Introduction to Mindfulness - Dean Amory

“It (the course) got me to recognise that my feelings, good and bad,
pass. Like the homework exercise, when we had to write down good
and bad feelings and how they pass was great. The good ones made
me laugh, the bad ones were hard… noticing the bad feelings passed
made me feel guilty that I wasn’t feeling good all the time. The
homework helped me deal with it, accept it, ‘I can’t do anything about
it’”
The main issue for discussion in this session was how to recognise
and cope with urges and cravings. Many of them were confused
about this idea of being present and accepting one’s feelings and
cravings, versus giving into them.
One man captured the idea of being “mindfully aware” of urges and
craving pretty well: “It’s like, when you get a craving, to accept them
and go through it rather than running away from them and turning to
something else, cause then it would just come back worse. When it
hits me, I just go through it, the cravings will only last 3 or 4 minutes,
a cigarette only lasts 3 or 4 minutes, and then it’s only one, then the
next time I’d beat myself up and before the craving even comes I’ll
give in. Mindfulness makes you aware that they are only feelings, not
more sinister, even though it feels that way sometimes”.
Another person described how she was overcome with anger after an
unpleasant encounter with a city official. Her day had started out very
well, as she had the insight during her practice that we “make up our
realities”. She had found this idea very liberating and felt that she’d
finally “got what mindfulness was about”. However, after her
frustrating encounter she “completely lost it”. She described feeling
sorry for herself and becoming carried away with a “story in my
head” that she would always be miserable. And then the thought hit
her: “wouldn’t it be great to get drunk!” She described how she
“cradled this feeling” for a long time before deciding to do something
constructive, which seemed to “break the spell”. This led to a very
important discussion about how people reacted to urges and cravings.
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