Mindfulness-Based Counseling & Mindfulness Therapy
Reduce Anxiety and Stress, Better Understand Yourself and Others, and Create a Life You Truly Love
Given everything we have going on in our lives, it comes as little surprise that our minds are active with many thoughts and emotions, leaving us feeling high-strung, stressed, anxious, and burned out.
When you’re constantly fidgety, overwhelmed, preoccupied, ruminating, incapable of letting go of distress, and feel like you need to take responsibility for anything and everything that happens, just finding five or ten minutes to unwind can seem an impossible task, let alone making the time to truly relax, meditate, and take care of your mental health.
Yet making time for mindfulness-based practices, such as focused breathing and meditation, is incredibly important for your physical, mental, and emotional health.
This is why we not only incorporate Mindful Practices into all of our work with clients; we even chose it as the name for our group practice!
Mindfulness therapy techniques play an invaluable role in helping clients slow down and pay attention to what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling in a non-judgmental way, which is absolutely necessary to create true healing and growth.
All of this begs the question …
What Exactly Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness can be described as a mental state of focused yet relaxed awareness of the present moment.
Being mindful is about focusing on the present and quieting the inner critic inside of us that is based on a negative narrative and that often judges everything we’ve done, are doing, or plan to do.
Quieting this internal dialogue by practicing mindful awareness can help you become more open and curious about your thoughts and feelings in the here and now, change the narrative, and transform your relationships with yourself, others, and the world around you.
Mindfulness practices have been shown time and time again to help individuals develop concentration skills, reduce anxiety and stress, improve digestion, reduce insomnia, better one’s understanding of one’s self, and discover what’s truly important and meaningful in one’s life.
But how can you maintain a state of mindful awareness, stay focused on the here and now, and do the work necessary to heal and grow, especially when your mind keeps running away from you like it does so often?
This is exactly what incorporating mindfulness techniques into counseling and psychotherapy is all about!
Mindfulness in Therapy
Most of us have an “inner critic.” And we often rationalize, deny, or dismiss uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. But being self-critical, rationalizing, denying, or dismissing our thoughts and feelings doesn’t help us actually create change. Those thoughts and feelings return, uninvited, time and time again.
Counseling and psychotherapy are all about acknowledging and accepting those uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, so we can understand them to create change.
However, like most things in life, attaining a state of mindfulness takes practice.
Fortunately, there are numerous simple techniques and exercises that we teach clients, all of which can help you quiet your inner critic, reduce anxiety and stress, and experience all the benefits mindfulness has to offer, both during and in between our sessions, including:
- Mindful breathing is a very simple, yet powerful exercise that you can do pretty much anytime and anywhere to regulate your breath, practice deep restorative breathing, and attain a sense of calm and focus.
- Mindful observation is another simple, yet powerful technique that works similarly to mindful breathing, except instead of focusing on your breath, you’ll connect to the present by focusing on what’s around you.
- Mindful awareness is all about stopping for a minute or two and being mindful of where you are, what you’re doing, how you feel, and what you are thinking.
Of course, this is only a few of the types of mindful practices we incorporate into our work and teach clients.
The primary goal of all of these types of mindful practices in therapy is to help you become consciously aware and accepting of your thoughts and feelings, so you can identify, understand, and change the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are holding you back from creating the relationships and life you desire.
Can Mindful Practices Help You?
Mindful practices aren’t difficult. But, as mentioned above and as the name suggests, attaining a state of mindfulness does take practice.
That being said, if you’re willing to put in the effort, mindfulness techniques and mindful practices can help you improve your concentration, problem-solving, and coping skills, decrease anxiety and stress, better cope with overwhelming situations and chronic pain, improve your immune system and overall levels of health and wellness, and help you better understand yourself and how you relate to others and the world around you.
In fact, becoming more mindful of who we are and how we think and feel in order to create the changes we desire is what counseling and psychotherapy are all about!
So, if you’re ready to stop ruminating about the past, free yourself from worries about the future, discover who you REALLY are, and create a life you truly love in the present, contact us today to schedule a free, 15-minute, initial phone consultation. We look forward to speaking with you and helping however we can.