Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Made Simple: 10 Strategies for Managing Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Panic and Worry (Sheldon Press)

by Seth J. Gillihan

Chapter Summary and Homework In this chapter, we explored the powerful and far-reaching effects of simply being fully in our experience with greater openness. Formal practices like yoga and meditation complement moments of mindfulness in our everyday activities. We also saw how these practices have been integrated with CBT and shown to effectively treat many conditions. If you’re working on behavioural activation and/or changing your thoughts, mindfulness principles dovetail perfectly with those practices. Subsequent chapters will include practices from all three pillars of CBT. It’s normal to have misgivings about mindfulness, which often are based on false impressions of what the practice is about. If you’re ready to try mindfulness for the first time or want to deepen your practice, I invite you to take the following steps: 1 Begin to notice what your mind is up to during your day. Is it focused on the past, the present, the future? Is it opening to your experience or resisting? Take care to just notice, letting go as much as possible of judging what your mind is doing. 2 Choose a small number of activities to practice mindful awareness during your day, using the six principles presented in this chapter. 3 Begin a meditation practice. If meditation is brand new to you, start with just a few minutes a day. The Resources section at the back of this book provides links to free guided meditations. 4 Reading books on mindfulness can reinforce the concepts from this chapter a...