Peaceful Mind: Using Mindfulness and Cognitive Psychology to Overcome Depression

John McQuiad and Paula Carmona

ISBN 1-57224-366-X

Amazon link

From the introduction:

“The motivation to write this book certainly comes from the desire to help the many people we have seen suffering from depression. But this is not a book getting rid of your depression. Our more earnest hope is to give you tools to help transform your life. Transformation doesn’t happen by merely getting rid of a problem. Transformation occurs when you have the capacity to greet problems in your life with an open awareness and a keen interest. Learning how to be open with life and face painful problems is at the heart of our interest in exploring

how mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy can be tools of transformation. A life shaken by depression is also a life open to the possibility of deep transformation. We hope that this book provides a useful foundation and skillful means to help you move beyond a life where depression is your shadow.”

The chapter headings are:

1) From depression to hope

2) The combo plate

3) CBT and mindfulness meditation: first steps

4) Core belief framework

5) Understanding and changing depressed thinking

6) Activities and mood

7) People and your mood

People skills

9) Depression and exercise

10)Acceptance is not defeat

11)Stages of change

The stages of change from chapter 11 are:

Precontemplation—is what generally is called “denial”. In this stage we have trouble acknowledging a problem. The denial is actually used as a defense to not face reality.

Contemplation—occurs as we move into an emotional area of becoming willing to own a problem or situation.

Preparation—is the emotional space where we balance staying where we are or moving in a new direction.

Action—is the stage that we begin implementing changes in our lives. The changes adopted here should be small and slow so that we may learn how to recognize what helps bring on the problem.

Maintenance—is achieved according to one (James Prochaska) of the authors (James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente) of how we change as “a sustained long-term effort and a revised lifestyle”.

Termination—does not mean that depression leaves forever. Instead it means that each sufferer has learned his/her own relapse prevention and used the maintenance tools introduced here to continue life without deep depression. With practice, the sufferer becomes less and less willing to stay in denial.

The basic problem with the medical model of addiction recovery is that the medical field calls someone “well” by sending them to take classes about symptoms and this determines the level of “help” that the “well” person will be able to give.

The reality of any emotional/mental help is that the healer can’t help beyond his/her level of recovery. We are all wounded healers but growth only happens after surrender to the need for recovery.

What other field of medicine focuses mainly or only on the symptoms? I mean, where is the cure? Certainly a label can help by identifying what information is needed to lead to a cure. But how does telling someone that they are in denial help that person to understand that their thinking is faulty?

Denial is not about lying but about someone not knowing the truth. Isn’t it more helpful to say that an addict is someone using a learned pattern of behavior to deal with uncomfortable feelings? If there are problems because of the addiction, then the learned pattern has to be given up and a new pattern of behavior has to be chosen for the energy used to be a positive for the addict.

In other words, some of the main issues in addiction treatment are maturity issues. The age at which a person started drinking, using, eating, buying, being overpowering to others, using sex, etc. is the emotional age he/she still is. If he/she started at age 15, which is pretty normal, then he/she is age 14 emotionally.

So recovery is generally about growing up. Another main issue of why people are addictive is to continue to live life in their head or in their imagination. No one knows reality–we only have a perception of reality.

As the hero in 10 Million Ways to Die says, “I never knew that I lived in a world that I hadn’t created.” That is why the addict experiences such anger at having to give up the addiction. The addict believes that his/her using only affects him/her and is no one else’s business. In reality, the addiction is affecting everyone in the addict’s life.

In the self-discovery model of group healing, everyone in the group is a student. The sharing of power in relationships defines the health of the relationship. No hierarchy is needed when people enter groups to help each other. The leadership of the group can be shared by all on a rotation basis.

The group members in the self-discovery group must agree to follow guidelines that the group chooses. The main goal of the group should be short-term with the idea of splitting up to form new groups. Some people may choose to recycle–repeat the same group–before branching out to their own group. After 2-3 times recycling, the other group members may help with the formation of new group to a group member who needs more support.

The Mental Health Institute claims 20% of the population suffers from mental illness. These people generally can benefit from mental health counseling. In America, with all our wealth, many of these poor souls wander our streets as the homeless. They have no medical insurance so mental health care is a sometime thing. Since most of the population isn’t mentally ill, education groups can be a great source of comfort and growth for those not needing therapy.

Tags: addiction, recovery, well, health, self-discovery, mentalhealth, education

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