Posted by pegasus on May 26, 2005, at 16:43:37
In reply to confusion about therapy, posted by sunny10 on May 26, 2005, at 15:05:10
What she's describing is exactly the technique of meditation taught in Buddhist and Buddist-inspired traditions. And it's no simple thing. In those traditions, they expect you to practice and practice to eventually be able to do it. I've had some training in that type of meditation, and I did find it useful for controlling some of my obsessions and ruminations. In fact, that was probably the most valuable thing I've done other than medication. I don't know where you live, but there are lots of organizations that provide instruction in that type of meditation - not necessarily Buddhist. If there is a Shambhala group in your community, they have a great series of weekend trainings that can help. And Jack Kornfield has some great CDs and tapes that teach beginning meditation.
Another thing that helped me were some mental tricks I learned from a web site that I can't remember: when you recognize undesired thinking, try assigning it a particular color, and mentally putting it away in a room. So, you might say, "Oh, that's another one of those green thoughs, I'll put it in the green room and close the door." I used to get some temporary relief that way. Also, sometimes I get relief by noticing that I'm doing the ruminating or whatever, and taking a moment to reorient myself to my acctual surroundings. I check in with each of my senses. Sometimes that stops things for a while.
Good luck to you. I remember my therapist being pretty unable to offer tips for dealing with this also, and I was pretty disappointed. I guess they don't cover this type of thing in therapist school.
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:503230
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050521/msgs/503258.html