Unlocking and Nurturing Mindfulness to Begin the Path of Healing

Do you often find yourself functioning on auto-pilot with a numbness of being and without much thought or feeling? Or as if you’re just going through the motions partially submerged in water while breathing shallow? If you’re saying yes, chances are that you’re not mindfully living your life in a way that could bring you deeper contentment, a sense of purpose, meaning and healing.

Mindfulness can play a key role in healing ourselves and to work through our pain and suffering in an integrative and long lasting way. When we become more mindful we can listen and attune to the needs of our minds and bodies, we can make better choices for ourselves, seek the right help, learn how to self-regulate during challenging times and even learn to unravel the unconscious thought patterns that have been keeping us essentially mindless- on auto-pilot.

However, to understand mindfulness we need to accept and embrace the mind-body continuum. One cannot exist without the other. Also, we are not a static snapshot in time. Who we are in this moment- our whole self, including mind, body and spirit- is an amalgamation of every sensation, emotion, experience and thought prior to this moment. We are constantly in a state of motion and change internally and externally. Therefore, we must attend to the current needs of the mind and body as a whole in relation to its past trajectory, in a multidimensional manner.

Our inner narratives about pain and challenges learned over time prevents us from starting a meaningful healing process. I would like to highlight some factors that inhibit healthy mindfulness such as "automatic" deep rooted and self-defeating attitudes. Here are some perspectives to alter and shift the older ones that may be curbing your cure:

1. Compassion vs. Judgment: Know Thyself
Getting to know ourselves by observing how we relate to ourselves, our problems and our pain is really half the battle on our path to healthy mindfulness. Self-judgment, self-criticism and minimizing our difficulties is a major road block to mindfulness. I often hear "Who am I to complain when others have it worse?" or "I should be able to deal with this on my own" or "I can't get it together…what's wrong with me?" These kinds of self-debasing, self-minimizing thoughts are a sure way to keep self-compassion at bay. And without self-compassion there simply cannot be any mindfulness or healing. Don't confuse being mindful of yourself with being critical of yourself.

How we perceive ourselves is often how we perceive others and the world that contains us. And so, chances are that if we are judging and expecting perfection from ourselves we are also judging others and are in constant fear of being judged. And hence, the vicious cycle of punishing yourself curbs your ability to make mindful choices like helping yourself with kindness by reaching out and seeking help from others who in fact are not judging you for needing their assistance. Be curious and question the assumptions you make about how others are perceiving you. How much of it is “imagined”? To nurture and grow self-compassion get to know and respect your true self- who you are with all your strengths and limitations vs. who 'you think' the world expects you to be. The latter, is a self-defeating endeavor.

2. Control vs. Influence: The former is obsolete
Knowing yourself with compassion and accepting both strengths and limitations leads to the realization that we in fact do not have absolute "control" over ourselves or others...that perfection is an illusion. It reinforces that mindless, self-punishing inner narrative when we realize that we could not control something, and proceed to internalize that as our “failure". This may cause a deep disillusionment that can inhibit healthy mindfulness as it leaves one helpless and inert. The remedy for this disillusionment is taking back power by replacing the word control with "influence". We can influence outcomes for ourselves and others by making a series of positive and mindful choices to improve our situation.

3. Black & White Thinking vs. The Infinite Gray: Enduring the Unknown
An off-shoot of perfectionist attitudes that further inhibits mindfulness is black and white thinking. As long as we think in terms of 'polarities': either-or, this or that, all or nothing, good or bad, success or failure, our inner lives will remain constantly constricted and discontent. Such rigid and polarized thought processes stifle the much needed in-between space necessary for a self-reflective process and without self-reflection there is no self-compassion and hence, mindfulness. We need to learn to tolerate or rather, 'endure' the ambiguity of sitting with the nuances of the gray i.e. holding the feeling of 'not knowing' instead of taking the easy way out by jumping to extremes in the service of getting a concrete answer for all our doubts, fears and anxieties- a temporary fix.

4. Quick fixes vs. Lasting Change: Beyond the Band-Aid
If we're constantly on the hunt for a magical, singular answer or solution to all our problems we are in fact setting ourselves up for disappointment or discouragement when we realize that our difficult symptoms have returned yet again. This can then be internalized as our own failure. And the feeling of being a failure constricts mindfulness as it devours self-compassion. We need to try and expand our capacity to endure a "process" vs. a "product" (the product being the quick-fix). Our current minds and bodies were not constructed overnight and need to be understood and healed through a process over time. Understanding that we are a work in progress and always will be is a humbling and profound realization. And this, can help replace perfectionist attitudes with more empathy and patience for ourselves and our healing process without which mindful healing is next to impossible.

Keeping in mind that there is no final "end point" to our growth expands the space between the problem and the solution and encourages a healing process. We need to deepen our comprehension of our problems and not just deal with the "surface" symptoms but attend to the roots and causes as well if we want to see long-lasting change. By embracing our healing as a process we open up the much needed psychological space that mindfulness thrives in.