this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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I'm not saying mindfulness can't have serious benefits. However, I would caution anyone who's into it to read the book McMindfulness. A lot of the "science" behind it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, there can be genuine drawbacks to it, and it's often used in unethical ways--like to make CEOs of ruthless companies more able to shove aside their feelings of guilt, or to sharpen the minds of soldiers for killing.
Wait, there's people making money off of this shit‽ Like, my therapist and I work on mindfulness, but for me that just means being present in my body (not escaping into books/games/videos), considering my wants and needs, and listening to my emotions (even when they're unpleasant). Is there some other definition? I like talking to people about it, but I'll have to be more specific about what I mean in the future if there's someone out there selling something.
I mean, look up "mindfulness" on Amazon. There are a million books for sale out there. And people like John Kabat-Zinn have made plenty of money selling mindfulness to everyone from mental health clinics to the military.
Mindfulness in this context is generally just defined as paying attention to the present moment. But that's ethically neutral and can be used to, for example, make the horrors of late-stage capitalism more bearable for its subjects, or to help soldiers focus on the act of killing rather than the horror of it.
Bleh, I like my version better. I feel a more diverse range of emotions, and I feel those feelings more, not less. I used to be able to ignore things that made me unhappy or were actively hurtful/harmful, and now I can't really do that (except for trivial things). I'm now aware that I feel progressively more miserable if I don't take some sort of action to deal with my feelings. I'm coming at this from a place of intense childhood trauma, so that may explain the difference. I had to do a bunch of EMDR and other very unpleasant things to reach the point where I could stand to live in my own head. That's probably where the disconnect between my mindfulness and the commercial self-help mindfulness comes from.
FWIW, this was a new issue to me. I’ve only encountered mindfulness practices like you’ve described.
Gratitude journaling, breathwork, meditation. Pulling yourself into the present to avoid things like lingering anxieties or future worries. I combine this with exercise and really prioritizing sleep to good effect for me.
I think there’s always gurus trying to sell something but like most things there is no easy roads or short cuts. And it’s interesting to hear others perspectives.
Good luck on your mindfulness journey. Do you have any practices that work for you?
I do, but a lot of it is focused on dealing with fairly intense childhood trauma. Mindfulness for me might mean being aware that I'm feeling worse, until I help myself. Small techniques are deep breathing (4 seconds in, 4 hold, 4 out, 4 hold), going to my comfort places and trying to pick out as many details as possible (I'm lucky and have a backyard with a pond and a lot of birds), and in extreme cases, I'll smell tea leaves. That last one is more about getting out of a traumatic disassociation rather than getting into a state of mindfulness, but disassociation and mindfulness are mutually exclusive, so it's sort of a mindfulness thing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Like, before I worked on my mindfulness, I'd hide from my problems for months or years. Hell, I'd be so zonked out of the world that I wouldn't know I needed to use the bathroom until I started to feel physical pain. I could numb and hide my feelings so well that I just ghosted through life. Now, I can't do that and I don't want to. Things hurt, things are stressful, things are miserable. Things are also joyful and happy, or are deep and meaningful. I get to have the full gamut, rather than just snark, sarcasm, and nothing. It's probably not comparable, and on further reflection I'm glad that most people will never have to go through the process I went through. Trauma sucks and the recovery sucks too.
Interesting suggestion, I’ll have a look over the book. I mainly was referring to practicing meditation, doing things like gratitude lists, trying to maximize peace in my life on a daily basis versus maybe a lot of what other mindfulness practices teach. I will check out that book though, thanks for an alternate perspective.