Mindfulness

Self-awareness is defined as a “conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires”. People have a choice of whether or not they want to be self-aware, and addiction has the ability to take away our self-awareness as well. For example, a 2014 study conducted by researchers in New York found that drug addiction compromised self-awareness, causing people to exhibit drug-biased attention, disregard for negative outcomes, dissociation with the self, and behaving in ways that are socially unacceptable. The study concluded that treatment interventions that facilitate self-awareness building could serve as an effective foundation throughout recovery. Recovery programs often incorporate activities through individual or group therapy and other methods to help individuals build their self-awareness. These activities may include:

We’ve all had moments of built up frustration and anger. When this happens, you may feel the need to immediately get your thoughts – and feelings – out into the open via a friend, family member, coworker, or stranger. Venting means to freely express strong emotions. When this happens, you may feel a sense of relief because you finally got everything off your chest. While this may feel good for the moment, there are some dangers that can arise with this as well. The Huffington Post states that venting can keep us stuck in a negative cycle of anger and can prevent us from coming up with creative solutions to the problem. For example, if you dislike your job you may vent about it to coworkers; if this happens once it may be harmless but doing this often without applying to other jobs and attempting to take actions towards resolving your issues means that more anger will fester – and you may lose patience with your coworkers. All in all, venting can reinforce negative attitudes towards a situation. What can be done about this? There are many healthy ways to manage your anger and frustration without stewing. Here are some excellent examples:

Anger is a powerful emotion, and, when used inappropriately, it can damage relationships in significant ways. Whether you are currently single or in a relationship, understanding the impact that anger can have on you and others may give you insight to educating yourself on effective coping strategies and ways to express anger. When it comes to your love life, Psych Central claims that even mundane instances that occur throughout the day can lead up to resentment, which further harbors anger. Here are the following steps that you should try to follow when feeling angry:

Honesty is being free of insincerity and deceit. Sometimes, when we think we are really being honest with others, we are not being sincere with ourselves. Other times, when we think we are being clear with ourselves, we are deceiving others. What we consider to be honesty might be an exaggeration, elaboration, or total evasion of the truth. We want to give others the honest truth but we don’t want to be honest with ourselves. Before we can be honest with others in order to stick up for ourselves, set a boundary, or define our needs and wants, we have to be honest with ourselves. Where are we coming from? What are we triggered by? What do we honestly need? Are we honestly aware of what we need or what we want? We have to first get a gauge on what is going on within us before we can start responding to what is going on outside of us.

When you have an entire world between your ears, constantly buzzing around, it is hard to find some silence. Silence is daunting. Stillness is frightening. Silent and still, you have to confront all of that noise swirling around your head. It makes you uncomfortable, but you’ve learned to live with it because that is the way that you are, that is the way that your brain is. As a result, you’re busy. You’re busy in the brain and you’re busy in the body. You keep yourself busy to keep yourself away from the silence. At some point, you aren’t sure which would be more insufferable, the silence or the business of your life. You aren’t alone in this struggle. Modern life is busy and most people are struggling to find time to sit still, in silence, because of both their busy lives and their busy minds. In times of being busy, they’re wishing they could sit still. In times of sitting still, they’re thinking about busy things. Silence and stillness are precious commodities. An increasing amount of research is indicating that you need time for silent stillness and still silence in order to fully thrive in life. Stress is a leading cause of disease and illness physically. Mentally, stress which is caused by unrelenting busy-ness can trigger mental illness symptoms causing them to become more severe. For example, in drug and alcohol use disorders, chronic stress without any pause for manageability, can cause cravings.

To be mindful is to be “conscious or aware of something”. How often are you totally conscious- aware of and responding to your environment- of what you’re eating? Do you really taste your food when you eat it? Take time to appreciate it? Know how much you’re eating? Really discern whether you are full or not, eating for hunger or not? Too often we tell ourselves we’ll only have one slice of pizza and eat half the pie. We go beyond our self-set limits because we go unconscious when we eat. We stop being aware of what we are eating, how we are eating it, and the effect it has on our body. We eat only to feed ourselves, sometimes we eat to feed our emotions. Essentially, we become mindless about our eating. For all forms of mental health recovery, eating, diet, and nutrition are essential parts of a recovery program. Mindfulness is a practice that can be applied to all areas of recovery because mindfulness is applied to all areas of life. As a form of but separate from meditation, mindfulness helps focus the mind. Practicing mindfulness is as easy as paying more attention, becoming more aware, noticing more, and bringing an element of non-judgment. When you’re reaching for that next mindless snack, you’ll suddenly find yourself thinking- why am I eating? Should I be eating? Do I want to be eating this if I am hungry? According to the Center for Mindful Eating, mindful eating is defined as being aware of how healing and nurturing food can be. Using food preparation as an opportunity to connect with your food and respecting your “inner wisdom” about food are mindfulness practices as well. When you choose mindfully, you are “choosing to eat food that is both pleasing to you and nourishing to your body by using all your senses to explore, savor and taste.” You recognize your autonomy in responding to food authentically. Mindfulness allows you to eat what you like and what you don’t like without judging yourself. Lastly, mindful eating helps you to become aware of your physical hunger to know when you’re truly hungry and when you’re not as well as when you’re still hungry as opposed to when you’re eating for other reasons. Mindfulness is studied for its beneficial effects in reducing stress and symptoms of mental health stressors like anxiety and depression. Research has found that mindfulness reduces stress and improves mental clarity, improving habits and behaviors. When you bring mindfulness into your eating, you make eating a conscious, connected experience which provides benefits to your mind as well as your body.