depression – Page 7 – Grow Mindfulness

Mindfulness and Postpartum Depression

Kristi Pahr, freelance writer and mother, discussed how mindfulness helped her to deal with postpartum depression (PPD). One of her problems, experienced by many mothers, was that she did not recognise her systems as PPD but put them down to hormonal change. Unfortunately, PPD can get a hold of you very quickly and its effects can lead to a rapid deterioration in your mental health, your relationships and overall life.

Typically, the father is unaware of the nature, cause and devastating effects of postpartum depression and can further aggravate the condition through their seeming insensitivity, lack of concern or lack of physical/emotional support. The mother may also feel unable to communicate the intensity of their feelings or their deteriorating health, and may be reluctant to communicate their real condition for fear of being seen as incompetent. The symptoms of postpartum depression can be many and varied and this fact serves to compound the confusion on both sides, for mother and father.

Kristi’s Story: How Mindfulness Helped My Postpartum Depression

Factors that contributed to Kristi’s postpartum depression were a loss of the first child during pregnancy, traumatic birth of the second, exhaustion, physical isolation and loneliness. Feelings of inadequacy with a newborn baby often overwhelm even the most competent women and Kristi found that her sense of “not coping” led to “hyper-vigilance” – a constant scanning to check that everything is okay with the baby, heightened sensitivity to stimuli (e.g. a baby’s cry), and increased emotional arousal.

Hyper-vigilance can intensify feelings of inadequacy and anxiety and create a downward spiral in terms of mental health and well-being – the exhausted mother cannot sleep and recuperate which, in turn, negatively impacts her physical health and depletes her energy and capacity to cope with the stresses of daily life with a new baby. It is a common experience that when you are tired, even the smallest problem or issue appears insurmountable.

What Kristi found is that mindfulness helped her to get in touch with her feelings, stand back from them, identify her triggers, defuse her negative thoughts and develop ways to manage her emotional response. It also enabled her to identify the severity of her condition and to seek professional help so that she was able to increase her arsenal of strategies and tactics to manage her condition.

One of these strategies Kristi employed was practising awareness by writing a journal at the end of each day and addressing these insightful questions:

What feels really good right now?
What doesn’t feel so good right now?
What made me feel balanced today?
What am I grateful for?

Resources: Mindfulness for Postpartum Depression

Research into mindfulness for postpartum depression suggests that mindful practice should begin in pregnancy. Here is a selection of resources for developing mindfulness for pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum depression:

1. Shamsah Amerise, MD, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist, when writing for Headspace.com offers 10 Tips for a Mindful Birth.

2. Katherine Stone, award-winning blogger, provides resources for people experiencing postpartum depression on her blog: www.postpartumprogress.com

Her resources include the following the article: Why Mindfulness Should Matter to Moms

3. Edith Geddes, MD and Medical Director of the University of North Carolina Women’s Mood Disorder Clinic, passionately advocates for screening for, and treating, perinatal mood disorders, especially in rural areas. Being a former professional musician, she offers a mindfulness technique for composing a moment:

Composing a Moment: Mindfulness Techniques in Postpartum Mood Disorders

4. Mind the Bump App – developed jointly by beyondblue and Smiling Mind – is designed to reduce stress during pregnancy and reduce the risk of developing postpartum depression:

Mind the Bump App Improves Wellbeing During and After Pregnancy

5. Andy Puddicombe – The Headspace Guide to a Mindful Pregnancy.

As you grow in mindfulness during pregnancy and the postnatal period, you will be better able to handle the stresses of pregnancy and reduce the possibility and/or impact of postpartum depression.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of marmaladelane on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Post-Holiday Blues

If you have recently returned from a holiday away, the normal reaction is to focus on the loss resulting from your return home. You might miss the break away from work and home responsibilities, the free time, the opportunity to see new things, meet new people and have time to yourself.

People often feel sad at the end of a holiday, wishing they had made better use of their break, visited some particular attraction or brought a particular item of clothing that they really liked.

So we can experience depression by focusing on our recent past holiday which invariably “seemed to go all too quickly”.

You might also not be looking forward to the responsibilities of work, the time pressures, the repetition that is present in any job, the pressure to produce, unfinished business from the time before you went away and the inevitable conflict with one or more colleagues, staff or clients/ customers.

This focus, in turn, can make us anxious as we look to the future and all the demands we expect to be placed on us.

Alternatively, we can avoid depression and anxiety by focusing on the present moment, appreciating what we do have – health, home, family, work and friends.

We could express gratitude for the time we did have away, all the individual activities that brought joy and happiness, the highlights that we really value and the. companionship we enjoyed.

We could focus on the precious moments when we were able to stop and be mindful in the presence of nature’s stunning variety and beauty, the ingenuity of men and women, the artistry of sculptors and artists of long ago or the magnificence of architecture we observed.

We might also express empathy and compassion for those who had real loss and grief during the holiday period – the loss of family members through accidents or illness or suicide, the break-up of an intimate relationship or a fracture of the relationship with a son or daughter or other family member.

Appreciating what we do have, being grateful for what we were able to experience on our holiday and/or thinking empathetically about others and their loss, can take us outside of our self-focus and enable us to experience the richness of the present moment in our lives.

As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to savour the present moment and avoid depression resulting from a focus on the past or anxiety arising from a focus on the future.

We can learn a lot from Holly Butcher who died on 4 January 2018, at the age of 27, from a rare form of cancer and had written a powerful letter just before her death which her family published on her Facebook page the day she died. Some of her comments are especially relevant for the topic of this blog post:

Those times you are whinging about ridiculous things (something I have noticed so much these past few months), just think about someone who is really facing a problem. Be grateful for your minor issue and get over it. It’s okay to acknowledge that something is annoying but try not to carry on about it and negatively effect other people’s days…

I hear people complaining about how terrible work is or about how hard it is to exercise – Be grateful you are physically able to. Work and exercise may seem like such trivial things … until your body doesn’t allow you to do either of them.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Mindfulness for Children: MindUP

Empathy is the gateway to compassion. As we grow in mindfulness we become more aware of others and their needs and of the pain and suffering that mirrors our own experiences. We also gain the insight to understand our own potential and capacity to act to redress pain and suffering in others – our ability to show compassion in a way that is reflective of our life history and unique skill set.

This was certainly true of Goldie Hawn who acknowledged that, as she grew in mindfulness through mindful practice, she developed a deeper empathy for the plight of children who were lacking in joy and suffering from stress and fear. This deepened empathy led to the insight that she herself could do so much to redress the pain and suffering of school age children in a unique way – she could show compassion in a way that was built on her own life history and skill set.

This, in turn, led to the development of MindUP™ – mindfulness for teachers and children. In establishing MindUP™ through her Hart Foundation, Goldie had some very clear goals in mind:

I created MindUP ™ with educators, for educators. I wanted to help them improve student focus, engagement in learning academics and give them tools and strategies that would bring joy back into the classroom. It is my greatest hope that every teacher who uses MindUP™ will find it beneficial in their work and in their life.

Goldie realised that she had to work through teachers to develop a new curriculum based on mindfulness and to give the teachers experience of the benefit of mindfulness so that they were motivated to share this with their students. The program with its curriculum and framework consists of 15 lessons for Pre-K-8th grade children. It exposes the teachers and children to “neuroscience, positive psychology, mindful awareness and social learning”.

An experiential approach to mindfulness is embedded in the program through daily mindfulness practices. Children are taught “activities around topics such as gratitude, mindfulness and perspective taking”. Goldie was able to report that the science/evidence-based program, which has been evaluated over a ten year period, has impacted the lives of 500,000 teachers and children.

The outcomes of the MindUP™Program, identified in the ongoing evaluation, are reported as “drives positive behavior, improves learning and scholastic performance, and increases empathy, optimism and compassion”.

This program shows you what mindful leadership can lead to and what impact a single individual can have through their own growth in mindfulness.

Mindfulness for children is becoming critical because of the increasing loss of the capacity to focus and pay attention, the growth in depression and mental illness in school aged children, the disastrous impact of cyber bullying leading some to suicide and the underlying lack of skills and resilience to deal with life’s challenges.

Goldie Hawn, through her MindUP™ Program, takes action to redress these issues for children. She shares how her own life is now filled with joy and happiness. What she has effectively achieved in her own life through mindfulness practice, are the essential elements of happiness:

work or activity that utilises her core skills and experience
meaningful work/ activity
working towards something that is beyond herself.

Personal happiness can be an outcome of mindfulness but it also provides the foundation for the active pursuit of some goal that will bring happiness and fulfilment into the lives of others.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Khamkhor on Pixabay

Mental Illness in the Workplace

There are two compounding trends that, in concert, are beginning to increase the issues associated with mental illness in the workplace. They are the incidence of narcissistic managers and the growth in the number of people in the workforce who have a mental illness. I will deal with each of these trends in turn and link the issues to the offsetting influence of mindfulness.

The Incidence of Narcissistic Managers

Many significant publications such as Psychology Today, Harvard Business Review, Inc.com, Health.com and Time.com, have recently discussed the incidence of narcissistic bosses and ways to self-manage in the workplace to protect yourself from psychological damage caused by these bosses. It is suggested that most people will encounter at least one narcissistic manager in their working life – I have experienced three that I can recall.

What are the characteristics of narcissistic managers that contribute to mental illness in the workplace? Well the characteristics of these managers have been summarised by the underlying philosophy of “me, myself, I” – that is I “first and foremost”.

Characteristics of Narcissistic Managers

There are many characteristics of narcissistic managers described in the articles and in research. Some of the more common traits described (and confirmed by my own experience) are:

Self-aggrandisement – believe they are more capable, competent or efficient than they actually are (believe they create high performance teams when the reverse is true)
Obsession with self advancement – their careers come before anything or anybody else
Over-concern with visibility and being seen in a good light
Blame others when mistakes occur (to deflect blame from themselves) – always looking for a “scapegoat”
Will lie to save their projected image
Take credit for other’s work if it advances their own positive visibility
Insensitive to the needs of others, especially their own staff
Will constantly change priorities depending on what advantages them, without regard for the impact of such constant change on others
Will have an in-group, but any member can become part of the out-group at anytime if they cause embarrassment
Create unrealistic time pressures for staff to try to show that their area is highly productive
Will publically criticise their own managers in front of the manager’s own staff
Will micromanage to try to ensure that mistakes do not occur and that what they want to occur will actually happen.

The Impact of Narcissistic Managers on Mental Health

The reality is that these managers do not achieve control. In fact, their situation becomes progressively out of control and they experience high levels of stress as a result, on top of their self-induced stress caused by self-obsession. They may gain compliance through fear, but lose commitment because people physically or psychologically withdraw to protect themselves – no longer caring about the work, unwilling to offer suggestions for improvement, avoiding contact with the manager or engaging in covert sabotage (to get back at the narcissistic manager). They also lose confidence and begin to question their own competence.

The narcissistic manager, then, not only creates an environment conducive to the development of mental illness in staff, they also potentially aggravate the condition of staff who already have a mental illness before joining the narcissistic manager’s workgroup. The compounding issue is that the narcissistic manager lacks the insight to see how they contribute to the conditions creating, or aggravating, mental illness; nor are they overly concerned about the individuals negatively impacted by the highly stressful workplaces they create.

People in the Workplace with a Mental Illness

Beyond Blue, an organisation dedicated to improving the mental health of all Australians, estimates that there are 3 million people in Australia suffering from anxiety or depression and eight people die each day from suicide. This suggests that anxiety and depression are an issue in the workplace. Beyond Blue funds an extensive research program covering anxiety and suicide for all categories, including young people, women, men, aged people and the LGBT community.

The Black Dog Institute also supports the development of mental health in the community. They draw extensively on research to support their role. From this research, they are able to maintain that:

Mental illness is very common. One in five (20%) Australians age 16-65 experience a mental illness in any year. The most common mental illnesses are depressive, anxiety and substance use disorders.

What is particularly concerning is that they report that suicide “is the leading cause of death for Australians aged 25-44 and second leading cause of death for young people aged 15-24”.

This means that suicide is potentially prevalent among people who are in early-career or mid-career as well as those entering or about to enter the workforce.

The role of Mindfulness

The narcissistic manager exhibits the characteristics that are the opposite of the mindful manager. They particularly lack self-awareness and hence self-management. They are by nature lacking in empathy and compassion and are unable to communicate with insight as they are blinded by their own emotions and selfish-obsession. Their only motivation is to advance themselves – they have no source of motivation beyond themselves and are thus unable to engage committed individuals.

As we mentioned in recent posts, emotional intelligence skills can be learned through mindfulness. The challenge is finding ways to engage narcissistic managers in mindfulness training when they have a “keep busy” mindset. Offering mindfulness training as a means of stress reduction may provide the motivation for them to be involved – because it focuses on “where they are hurting”.

Hence, mindfulness has the potential to help narcissistic managers to manage their stress levels, change their management style and assist other individuals experiencing mental illness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn has demonstrated over more than 30 years that his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training has very substantial benefits for people suffering different levels of stress and forms of mental illness. His findings through his practice have been confirmed by neuroscience research.

As individuals in either group grow in mindfulness, they will experience the benefits, and contribute to the development of a more humane workplace.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Maialisa on Pixabay

Mindful Meditation to Reduce the Symptoms of Psoriasis

In an earlier post, I discussed how mindfulness meditation can help the management of chronic pain. In this post, I will focus on the beneficial effects of mindful meditation for the management of psoriasis.

Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition that can last for weeks, months and even years and can recur at anytime. This skin condition is thought to be an autoimmune disease that typically manifests as a rash or skin lesion that can be exceptionally itchy and results in dry, cracking skin that can be painful. The skin problem is exacerbated because people with psoriasis, consciously or unconsciously, scratch the itching skin which intensifies the itch and increases inflammation of the skin.

This vicious cycle can contribute to emotional and psychological problems. People who suffer from this skin condition may feel embarrassed to be seen out in public and may withdraw emotionally leading to depression. The negative emotional effects are aggravated by the difficulty experienced in attempting to heal this persistent skin condition – a debilitating disease experienced by 450,000 Australians and over 125 million people world-wide according to the Skin & Cancer Foundation.

There are numerous triggers to cause psoriasis in an individual – stress and infection being two of the major triggers. The inability to isolate the primary trigger for an individual adds to the anxiety experienced by the psoriasis sufferer.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a renowned mindfulness expert, undertook research in support of an approach to curing psoriasis using meditation as a means to heighten the effect of the treatment. His research involved two groups of people receiving treatment for psoriasis, one group practising meditation during the treatment and the other group, the non-meditators, taking the treatment as normal. He found that “the meditators skin cleared at four times the rate of the non-meditators”.

In discussing these results (which have been confirmed by other researchers), Kabat-Zinn suggested that the positive effect of meditation on the rate of healing of psoriasis is related to the connection between the body and the mind:

And it is a beautiful example of the mind/body connection because you’re doing something with your mind and something is happening in the skin. So it just doesn’t get any better than that.

The Psoriasis & Skin Clinic offers a number of meditation methods to reduce the stress associated with psoriasis and to build emotional resilience while suffering from this skin condition. They suggest a form of body scan meditation which involves concentrating on a specific part of the body where itching or pain is experienced., breathing deeply and focusing your mind on that itching or pain to reduce or alleviate the discomfort.

They also suggest another meditation/relaxation technique which involves experiencing, or thinking about, a peaceful or inspiring location and using this focus to release any troubles or worries that may be causing you stress. Their instruction for this exercise is reminiscent of Kabat-Zinn’s book, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness:

If you are sitting on the sand on the beach, feel the setting sun warm your face, feel the breeze on your skin, smell the ocean air, taste the salty tang on the breeze, hear the waves washing right up to you and as you hear each and every wave, release all of your stress and throw it onto the waves to wash out into the ocean.

As you grow in mindfulness through mindful practices such as these meditations, you will be better able to manage the discomfort of psoriasis and assist your healing process, whatever treatment method you adopt. The experience of itching or pain can even become a catalyst to mindful meditation to relieve the discomfort.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Do You Feast on the News?

We can become so obsessed with the news that we continually seek out the latest information. We might access the news through social media such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube or through newspapers both offline and online or via text messaging through RSS feeds.

Whatever the source, we justify the continual access to the news via our smartphones or tablets because we need to keep up to date, our work requires it, we don’t want to be left out of conversations, we don’t want to appear ignorant or a multitude of other reasons.

However, if we are following a news trail, we may go from one report to another, particularly if we are online. We spend hours collectively feasting on news reports and end up with no surplus in our lives that would enable us to contribute to something larger than ourselves – an activity that is foundational to happiness. We become time-poor, a condition that leads to frustration and unhappiness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us that when we are continually accessing the news, we are often digesting distorted information:

We are perpetually bombarded with information, mis-information, partial information, slanted information, conflicting information, and endless opinions and opining on all sides of all issues. (Coming To Our Senses, p.515)

Continuous access to the news is inviting distraction and emotional disturbance into our lives. Distraction involves the inability to concentrate or the loss of focus, which in turn affects our productivity, insight and creativity. Emotional disturbance results because we become upset by a tragic event, angry at unfair treatment, disoriented by endless opposing views, upset through generated “flashbacks”, annoyed at biased reporting, or any other negative emotions occasioned by news events. Continuous access to negative news can generate a sense of powerlessness and, ultimately, depression.

It is true that what happens on the other side of the world can impact our daily lives. However, there is very little we can do about much of what we read or hear in the news.

What we can do is concentrate on developing peace and calm in our own lives and sharing that with others. As we grow in mindfulness through mindful practice we can create positive energy for those around us. Our energy field impacts others and is amplified through interaction with others, both virtually and face-to-face.

We can lessen the negative impact of news on our lives by reducing the frequency with which we access news and/or by offsetting the negative news with a daily feed of positive and inspirational news such as that provided by sites like KindSpring or DailyGood.

KindSpring, for example, describes its purpose as follows:

KindSpring is a place to practice small acts of kindness. For over a decade the KindSpring user community has focused on inner transformation, while collectively changing the world with generosity, gratitude, and trust. The site is 100% volunteer-run and totally non-commercial. It is a shared labor of love. (Emphasis eadded)

We have a choice about how we spend our time daily – we can intensify our distractions and emotional disturbance through feasting on the news or grow mindfulness through mindful practice and impact the world around us in positive ways while achieving happiness in our own lives.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: Courtesy of geralt on Pixabay

What Will You Do With the Surplus in Your Life?

Seth Godin – the famous internet marketer, author and daily blogger – suggests that if we have personal safety, good health and food to sustain us, we are living with surplus in our lives – we have spare time and energy to devote to making a contribution to others and to the community at large.

In a recent blog post, he challenges us to think about how we will spend our surplus:

You have enough breathing room to devote an hour to watching TV, or having an argument you don’t need to have, or simply messing around online. You have time and leverage and technology and trust.

When you stop to think and reflect on your life, you begin to see what eats up your time. Some things become a compulsion – they take over your life. Meditation and other mindful practices can help you to see how you spend your time and help you to identify ways to expend the surplus that should be in your life.

Mindfulness also enables you to understand the leverage for change that you do have and to appreciate the trust that you have built up over time. Technology, itself, provides incredible leverage power and opportunities to build trust and relationships. So whatever your surplus situation, as Seth suggests, there is opportunity to contribute – rather than just consume.

When you move into semi-retirement as I am starting to do, you have even more surplus on your hands. It’s a challenge expressed eloquently by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners in their book, Don’t Retire, Rewire. They argue that on retirement you have to find creative ways to expend the energy that you previously used in your work environment. If you don’t find a way to use this surplus energy, your energy reserves can decline rapidly and you can also find that your life loses meaning.

When I confronted this challenge of using my surplus, I decided that a key way for me to contribute to others is to help people to grow in mindfulness through this blog and mindful workshops I run. This way of spending my surplus enables me to utilise the core skills I have developed over my life – writing, researching and facilitating workshops – to help others deal with the winds of change in their lives and to build resilience, wellness and mental health. Hopefully, it will also help others to overcome or stave off depression.

Of course, one of life’s lessons is that true happiness and fulfilment comes from helping others. While my plan is altruistic, it also has resounding benefits for me – it gives meaning to my life; helps me to learn, grow and develop my mind; keeps the need for personal mindful practice at the forefront of my mind; and staves off depression (that can be precipitated by loss of work identity).

So, how will you answer Seth’s challenge – what will you do with the surplus in your life?

Image source: Courtesy of fancycrave1 on Pixabay

Mindful Walking on the Inside

In a previous post, I discussed various ways of mindful walking with an emphasis on walking outdoors. Here I want to focus on a simple approach to mindful walking that can be used indoors, particularly when you are time-poor.

The basic process for mindful walking indoors is as follows:

Work out where you are going to walk from and to
Stand with your feet apart and be conscious of the soles of your feet on the floor
Ground yourself mentally and physically
Lift your right foot slowly
Place the heel of your right foot slowly on the floor
Gradually lower your foot so that the sole of your right foot is slowly flattening on the floor
Lift your left foot slowly
Place the heel of your left foot slowly on the floor
Gradually lower your foot so that the sole of your left foot is slowly flattening on the floor.

Repeat steps 4-9 keeping your mind focused on your walking action. You can start with your left foot if this is your preference.

As you become more conscious of mindful walking and begin to practise it indoors, you will notice many opportunities that arise where you can take a few minutes to practise, e.g. while waiting for the jug to boil, or waiting for your partner or children to get ready to go out. You will also become more conscious of your walking when outdoors.

So often we “race from pillar to post” thinking about something we have to do or have failed to do or done wrongly. We rush everywhere, even in our own home.

Mindful walking enables us to slow down, to be more conscious of the present and to appreciate what we have. It can help us to reduce anxiety about the future and depression about the past. It leads to peace, contentment and lowered stress. With a clearer mind, you may also experience increased awareness and insight.

Mindful walking indoors is a simple, time-efficient way to grow mindfulness and to keep things in perspective.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pexels on Pixabay

Making a Difference Through Mindfulness

One of the things that we often fail to realise is what impact our own consciousness has on people around us – how we can make a real difference through being mindful.

Paulo Coelho captures this principle in his book, The Alchemist:

That’s what alchemists do. They show that, where we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too. (The Alchemist, p.150)

Recent research reinforces the fact that our moods are contagious – so if we are happy and calm, then we can positively impact those around us. We can make a difference in other people’s lives by living mindfully – by developing our emotional intelligence and building our sense of gratitude and contentment.

Joseph Folkman, who has made a personal study of the contagiousness of mood and engagement, reminds us:

Since doing this research, I have begun thinking about the fact that every interaction I have with other people can be inspiring and building, or discouraging and frustrating. We can build others up or tear them down.

The impact of our mindfulness can spread to our social network just as a person’s grief can impact those connected to them to “three degrees of separation” (friends of friends of friends) – like the concentric ripples that result when a stone drops into a pool of water. Nicholas Christakis has studied this ripple effect over 15 years and demonstrated the pervasive influence of social networks. His study can explain the growth of obesity, drug use and depression within a social network over time.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, our mindfulness can impact others in a positive way and make a real difference in their lives. This was recently reinforced for me with the death of a friend, Pam Kruse. People from all walks of life and different phases in her life, expressed their appreciation and gratitude for her sense of fun and humour, her zest for life, her thoughtfulness, her energy and readiness to serve others in a generous and unassuming manner. In a lot of ways, Pam epitomized the “servant-leader“.

So let the warmth of your smile and your sense of contentment shine on those around you, just as the setting sun brightens the darkness of the night sky.