Mindfulness and Acceptance

Mindfulness and Acceptance Based Practices play a key role in self-compassion practices and are key components of many popular therapies (e.g., DBT, ACT). They develop our ability to be with and process experience as it comes up, which we can use to understand and pursue our goals as well as manage difficult emotions, thoughts, or body responses.

A well-known exercise for explaining the importance of mindfulness is asking someone to try not to picture a pink elephant.  As you might have guessed, the pink elephant is the first thing they picture!  Stress and distress of all forms respond similarly to avoidance.  The more we avoid or ignore them, the stronger their influence over our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and the more often they seem to be trying to push their way into our current thoughts.

Mindfulness and Acceptance Based Practices simply short circuit the problems caused by avoidance. By observing our experience, and our natural human response, we turn down the volume on our problems and begin to process them.  It is simple and effective, but like any skill takes some time to learn.  Some people assume that it is a passive process, but I assure you it is quite active!