Clients with mindful psychotherapists do better

Hi Norbu

I have had just a couple hours demonstration and workshop on mindfulness, and haven't had time to read the link you posted yet, but wonder if you'd like to elaborate more?

x

Hi Norbu

I have had just a couple hours demonstration and workshop on mindfulness, and haven't had time to read the link you posted yet, but wonder if you'd like to elaborate more?

x

Hi there,

I'm not sure where to start exactly except to say first of all that I'm not a psychotherapist or a counsellor. However I do think that mindfulness skills are very useful in many contexts including interactions with other people. And this clearly includes the relationship between a psychotherapist or a counsellor and a client.

Mindfulness skills need to be developed by the individual in a relationship with their own experience normally in the context of mindfulness meditation practice. In a nutshell a great deal of this practice is about shifting the balance of attention from internal dialogue to perception of bodily sensations. This is an oversimplification but this is a very big part of it.

What is going when we do this? When we are caught up in mental dialogue we inhibit processing of bodily experience in our nervous system to an extent at least. When we bring attention to bodily sensations we let bodily processing get on with things. This enables more intuitive processing to go on. It distracts us from the feedback of emotional response and the narrative that maintains the emotion. The emotion and the narrative subside rather than being sustained.

I think it's like this. When we are engaged in a dialogue with another person; paying attention to our bodily sensations instead of our mental narrative we are actually listening to the other person better. Our emotional response is processed more effectively. The other person notices we are not so wrapped up in our own perspective. Part of this is because our own perspective is something that goes on in our mental dialogue it doesn't go on in an embodied consciousness. The embodied consciousness is engaged in subtle processes as it interacts with the other person who we are interacting with.

This doesn't mean that we are not listening to the words that are spoken but we are listening to much more than just the words. There is much more to communication than the narrative, which is often just a veil of explanations about something that lies held in the body as our body processes our emotions.

I have found, in many situations, when in a meeting or just with a group of people socially, that I think of something that I want to say. If I hold back and just watch my feelings about my desire to contribute to the conversation, someone else often says what I wanted to say. In the end when things go quiet then something more useful can be said and then I can have the opportunity to contribute. And in this context, my powder has been kept dry, and what I then wish to say is often not only more useful but more notice is taken of it.

I think that this approach naturally seems to attract authority in a group. It's really very interesting. It seems one can often be more influential in a group or with another if one keeps ones trap shut until one feels there is little personal need, or need to express oneself on the based of an emotional reaction, to express oneself. In the end when you've done the listening to yourself first then the only things to be said are things that are relevant to the other person or people present.

In this context the insight you express will be greater and more relevant to the situation at hand and will be less clouded by your own personal agenda. It will be more based on a concern of the best outcomes for the group or the other person in the dialogue or your own valid needs. What you say will express a deeper insight and more authentic compassion with greater skill in it's presentation.

What do you think?

Norbu