Hi Blueberry, Kizzie and Jazzy - I don't like the time-limited aspects of the course sessions, but I am doing my best to try to watch them whilst they are free - and I'll also try to do notes, when I can.
I watched Day 2 (22nd September 2019) which is a talk by Dr Ron Siegel called "Mindfulness in Trauma Treatment: Fitting the Practice to the Person."
(I would say that I found the process of watching this and the resulting thoughts and feelings that were triggered meant I wasn't able to get here till much later in the day to write up these notes, and I feared I might not manage it, but I am here, and I hope to put down my notes. The talk was good, but it made me think about a lot of things, and I think that normally I dissociate and avoid stuff - acknowledging that is quite hard really)
My notes:
What is Mindfulness? An attitude towards experience. Not a practice. Awareness of present experience with acceptance. Very subject to the Dunning-Kreuger effect. Actual competence is inversely proportional to perceived competence.
Helpful for many issues.
Studies - want to measure mindfulness. Hard to measure.
Higher resolution consciousness develops as one does mindfulness.
Everyday mindlessness - auto pilot, breaking and spilling things, lost in thought stream, wishing away/present moment to get to the good stuff.
Meaningful moments - consider them.
Heart, mind and senses - Present - more full presence. But they are the exception rather than the rule.
Ron Siegel noted that trauma patients will shut down if therapist indicates they can't tolerate the emotion. Need mindfulness to help the therapist ground themselves when talking to the client who has trauma.
Parallels with somatic experiencing.
Mindfulness - grounded in sensation rather than thought.
Opens up a whole realm of experiencing.
Body = another royal road to the unconscious.
Attune to inner experience - enables emotional experience that is shut away to be accessed.
How mindfulness practices work psychotherapeutically. Mechanism of action. Modify to fit the person.
When putting together the DSM V (DSM five) there were squabbles between what Ron Steigel termed the 'lumpers' versus the 'splitters' - lumpers want to lump apples and oranges together, whereas splitters argue there are more categories needed. (I think I missed the jist of this section, so sorry about that).
Emotional or experiential avoidance - looked at for the role in things that affect us. Talked about differences between sorrow and depression, and psychosis.
Things we do to defend that cause issues.
He gave examples of two different days:
Day 1: Bad cold, self-medicating, lack of sleep, feel horrible. Bad day. Flat tyre. "I can't handle it" - depleted and over-whelmed by moderate stressor.
Day 2: Healthy habits, reading inspirational material, good sleep, feeing refreshed, nice day and temperature, nice interaction with family member, 'Goldilocks' day with nice clients, mindfully enjoying day, gratitude. Then hit from behind in traffic, other driver is nice and apologetic, and all is ok - good outcome.
Difference in whether we feel resourced or not. Resilience and good capacity to bear things.
He spoke of 'De-Crease intensity of adversity psychological states'
Mindfulness:
1) Increases our capacity to bear discomfort. Therefore don't need to medicate or have ultimate external conditions met. Develop flexibililty. Increase sensitivity to emotional experiences. Full range of emotion. Experiential approach.
2) Don't necessarily do these things at same pace.
He said a patient has once said 'Bury feelings alive'
Trauma: Intensity of experience was greater than our felt capacity to bear it and in some way we shut down. Split it off and residue remains.
Reintegration = healing.
Danger - uncover and reintegrate more than we can bear.
Willoby Brown has done a 10 year study on adverse effects of mindfulness practices. Found lots of adverse effects. States of dissociation. States of anxiety/depression.
Most frequent precipitant was found to be 'De-Repression' - softening and too much material comes up too quickly.
Pacing and dosing important.
Green zone/Safe zone/Zone of proximal development - uncover and integrate but NOT too much, too fast.
Safety, resources: Which mindfulness strategies do this, versus uncovering, but could be premature and inappropriate.
Exercise: Close eyes together. Breath normal breaths. Notice sensations. Feel the body, how it feels inside, visceral feelings. Generate a small bit of sadness. Notice where you feel it in your body. Put your hand over that part of the body. Breathe. Generate a bit of anxiety/fear. Put hand on part of body you feel that. Allow connect with some anger/annoyance. Feel that part of body. Open eyes.
All emotions - exist as somatic events. Can feel where they are in the body.
Non-emotional discomfort
Distress tolerance. e.g. don't scratch your itch.
Increasing capacity to tolerate.
Emotions tend to be in central corridor of body - Face through to core.
Viscera - where emotions are most alive.
Less likely to be over-whelmed if using meditations involving e.g. walking
Distal, external objects
Inner work
Can bring either up.
To what degree can this person be able to be friends with their inner experience - useful question for therapist to ask about a client.
Denial or unable to recall things - 'ding dong'
Connectedness.
Inward practices to increase safety.
Benefactor. Represent love and kindness. May you be safe/peaceful/generate positivity.
Internalise positivity
Loving kindness practices
Self compassion practices
Positive psychology
Evoke it as an adult.
Acceptance
Carl Rogers and Winnicott
Back-draft - be juditious. Sense whether it might be overwhelming
Mountain medication - guided imagery. Kabbat-Zinn
Marsha Linehan - integrated mindfulness techniques
2 fists and open them.
"Sitting together" Tibetan. Turning towards sharp points.
Awareness vs acceptance practices.
Objects of attention.
Vivid versus subtle re: stimulus
Lots of decisions.
Mindfulness practices = a basket of things.
Spiritual aspects discussed at the end. Beyond isolated separateness. Transpersonal experience. Many pathways.
Dr Ron Siegel concluded with a mention of his website, which is Mindfulness-solution.com and he said there is some free things there that can be downloaded. So worth a look. (I've not had a look there yet, but hope to do so at some point).
(I realise these notes may not make sense unless you've seen the talk, but maybe they will be helpful - if you've missed it.)
Hope
