A common treatment goal for children and adolescents is learning ways to self regulate and calm one’s emotions and mind. For that reason, Mindfulness can be an effective adjunct in treatment in addressing the cognitive, emotional, and physiological symptoms associated with trauma, and of PTSD specifically. Mindfulness practices, including meditation and relaxation can reduce autonomic sympathetic activation, muscle tension, and blood pressure and improve neuroendocrine and hormonal activity, decrease physical symptoms and emotional distress, and increase quality of life (Emerson, Sharma, Chaudhry, Turner, 2009).
Dialectical Behavior Therapy uses mindfulness in order to obtain clarity and focus in the moment. Linehan states “The patient must be taught how to focus their attention on one task or activity at a time, engaging in it with alertness, awareness, and wakefulness” (Linehan, M. (1993) Cognitive Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. New York, New York: Guilford Press). Linehan suggests that the skill of mindfulness can assist individuals in obtaining this clarity and focus. Mindfulness is about being completely in touch with the present moment and being open to experiences as they come. Mindfulness is made up of a number of skills which include awareness, nonjudgmental/nonevaluative awareness and being in the present moment. This includes being mindful of your breathing, sounds, sitting meditation, eating mindfully, mindfulness of thought, and mindfulness of emotion.
Why Mindfulness?
Research indicates that meditation and mindfulness quiet the mind to allow silence and healing from stress. Sarah Lazar and colleagues of Massachusetts General Hospital completed a fMRI imaging study of 20 people engaged in meditation involving sustained mindful attention to internal and external sensory stimuli and nonjudgmental awareness of present-moment stimuli without cognitive elaboration. The results of the study found that brain regions associated with attention, introspection, and sensory processing were thicker, providing evidence that the brain changes with meditation, specifically those regions of the brain that control emotional reactions. Lazar’s study lends support to the notion that treatment of anxiety, traumatic stress, and emotional dyregulation may need to include becoming mindful.
Learning to become a careful observer of the ebb and flow of internal experience, and noticing whether thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, and impulses emerge. In order to deal with past trauma or emotional distress, individuals need to learn that it is safe to have feelings and sensations. If they learn to attend to inner experience they will become aware of that bodily experience never remains static. Once individuals realize that their internal sensations continuously shift and change, particularly if they learn to develop a certain degree of control over their physiological states by breathing and movement; they will understand that they can control their emotions to a point where they are no longer overwhelming or uncontrollable.
Get Inspired
Try it yourself! Start off with a two minute mindfulness practice. Sit quietly, observe your breath, and try to remove all thoughts from your mind. If a thought does enter into your mind, just achknowledge it without judgement. Try engaging in this mindfulness practice every day. You will notice an improvement in your physical and mental health after just a few minutes a day
