Psychotherapists often ask about ways to introduce mindfulness and meditation to clients. There are other posts on this blog that offer basic introductory information on both content and process.Cognitive learning difficulties here I will simply introduce you to four brief, basic meditations for clients suffering from anxiety and/or depression, along with pervasive cognitive “stuckness” on unhelpful thoughts and related emotions.Cognitive learning difficulties once our clients – and ourselves for that matter – get stuck on unhelpful cognitions and emotions from the past, we need to move to the present moment and be there in calmness and safety.Cognitive learning difficulties of course other interventions are required when psychosis, intoxication, or extreme emotional dysregulation occur; meditation is not the recommended response in these conditions.Cognitive learning difficulties one of the best ways to introduce your clients to meditation is to simply allow a gentle focus on the breath, just as it is. Relaxation-focused manipulation of the deep breath, especially for client with untreated trauma and polyvagal complications, may lead to the opposite effect – stimulating anxiety.Cognitive learning difficulties once your client can focus gently on her/his breath and benefit from brief exposures, he/she may be ready for brief meditations.

Below I have noted four scripts for you to use or modify as needed.Cognitive learning difficulties follow the rule-of-third by introducing the meditation cognitively (explain it); then with your client’s due process permission, do the brief meditation (in the body); and, after five or less minutes stop and process the meditation cognitively (talk about it).Cognitive learning difficulties always allow your client to stop the meditations at any time if they desire to do so. Comfort and safety are key values of psychotherapy process and relationship.Cognitive learning difficulties if you or your client have doubts about comfortably completing the meditations, your client may prefer to be phased into them. Do this minute-by-minute by breaking down the five minutes into shorter time periods.Cognitive learning difficulties complete one or two minutes (half the scripts) rather than the full five minutes. Since mindfulness and meditation have been proven in thousands of studies to be helpful in anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and emotion regulation (trauma and addictions), the more comfortable your client feels, the more likely he/she will continue practicing.Cognitive learning difficulties it is sometimes helpful to remind your client that if/when distraction occurs, that is the time to simply bring attention back to the task at hand.Cognitive learning difficulties return attention again.

• five-minute meditation for opening up the flow of energy – sit, relax, and breathe calmly with your eyes open. If you are comfortable with your eyes closed, that is fine.Cognitive learning difficulties if you like your eyes open, you may want to glance gently downward toward the floor about three feet in front of you. Do your best to hold your head in a relaxed and level position.Cognitive learning difficulties now loosen your jaw and notice. Practice releasing any tension that you may be carrying in your throat. Let it go very gently, and open up your throat.Cognitive learning difficulties now bring attention to the area of your heart center, and imagine a warm, glowing, gentle inner light there. Notice the feeling. Allow it to nurture you.Cognitive learning difficulties to end simply be with your natural breath; after a few breaths, allow it to bring you to full attention. This meditation is over.

• five-minute meditation on not judging – sit, relax, and breath naturally with your eyes opened or closed.Cognitive learning difficulties be as quiet inside as you can, and practice non-judging. Simply notice what comes into awareness for you, but without judging or evaluating it.Cognitive learning difficulties simply allow yourself to be with it. If your eyes are open, please close them if comfortable. Notice what comes into awareness BUT without judging or evaluating.Cognitive learning difficulties if your eyes are closed, please open them; simply note what comes into your awareness BUT without judging or evaluating it. Be as quiet inside as possible – enjoy the silence if it is there.Cognitive learning difficulties count five breaths and end this meditation.

• five-minute meditation on letting go of your thoughts – sit, relax, breathe calmly or naturally, and allow your eyes to remain opened or closed.Cognitive learning difficulties pay close attention to the thoughts (sometimes voices of others) in your head. If unhelpful thoughts arise, do your best not to react; instead simply notice without responding or reacting.Cognitive learning difficulties perhaps your thoughts are about people, places, things, images, body feeling, or personal experiences. As consciousness presents you with each item, one by one, simply notice and LET IT GO.Cognitive learning difficulties do your best NOT to get entangled with them; do not engage with your thoughts, or carry on conversations in your mind. Thoughts are just thoughts!Cognitive learning difficulties as each one come into awareness, just practice non-judging and LET IT GO. Allow each thought to arise and fall – just LET IT GO! Yes, just let it go.Cognitive learning difficulties now complete a few in-out breaths, and end the meditation.

• five-minute self-acceptance meditation – sit, relax, breath naturally and have your eyes opened or closed (it is up to you).Cognitive learning difficulties as you sit simply allow thoughts, images, feelings to arise and fall; just notice them without engagement – LET EACH ONE GO. Be the “watcher.” try not to get hooked by them.Cognitive learning difficulties now repeat this statement to yourself: “may I accept and love myself just as I am, with imperfections.” you may note this statement in your mind and be more specific be replacing “imperfections” with another word.Cognitive learning difficulties repeat this statement several times without distractions. Now rub your hands together until you feel heat. When your hands feel hot, gently place them on your face – covering your eyelids, cheeks, etc.Cognitive learning difficulties just sit there in your warmth and notice. Be the warmth. Feel free to rub your hands again and repeat the process. Count to five and end this meditation.Cognitive learning difficulties

This post is about the buddhist sutta called the gilana sutta (SN 35:74). It is a touching story about a young monk, who became very ill. Another monk informed the buddha of the young monk’s health conditions.Cognitive learning difficulties buddha visited and hoped he had improved and held on to some comfort. The ill monk replied that he had not improved and was not at all comfortable.Cognitive learning difficulties the buddha replied, then I hope you have no anxiety or remorse. To which the ill monk replied, that he did have anxiety and remorse. Buddha inquired about the nature of the monk’s anxiety and remorse; the ill monk noted that he understood the damma (dharma teaching) included the fading of passions.Cognitive learning difficulties when buddha asked about the monk’s sensory desires, all were reported as stressfully inconsistent. The buddha reminded the monk that all experiences of senses and mind were subject to change, and change was impermanence – sometimes cessation leading to dissatisfaction.Cognitive learning difficulties in his current situation, this was the monk’s own experiences of the self – who and what I am now.

Now the ill monk realized that liberation from pain and suffering was related to him becoming disenchanted from sensory desires and intellectual/mental understanding related to sensory desires.Cognitive learning difficulties attachments to what the monk desired. The ill monk worked on his own dispassion from sensory desires, and eventually entered a state of being released, liberated from the suffering of sensory desires and related thoughts about them.Cognitive learning difficulties their meeting ended with the monk feeling liberated from his sensory desires and related thoughts – all about pain and suffering. The buddha ended the conversation noting that all experiences are subject to dependent origination, and that all such experiences are subject to cessation – thus impermanence.Cognitive learning difficulties in his newfound realization and liberation, the monk was neither anxious or remorseful. He was just a being, being in an impermanent experience.Cognitive learning difficulties

How are you doing with you sensory desires and related thoughts about them? Do you realize that your energy in pursuing sensory desires and related thoughts simply may add to your own suffering?Cognitive learning difficulties can you be comfortable being alone with yourself, or not having what you desire? This is not nihilism; this is being in “the middle way” about your life experience.Cognitive learning difficulties this is about radically accepting that which you do not desire but cannot change, and appreciating that which you enjoy but cannot hold on to.Cognitive learning difficulties it is about releasing and reducing your own ego involvement with your life experiences. Egolessness is a hard goal to achieve in practice. May you be safe, healthy, free from suffering, happy, and be at ease with life.Cognitive learning difficulties

This post includes basic considerations, processes, and clinical skills necessary for developing a strongly positive clinical alliance and therapeutic relationship in therapy.Cognitive learning difficulties here the alliance is required for any substantial change in psychotherapy, and the therapeutic relationship rides the quality of the initial alliance to expand and inter-penetrate the emotional b0nds between the client and the therapist.Cognitive learning difficulties the combination of strong initial alliance and highly positive therapeutic relationship is a powerful enhancement for personal growth and positive change in therapy.Cognitive learning difficulties however, it is doubtful that these factors alone will bring about meaningful change in the problem/s that brought the client into therapy. Without them, there will be no meaningful change.Cognitive learning difficulties

Caution: most psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies place primary emphasis on the clinical relationship between the therapist and the client, and less emphasis on actual cognitive and behavioral change in presenting problems.Cognitive learning difficulties therefore, it may be a moral (not ethical) question as to whether a therapists uses only these approaches. It may be best to integrate them with a well researched evidence-based therapy.Cognitive learning difficulties for supportive reviews see the work of mark solms, edward tronick, and C.A. Alfonso, R.C. Friedman, & J.I. Downey (eds.) (2018). Advances in psychodynamics psychiatry. For a strong critique see richards, A. (june, 2018).Cognitive learning difficulties psychoanalysis in trouble… psychoanalytic review, 102(3), june, 2018.

Anxiety 47-61%; depression 40-49%; stress 45%; relationship and/or family issues 33%; academic performance concerns 28%; psychiatric medications 26%; suicidal thoughts/behaviors 20%; alcohol/drug issues 18%; prior treatment 15%; self-injury 13%; ADD/ADHD, LD, experiencing oppression, assault, eating issues ALL below 9%.Cognitive learning difficulties this is the 6th year in a row that anxiety placed in the top category for college students seeking help.

• the staffing make up of counseling centers represented mainly psychologists and social workers, with a student to clinician ratio of 1,737:1.Cognitive learning difficulties there is approximately a 30% demand level, up 5% in more recent data. Use of telehealth has increased to 9%. Wait lists are norms, especially in larger institutions of higher education (30,000+ students).Cognitive learning difficulties there is a slight increase in counseling staff from more diverse populations; this is in response from complaints from minority students.

• the data suggests a condition of continuing deterioration of mental health status in college students.Cognitive learning difficulties this does reflect the american population as a whole, with slightly higher increases in younger populations. In my own opinion, after over 30 years of clinical behavioral health employment, it feels like the american culture is in a meltdown situation; there are many complex reasons for this conditions.Cognitive learning difficulties

• some reasons noted for increased stress and, therefore, mental health issue exacerbation among college students are financial concerns, family health and relationships, social status, technological domination (perhaps increased cellphone addiction).Cognitive learning difficulties independent research has suggested that there may be a correlation between increased cellphone addiction and the rise of reported mental health conditions.Cognitive learning difficulties

Sometimes setting emotional boundaries from the psychotherapy room to your life outside of work can be a difficult thing to do. Shifting from “experience near empathy” (kohut), “unconditional positive regard” (rogers), “hovering attention” (freud), “the holding environment” in “intersubjective space” (winnicott), and compassionate awareness to emotional distancing, separation, and dispassion is no easy task.Cognitive learning difficulties in more in-depth clinical interactions, the process of projective identification between therapist and client may drain your emotional resources; sometimes being “as if” you were the experiencer of your client’s pain and suffering can take a serious toll on your own emotional resources.Cognitive learning difficulties at time the therapist’s own emotional life lacks the quality of connection experienced in the therapy session. Success in setting emotional boundaries is a very important self-care skill.Cognitive learning difficulties it may determine your success, failure, joy, or misery in the clinical work you do. It will definitely prevent most case of “burn out.”

Another very powerful process is to develop improving self-compassion for yourself, often blurring the inner boundaries of your own emotional life experience and the clinical work you do.Cognitive learning difficulties therapists are, in the end, only people with a set of specific helping skills. We suffer just like other people do. Hopefully, our training and experience have given us a bit of a positive edge here.Cognitive learning difficulties here are some things you may wish to consider to improve your own level of self-compassion.