When You Find Yourself Ruminating
I kicked off the Annual Conference of the Financial Therapy Association on Monday morning with some mindfulness. They are a wonderful, inter-disciplinary group of financial services professionals who use research-based interventions to help clients achieve financial wellness.
Mindfulness comes at our personal narratives—the stories we tell ourselves—from a different perspective than most types of therapy (with the exception of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and other cognitive therapies). We acknowledge that we all have our stories, however we don't spend too much time deconstructing said stories. In mindfulness, all stories are essentially the same—they're narratives you're using that function to keep you in a pattern or help you create a new one. I'm frequently asked what we do instead of dig into our stories. That conversation inspired this post.
When You Can't Stop Thinking About The Thing
There you are, attempting to focus on your anchor point for five minutes, and you find yourself ruminating. Or better yet, there you are, "working," and you realize you're not working at all, but you've got a scene from the show you're bingeing on Netflix on a continuous loop in your head.
Working with Intrusive Mental Activity