How mindfulness can help you through hard times

Nancy Robinson-Berry is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist in Georgetown, Texas. She has been an LCSW for 23 years, working with at-risk children and their families, as well as active duty soldiers and veterans. Now her work focuses on senior citizens to promote resilience and find meaning while aging.

If I were only allowed to tell my psychotherapy clients one sentence, it would be, “Learn to do mindfulness meditation.” I teach some form of it to a majority of them. Most who use it regularly report to me that they feel more at peace with their emotions and that they worry less.

They are often able to be more patient with themselves and to approach challenges less from a place of reacting and more from a place of curiosity. This helps them to suffer less when something painful happens to them.

Mindfulness meditation is not relaxation. It is about paying attention to “what is” in this moment, without judging it. If you feel anxious, you notice that. If you feel relaxed, you notice that. If your thoughts are loud in your head, or if you hear a clock ticking in the room, you pay attention to that.

With mindfulness, you want your mind to be where your body is. How many times is the opposite true? Your body is here, but your mind is in the future, thinking of all the awful things that could happen. Or it’s back in the past, replaying all the choices that you wish you had made differently.

All the while, you are missing the reality of this very moment that you are in. A blossoming flower might be right in your line of vision, but you don’t notice it. You are focused on desiring something different than what is right in front of you. In Buddhist thought, which is where mindfulness meditation has its origins, this desiring is the cause of all of our suffering.

I must have looked at him like he had three eyes. I didn’t want to suffer well, I wanted my suffering to stop!

So how do you stop desiring something other than what is right in front of you in this moment?

Through mindfulness meditation, also known as insight meditation, you can train your mind to come back to this present moment whenever you realize it has gone somewhere else. You know how weight lifters use “reps” or repeated exercise of a muscle, to build strength? With mindfulness meditation, you repeatedly practice bringing your mind back to “now.”

Why does this help? Because you can pretty much deal with whatever is in front of you in this moment. It’s when you let your mind start commenting on (judging) what you are experiencing right now that your physical or emotional pain causes you to suffer.

Although you will notice the benefits of mindfulness meditation with time, it is not a quick fix to get rid of unpleasant emotions. On the contrary, it helps to build your “emotional muscle” to experience feelings from a place of balance and calm.

Equanimity: Getting rid of ‘good’ and ‘bad’
There is a concept in Buddhism called “equanimity,” which is the idea that things are not innately “good” or “bad,” but our tendency to judge them as so causes a lot of our suffering. With the wider perspective you can gain through mindfulness meditation, you start to see that often, what you first thought was “bad” has a “good” outcome, and vice versa.

Those labels become meaningless. With equanimity, you learn to notice and observe events, emotions, physical sensations and thoughts without judging them.

For example, if you are feeling anxious, rather than judging the emotion as a bad thing you must get rid of, you learn to be curious about it and explore it. If it arises during meditation, you invite it in to sit with you, and you notice it as energy in your body. Where is it located in your body, what exactly does it feel like, is it increasing, decreasing, moving around?

Impermanence and ‘suffering well’
Often in meditation, you realize another important Buddhist concept, which is the impermanence of all things, including your emotions. No emotion stays forever, and that includes the emotions that we often label as good. They all wax and wane, and we can practice watching them rise, fade and sometimes disappear, without having to react to them.

When I was in my 30s, I went through a difficult divorce while raising my two sons. There were a lot of times when I felt overwhelmed and anxious. My very wise therapist at the time talked to me about being compassionate with myself when I am anxious, rather than trying to make the anxiety go away.

He introduced the idea of “suffering well,” which is also from the Buddhist traditions. I must have looked at him like he had three eyes. I didn’t want to suffer well, I wanted my suffering to stop!

I was scared to death. What would I become aware of if I sat that long in silence?

But the truth is that we can’t make any emotion go away, including joy and happiness. And the more we try to avoid them, the more energy they build inside us, just like a boiling pot on the stove when you put the lid on it.

On the other hand, we can invite our emotions to sit down with us in meditation, and we can be kind and compassionate with ourselves about our pain, just as we would be with someone that we love who is suffering.

Rather than telling ourselves, “It’s awful to have this pain, and I must make it go away,” we can tell ourselves something like, “Of course I feel sad and hurt after this loss. It was a painful experience and I will take care of myself now.” Paradoxically, once we truly accept and allow the emotion to be there, it loses its power over us, and we suffer less.

These ideas were radically new for me. They stopped my thinking in its tracks and flipped it upside down. Maybe there was something to this mindfulness meditation.

My first meditation session
With my therapist’s advice in mind, I went to a meditation group that was led by a Buddhist monk. He gave us a brief introduction to the basics of how to meditate, and then we were to meditate together for 20 minutes. I was scared to death. What would I become aware of if I sat that long in silence? Could I actually meditate for that long?

We were to mentally focus on a small spot two fingers down from our navels, and try to keep our attention there. We sat on a small wooden bench close to the floor and gazed a few feet in front of us on the floor. Whenever our minds wandered, we were to bring our attention back to that spot below the navel.

The monk lightly tapped a metal bowl that made a beautiful ringing sound. Sitting there I was still nervous, but I listened to the sound more completely than I’d ever listened to a sound before. The ringing filled the room, hung in the air, and then slowly melted into nothingness. It was my first realization of the beauty that is available to us when we are willing to stop and pay attention to this moment.

But in the silence that followed, my mind started racing. “What am I supposed to do now?” it demanded. “Man, it’s quiet in here. There is no way that I can sit still for another minute, let alone 20.” And on, and on, and on. They call this our “monkey mind,” because our minds like to chatter to us all the time, like monkeys.

Then my old companion Fear stopped by. It started with a tightness in my chest, and then migrated to my stomach, creating a knot. My mind started reacting, judging: “Uh-oh, I don’t like this feeling.” “I wonder how many minutes are left?” “I don’t want to sit here.” “My shoulder hurts.”

I could sometimes get my mind back to that spot below the navel, but quickly my untrained monkey mind would start swinging from the trees again. At times my thoughts became kinder: “You can do this. You’re actually doing pretty well.” And, “Nothing horrible is going to happen.”

The knot in my stomach began to loosen, and I felt more relaxed for a while. I heard a dog barking outside and noticed that I was irritated that I couldn’t focus because of that. I alternated between the fear, irritation, and occasional relaxed feelings for the rest of the time. At one point, I was able to observe the feelings in a detached way, watching them vacillate between one another.

At the end of the session, the monk rang the bowl again. He did a brief dharma talk afterward, which is what usually happens at the end of a meditation. The dharma is the collective teachings of the Buddha.

He also talked with us about what we had experienced. I was relieved to hear that several other people had noticed feelings of fear. The monk said that feeling fear is one of the most common experiences people have when they start meditating.

You can be mindful while brushing your teeth, washing the dishes, listening to a friend or eating.

He said that if we are not aware of the fear that we all carry, it affects our behavior, and thus the world, in negative ways. Becoming aware of it helps us to not be “afraid of the fear,” which allows us to become more balanced and to bring more compassion into the world. Kind of cool, right?

And the dog barking? My irritation was caused by my desire that it stop. Once we let go of desiring that things be a certain way, our suffering lessens. The sound is part of the process. The idea is to notice the sound, be curious about it, and then gently bring your attention back to the now, whether it’s by focusing on that spot below your navel or by focusing on your breathing in and out.

Meditation practice in my life
I was fascinated by that first experience of mindfulness meditation. I liked the idea of going toward my fear and exploring it, sitting with it, and seeing that it is fluid, constantly changing and not a permanent state.

I actually experienced the concept of “impermanence” while meditating. Experiencing something is more powerful than thinking about it. Those insights become a part of what you know, rather than what you believe. I continued with that meditation group for about a year, and then meditated mostly by myself at home.

I still meditate regularly, and my goal is to make a commitment to do so daily. At times I have joined meditation groups, but mostly I “sit” alone. I plan to start going to some meditation retreats this year, where I can focus more intensely on mindfulness over a period of several days.

However, the important thing to know is that you can practice mindfulness at any moment, for any amount of time when you “come back to now” and pay attention to this moment.

You can be mindful while brushing your teeth, washing the dishes, listening to a friend or eating. If your mind starts to wander during these activities, just gently direct it back to what is happening now. There is also something called walking meditation, where you hone your attention to each slow step that you take during a session.

There are many ways to make mindfulness a regular part of your life. I encourage you to find a meditation group, read about mindfulness meditation, and start meditating at home. Don’t worry whether you are “doing it right.” If you are trying, you are doing it well.

Your practice will deepen with time and with input from other meditators. Mindfulness is more of a journey than a destination. And just as a regular physical workout session keeps you physically fit over time, so a regular mindfulness practice keep you emotionally fit, balanced and strong.