Mindfulness

“Mindfulness” as a word is pretty weak. And the exercises themselves are extremely simple and unassuming. It was difficult for me to grasp how it would actually help me. So nocebo kicked in, my doubt fueled against the effects of mindfulness. And in true nocebo fashion, dropped adherence.

But considering academic burnout is kicking my ass, its name makes an appearance once again as I searched for solutions.

Mindfulness is a mentioned solution for stress and clearing the mind. I’ve been skeptical for years, considering I actually tried it in my undergraduate years as part of my semester-long health habit goal (maintained and monitored for an actual graded assignment) and…assumed it to be useless, or at least minimally helpful. Because I have no basis for comparison, there’s no telling if I would’ve been worse or better off for that semester. And different semesters are incomparable due to their workload differences.

But now that I looked into it more in my graduate years, nocebo may be backing off. Because I realized that mindfulness is an umbrella term for several highly compelling strategies.

Metacognition

Cognitive diffusion is a mindfulness technique of detaching oneself from thoughts. Observing them instead of internalizing them. Mindful journaling externalizes difficult emotions, identifying them. The RAIN technique investigates emotions instead of resisting or merely allowing them to take over. Labeling thoughts and emotions in a neutral way focuses on how thoughts are not absolute truths and simply exist. “Letting go” visualizations and acceptance acknowledges to suffer is to be human, a part of life, and negativity towards negativity (like nocebo or increased mortality to negative views on stress) only makes things worse.

Humility

Thought reframing or cognitive restructuring challenges egocentric self-defeatism and criticism by forcing realistic judgment: are you really a failure or did you just fail some things? Do you always fail (i.e. are you sure you never succeed)? Are you sure you’re stupid? (Would someone stupid get into a graduate program? Are you really the worst of your class? Even if you are, are you even the worst in your town?)

Remembering that you’ve struggled before, and you’ve also succeeded. More objective truths and less overblown self-important ruminating.

Grounding

This is probably the most obvious one and representative of most typical mindfulness techniques: mindful breathing, body scan meditation, mindful walking/eating/listening, guided meditation, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), visualizations, the I of investigate in RAIN technique which can be “where in my body do I feel this feeling?”, 5-4-3-2-1 technique (5 things you can see, 4 touch, 3 hear, 2 smell, 1 taste). Funny enough, I identified focusing on the sensation of putting lotion on myself, showering, and exercise as helpful grounding techniques without even realizing I tricked myself into practicing mindfulness all along (taking away from being in my own head and instead focusing on the physical, external world).

The word

The more that I type these things, the more I realize the reason the term “minfulness” and thus its whole concept and strategies put me off is because it might be a poor choice of name. All these techniques seem more focused on mindlessness. To reduce the control of the rampaging mind, to minimize its influence in favor of the present, external world. To detach from the mind’s ailments, granted mindfully observing it, but also accepting and letting it go. Personally I find “mindfulness” to be a terrible word, but I will now pay closer attention to and am more accepting of the idea of attempting its techniques by focusing on its components.

Physiology

Apparently mindfulness strengthens the prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational thinking and emotional control, and grey matter, the cell bodies of neurons and thus improving cognitive function. When there’s physiological explanations for things, I more tend to put my faith in them. Here’s to turning my nocebo into placebo, or at least undoing nocebo.

Closing thoughts

So, “mindfulness” may be a word I dislike, but now when I think of the label I’ll think of all the highly compelling things it stands for which explains how it works. That’s the idea anyway, and why I wrote this blog post (to remind myself).