Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies E-Book

Patrizia Collard

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 643

Beschreibung

Stay in the present and build a happier future Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies takes you through the eight-week MBCT course, using the principles of mindfulness to complement established CBT techniques. You'll discover how using MBCT can help lower your risk of relapsing into depression and reduce the risk of other mental health disorders including anxiety, stress, and low self-esteem. * Provides a solid foundation for positive mental health * The downloadable audio files contain guided meditations, a core feature of the MBCT program * MBCT works as an excellent supplement to therapy and may reduce the need for medication If you suffer from depression, anxiety, insomnia, or a host of other mental health disorders, let Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies keep you in the present and build a happier future.

Leseprobe

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2013

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-118-51946-2 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-51943-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-51944-8 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-51945-5 (ebk)

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

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Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/mindfulnessbasedcognitivetherapyuk to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Introducing Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

Chapter 1: Improving Your Wellbeing with Mindfulness

Placing the Power in Your Hands: Discovering MBCT

Encountering the term MBCT

Drawing on Buddhist philosophy

Developing from CBT

Integrating mindfulness and CBT into MBCT

Recognising the Need for a Mindful Approach

Addressing the shortcomings of CBT

Going beyond traditional therapy

Enjoying the Benefits of MBCT

Seeing the evidence of success

Fearing past and future experiences

Choosing to live in the now

Perusing even more ways that MBCT can help you

Chapter 2: Deciding to Lead a Mindful Existence

Understanding Your Problems

Feeling that you can’t cope

Wanting to make a change

Breaking the cycle of mental anguish

Developing an Understanding of Yourself

Opening up to yourself

Studying your personal thought patterns

Preparing for the Challenges Ahead

Facing your fears

Jumping over hurdles

Recognising the importance of everyday practice

Looking Forward to Long-Term Balance

Living in the moment

Accepting reality

Reducing suffering

Becoming your own best friend

Chapter 3: Putting Mindfulness into Practice with the Eight-Week Course

Creating a Personal Practice that Works

Setting yourself goals

Making the practice part of your daily routine

Making time, not finding time

Drawing up a schedule

Keeping a practice diary

Dispelling the Myths

Feeling that you lack the necessary experience or knowledge

Assuming that mindfulness is all spiritual mumbo-jumbo

Distinguishing between meditation, mindfulness and awareness training

Believing that you can do it by yourself

Being Actively Mindful: Theory Rooted in Practice

Practising oriental disciplines

Adapting old techniques

Joining body and mind

Focusing on each individual task, and being present in the moment

Discovering the Advantages Awaiting You

Adding up the benefits

Tailoring the benefits to you

Living healthily

Slowing right down

Helping yourself and others

Introducing the Eight-Week Course

Going over the core skills

Casting a look over the weeks to come

Part II: Sailing Your Personal Ship – the Eight-Week MBCT Course

Chapter 4: Preparing for the Voyage – Week One: Practising Mindfulness and Stepping Out of Autopilot

Preparing Yourself and Your Surroundings

Creating your practice space

Making yourself comfortable

Uncluttering Your Mind

Letting go of worries and concerns

Entering the now

Exploring Your Physical Self Mindfully

Understanding the importance of taking your time

Engaging in the body scan practice

Becoming aware of your mind wandering

Slowing Down and Living Your Life Mindfully

Performing everyday activities mindfully

Eating with awareness: Raisin exercise

Making time for regular practice

Recording your reactions and responses

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 5: Plotting the Course – Week Two: Cultivating the Right Attitude

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Going Deeper into Self-Awareness

Listening mindfully: A ten-minute sound meditation

Engaging in your mindful routine

Retaining your awareness

Dealing with Barriers to Practising Mindful Exercises

Suggesting changes to maintain motivation

Staying focused and committed

Coping with Setbacks, Pain and Emotions During Your Practice

Trusting your own judgement

Accepting difficult emotions

Knowing your physical limits

Observing the Wandering Mind

Regulating the breath: Mindful breathing exercise

Exploring automatic thoughts and the connected feelings

Taking note of thoughts throughout the day

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 6: Setting Sail – Week Three: Developing Physical Awareness

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Applying Mindfulness to Your Body’s Senses

Seeing mindfully: Making a short mind-movie

Getting physically in touch with daily tasks

Finding the breathing space: An emergency meditation

Allowing awareness of sight, sound, breath and body

Engaging Your Body in Mindful Movement

Discovering movement exercises

Stretching yourself

Going for a stroll: Walking exercises

Observing Mindfulness in Daily Movement

Getting up in the morning

Preparing a mindful breakfast

Exercising mindfully throughout the day

Retiring for the night

Making a Note of Unpleasant Events

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 7: Weathering the Storm – Week Four: Dealing with Difficulties

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Exploring and Explaining Stress

Grasping the nature of stress

Hearing the good news

Dealing with Unhelpful Thoughts

Being with negative thoughts

Creating more helpful thoughts

Addressing Your Anxiety Demons

Attending to an anchor of awareness – or two

Using mindfulness with unpleasant tasks

Coping with Troublesome Thoughts

Tracing your stressful thought patterns

Sitting with difficult thoughts

Strengthening your position by finding new perspectives

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 8: Navigating Troubled Waters – Week Five: Relinquishing Attachments

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Allowing the Presence of Painful Thoughts, Emotions and Memories

Staying with discomforting thoughts

Developing the coping breathing space exercise

Tackling Troubling Past Experiences

Bringing painful experiences to mind

Seeing your past as the midnight movie

Pre-empting future events

Coping with strong emotions

Resisting the urge to fight or run away

Maintaining a gentle approach

Beginning a new relationship with your experiences

Using storytelling to understand suffering

Unchaining Yourself from Attachments

Noticing strong attachments to the past

Co-existing with aversion

Understanding the importance of acceptance

Letting go of the desire for quick fixes

Jettisoning pleasant attachments too

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 9: Going with the Current – Week Six: Accepting the True Nature of Thoughts

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Demystifying Thoughts: They’re Less Peculiar Than You Think

Understanding how your thoughts affect your moods (and vice versa)

Distinguishing your thoughts from facts

Relating to your thoughts in a new way

Parting the Waves of Self-Doubt

Bringing awareness to your thoughts

Performing the pebble meditation to consider deeper thoughts

Writing to yourself about your thoughts

Approaching difficult thoughts in a longer meditation

Visualising problems and ­problematic people

Being Kind to Yourself

Treating yourself well with the kindness meditation

Remembering real moods occurring during real events

Avoiding self-criticism and -judgement

Releasing unhelpful emotional habits

Finding inner peace by sitting with your thoughts

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 10: Coming Into Port – Week Seven: Looking After Your Own Wellbeing

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Taking Positive Steps to Look After Yourself

Taking a break: Fixing your focus mindfully

Maintaining and developing your practice for your benefit

Beginning your day with a treat

Rebalancing Your Daily Life

Identifying your daily drainers and possible rechargers

Alleviating feelings of anger

Stabilising your mood

Having Fun for Fun’s Sake

Treating yourself

Not overindulging

Dealing with Threats to Your Wellbeing

Remembering the good

Finding the right response

Linking your actions to your moods

Improving how you feel through what you do

Sitting with spacious awareness

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Chapter 11: Looking Beyond the Horizon to the Rest of Your Life – Week Eight: Living Mindfully

Getting Your Bearings on the Course

Embracing a Mindful Life in Good and Bad Times

Pledging to Practise

Motivating yourself

Creating action plans

Keeping a progress diary

Having a Mindful Day, Every Day

Waking up

Breaking your fast

Journeying mindfully

Taking regular breathing breaks

Performing mindful daily actions

Communicating mindfully

Going to sleep

Embracing your experiences

Exercising mind and body

Developing Mindfulness Attributes

Remembering non-judgement

Having patience

Using childlike curiosity: Beginner’s mind

Trusting yourself

Working on non-striving

Accepting things the way they are

Letting go

Accepting the importance of commitment, self-discipline and intention

Keeping it simple

Giving yourself a reason to keep practising

Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week

Part III: Developing Different Treatment Practices

Chapter 12: Stopping the Cycle of Depression

Staring into a Black Hole: Understanding Depression

Becoming depressed: You’re not alone

Knowing the common symptoms of depression

Identifying the causes

Observing the effects that feed depression

Breaking Down Common Symptoms: Your Personal Narrative

Searching for your personal signature

Noticing how depression affects you

Lacking drive or energy

Feeling helpless

Understanding why some people self-harm

Overcoming Unhelpful Thoughts

‘Snapping out’ of it

Believing that you’re against the world

Deleting the Depression Loop

Encountering a depression loop

Making time, not finding time

Following up on your progress

Using MBCT to prevent depression relapse

Believing that things can and will improve

Chapter 13: Breaking Free from Addiction

Discovering the Realities of Addiction

Filling a void – why people get addicted

Looking at common factors of addiction

Wanting to Stop: The Process of Change

Entering the sea of change

Meeting with others

Accepting who you really are

Believing in yourself

Letting go of addiction, mindfully

Starting afresh, now

Staving Off Relapse

Losing Control: Understanding Alcohol Addiction

Considering the symptoms of alcohol addiction

Discovering the dangers

Challenging the misconceptions

Believing that the problem is out of your hands

Going cold turkey

Remembering Helpful Lessons

Chapter 14: Relieving the Strain of Anxiety

Coping with Pressure

Understanding how anxiety manifests itself

Differentiating between the types of anxiety

Tackling Your Fears with Targeted Interventions

Developing a coping plan

Changing unhelpful thoughts

Intervening mindfully

Creating practice points

Making Peace with Your Fears

Understanding that your instincts are natural

Knowing that you can rise above your instincts

Accepting Anxiety as Part of Life

Pre-empting anxious feelings

Changing what can be changed

Allowing what can’t be changed

Sleeping it off

Remembering Helpful Lessons from the Course

Chapter 15: Nurturing Hope While Living with Pain

Grinding to a Halt: When Pain Stops You from Living Life

Understanding the nature of pain

Looking at different types of pain

Studying the effects of pain on memory

Hurting mentally

Maintaining Perspective

Waking Up to Life: Accepting Pain

Accepting and then responding

Recognising what your body can still do

Creating a new relationship with pain

Using Regular Coping Skills

Engaging in breathing practices

Achieving wholeness

Chapter 16: Finding Purpose and Meaning When You’re Older

Thinking About the True Meaning of Purpose

Redefining your concept of purpose

Reconnecting to your own sense of purpose

Finding Positive Aspects of Life

Surrounding yourself with positive people

Widening your experience of life

Cultivating motivation and inspiration

Dismissing nothing, including everything

Finding joy

Accepting Limitations of All Kinds

Trying to improve and develop

Dismissing the notion of ‘failure’

Rediscovering your strengths

Connecting Fully with the Life You Have Now

Setting yourself new goals and challenges

Moving forward one step at a time

Living in the now, whatever your age

Moving Gently, but Mindfully

Pressing palms

Cutting wood

Opening the chest

Flexing the spine

Chapter 17: Bringing Harmony to Your Life

Accepting the Importance of Mindful Living

Homing in on Domestic Mindfulness

Waking with an open mind

Getting up on the right side of bed

Enjoying your morning routine

Starting with a positive attitude

Preparing yourself for the rigours of the day

Relaxing and enjoying yourself

Winding down

Employing Mindfulness at Work

Focusing on each individual task

Making sure not to overload yourself

Responding to pressure and criticism

Knowing when you’ve done enough and setting up boundaries

Making time for mindfulness practice

Enhancing Your Relationships

Communicating mindfully

Being mindful of your body language

Noticing when and why moods change

Having realistic expectations and accepting the notion of change

Assessing Your Core Values

Looking at what makes people human

Seeing how your values agree or conflict with those of other people

Accepting the imperfection of human beings

Making Mindfulness a Shared Experience

Considering ways to share mindfulness with other people

Living in a mindful society

Part IV: The Part of Tens

Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Expand Your Mindfulness Experience

Dropping by the Enter Mindfulness Website

Checking out the Be Mindful Website

Visiting the Mindfulnet Website

Studying Mindfulness Formally: Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice

Benefiting from Research at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre

Taking a Mindful Breath with Breathworks

Attending a Mindfulness Course in Scotland

Watching Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter . . . and Spring

Changing Lives: Doing Time, Doing Vipassana

Following One Man’s Mindful Recovery: I Am

Chapter 19: Checking Out Ten Inspirational People

Thich Nhat Hanh: Spreading Mindfulness and Peace

The Dalai Lama: ‘My Message Is Love’

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Mindfulness in Medicine

Ram Dass: Expressing Gratitude

Eckhart Tolle: Living Moment to Moment

Melissa Myozen Blacker: Teaching Mindfulness

Buddha Maitreya: Living the Path

Rick Hanson: Examining the Mindful Brain

Jenny Ronayne: Studying Autism

Kristin Neff: Focusing on Self-Compassion

Chapter 20: Surveying (Almost) Ten Inspirational Places to Visit

Plumbing the Heights of Mindfulness at Plum Village

Attending Quiet Days at the London Insight Meditation Society

Finding a Home from Home at Findhorn

Channelling Your Inner Bruce Lee at Shaolin Monastery

Exploring the Buddha’s Teachings at Gaia House

Retreating to the Countryside at Trigonos

Enjoying the Food (Mindfully!) at The Abbey

Getting the Best of Both Worlds: West-Östliche Weisheit, Benediktushof

Visiting The Well at Willen

About the Author

Cheat Sheet

Introduction

When I was young I learned to sing and read very early on but, my mum tells me, I refused to learn how to read the time. Clocks and watches were my enemy. They spoilt my games and forced me to do things I wasn’t ready to do at that moment. I resisted until I was seven years old, and then the world got me!

Little children are naturally mindful. They don’t want to look at a clock to determine whether playtime is over or whether they’re hungry or not; they just play until they’re tired or until their stomach rumbles. They enjoy sweets without worrying whether the next portion is going to taste just as good as this one; they climb onto climbing frames and roundabouts in the park because doing so is exciting; they build sandcastles even though they’re going to be washed away by the sea. They don’t feel guilty about just being and not doing much. They live in the moment completely.

Unfortunately, most adults have lost this immediate experience of life. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (or MBCT as you’ll see throughout this book) may be a way to return, at least temporarily, to these moments of joy, these moments of simply tasting life.

MBCT was developed to help people help themselves. It features in-depth training in meditation and moment-to-moment everyday awareness. More precisely, you can see mindfulness as bringing your awareness deliberately to the present moment and accepting what you find, as opposed to judging it or wanting to change it.

I can’t stress enough the importance of being able to just experience life, rather than rushing through it. When you look at your life, do you find yourself being calm and centred, joyful and relaxed? If so, congratulations! The majority of people find that they’ve less and less time for being, despite all the technological advances you can dream of. In fact these are often your bane rather than your saviour. Perhaps you too find yourself using your mobile or computer tablet while eating, travelling, crossing the road or even when having a conversation.

If you belong to this latter category of ‘human doings’ (rather than ‘human beings’), this book is for you. I demonstrate numerous ways of stepping out of autopilot and moving back into moments of simply being alive. My hope is that this book reminds you that being alive is special and that every moment counts and is precious, because it’s all part of your life experience.

About This Book

Everybody’s talking about MBCT: newspapers and magazines are writing about it; books are being published on it; YouTube is bursting with short videos explaining how to do it. Perhaps a well-meaning friend even gave you this book as a gift. The purpose of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies is to introduce you to the concept of MBCT, the whys and hows, and whether it may be a life skill that can benefit you. Being a For Dummies book, you can choose to pick up a couple of useful tools and meditations or a whole bag full of them, depending on what you choose to read and how much you feel you want to experiment with mindfulness.

This book is helpful for the beginner, who wants a taste of mindfulness and maybe to take things further step by step, as well as for the more experienced meditator, who may find a number of new insights and perspectives on the subject.

I want you to read this book in the way that helps you most. I’ve done my best to create something that gives you the insights and tools to help you cope better with the various upheavals that life may throw at you. I sincerely hope that you don’t need to read all the chapters. You may, however, gain deeper insight into MBCT and the human condition if you skim-read what the different chapters are about: go on, take a peep.

I include many anecdotes, stories, examples, poems, and so on, but place these in grey-tinted boxes called sidebars so you can choose to read or skip them. They enrich your experience (stories and poems have this great way of unfolding complicated facts so that you can feel the truth rather than just know it), but these sidebars aren’t essential to practising mindfulness so skip them if you want to.

Foolish Assumptions

In my line of work I meet many individuals who struggle with aspects of their lives, including clients and therapists alike. So I assume that every person can benefit to a larger or smaller degree from this book. I also assume that you’re genuinely interested in finding out what MBCT is and how it may help you.

I certainly don’t assume any existing knowledge about MBCT, mindfulness, cognitive behavioural therapy, meditation or Buddhism.

I lead you gently through the subject and hope that this book becomes a good companion to you over the next few months or years.

Icons Used in This Book

If this book is your first For Dummies one, you may not be familiar with the icons used throughout the book. Even if this is your umpteenth For Dummies experience, remembering what they stand for is still useful:

This icon points out ideas to help you make your mindfulness voyage smoother.

This icon features essential pieces of guidance that you may want to note down in your diary or read a few times until they sink in.

Sometimes, you have to watch out for specific problems, and I provide advice on avoiding the pitfalls that other people have fallen into beside this icon.

Beside this icon you find exercises, practices and meditations that lead you through something new and inspiring.

Here I demystify therapy language that you may not have come across before.

This book comes with a selection of guided MBCT meditations and exercises. This icon draws your attention to those meditations and exercises for which you can download accompanying audio tracks.

Beyond the Book

As you walk your journey of discovery into the world of MBCT, you can augment what you read here by checking out some of the access-anywhere extra goodies I’ve hosted for you online.

You can find the book's e-cheat sheet online, at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/mindfulnessbasedcognitivetherapyuk. The at-a-glance ideas and tips I offer in this cheat sheet can help you to make room for mindfulness in your life, and to bring mindful attitudes to everyday activities.

I’ve also recorded a selection of guided meditations and exercises to go along with some of those I’ve included in the book:

Track One: Introduction

Track Two: Making yourself comfortable, Chapter 4

Track Three: The body scan practice, Chapter 4

Track Four: Ten-minute sound meditation, Chapter 5

Track Five: Mindful breathing exercise, Chapter 5

Track Six: Allowing awareness of sound, breath and body meditation, Chapter 6

Track Seven: Sitting with difficult thoughts meditation, Chapter 7

Track Eight: Sitting with spacious awareness exercise, Chapter 10

Track Nine: Mindful walking exercise, Chapter 12

You can access these audio tracks online, at www.dummies.com/go/mindfulnessbasedcognitivetherapyuk.

Additionally, you can also find bonus content online, at www.dummies.com/extras/mindfulnessbasedcognitivetherapyuk, which includes an extra Part of Tens chapter: 'Ten (Plus One) Tips for Developing Mindful Attitudes'.

Where to Go from Here

I’ve been leading MBCT courses for more than a decade, and over the years I’ve discovered plenty about what works and what doesn’t. I do my best to convey this knowledge to you, so that you can make practical use of it in your own time and at your leisure.

You can read this book in any order you like. I suggest, however, that you read Chapter 1 initially and then skim through the Table of Contents to pick out what seems most interesting to you. If you have a specific issue you want to tackle quickly, you can turn to the relevant chapter in Part III, such as Chapter 12 for depression or Chapter 16 for handling retirement, for example.

My guess is that when you understand how essential mindfulness is for surviving mentally and physically in this frenetic world, you may feel inspired to engage more deeply and start the eight-session voyage into mindfulness that forms the core of this book in Chapters 4 to 11. Whether you choose to take eight weeks or eight months, these sessions are the best way of getting your head round the topic and installing enough mindful ways of being into your brain and daily life.

If you get infected with the mindfulness bug, you may even set up a group with others and meditate together. Sitting in a circle can be particularly powerful and unifying; connecting with others and experiencing kindness. Be well!

Part I

Introducing Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

For Dummies can help you get started with lots of subjects. Visit www.dummies.com to learn more and do more with For Dummies.

In this part…

Grasp what purpose mindfulness-based cognitive therapy has and how it is used as a treatment tool, and discover how it can enable you to tackle and live with problems, struggles and challenges.

Know the importance of experience and of being in the present moment as central aspects of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

Understand yourself and the problems you face in your life today, and get motivated to make a real change for the better.

Learn how to use mindfulness-based cognitive therapy to let go of pointless ruminative thinking and to help you focus on now.

See the benefits of regular mindfulness-based cognitive therapy practice, and prepare yourself for and successfully personalise an eight-week voyage into mindfulness to suit you.

Chapter 1

Improving Your Wellbeing with Mindfulness

In This Chapter

Introducing MBCT

Perceiving its purpose

Focusing on the benefits

The person who’s never worried, faced challenges, suffered pain or struggled with life has never existed. Every single person (however rich or materially successful) experiences difficulties, simply as a part of being alive. So don’t worry – you’re not alone! Therefore, the issue isn’t to try and avoid or run away from problems (that’s futile), but to find a healthy way to tackle or live with them, without adding to your original suffering.

I believe that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a great technique for doing just that, first because it worked for me and second because research proves that mindfulness can convey a sense of meaning and purpose to life, based on the understanding that everything in life is interconnected.

In this chapter I introduce you to the basic concept of MBCT, how it works and how you can use it to improve your life and wellbeing. I describe two central aspects of MBCT that crop up throughout this book: the importance of experience and of trying to be in the present moment. I also provide a brief taster of some of the useful skills you can pick up as you practise the meditations and exercises in this book.

Although the term may seem a bit forbidding at first glance, MBCT isn’t something reserved for academic experts or an elite group of super-dedicated Eastern monks. Quite the reverse: MBCT is a practice for you to use in your own way and integrate into your personal life to help combat your personal demons. Whatever your background, culture, religion, experience, age, and so on, MBCT can work for you. After all, if suffering is a universal fact of being human, the world needs a universal approach to dealing with it.

Placing the Power in Your Hands: Discovering MBCT

In this section I introduce you to the nature of MBCT practice, which helps you overcome personal problems by increasing your understanding about the reality of the world you live in and your own thoughts and behaviours. I describe the term MBCT, break down its components of Eastern philosophy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and explain how these aspects integrate so effectively in MBCT.

The essence of MBCT is discovering how to let go of negative thinking and behaviour patterns.

You certainly don’t need to know anything about the historical development of MBCT to practise it successfully but if you’re interested, check out the nearby sidebar ‘A brief history lesson: East meets West’ for a little background.

A brief history lesson: East meets West

MBCT is a fusing of two distinct techniques: the Eastern, Buddhist philosophy of meditation and everyday mindfulness and the Western psychological treatment called cognitive behavioural therapy. First created and used as a group-intervention tool to prevent relapse into depression, MBCT is used today as a path of healing for loads of mental and physical health issues.

MBCT was developed by three clinical psychologists: Mark Williams, John Teasdale and Zindel Segal. They all studied mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a programme based on mindfulness meditation and yoga that Jon Kabat-Zinn created in the US to help people with chronic pain and illness. For more on Jon and on MBSR, turn to the later sidebars ‘The work of Jon Kabat-Zinn’ and ‘MBSR: The forerunner to MBCT’, respectively.

These early practitioners discovered that even negligible increases in sadness reactivated depressive thinking patterns in formerly depressed people. But an experiment showed that MBCT significantly reduced the recurrence of depression in people who had experienced clinical depression more than twice; in fact it halved the recurrence of depression in this group. To confirm its effectiveness, the experiment was repeated a few years later and the positive results were repeated.

Encountering the term MBCT

Don’t let the apparent jumble of consonants of MBCT put you off! Its meaning is pretty straightforward.

The ‘M’ stands for mindfulness, which you can see quite simply as the practice of bringing your awareness deliberately to the present moment in time and experiencing it without judgement or expectation. Mindfulness isn’t about intense concentration or effort. In fact, most little children are quite naturally mindful, such as when they’re absorbed in flying a kite and being amazed, eating a delicious ice cream or building sandcastles. Children have the enviable ability of living in the present moment without any reason for doing a particular thing. In this sense, they live life to the full.

Although adults often lose this natural ability as they mature, mindfulness can reconnect you to this sense of pure living without constantly feeling that you need to create purpose.

And the other letters? Well:

B stands for based, as in ‘derived from’ or ‘connected to’ (but you knew that, didn’t you!).

C stands for cognitive, which refers to the thinking, planning and measuring part of your brain.

T stands for therapy: the treatment of disorders and illnesses. (Interestingly, therapia is a Greek word meaning ‘walking a path together for a while’, so you can see me as walking with you for these eight weeks. The rest of your life then continues to deepen your practice.)

Essentially, MBCT is about becoming more aware of how you think and behave in order to help improve your life.

Drawing on Buddhist philosophy

Although MBCT draws on techniques from Buddhist mindfulness meditation, Zen, yoga, Taoism and Christian mysticism, MBCT isn’t a spiritual path in itself. It’s a secular form of meditations and exercises aimed at reducing your suffering.

That said, traditional Buddhist philosophy is a central part of MBCT. This philosophy emphasises the importance of direct personal experience, as opposed to just studying a theory. Meditation, therefore, is the path that connects theory with practice. The goal of mindfulness is to observe your mind in depth. In order to develop profound insight into the unfolding of life and the meaning you give it, you need to observe your mind deeply and regularly, and question what you find out.

Awareness, as seen in the Buddhist context, refers to a certain kind of focusing in the present moment: with alertness, openness, objectivity and ­non-judgement.

When practising mindfulness, try as best as you can to observe everything that arises; experience thoughts without adding emotional memories from the past that may taint them as positive or negative. Furthermore, try to experience awareness of the present moment as an unbroken progression, coming and going, without being censored or interpreted, or held on to or pushed away.

In this book’s eight-week course (which I introduce in Chapter 3 and cover week-by-week in Chapters 4 to 11), I encourage you to experience mindfully every single moment of your life (however apparently mundane) as something special and almost miraculous – to allow life to unfold itself moment by moment. In other words, when you eat, just eat; and when you walk, just walk!

One practical example that’s a central part of Buddhist meditation is just focusing your attention on your breath. By this simple act of anchoring awareness on the breath, you start breathing more deeply, which leads to a more peaceful and focused awareness moment to moment. In a sense, meditation is a way of befriending yourself, because with practice you tend to experience life with less anger and more acceptance.

The work of Jon Kabat-Zinn

The vision of molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn made the application of mindfulness to medicine and psychotherapy possible. A keen practitioner of yoga and Buddhist meditation for more than a decade, he was inspired by the benefits these traditions brought him. He was convinced that others could improve their own wellbeing as well, by adopting these practices in their own lives.

His goal was to make mindfulness available as a life-enhancing skill for all and to ‘translate’ parts of Buddhist wisdom and philosophy. He hoped to reduce suffering where it was mainly caused by unhelpful thinking, expectations and behaviours. He wrapped the wisdom of the East into a digestible form for people in the West.

For more on Jon Kabat-Zinn, flip to Chapter 19.

Working together

Dr Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist and the founding father of CBT, was frustrated with his attempts to treat patients suffering from major episodes of depression with psychoanalytical therapy in the 1960s. He concluded that the notion and motto of the analytical approach that patients need to suffer was simply unnecessary and even damaging at times. He applied psychoanalysis to patients, at times for more than six years, without seeing significant changes. In some cases, they responded so negatively that they attempted suicide.

In contrast, in CBT the therapeutic relationship is extremely important and focuses on empathy, genuineness, respect, warmth and unconditional positive regard. The client and therapist work as a team to resolve problems and two-way feedback is encouraged. Goals for change are identified and agreed upon. Even the therapist’s mistakes are admitted and the client suggests solutions when therapy gets stuck. In fact, you could say that clients are trained to become their own therapists.

Keep a look out for these aspects that I revisit repeatedly throughout this book. They’re central to the exercises I provide and to the attitude I invite you to have when practising mindfulness: bringing awareness to this moment you’ve selected and doing so without judgement. So, if you choose to focus on your breath and your mind flits off occasionally, you just kindly and patiently bring it back and start over.

Developing from CBT

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is one of the most highly recommended and respected talking therapies of the 21st century (for some background, see the nearby sidebar ‘Working together’), and can be defined as an active, directive, time-limited, structured approach used to treat a variety of mental problems such as depression, anxiety, phobias, stress, pain, and so on.

CBT mainly focuses on the here and now, and the therapist accompanies the client towards chosen goals. In this sense, CBT (and MBCT) is client driven and you choose what you want to work on throughout the whole therapy. As with MBCT, you’re also advised to use a notebook to record insights, just as I do in this book (check out Chapters 3 and 4 for more about creating your personal mindfulness diary).

MBSR: The forerunner to MBCT

MBSR is a group-based programme, designed and developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, for people with a wide range of physical and mental health problems. It comprises an eight-week course and has been used to treat patients within a large traditional American hospital since 1979.

By 1999 over 10,000 patients had completed the course and it was extended into prisons, deprived inner-city areas, schools, and professional sport and corporate environments. MBSR is now a recognised part of behavioural medicine and general healthcare. Its potential lies not only in treatment, but also in prevention of ‘dis-ease’!

MBSR uses the ancient tradition of mindfulness in an accessible, secular format and helps participants to conquer their difficulties when suffering from a variety of physical and psychological illnesses. MBSR research shows positive results for participants with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, generalised anxiety disorder and panic attacks, and some forms of cancer, among other ailments. The programme involves intensive training in mindfulness meditation, yoga movements and discussions on stress and life skills.

During CBT treatment sessions, problems are uncovered and assessed constantly. Problems are identified and therapy helps you to shed light on how your thoughts and emotions, physical health, relationships and general daily functioning, are interrelated. The treatment plan is created early on but constantly reviewed and expanded; plus a specific timeframe is set and adhered to.

Integrating mindfulness and CBT into MBCT

MBCT is based on an integration of CBT components with Eastern mindfulness meditations (check out the preceding section and the earlier ‘Drawing on Buddhist philosophy’, respectively), as well as mindful movement skills. It aims to increase your understanding about your particular difficulty (such as anxiety, chronic fatigue, chronic pain and illness, depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleeping difficulties, stress, and so on).

For example, in the case of depression (to which I devote the whole of Chapter 12), you’re given information about the universal characteristics of depression to help you recognise your personal relapse signatures (behaviours and thinking patterns peculiar to you – when you know the signals that indicate you may be slipping back into depression, you can nip it in the bud). The pattern of behaviour that makes people vulnerable to depressive relapse is called rumination. When ruminating, the mind repetitively reruns negative thoughts. The core skill that MBCT develops is intentionally to shift mental gears. It doesn’t so much attempt to change unhelpful thoughts into more helpful ones, as encourages the insight that focusing repeatedly on negative thoughts and how to change them can accentuate and highlight them, possibly deepening them rather than alleviating them.

Key themes of MBCT include learning by experience (see, for example, the body scan meditation in Chapter 4 and mindful movement in Chapter 6), and the development of an accepting, open attitude, in which you deliberately face problems and uncomfortable feelings.

Through increased mindfulness training, you become more aware, moment by moment, of physical sensations and of thoughts and feelings as merely experiences rather than absolute truths. This insight helps you to become less convinced and bothered by your negative thoughts, and allows you to notice much earlier on when you’re moving towards the blues.

Thus, you discover how to take the stand of an observer looking at your thoughts but not believing them or acting on them. You slowly but surely understand that you aren’t your thoughts!

MBCT is relatively cost- and time-effective and is now included in the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guidelines for the prevention of recurrent depression.

Here’s a quick exercise to demonstrate an important truth about thoughts. Please sit down in a comfortable position and think of yourself as being a green frog jumping about and croaking. What do you feel? Most likely, you feel silly or even ridiculous – you know that you aren’t a frog (if you’re not sure, I’m afraid you need more than mindfulness!). Don’t worry, just keep an open mind and enjoy the silliness.

Now, with the same open mindedness, think of yourself as a failure, remembering all your lost relationships, failed job interviews and other things that didn’t work out as you hoped. Does that sound more like you? Is this how you think of yourself at times?

But nobody is a ‘complete failure’, because no one fails at every single action in their life! See how easily you slip into believing your negative thoughts and pessimistic self-talk?

When you were thinking that you’re completely inadequate, I bet you felt low, raw and vulnerable. Yet when you visualised being a green frog, you may have felt giddy with laughter, imagining yourself leaping and making strange noises. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, apparently advised his patients to regress (be childish) at least twice a day. So come on – fool around!

This frog-versus-failure experiment shows how much easier you believe the suggestion that you aren’t good enough, whereas the ‘frog’ suggestion doesn’t stand a chance of being taken seriously. Human beings are much more easily convinced of their flaws rather than funny or positive things, because the human mind is more inclined to believe negative suggestions. Unfortunately, negative thoughts are like Velcro and positive thoughts are like Teflon!

Recognising the Need for a Mindful Approach

Although CBT (see the earlier section ‘Developing from CBT’) is often effective in treating depression, one particular client group (whose members had suffered three or more episodes of depression) continued to relapse, almost as if CBT can turn off negative thinking but not fully delete it from the mind’s hard disk. The more often a person experiences a major episode of depression, the more likely they are to relapse.

For this reason, clinical psychologists Segal, Teasdale and Williams started searching for a therapeutic way to prevent or at least reduce depression relapse (turn to the sidebar ‘A brief history lesson: East meets West’ for the background). The result was the eight-week MBCT course, during which you acquire the necessary skills to improve your wellbeing and joie de vivre in the here and now (see the chapters in Part II of this book).

Addressing the shortcomings of CBT

In contrast to CBT’s focus on recognising unhelpful thoughts and replacing them with helpful ones (which often gives the negative thoughts too much power and simply reinforces them), MBCT states that thoughts aren’t facts and therefore you don’t need to focus on them more than necessary. In Buddhist philosophy, thinking is seen as an additional sense, no more or less important than seeing, smelling, tasting, touching or hearing.

MBCT endeavours to show you how to focus your awareness on all your senses. Meditations regularly use one anchor for your awareness. Without an anchor, you can just end up thinking, planning, worrying, day-dreaming and so on. As a result, MBCT really makes you aware of how busy your mind is and how it tends to stick to negative thoughts.

By giving your mind one single anchor of attention (such as your breath or body, a sound, and so on), you can truly be and experience the present moment.

Get meditating, quick!

Modern technology and hard evidence prove what people who practise mindfulness meditation have known for a long time: MRI scans show without doubt that MBCT is like a mental workout for your brain. Areas of the brain connected to compassion and calm tend to increase, whereas areas to do with the stress response and anxiety become less activated.

The brain’s amygdala plays a key role in the processing of emotions, memory and emotional reactions. Buddhist monks who meditate intensely on a regular basis have (unknowingly) modulated their amygdalas to the extent that they experience less anxiety than ­non-meditators.

Going beyond traditional therapy

Choosing to practise MBCT is more than choosing a therapy: it’s about engaging in a lifestyle change (as I explain in Chapter 2). If you decide to give it a go and slowly but surely harness yourself with its skills, it doesn’t end after you’re familiar with the practices. MBCT becomes part of your everyday life and affects not only your existence, but also that of all people you’re connected to or are in touch with.

Enjoying the Benefits of MBCT

In this section I lay out just some of the many benefits that MBCT can bring to you, whether combating problems such as anxiety, depression and fear or generally improving your life and relationships by making you more aware and attentive and able to live in the present. For more benefits, check out Chapters 2 and 3.

Seeing the evidence of success

MBCT has managed to improve the lives of many people with diverse problems. Here are just a few examples of such problems (with appropriate chapters if I mention these issues directly):

Anger management (Chapter 10)

Bipolar disorder with a history of suicidal thoughts

Cancers, including breast and prostate

Chronic fatigue syndrome

Chronic pain and illness (Chapters 6 and 15)

Coping skills for parents and carers of children with autism

Depression (Chapter 12)

Eating disorders (Chapter 13)

Fibromyalgia (an autoimmune disorder causing physical aches and pains)

Generalised anxiety disorder (Chapter 14)

Health anxiety

Living healthily after retirement (Chapter 16)

Psoriasis

Psychosis

Relationship difficulties (Chapter 17)

Sleep disturbances (Chapter 14)

Stress (Chapters 7 and 14)

To help you appreciate the importance of application and regular use of MBCT, consider this comparison: using MBCT is as important and useful as brushing your teeth. Just as regular dental hygiene improves how long you can keep your own teeth, reduces stomach cancer and digestive disorders (and has even been linked to reducing heart disease), implementing the MBCT exercises in this book is sure to have a positive effect on your internal and mental wellbeing.

Depression

Depression is the subject of Chapter 12, but here are some of the proved benefits (published by the Mental Health Foundation):

MBCT is more successful than maintenance doses of anti-depressants in preventing depression relapse.

Three-quarters of people engaging in an MBCT programme alongside anti-depressants were able to come off their medication within 15 months.

MBCT can reduce the severity of symptoms for people who are currently depressed.

Anxiety

Although I discuss anxiety in detail in Chapters 7 and 14, here are some of the Mental Health Foundation’s published results for anxiety:

MBCT can reduce sleeplessness in people with anxiety disorders.

Mindfulness promotes greater self-acceptance in practitioners.

Mindfulness can reduce dependency on alcohol, caffeine, prescription medication and illegal drugs (Chapter 13 focuses on addiction in detail).

Fearing past and future experiences

Dealing with events from your past and expectations or fears of the future can be extremely difficult. These fears even have the power to hold you back from the life you want to lead in reality. MBCT can help you overcome and find a way of coming to terms with those unhelpful thinking and behaviour patterns.

As you gain more and more insight through the practice of MBCT you may comprehend that whatever your plans for the future may hold you have no guarantee that they’ll unfold as you hope they will. The only certainty is the fact that everything changes, and sometimes too soon. This is why this moment is so precious; it represents your life right here and now.

MBCT helps you enhance your ability to be aware in the present moment. You find out how to be less attached to pleasant experiences and less worried about unpleasant ones, because when you realise that life changes moment by moment you truly understand a central slice of MBCT wisdom: everything is impermanent for everybody. Nothing’s wrong with enjoying the moment, but you need to avoid fixating on it over and over or keeping it alive forever, because that’s when you create disappointment and suffering for yourself. Nothing lasts forever!

Knowing where the fear comes from

Your past experiences shape you and your thinking. Some aspects of your beliefs about the world may have been formed when you were a young child. They may have helped you to survive then, but over time they may well become an obstacle for enjoying the present moment.

For example, people who were bullied at school, or who have been neglected by adults who should have cared for them, can become overly self-sufficient people who barely ever seek the help or company of others. This behaviour can become a real obstacle at work, when they’re seen as recluses who refuse to delegate or communicate, and in their private life, when they’re unable to open up to friends. Intimate relationships suffer too: the perfectly independent and self-sufficient person can never trust or commit fully, because their underlying belief is that other people are going to hurt or disappoint them.

Mindfulness can help you uncover such fears and negative underlying beliefs and so free you to start again in the present moment. The memory of your suffering doesn’t disappear, but you can file it away so that it doesn’t constantly interfere with your experience.

Knowing what the fear can lead to

Fears about the future are partially due to how the human brain evolved. The brain is amazing, but alas it is primed to watch out anxiously for potential dangers. Mother Nature never worried about you having a peaceful life, but instead how your species can survive.

Thus, you and all other humans have a tendency to worry about the future, because your cave-dwelling ancestors never knew what threat lurked around the corner. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson calls this feeling ‘an ongoing internal trickle of unease. This little whisper of worry keeps you scanning your inner and outer worlds for signs of trouble.’ (You can read more about Rick and other inspiring people in Chapter 19.)

Mindfulness works out your brain and builds ‘thinking roads’ that enable you to be less fearful of the future and the now, and fully immerse yourself in truly living life. The more you practise, the more your brain structurally changes and engages your self-soothing system.

Choosing to live in the now

The meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh says that ‘if we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.’ How true that is! Check out Chapter 19 for more on Thich Nhat Hanh.

Please carry out this simple exercise to experience the sense of relief that comes from focusing on the present moment. I invite you to bring your awareness to this moment: are you aware of any immediate danger or threats? If not, you can safely adopt an attitude of ‘right now, in this very moment, everything is okay’. You’re obviously reading this chapter, and your mind is trying to digest this information, which is great, because it proves that right now you have no need to feel anxious.

Continue to check in with yourself every hour or so and see whether you’re still okay. In all likelihood, more often than not, the answer is ‘yes’. So think to yourself: ‘I’m fine, all is okay right now’. Feel into your body; what are you aware of when you just soothe yourself this way? Maybe it feels more than okay, perhaps even good. You may not have everything you want or desire (who does?), but think about the things you do have and the parts of your body that are well and not in pain.

As an experiment, write down in your diary (I describe setting up a mindfulness diary in Chapter 4) all the things that are okay, good or wholesome in this very moment. The list may well get quite long.

Here are a few ways you can live in the moment in everyday practice:

Drink and talk more slowly.

Eat nuts, raisins, chocolate buttons and the like one at a time, instead of scoffing a whole handful!

Don’t read or watch TV while eating.

Don’t look at your mobile phone when meeting with friends and family, or just before you go to bed.

When feeling stressed, ground yourself, feel your feet rooted to the floor and connect deeply to your breathing.

Perusing even more ways that MBCT can help you

Here are some more key aspects of MBCT (in no particular order), along with the chapters where I discuss them, so that you can turn straight to any location that seems particularly relevant to you:

Responding wisely and kindly rather than acting rashly or unthinkingly. I discuss the importance of wisdom and compassion in Chapter 11.

Accepting what is, even if that’s challenging. When you know what you’re dealing with, you can discover what can be mindfully changed and what has to remain as it is (‘Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be’). (Flip to Chapter 8 in particular for more on this aspect.)

Discovering all about your thoughts, how they affect you, how you can observe them and most importantly that thoughts are only mental events, not facts (check out Chapters 5, 7, and 9).

Developing meditation practice, in particular the 40-minute body scan and 3-minute breathing space exercise (check out Chapters 4 and 6, respectively).

Harnessing your aptitudes of childlike curiosity, trust and kindness (read Chapters 9 and 10).

Reading mindful poems and stories that help to deepen your understanding of mindfulness. I scatter such poems and stories throughout the book).

Seeking out other mindfulness resources to maintain your motivation and expand your experience (I provide ideas in Chapter 18) and visiting mindful locations (see my suggestions in Chapter 20).

Getting back in touch with your body, so that you learn to notice the little signals it gives you before having a panic attack or a full-blown episode of depression (see Chapters 4, 12, and 14).

Keeping your body moving; challenging the idea that you can no longer enjoy movement because aspects of your body are no longer fully functioning (see Chapters 3 and 15).

Motivating you to experience another new way of living every day in the present moment (I describe an entire mindful day in Chapter 11). Step out from autopilot and really engage in regular activities by fully experiencing them. When you eat an orange, for example, take your time and sense deeply how you peel the fruit, how you break it up into individual slices, eating one at a time, enjoying the sweet taste and being truly present when doing so (see Chapter 4 for more on performing everyday activities mindfully).

Autopilot refers to functioning without awareness (being ‘mindless’): for example, entering a room and forgetting why you went there, driving home and being clueless about what happened during the journey and how you got safely from A to B, or having a shower without remembering how it felt (being unaware of the sensation of water on your skin or the smell of the soap because you were busy making plans for the day). The concept of not living on autopilot is central to mindfulness and so occurs throughout this book.

Autopilot, however, does have a place in your life. If you had to learn everything daily over and over again, you wouldn’t learn very much and wouldn’t fulfil your potential. Life would become very repetitive. So what you’re aiming towards is the middle ground: using autopilot and also bringing awareness to special moments throughout the day.

Chapter 2

Deciding to Lead a Mindful Existence

In This Chapter

Gaining an insight into your personal troubles

Getting to know yourself better

Understanding the potential difficulties ahead

Appreciating the benefits of MBCT

I invite you to open your heart and mind to accepting and understanding a central truth of human existence – all humans suffer and suffering is part of living – while also realising the deep change that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) can bring about in you. The insights and exercises I offer in this chapter really can reduce your suffering. They help you to let go of pointless ruminative thinking and to focus on each individual moment with such detail that you experience gladness and gratitude for those moments.

Going through the journey that leads you from simple beginnings, such as mindfully eating a piece of fruit, you discover that MBCT provides the tools to help you become a deeply aware and conscious person. I encourage you to discover yourself and your personal issues anew and give you an insight into the required mental preparation and commitment of MBCT, as well as its benefits. I train you in the discipline of meditative practice so that you can see just how much of suffering depends on the frame of mind you’re in. You also find out how to create a more helpful mindset through the various practices offered on your mindfulness voyage.

Understanding Your Problems

One of the hardest challenges you can come across in life is to develop an honest understanding of your own issues from an objective standpoint so that you can begin to help yourself. This element is the first step of mindfulness practice – you don’t necessarily need to put a name to it, just let yourself know that something is wrong and that you want to change it.

Knowing precisely why you’re reading this book is a great start to uncovering your issues. Take a minute to think about your responses to these questions:

Did you make a conscious decision to buy this book or did somebody choose to give it to you as a gift?

Have you come across mindfulness in the news or heard about it from friends who say it changed their lives and who’ve whetted your appetite?

What specifically got you interested in MBCT and in this book?

What do you think engaging in this book/course will entail?

Who or what will benefit from you having read this book? Yourself? Your partner? A friend? Your work?

Right now, what would be the most important outcome you could hope for as a result of becoming more mindful?

Could becoming more mindful make a difference in your life, health and relationships?

Setting out on a journey through MBCT will certainly be an adventure, and like all good adventures you will find some obstacles. Whatever your reasons are for setting out on this journey, I suggest that you read Chapter 1 (if you haven’t already) to get an inkling of how the ideas that MBCT promotes can help you.

To get motivated and apply real changes to your life, you need to develop the strong desire to overcome what’s holding you back, causing you pain and making life troublesome and difficult.

Feeling that you can’t cope

Perhaps all you can say is that, for whatever reason, things aren’t working out for you. But can you identify the problem more closely? Are you overly tired/stressed/angry/lethargic/sad? Do you have problems being intimate or talking to people or motivating yourself? What’s troubling you?

Please sit down and put on soft background music, maybe light a candle and take a few deep breaths. Now open your diary (I describe setting up a mindfulness diary in Chapter 4), or simply use a sheet of notepaper, and start to write down all the things in your life that feel out of balance: the thoughts and feelings that cause you pain and dissatisfaction. You don’t need to organise them into any categories. Simply connect as best as possible to the wounded or frightened part inside you and let it speak.

Here are some examples to help you start uncovering the thorn in your side:

My life is such a lonely experience.

I’m tired all the time and feel numb.

Why am I here? What is this life all about?

I’ve been feeling so listless and uninspired lately.

I feel ugly, unattractive and unloved.

Why didn’t I go for the adventure of life? Why did I go for the safe option instead?

I still miss ‘X’. We had this stupid argument about nothing and now we’ve not talked for three years. It’s so sad, but I’m frightened that he won’t reply to my call or message. It would hurt even more if he rejected me now.

I constantly feel that I’m on the verge of bankruptcy. There’s never enough money and I’m working my socks off.

I’d like to do something crazy, but what if something goes wrong?

When will I meet my Prince Charming? I’m fed up with superficial relationships.

I’m retired, the children are grown up with their own lives, the pension barely covers my living costs and I wonder what I’m still doing here. What now?