that simply makes things worse. This is learning to see that we are not the same as our thoughts, but that we are actually much bigger than any of the thoughts, emotions or negative beliefs that arise. Our essential nature is as the container of all this content, the conscious space that contains; the pure knowing itself. This fundamental shift from being our thoughts to being the knowing of our thoughts is the most important first step on the path of inner transformation, and mindfulness is an excellent tool for cultivating this new state of being.

Mindfulness Meditation

We can practice mindfulness throughout the day in all our activities: in our physical actions; when speaking; and most importantly of all, the activities of our mind. This is cultivating mindfulness of body, speech and mind. What we are learning through mindfulness is to be more present for all these activities, whilst also learning to be mindful of any impulse to react to any activities involving body, speech and mind.

            Set yourself a task. Challenge yourself to be mindful when talking to a friend or colleague. Besides learning to be mindful of these activities, also look closely for any impulses to react emotionally. Look for anything that causes agitation and pulls you off balance. Recognize these reactions and respond to them with mindfulness.

            It’s also good to set aside 15-30 minutes each day to practice mindfulness meditation. Not having to deal with lots of distractions and demands can give you time to really work on your mindfulness skills. Mindfulness meditation means turning your attention inwards to examine the mind in detail and in depth. The more familiar you become with all the activities, impulses and habitual reactivity that constitute the mind, the less control they will have over you, and the more freedom you will experience. It is always what you don’t see that does you the most harm, and mindfulness meditation is learning to see exactly what is present in the mind. When we become cut off, or dissociated, from our inner emotions, they will control us. The purpose of mindfulness meditation is to reconnect with these inner parts that clearly needs our attention and care.

            Take a few minutes to relax and then close the eyes and go inside and get in touch with that inner stillness that lies just beneath the surface when we let go of thinking and reacting. Spend the first part of your meditation session residing in this inner stillness and watch for the arising of thoughts, worries and other mental objects, which will inevitably arise. Greet each thought, feeling or impulse. Acknowledge it and then gently let go of it and return your attention back to the still center. You my notice sounds, sensations in the body, or other physical sensations. Note each sense object as it enters your field of consciousness and then respond by gently letting go. In this way you cultivate the inner place of pure knowing that is still, tranquil and not reactive. This inner state of composure and stability is called samadhi, and as we develop samadhi, we develop a very powerful inner resource and strength that helps us maintain balance and prevents us from becoming reactive. After we have developed the felt-sense of this inner center of stillness, then we can proceed to the more difficult step of investigating our patterns of emotional reactivity.

            Imagine a scenario - past, present or future - that you know is a hot bed of reactivity. Perhaps a recent argument with a spouse, or something that you are worrying about, or some topic that creates anxiety and stress in your life.

            Now practice learning to recognize any emotional impulses that arise and try to pull you off balance into thinking or becoming upset or agitated. Learn to recognize each mental object, each thought, feeling and impulse, and respond to each with mindfulness and just see it as it is. When you respond with mindfulness in this way, then in each moment of mindful-contact, you are also spontaneously letting go of the impulse to react. Notice how, each moment of mindfulness returns you to that inner stillness and inner calmness that is not identified with the reactive content of the mind.

            This is not an easy process, and it will take time to develop, but what could be more important than learning not to react; of developing inner freedom and choice; of cultivating the inner strength and stability of mind in the midst of the chaos of our lives? If you make the effort, you can develop the skill of mindfulness, and it will grow exponentially as you begin to experience the benefits of not being the victim of the ups and downs of life. Every response of mindfulness strengthens the mind; every reaction based on unawareness weakens the mind. Mindfulness energizes our being; reactivity drains the mind and spirit. Mindfulness makes us more compassionate; reactivity makes us more violent.

            The choice is yours: responsiveness or reactivity; mindfulness or suffering. Good luck!

Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.

Besides therapy sessions in his Boulder Office, Dr Strong offers Online Counseling through Skype (Skype Therapy).

Email inquiries are most welcome. Request a Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.

 

You can purchase a copy of Dr Strong’s book ‘The Path of Mindfulness Meditation’ at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk. Also available on Kindle.

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