Tag: Psychology

Simple awareness, not fixing, is the key

Karl Duffy2 Comments

The crumbling of the false self occurs through awareness of its manifestations, not through the substitution of some underlying “truer” personality. The ability to become aware of self- representations without creating new ones is, psychologically speaking, a great relief. It does not mean that we drop the everyday experience of ourselves as unique and, in some way, ongoing individuals, but it does mean that whenever we find ourselves entering narcissistic territory, we can recognize the terrain without searching immediately for an alternative.

Mark Epstein, Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

The not knowing which is somehow right

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Most western therapies are based on theories of personality; they are geared toward knowing, rather than not-knowing. An unspoken assumption in the therapeutic world is that we should always know who we are, and if we don’t that a real problem. So when an old maladaptive identity starts to break down, this may be frightening for client and therapist alike…. At times like this I rely on my own realization that none of us really knows who we are, that this is the nature of our being, that if we have a true self at all, it somehow lies in the heart of the unknowingness that opens up when we inquire deeply into our existence, and that we can hang out on the edge of this unknown, we may discover how to let ourselves be, without having to be something.

John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening

More scientific evidence supporting health benefits of mindfulness meditation

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Although meditation practices in different wisdom traditions and religions have been around for thousands of years, there has been an increasing amount of scientific interest in their effect over the last decade or so. It is true to say that for a good part of the last century, the psychological community had a low opinion of religious practices, as can be seen in Freud, who regarded them as an attempt to control the outside world and sometimes as a regressive infantile delusion. However, in more recent times,  a significant amount of attention and research has been conducted on both the medical  and psychological benefits of religious practice and on the health effects of secular meditation programmes such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)  and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT ).

One recent study, published just this week in the July 2012 Journal of Psychiatric Practice,  was conducted by Dr William R. Marchand of the George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and found that there was “convincing evidence that such interventions are effective in the treatment of psychiatric symptoms and pain, when used in combination with more conventional therapies”

Dr Marchand set out to review published studies evaluating the health benefits of mindfulness-based practices. His conclusion was that both MBSR and MBCT have “broad-spectrum” effects against depression and anxiety and can also decrease general psychological distress.

Based on the evidence, MBCT can be “strongly recommended” as an addition to conventional treatments (adjunctive treatment) for  depression. Both MBSR and MBCT were effective treatments for anxiety and Dr Marchand states that from a medical point of view “the available evidence indicates their use is currently warranted in a variety of clinical situations”

Seeing ourselves as we truly are

Karl Duffy1 Comment

People who are suffering want to change, but they do not know how. They feel…that they have to go into their problems, or get rid of them entirely. They do not know that to bring about true healing they have to learn to see themselves as they truly are.……Powerful emotional reactions have the capacity to take hold of us and drive our behavior. We believe in these reactions more than we believe in anything else, but they become the means by which we both hide from ourselves and attempt to cope with a world of ceaseless change and unpredictability.

Mark Epstein, Going on Being:Buddhism and the Way of Change.

A crisis is an invitation to grow

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Crises come at critical points in our lives. Usually they make it painfully obvious that the previous world view or attitudes of consciousness are inadequate to encompass the new situation. Accordingly, the crisis requires the development of new attitudes, however disdainful the ego may be. Often these crises are tied to the exhaustion of the dominant attitudes of consciousness and are indications that neglected portions of the psyche need to be brought into play. Any crisis bring the limitations of conscious life to the surface and reveals the need for enlargement….The meaning of crisis for us all [is] the invitation to sort and sift, to discern, to move to enlargement, to outgrow the sundry comforts of the old vision of self and world

James Hollis, Creating a Life

Open to Ambiguity

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The test of a psychologically mature person, and therefore spiritually mature, will be found in his or her capacity to handle what one might call the Triple A’s: anxiety, ambiguity and ambivalence. While all of us suffer these onslaughts and react reflexively, the immature psyche especially suffers a tension and seeks to resolve it quickly by a shift right or left to a one-sided solution. The more mature psyche is able to sustain the tension of opposites and contain conflict longer, thereby allowing the development and revelatory potential of the issue to emerge. Anxiety rises in the face of uncertainty, open-endedness. Ambiguity confounds the ego’s lust for security, to fix the world in a permanently knowable place. Ambivalence – the fact that the opposites are always present, visible or not  – obliges one to deal with the capacity for dialogue with that other.

James Hollis, Creating a Life.