Mindfulness and Pandora's Box of Photo memories

A recent post over at "Stepping Over Junk" has got me thinking :-), about all the memories I have stored on my laptop (and backed up on my external drives, CD's and DVD's ..yes I'm obsessive!).

... the boys first attempts at sitting, crawling, walking .. their scrounging .. their first swim .. baths .. and then Little Missy's antics .. and firsts also .. and also all the days and fun I've captured on film ..

I took photos of her and the boys every month in the first year .. and I'd love to get myself organised and do a sequenced photobucket film ... just to see the changes ...

You can tell the spaces where I was 'unwell' as there are less photos . .and then when I was pregnant with Missy .. they are far and few between, as I couldn't hold my head up very far from the toilet let alone, hold a camera much ...

I was looking back and as well as making me laugh, cry (happy tears) .. and smile ... there are a few sad moments too where the emotions were way too over-whelming so I took photos and more photos to capture the moment .. after all that's what photos do huh?

I figured I have 12,213 photos to sort out .. a sign of the age of the digital camera ... not all are the best shots .. but I kind of feel, that the photos have captured the souls of the people in them .. and find I rarely delete a photo (unless of course it's blurry or out of focus etc) I don't really know why .. I just feel this need to keep everything .. just in case .. a grand distinguishing feature of my anxieties?

I'm in kind of an obsessive frame of mind this week, my Psychologist has dug where it has made me kind of uncomfortable. .. nothing that he has done, but more me having to shift away from the complete denial and start "thinking" about why and what I'm thinking and how this is impacting on how I am coping (well not coping) with day to day things .. and other "normal" things.

We've (well he has) talked a lot about Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy .. and as part of this I am to keep a "thought" diary if you will to help break down the thought cycle I have .. it's interesting stuff .. really, but kind of scary too .. I've done some digging on the Internet as I do .. and it all sounds fair enough in theory .. so .. here's hoping ..

From the website: MBSR Programs

About the Practice of Mindfulness

Mindfulness can be described as intentionally paying attention to the present moment without being pulled into the mind’s usual elaborations of judgment, internal dialog and the emotional reactions such elaborations can trigger. It is being with the experience of the moment with gentle compassion and a strong disciplined intention to simply stay present with whatever is happening in the moment, allowing space for the experience to raise and fall away without adding our usual overlay of suffering, frustration or panic. More about Mindfulness.


In this program, we will learn to come into and remain in the richness of the present moment. We will focus on bringing our attention to our breath, physical sensations, thoughts and feelings through a variety of meditation techniques including mindful yoga, sitting, walking and eating meditation as well as mindful speaking and listening.

How will what I will learn through MBSR help to reduce my stress?

Stress research has shown us that it is not so much the stressor itself, but how it is perceived and what the mind/body does in reaction to that perception that’s determines whether or not we experience distress in response to a stressor.


By cultivating mindfulness we learn to relate to our experience with less anxiety and fear, allowing more space between experience and perception. With this skill, we can move from mindless reactivity to skillful response, from a sense of urgency to a calm inner peace. We bring a more compassionate attitude towards ourselves and our situations and therefore cause ourselves less suffering through unskillful reactive habits (e.g. a host of addictions, venting anger inappropriately, poor self care).


The skills learned through MBSR training can help reconnect us with our sense of wholeness regardless of what challenges we are facing. We can experience greater balance in our lives regardless of how chaotic things may appear from the outside.


These skills can be helpful to those living with work or family stress, relationship issues, mid-life transitions, emotional and psychological challenges, chronic pain or physical illness.

Those who practice mindfulness techniques, commonly report experiencing:

- A relaxed awareness of the present moment
- Enhanced psychological flexibility
- Release of unhelpful attachment or aversion
- Greater stress tolerance and impulse control
- Clarity and awareness of thought patterns
- Greater insight

From the paper :

Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical Review

- Ruth A. Baer, University of Kentucky.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy
Teasdale, Segal, and Williams (1995) proposed that the skills of attentional control taught in mindfulness meditation could be helpful in preventing relapse of major depressive episodes.


Their information-processing theory of depressive relapse suggests that individuals who have experienced major depressive episodes are vulnerable to recurrences whenever mild dysphoric states are encountered, because these states may reactivate the depressive thinking patterns present during the previous episode, or episodes, thus precipitating a new episode.


Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a manualized (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002) 8-week group intervention based largely on Kabat-Zinn’s (1990) MBSR program.


It incorporates elements of cognitive therapy that facilitate a detached or decentered view of one’s thoughts, including statements such as “thoughts are not facts” and “I am not my thoughts.” This decentered approach also is applied to emotions and bodily sensations.


MBCT is designed to prevent depressive relapse by teaching formerly depressed individuals to observe their thoughts and feelings nonjudgmentally, and to view them simply as mental events that come and go, rather than as aspects of themselves, or as necessarily accurate reflections of reality.


This attitude toward depression related cognitions is believed to prevent the escalation of negative thoughts into ruminative patterns (Teasdale et al., 1995).

Heaps more is on Google .. but this I found interesting too.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (UK site)

How does mindfulness help reduce the downward mood spirals?

1. When we enter a phase in our lives when we are vulnerable to depression, we lose touch with what is going on around us. It is a sort of tunnel vision: we can only see part of the landscape. We do not notice the moment when a spiral of low mood is starting.

Mindfulness practice helps us to see more clearly the patterns of the mind; and to learn how recognise when our mood is beginning to go down. This means we can ‘nip it in the bud’ much earlier than before.

2. The very ‘losing touch’ with things can put a barrier between ourselves and the small things in life that might have given us pleasure. This tendency can become extreme in clinical depression where it is known as ‘anhedonia’ (lack of pleasure from things we used to enjoy). But we all may know the feeling, especially when there is too much to do at work or home, or we are preoccupied on a project, when we don’t notice the small pleasures around us.

Mindfulness teaches us a way in which we can get back in touch with the experience of being alive.

3. Low mood can bring back memories and thoughts from the past, and make us worry about the future.

Mindfulness helps to halt the escalation of these negative thoughts and teaches us to focus on the present moment, rather than reliving the past or pre-living the future.

4. When we start to feel low, we tend to react as if our emotions were a problem to be solved: we start trying to use our critical thinking strategies. When these do not work, we re-double our efforts to use them. We end up over-thinking, brooding, ruminating, living in our heads.

Mindfulness helps us to enter an alternative mode of mind that includes thinking but is bigger than thinking. It teaches us to shift mental gears, from the mode of mind dominated by critical thinking (likely to provoke and accelerate downward mood spirals) to another mode of mind in which we experience the world directly, non-conceptually, and non-judgementally.

5. When we have been depressed, we dread it coming back. At its first sign, we may try to suppress the symptoms, pretend they aren’t there, or push away any unwanted thoughts or memories. But such suppression often does not work, and the very things we tried to get rid of come back with renewed force.

Mindfulness takes a different approach. It helps develop our willingness to experience emotions, our capacity to be open to even painful emotions. It helps give us the courage to allow distressing mood, thoughts and sensations to come and go, without battling with them. We discover that difficult and unwanted thoughts and feelings can be held in awareness, and seen from an altogether different perspective - a perspective that brings with it a sense of warmth and compassion to the suffering we are experiencing.

Phew all sounds fair enough to me .. I don't know what is worrying me about it .. well I do really .. but that's a whole new Pandora's box ..

Anyhoo ..

I baked today too .. after last weekend with no butter ..heh heh .. so muffins, jam drops, choc. fudge cake and afghans ..oh and lunch a quiche, were the order of the day and half it is is gone already .. All yum .. and admit I tasted the choc fudge cake .. it was too much to ignore .

So goodness knows what the scales will say tomorrow .. I wasn't in the best both in mind and body this week (another headcold!!!), so Thursday and Friday were bad choice in the food dept, but tomorrow is a new week .. and I must look in to hiring a cross trainer!!!

It's the last day of the Olympics too .. would love to sit up and watch the closing ceremony .. but alas .. I'm far too tired ..instead I'm waiting for DH's washing to finish so I can hang it out on the airer and then I can head off to bed ..

...and we have our own tag team Olympics event here anyway called "which one.. will wake mum up tonight" . and so far the boys are holding their own (C5 last night and M5 the night before) with Little Missy also not letting the team kids side down by coming in also at about 4.30am ... saying "reach .... drink" ... arrgghhh!!! *picture headbanging here*

**** A reminder to myself ... I just thought about what the psychologist said about ways of coping and dealing with M5's behaviour lately .. and it is a whole new post .. but was an interesting concept .. again all sounding great in therapy ,. and I'm hoping if I follow it through it will help abate things a bit more...