Category: Psychology

Mindfulness and attachment

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There are interesting possible links between the practice of meditation and the healing of attachment patterns which are at the basis of all our relationships. Our early relationships with our primary caregivers laid down a pattern or paradigm which can be activated in later relationships. This paradigm can be very deeply ingrained in our unconscious and in the neural patterns of the brain. Luckily, like all neural patterns they can be changed, even if this takes a lot of time. One possible effect of meditation is that it allows the healing of excessive needs in relation to others by developing a greater contentment and balance with ourselves. This seems to be supported by the following quotation from Daniel Siegel on the brain and how it functions. Although it comes from a neurological point of view it seems to me to agree with the more Buddhist view of the mind’s natural wakefulness which I referred to in the previous post.

Each of us needs periods in which our minds can focus inwardly. Solitude is an essential experience for the mind to organize its own processes and create an internal state of resonance. In such a state, the self is able to alter its constraints by directly reducing the input from interactions with others. As the mind goes through alternating phases of needing connection and needing solitude, the states of mind are cyclically influenced by combinations of external and internal processes. We can propose that such a shifting of focus allows the mind to achieve a balanced self-organizational flow in the states of mind across time. Respecting the need for solitude allows the mind to “heal” itself – which in essence can be seen as releasing the natural self-organizational tendencies of the mind to create a balanced flow of states. Solitude permits the self to reflect on engrained patterns and intentionally alter reflexive responses to external events that have been maintaining the dyadic dysfunction.

Daniel J. Siegal, The Developing Mind p., 235

The effect of mindfulness on the Brain

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

From Dan Siegal, the author of The Mindful Brain:

Studies show that the ways we intentionally shape our internal focus of attention in mindfulness practice induces a state of brain activation during the practice. With repetition, an intentionally created state can become an enduring trait of the individual as reflected in long-term changes in brain function and structure. This is a fundamental property of neuroplasticity—how the brain changes in response to experience. Here, the experience is the focus of attention in a particular manner.

First, a “left-shift” has been noted in which the left frontal activity of the brain is enhanced following MBSR training. This electrical change in brain function is thought to reflect the cultivation of an “approach state,” in which we move toward, rather than away from, a challenging external situation or internal mental function such as a thought, feeling, or memory. Naturally, such an approach state can be seen as the neural basis for resilience.

Second, the degree of this left-shift is proportional to the improvement seen in immune function. Our mind not only finds resilience, but our body’s ability to fight infection is improved. At the University of California, Los Angeles, David Cresswell and his colleagues have found that MBSR improves immune function even in those with HIV.

Learning new habits

Karl DuffyLeave a comment


At this time of year people often focus on new habits of behaviour, changing existing patterns or learning new skills. For example, some seek to more exercise, some to eat more healthily or learn a new skill, or maybe even meditate every day. The question is, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires huge effort or massive self-discipline? How many days or weeks does it take for a new habit to become ingrained?

The popular myth is that it takes somewhere between 21 and 28 days. However there does not seem to be any real evidence for this number at all. The figure might have originated with the observations of a surgeon, a Dr Maltz, who wrote that amputees took, on average, 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb. He abstracted from this to argue that all people take 21 days to adjust to any major life changes.

Now unless the change you intended for 2010 involves major surgery, this does not seem to be the case. More helpful is the study carried out by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from University College London in 2009. She did some research on 96 people who were interested in forming a new habit, such as eating fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minute jog every day. The participants were asked each day how automatic their new behaviours felt. For example they were asked whether the behaviour was ‘hard not to do’ and could be done ‘without thinking’.

On average, the participants reported that the behaviours felt automatic after 66 days, or after over two months. In other words it had become a habit. This was the average, with some reporting as early as 20 days and others 254 days. It seems related to the type of new behaviour being tried, some being harder to acquire than others. Finally it seems that some people in the study were slower than others in their attempts to start new behaviours, suggesting that there may be personalities more resistant to change.

A bit different, then, from the popular optimism which infects people around New Years Eve and which momentarily presents itself as the answer to all our discontents.

More Lessons from Saint Martin

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

“The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” Jung

The most famous event in the life of Saint Martin occured when he met a poor man begging on a very cold day. The beggar was shaking and blue from the snow but no one reached out to help him. We are told that Martin was overcome with compassion, took off his expensive cloak, cut it in two, and gave the half to the beggar. Later that evening he had a dream in which Jesus was wrapped in the cloak, and said “Here is Martin who has clothed me”

These early stories may be based on historical events but also can have a symbolic meaning. A beggar covered in sores and nearly naked disturbed most of the people who passed by and shunned him. His presence and appearance bothered them. We have many instances today where we are bothered, as individuals or as a society, by those who are different, by strangers, by conflicting views, by different cultural practices. These can give rise to fears and to the desire to exclude these people or their opinions from our sight and our surroundings. In times of fear, such as the current economic climate, it is easy to look to blame others, to find someone outside and project the negativity onto them.

I think the beggar in the story can also be seen as the weak, needy or wounded parts of our inner selves. We can be are uncomfortable with parts of our own life and history. We too can have wounds and injures caused by others or by our own life history.These parts of our lives can become our shadow side – all that has been split off, unrealized or every potential that has never been developed. We all carry with us a histroy of neglected, unrealized, underdeveloped talents and possibilities that can be there, begging for our attention. Or there can be parts of our lives that we are actively afraid of or uncomfortable with, such as addictions, repeating behaviours or powerful emotions which arise from time to time. We feel, at times, panic, anxiety, loneliness, anger and a lack of safety.

Today’s fast paced society means that we have plenty of opportunity for looking away, for rushing by. Even more so, we have strong habits of not wanting to experience the unpleasant, or preferring to turn away. Or we can project an underdeveloped or disowned part of yourself onto another person. Consequently the deep message in times like these go by without our full attention. In these difficult moments, it can be easier to avoid looking at our inner world and focus our attention outside ourselves, or perhaps rushing to find a fix for what appears to be wrong.

What Saint Martin’s example prompts us to do is firstly not to turn away or rush to fix but to turn towards, to recognize our own suffering, our own wounds and the places that scare us in our lives. He then shows us to extend compassion to our poor and needy selves – after recognizing our wounds and suffering, to respond to them with love. This means not looking away, not seeking distractions when offered the opportunity to be present for our own pain, or the difficult moment that scares us. The practice is to try and be open to all emotions even those that are frightening and to hold them first in simple attention. Understanding and caring for the shadow aspects of our lives is a path towards wholeness.

As Rumi said:
Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That’s where the light enters you.

Jung on Patterns

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” Carl Jung

Factors which can lead to stress come from many sources. They can be due to external circumstances such as the current economic situation or being far away from family and familiar supports.

However some factors are internal, such as those caused by the patterns or conditioning we have built up over the years. Thus we may have learnt that we need to push ourselves hard in order to get attention and worth, and this manifests in our life as a compulsive, driven focus on work or success.

There also seems to be patterns that have been passed on to us, unconsciously, when we were very young. Jung’s observation prompts us to consider how where and how our caretakers were stuck in their development, and how this can becomes an internal paradigm for us also to be stuck. Jung goes on to say: “The child is so much a part of the psychological atmosphere of the parents that secret and unsolved problems between them can influence its health profoundly. The participation mystique, or primitive identity, causes the child to feel the conflicts of the parents and to suffer from them as if they were its own. It is hardly ever the open conflict or the manifest difficulty that has such a poisonous effect, but almost always parental problems that have been kept hidden or allowed to become unconscious”

Without developing some non-judgmental, gentle capacity for awareness of these influences on our inner life we can fail to transform or integrate them into who we are. Thus even into adulthood, our psyche can remain trapped and unconsciously serve the agendas and the lacks of others. In this way we can fall short of achieving our own potential and end up repeating patterns in relationships and in our work life. An awareness of these repeating schemes seems to frequently happen in mid-life when some of the paradigms adopted up until can fail. It was in this period of our lives that Jung said that we need to “decently go unconscious“.

The first step in doing this is to slow down, to make space, to stop the constant flood of information and activity that assails the mind. Making space for art, for meditation, journaling and reflection are all ways we can be kind to ourselves and develop a greater understanding of the factors that lead to our freedom. Slowing down in meditation quickly reveals the first type of internal stressors – our compulsive repeating conditioning – and can perhaps go on to heal some of the unconscious processes which have left their mark on our inner lives.

Winnicott and Space

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

British Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote about the importance of a holding environment for the person when she or he is an infant. This is the psychical and physical space where the infant is protected without knowing he or she is protected. This creates a sense of stability and safety. At that early age the relationship between the infant and its environment (caregiver) is the primary and most important reality. Within the context of this relationship, Winnicott spoke of potential space which serves as a bridge between interior experience and external reality. The function of this space is to be a bridge between the multi faceted realm of interior, or unconscious, experience and the time-and space-bound realm of external, or conscious, experience.

Some studies of the effects of meditation are focusing on its effects on those parts of the brain which are laid down in those crucial early attachment experiences between the child and the caregiver. It may be that sitting in silence revisits and nourishes neural patterns related to a sense of stability and attunement.

“Sitting in meditation is essentially simplifying space. Our daily lives are in constant movement: lots of things going on, lots of people talking, lots of events taking place. In the middle of that, it’s very difficult to sense what we are in our life.

When we simplify the situation, when we take away the externals and remove ourselves from the ringing phone, the television,the people who visit us, the dog who needs a walk, we get a chance to face ourselves…”

Charlotte Joko Beck