Mindfulness doesn't work

Shock Horror! 

Mindfulness Doesn't Work For Everybody!

 The NHS website describes Mindfulness as the following

It can be easy to rush through life without stopping to notice much.
Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.

The problem however is that regardless of all the hype, this isn't necessarily true for everyone.





I am severely dyslexic and dyspraxic that includes difficulties with working memory and speed of processing.  Another part of these conditions is that I share a trait with autism, whereby I am hyper sensitive to my environment.

Too much awareness of present moment can be painful

So as I'm typing this, I am very aware of the keyboard click, the computer fans, the TV downstairs showing the Olympics, the car outside that's just gone past our house, another car is further away.  Someone'es just shut their front door and there are birds in the garden twittering away to themselves.  I've had a bath, so my skin is dry and my clothes itch, the seat I'm sat on is a bit too low and my legs hurt.  The light bulb for the room has a yellowy hue and the central heating system is humming while the radiator pipes are creaking with the heat.

So physically, I am very aware of what's happening around me and it has some very good aspects, such as going to classic music concerts and shows like the Anton Du Beke and Erin Boag show at the Bristol Hippodrome.  It really is a full bodied experience!

The problem comes however in very noisy and busy environments, especially if there are a lot of people talking all at the same time - infact I can sit on a plane for a long time with a background of engine noise far easier than half an hour of sitting in a noisy restaurant.  Christmas meals with the family tend to be a particularly difficult experience as its like having 200 radio stations all playing at once and I end up hearing everybody's conversations and it leads to being overwhelmed with brain overload.  I actually feel physically ill for the next day or so afterwards.

Believe me... from someone who almost always lives in the present moment and is highly aware of their surroundings for every day, hour, minute and second, it can be really very painful and exhausting.

Mindfullness people need to be very careful in what they're aiming for as living totally in the present moment wont necessarily provide the peace their looking for.

It's all about slowing down and savoring the moment

Due to my speed of processing and working memory, I am naturally slow.  Anybody who thinks I'm the type of person who rushes about doing lots of things all at once obviously doesn't know me at all.  In the race between the tortoise and the hair, I'd definitely be the tortoise!

Infact, if I was to slow down any further, then I'd stop altogether! 

This slowness does NOT mean I'm stupid but it does mean that I concentrate 110% on everything I'm doing at the time of me doing it.

Autopilot... what Autopilot?

Mindfulness websites talk about not going on autopilot but do things deliberately and savoring the moment.  Slowly eating a raisin or going out for a walk and enjoying the birdsong and countryside.... well, as you can probably tell, I'm already there with being in the present moment!    

I hear, see, smell, feel things that a lot of other people just don't notice and as I said above, sometimes it really does get exhausting.

Due to the issues associated with dyslexia and dyspraxia, I have to concentrate on anything and everything that I do at that present moment in time.  My Movement tends to be a bit awkward and clumsy and will usually trip over something within a five mile radius of my feet.

For example, another website I've read says that instead of automatically sitting at your usual chair in a meeting room, try deliberately choosing to sit somewhere else and see what it feels like.  From my point of view however is that there are a thousand and one different aspects to consider when choosing  a seat in a meeting room. These include will my walking aide be in the way? Will the projector hurt my eyes? Will I block other people when it's time to leave? Am I sat somewhere stupid - such as where the talker is going to sit?  

Strange Statements

One of the compensations for dyslexia is my logical way of thinking and find a lot of strange statements are made about the present moment which just aren't true:

As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.  Eckhart Tolle

Sorry.... but this is pure codswallop and rubbish! Mindfulness seems to be full of this sort of nonsense drivel that drives me up the wall, especially if nobody challenges it! Just because you "honor" the present moment doesn't mean that life suddenly gets wonderful!   

Other strange quotes from the same expert include: 

Suffering needs time, it cannot survive in the now 

There is always a simplicity about the present moment 

Again, both of these statements are complete cobblers.

Thoughts and Feelings

Mindfulness also talks about things like realizing that your thoughts are just your thoughts and not facts.  They also mention that thoughts are not good or bad, they just happen.  Which is certainly true and I've known for as long as I remember.

Getting nervous before a job interview is a perfectly normal reaction to have and so is getting angry & upset during an argument.  However, Mindfulness seems to make the case for stepping back away from normal feelings and emotions.

The problem with stepping back and being "non judgemental" about thoughts, is that you could miss important messages being sent up from your subconscious. A stupid obvious example is let's say you get stuck on a railway line, you might get the thought that a train might come along soon and you'd be splattered.    Stepping back and being non-judgemental, seeing this thought as neither good or bad is a fatal mistake.  

The fear attached to this thought ( which might be considered to be "negative") is actually the body's natural defense mechanism to get free as quickly as possible.  Obviously this is an extreme example but the subconscious has developed over millions of years to give us good clues as to what we should and shouldn't do in terms of survival.

If you keep finding the same thought keeps re-occuring over and over again, then its probably a message from your subconscious or intuition that something isn't right.

Trust your intuition!

Past and Future 

Mindfulness extends the idea to a point that is just more nonsense,some mindfulness websites say that the past and the future are an illusion and the only real state is here and now...and it just causes suffering if you look into the past or into the future.

This is just more nonsense.  As human beings we have strong memories of the past and imagination that can see into the future and there is nothing wrong with either of these ways of  thinking. 

If you ignore the past then you ignore all those wonderful memories like getting married, having children and amazing holidays abroad. If you don't look to the future, then you don't look forward to what might happen - like the next holiday or exciting job promotion.  We also need to learn from past mistakes, some of which might be painful and plan for difficulty times ahead. 

You also need to have a sense of achievement in what you have done in the past and feel good about the metaphorical distance you have covered to reach where you are now. You also need to have hope and see where you are aiming for in the future.  

It might be suitable for a Buddhist monk to always live in the present but everyone else in the modern world needs to look beyond the present moment in both directions, otherwise you just get stuck on an island with nowhere to "move".  

You need to be able to see that if you are in a situation that is causing a problem, then you MUST do something different in the future based on experiences you've had in the past, otherwise the same thing will keep happening.

Day Dreaming

Day dreaming is the opposite of always being in the present moment. Your mind wanders onto all sorts of subjects and can sometimes be a bit like having a waking dream.

For me and a lot of other people who struggle with the here and now, day dreaming is a crucial coping strategy for not getting overwhelmed in difficult environments.  It means that the brain can have a rest from the bombardment of the here and now and be somewhere else.

I daydream on a daily and almost hourly basis but I've actually experienced the exact opposite situation of not being able to daydream and it almost ended in a disaster.

I was working somewhere very difficult and stressful, with a lot of noise, talking and movement and very difficult to switch off completely to let my mind wander. I found that I'd get to work feeling perfectly okay but would be a complete gibbering wreck by lunchtime because of the "here and now present moment".  It gave me the shakes on a daily basis and complete strangers would come to me and ask if everything was ok.  

There was one lunchtime that I was trying to talk to an interesting lady but the environment became so difficult that my words started to come out as gibberish and she looked at me as if I was some sort of weirdo with three heads. It got to a point where it felt as if I was going to puke but I knew from a thought that I had to remove myself from the environment and find somewhere quiet.

I think I might have been a bit rude but left in quite a hurry.  I eventually found somewhere very quiet, where I could relax and as soon as I started to day dream out of the window, I found that I felt a thousand times better.

If I'd stayed and done the whole mindfulness thing of concentrating on the moment and studying how I felt, sensations in my body and not "Judge" the situation to be negative, then things would have been even more magnified and I would have vomited my jam sandwich all over the lady.

I found that I could reduce my stress and difficulties by finding somewhere to daydream.

As I said before, being in the present moment can be a very painful and stressful experience for those who are sensitive.

Imagination

Although I worked in computers, most of my employment has occurred due to my creative way of thinking and problem solving with issues that other people cannot solve.  I see things differently and a large part of it is todo with imagination.  

Being in the present moment makes it very difficult to facilitate that essential imagination that is required to come up with new ideas that nobody has thought of before.  I've solved most of my problems by switching off and day dreaming out of the window.  Mindfulness folks try to get around this problem by saying that you mindfully day dream... which again is nonsense - you need to be aware that you're daydreaming and control it....but that's just wrong and stupid  because the whole point of daydreaming is that you lose that conscious thought that is in control of your "normal thought process". 

Conclusion

The one good thing about mindfulness, is that its getting people to slow down and experience the world around them instead of rushing about like headless chickens and not seeing the things that I enjoy on a daily basis.   You don't need to check mobiles for facebook, twitter or text messages while watching the news and reading the newspapar all at once. 

As the NHS website seems to imply is that its for busy people and I can't help but wonder if busy people prefer the underlying mindful message of "slow down" if it is wrapped up in fancy words with a bit of Eastern Buddhist mystism thrown in to make it sound more magical than what it actually is.  Is it that on a subconsious level that they are being busy being "mindful"?

What I don't like about Mindfulness is that its touted as a solution that can fix anything and everything without proper scientific studies. It also doesn't seem to address the underlying causes of what might be causing stress and anxiety in the first place - these are just the symptoms.  If you dont sort out the real problem then these symptoms will continue.

Someone goes to a doctor and says they have a headache and the doctor gives them a paracetamol.  The next person that the doctor sees has an arm that hurts and the doctor gives them a paracetamol. A lady goes into the doctor's surgery complaining of a swollen and painful stomach, she too also gets a paracetamol. 

If the doctor had looked at them individually, then they would have seen the first person had an axe in his head, the next person's arm was falling off after an accident with a combine-harvester and the lady was pregnant!   

So from my point of view, I am very aware and sensitive to the present moment and can get overwhelmed by the here and now of the present moment.  The mindfulness route concentrates on the very thing that causes me stress, anxiety and discomfort.  I reach the goal of reducing stress by doing the exact opposite of mindfulness and go into autopilot and daydream.

I don't like the way that it seems to encourage a certain amount of detachment from feelings and emotions, whether they are good or bad.  We have these occur for very good reason and if you try to pretend that they're not happening or Step back and not take note of what your subconscious is saying, then I fear that important life-changing thoughts will be dismissed.

If you take detachment of thoughts, feelings and emotions to the extreme, then you end up being very bland, not enjoying anything for fear of the negative thought happening.

People need to have hope and look forward to the future and enjoy events from the past. Yes there might be difficult memories of the past and uncomfortable thoughts about future events but that is just a normal part of being a human and its far better to try and come to terms with them sooner rather than later, otherwise they will keep coming back with more and more bite regardless of what you do.

Yeah, things don't go as you always planned but instead of all the Mindfulness stuff, Just relax, go with the flow and see what happens.  There will be times that you need to take direct action - its not good to be stuck in a bad situation that's harming your health and say "oh I'm dealing with this by being mindful - my negative thoughts are not facts"

It's as if modern day people have lost touch with their feelings, emotions and intuition.  They've got frightened of having bad thoughts and normal worries.  The celebrity instagram culture just sees everybody looking wonderfully happy with big smiles and looking fantastic but a picture is just a snapshot in time and doesn't give a true reflection of how life actually is with all the normal ups and downs. 

I find it weird that the mindfulness experts say and suggest stupid things that just don't make any sort of sense.  It's almost as if its a self fullfiling prophecy, in that if someone says that licking a cucumber five times a day will bring peace and harmony to your life, then sure enough it probably will!

Hmm... maybe I could start my own well being craze called "Cucumberfulness" 

Most importantly of all, remember... there's no problem with being a normal human and all that it entails that is good and bad.  Don't be afraid of your emotions, memories of the past and dreams for the future -  It's all part of life and makes you who you are!