In both the public press and psychotherapy research, mindfulness has greatly increased in popularity in the last ten years. The practice of mindfulness has evolved from a Buddhist idea developed around 2,600 years ago to a commonplace psychotherapy notion today.
The proponents of mindfulness would have us think that almost all patients and therapists might gain from practicing mindfulness. Some advantages are self-control, objectivity, affect tolerance, flexibility, serenity, better focus and mental clarity, emotional intelligence, and the capacity to relate to oneself and others with love, acceptance, and compassion.
But is mindfulness as beneficial as it seems?
Being Mindful Helps Your Wellbeing
Gaining more awareness encourages various attitudes that lead to a fulfilled existence. Being attentive helps you engage in activities, enjoy life’s pleasures as they happen, and develop a stronger ability to handle negative situations. People who decide to learn how to practice mindfulness properly often learn that they can control where their attention is during certain situations. They are less likely to be consumed by worries regarding the future or things they regret in the past. They also think less about success and self-esteem, which results in developing deeper relationships with other people.
Mental Health Improvements
Medical professionals have found in the past few years that using more meditation during mindfulness treatment has been a successful strategy for those suffering from a range of issues, including depression, eating disorders, anxiety, or OCD.
Enhanced Emotional Control
Recognizing and controlling your emotions is another possible advantage of mindfulness. Your capacity to control your emotions is referred to as emotional regulation. This entails being able to control emotions based on circumstance and necessity.
Behind able to control one’s emotions can be good for mental health issues. Several disorders, including depression and borderline personality disorder, are associated with effective emotion management (BPD). The advantages of mindfulness for emotional regulation will help you better manage your emotions, eventually improving many aspects of your life, such as your relationships and overall well-being.
Improved Memory
It’s also possible that mindfulness might help you improve your memory. If you’ve ever missed a crucial appointment or misplaced your vehicle keys, you know how annoying even minor memory issues can be. Many of these forgetting periods are brought on by a phenomenon called proactive interference, in which older memories obstruct your access to more recent ones.
Participants in one 2019 research chose between four weeks of mindfulness training or a creative writing class. According to memory tests, those who had received mindfulness training showed the biggest decreases in proactive interference, which led to gains in their short-term memory.
Fewer Signs of Depression
Long regarded as a useful adjunctive therapy for depression, mindfulness enhancing practitioners’ capacity to control their emotions is one-way mindfulness might aid in treating depression. The ability to pull back from strong negative emotions, name them, and accept them rather than fight them is a skill that may be learned via mindfulness. Because of their improved emotional control, mindful thinkers can better cope and manage their depression.
A Costa and Barnhofer investigation supports this notion. They discovered that a brief mindfulness training benefited individuals who were battling with depression to improve their symptoms through better emotion control when compared to guided imagery relaxation.
Conclusion
It’s reassuring to know that, more than 2,000 years after it was created, something can be learned and used to affect our general health, including our mental and physical well-being. That alone should convince you to begin practicing mindfulness meditation.
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