A Tool To Help Calm Your Mind When It Kicks Into Overdrive

Mindfulness to Balance Your Mental health

You may be thinking, “My mind is already full … that’s the problem!” Isn’t it funny how the thing that often seems to trip us up in our journey to mental health, is often the very thing we need to hone in on, explore, and flip on its head? When you’re constantly struggling with anxiety and fear, depression, or a sense of dread, your mind seems to own you. The brain is thrust into overdrive, sifting through all of the worse-case scenarios and spinning in relentless circles. Sleep sounds good…whether you can achieve it or not…because it sounds like being emptied, not processing, shutting down. That’s why when a therapist recommends mindfulness meditation as a treatment option, it may sound like exactly the opposite of what you want to do. But, in fact, the practice of mindfulness may be a key to balancing your mental health.

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation is a highly successful practice for people who become overwhelmed by all kinds of intense emotions. Overwhelming feelings of anger, sadness, or fear can wash over us and, if they’re not addressed or managed, these emotions can throw us completely off course, threatening our work, our relationships, and the fabric of our day to day lives. The practice is used to strengthen our coping mechanisms to those kinds of emotions, helping us put them in their proper place as we address (not ignore) them. Mindfulness meditation also draws us into a deeper inspection of the intense emotions we are experiencing and allows us to take the time to reframe what may seem threatening to our well-being. As we practice mindfulness meditation, we let our inner-self rest, observe, and take ownership in a place of nonjudgmental love and compassion.

Losing the Judgment

According to The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, one of the core skills of mindfulness meditation is learning to become nonjudgmental during the practice. The truth is, criticism is deeply rooted in all of us. For good or bad, we walk around all day judging other people, political climates, the taste of food, the art on the walls, and our latest Netflix binge. So when we happen upon a situation that spurs us towards overwhelming emotions, we judge that situation. We even judge our emotional responses and in that process, may get caught up in the cycle of fear, anger, guilt and depression. Replacing these judgments with a foundation of love and compassion for ourselves and other people during the practice of meditation can help us redefine the situation we’re in and the emotions we’re experiencing. It allows us to slip off our preconceived notions and start observing ourselves and our situations as a blank slate. Becoming nonjudgmental is a practice that takes practice and it’s just one of the tools of mindfulness meditation that can help you on your mental health journey.

Verified Reliable Sources for The Content in this Article: The Dialectical Behavior Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay, PhD, Jeffery C Wood, PsyD, and Jeffery Brantley, MD

Put It Into Practice

Imagine yourself experiencing a severe pain…maybe it’s in your back, leg, or head. You can’t sleep and as soon as you begin feeling that familiar throb, you get grumpy and anxious about the pain. When will it end? Why does this happen to you? You are assuming that the pain is bad and that it will throw off your plans. You’re making a judgment.

Mindfulness meditation invites you to take note of the pain, but challenges you to do so without the preconceived notion of it being harmful experience. Perhaps you try to identify the pain as not simply pain itself but as heat radiating around your head or your back. Perhaps you try to breathe into the heat, be thankful that it alerted you to an internal issue, and try to breathe more deeply into the muscles around it.

Thinking non-judgmentally about relationships in your life or even traumatic events can help you heal in a similar way. Taking note of the areas that are hurting or broken, observing them calmly within meditation, and finding compassion towards yourself in the process is all part of learning to be nonjudgmental. 

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Luke Lewallen, Mental Health Counselor, Therapist