The Mindfulness Response: East and West

Integrating Ideas from Eastern and Western Philosophy

            One participant talked about having difficulty accepting Western religions with their ideas of sin and humans and their relationship to God. The participant talked to the group about how their understanding of what a religion or spirituality choice would be matched up with Buddhism.  They talked about feeling confused about the Western views and church doctrines. The participant explained that they did not feel connected to any church anymore. They went on to say the use of mindfulness was helpful and that they did feel connected to Buddhism.

            The Buddhist views include self-compassion concepts and mindfulness is one of them. The group discussed self-compassion and its history within Buddhist philosophies. The group therapy member identified with learning about self-compassion. Western psychotherapy can be applied to Buddhist philosophy as described in the eight-fold path. To accomplish the Mindfulness Response, both East and Western theories can be applied to people who experienced trauma and psychosis. The combination created the Mindfulness Response.

            The Mindfulness Response uses concepts from Buddhism. Starting with the “Right View,” which can be related to our perceptions and misunderstandings. Numerous psychological theories address misperceptions and the problems that come with it.

            The “Right Resolve” from Buddhism acknowledges suffering. Current psychological theories use self-compassion concepts to help people understand different levels of emotional pain.

            The “Right Speech” from Buddhism relates to being honest, respectful, and self-talk. These areas of psychology concern healthy communication and relationships. Symptoms that include psychosis, PTSD, or panic attacks will use reality checks to manage severe symptoms. Self-talk relates to negative thoughts and CBT cognitive distortions.

            The “Right Conduct” is similar to CBT, RET, PBCT, DBT, and other psychological theories that explain how actions have consequences. The RET method written by Ellis explains the ABC method of how a consequence is linked to behaviors.

            The “Right Livelihood” concerns cheating, killing others, or being involved in weapons to harm others. This is addressed by the Naikan philosophy, which emphasizes our relationships with others and our impact on others.

            The “Right Effort” explains that a person must use restraint, and not have strong emotions. When considering the symptoms of serious mental illness, a team approach helps a group therapy participant build lifestyle balance. By using supportive providers, a person learns to stabilize their symptoms and move back into the community.

            The “Right Mindfulness” is being aware of yourself and your environment. With the use of self-compassion concepts of mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness the group therapy participants learned to become more aware of their negative thoughts and what pleased them.

            The “Right Meditation” is introspection. This is learned through regular meditation work.

Group therapy participants learned the value of practicing self-compassion skills and becoming aware of their symptoms. This new knowledge helped them learn to disengage from previous reactions and learn another way to respond to distress. They learned to include mindfulness in their daily routines.

Self-Compassion: Common Humanity, Love and Belonging

            Common humanity is how others have similar feelings, thoughts, sensations, images, and problems just like we do. It is connecting to others and building a supportive network to help you maintain stable mental health. Finding ways to communicate openly and honestly with a supportive person and your team and keep people in our lives is important. Group therapy members talked about how they felt lonely and isolated, and how depression follows the loneliness. Connections to others take our effort to reach out to others on our team.

            Participants in group therapy thought it may not matter if they contacted a friend or a relative because they felt that “nobody wants to listen to me anyway.”  The group confronted this by pointing out that the depression was saying that, not the person. Common humanity helps us understand how depression, anxiety, psychosis, and PTSD thoughts can influence our emotions, feelings, and behaviors. It’s important to recognize them and notice what they are. They are not helpful thoughts. They will keep us alienated from others.

Love

Erich Fromm (1956) writes of love and belonging and how to develop more love in your life. There are different types of love, and they can be experienced through different actions and values. As children, we have experiences of love from parents, how it is found in religion, among brotherhoods, mother love or unconditional love, erotic love, self-love, and love of God. Love contains basic elements that are common to all types of love.

Similar to self-compassion concepts, Fromm writes about love’s requirement of discipline, concentration, and patience. Fromm explains that caring for oneself or doing self-care shows respect, responsibility, and understanding. Love of another person also involves the entire community and caring for the family as well as being responsible for the community. This value is not congruent with Western views that emphasize the individual, or one’s family, and not the entire community (Hofstede 1980, 2001).

            Group therapy participants talked about how religions emphasize loving your neighbor. You can’t love your neighbor if you don’t love yourself. The two are life partners. A person must love themselves and care for themselves just as they would care for another person.