this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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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.