In 2015, I completed Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy training hosted by Matthew Watkin.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is an innovative approach that combines the practice and clinical application of mindfulness meditation with the tools of cognitive therapy. The heart of this work lies in acquainting patients with the characteristic cognitive and emotional patterns of mood disorders, while simultaneously inviting them to develop a new healthier relationship to these patterns.
The 8-week programme covers the following:
Week 1—Moving from living on “automatic pilot” to living with awareness and conscious choice
Week 2—Moving from relating to experience through thinking to directly sensing
Week 3—Moving from dwelling in the past and future to being fully in the present moment
Week 4—Moving from trying to avoid, escape, or get rid of unpleasant experience to approaching it with interest
Week 5—Moving from needing things to be different to allowing them to be just as they already are
Week 6—Moving from seeing thoughts as true and real to seeing them as mental events that may not correspond to reality
Week 7—Moving from treating yourself harshly to taking care of yourself with kindness and compassion
Week 8—Planning a mindful future
Matthew wrote a great article on the benefits of Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression. Here is the link should you be interested to learn more.
Bringing back hope
What if, despite what your thoughts may try to tell you, there is nothing wrong
with you at all? What if your heroic efforts to prevent your feelings from getting the best of you are actually backfiring? What if they are the very things that are keeping you stuck in suffering or even making things worse?
This book is written to help you understand how this happens and what you can do about it.