Loving the Living with the Love of the Dead - Steven Hickman, Psy.D.

Photo courtesy of Brad Stewart

I have a wide open day ahead of me here in the San Francisco Bay Area and am eagerly anticipating a welcome return to the coastline of Point Reyes National Seashore and a meandering and rejuvenating drive up the coast through my childhood coastal stomping grounds. One stop along the way might be a brief visit to the seaside grave of my father-in-law, whom I have never met, but who rests in my heart because of what he meant to my beloved wife and the warmth and admiration that flows from her every time she speaks of him. I am the welcome and grateful recipient of his fatherhood in this way.

And so the thought floated up out of my waking moments: “What if we could be with the living breathing people in our lives, the way we are with the dead?” That may sound a little strange, but bear with me for a moment.

How are we when we stand there awkwardly looking down at whatever tangible marker might have been placed as a proxy to the vibrant existence of a family member or friend? We feel a certain presence of the deceased, but largely our attention is broad enough to include a kind of warm attentiveness to our own selves as we recall the person who once walked and talked and breathed with us.

We are quiet, respectful, patient, receptive and tender in our attention. We may feel the reverberations of grief and loss that the person’s passing brought to us, but it is a kind of nostalgia (the roots of that word referring to “the pain of remembering”) that bears the mellow sweetness of the time that cliché has told us heals all wounds. And we are finally free of the constricting web of a change agenda for the other. The “if only” and the conditional melt away with the reality of the absolute and the imperative of this very moment as it is, without holding or pushing away, even if we would like to do so.

We may also ride the harsher waves of hurts, resentments, wounds that never really healed, anger at abandonment, fear of life without this person who simply desired what we all desire: to have peace, satisfaction and joy in life, no matter how he or she went about seeking that. But we are finally and ultimately aware that absolutely nothing can be done but to meet this suffering within ourselves with some degree of kindness and gentleness, and perhaps the wisps of forgiveness. Forgiveness of this person who was ultimately and inevitably human, flawed and subject to failure, mistakes, desire and delusion, and vulnerable to the reality of mortality.

And perhaps some opportunity for forgiveness of ourselves is also present in the space of dwelling in the presence of the dead and buried. Forgiveness of ourselves as we realize that we are the only ones that have been truly and completely bequeathed to our daily and lifelong care. If we are to experience healing, change, improvement, relief and release, it will come from deep within us when we shift our relationship to the outer world and tend warmly and compassionately to what is within us.

How would it be if we had tea with a friend and sat with them as we sit with the dead: delicately attuned to our own experience, reflective but fully present, riding the gentle undulations of the heart as the encounter unfolds word by word, expression by expression, emotion by emotion. Is there, in the end, a more respectful and self-compassionate way of connecting with those we love than by connecting warmly with our own tender beating heart and treating it in the same warm way we treat a heart in its eventual repose?

Previously published on stuckinmeditation.com. Published here with permission of the author.

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Steven Hickman, Psy.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Associate Clinical Professor in the UC San Diego Departments of Psychiatry and Family & Preventive Medicine. He is also the Founder and Executive Director of the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. He has been teaching mindfulness, in the form of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, and more recently, Mindful Self-Compassion for 12 years.

We're excited to have Steven in Edmonton this August to co-lead Mindful Self-Compassion: 5-Day Residential Intensive!

Mindful Medical Practice - now published!

Mindful Medical Practice: Clinical Narratives and Therapeutic Insights is now available in hardcover and eBook!

This book - a collection of stories and insights about bringing mindfulness into medicine - is edited by our colleague Dr. Patricia Dobkin, who teaches at McGill's Programs in Whole Person Care.

Our Founder and Director, Dr. Catherine L. Phillips, is proud to be involved in this important project as a contributing author. Her chapter, "The Mindful Psychiatrist: Being Present with Suffering," uses her firsthand experience to illustrate how mindfulness can be brought into the therapeutic relationship, to the benefit of both patient and physician. 

Mindful Self-Compassion - Michelle Becker, M.A., LMFT

“Self-compassion is a skill that can be learned by anyone, even those who didn’t receive enough affection in childhood or who find it embarrassing to be kind to themselves. Self-compassion is actually a courageous mental attitude that stands up to harm—the harm that we inflict on ourselves every day by overworking, overeating, overanalyzing, and overreacting. With mindful self-compassion, we’re better able to recognize when we’re under stress and face what’s happening in our lives (mindfulness) and to take a kinder and more sustainable approach to life’s challenges. Self-compassion gives emotional strength and resilience, allowing us to recover more quickly from bruised egos to admit our shortcomings, forgive ourselves, and respond to ourselves and others with care and respect. After all, making mistakes is part of being human. Self-compassion also provides the support and inspiration required to make necessary changes in our lives and reach our full potential.”

— Christopher Germer, Ph.D

Brad Stewart - with permission

Imagine my surprise when my patient said, “STOP THAT!” “Stop what?” I wondered. I was listening to my patient talk about something very painful and had responded with a gentle mmmm. At first it was hard to understand what was happening; yet, it happened more than once and with more than one patient. Some of my patients were actually bothered by a compassionate response from me. The heartbreaking part of this is that these were people who had been so deprived of compassion. They were in desperate need of compassion, yet they spoke to themselves in a very critical way and could not tolerate receiving compassion from others.

Other patients soaked up the compassion from me like drops of rain in the desert. They needed compassion desperately; much more than I could give in a session a week, or even two sessions a week. They left my office feeling better for having been compassionately met, but then white-knuckled the time between our sessions.

I was already teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and practicing mindfulness, loving-kindness and self-compassion in my own life when I learned that Drs. Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff had developed an 8-week course in Mindful Self-Compassion. I was delighted! From my own personal practice and from my professional experience I was deeply aware this was the missing puzzle piece. “This is the salve the world needs” were the words that expressed my delight at finding this program. That was over a year and a half ago. Drs. Neff and Germer invited me to begin teaching Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and I’ve been teaching it continuously ever since, all over the US, Canada and Europe. To say it has been well received would be an understatement. Even participants with a 20-30 year meditation practice have remarked that it was the “missing piece” for them. MSC explicitly teaches us to pay kind and warm attention to what arises for us. In March of 2014, we launched our teacher training; in that short year we have had about 300 people go through the teacher training.

The patients I referred to above? Both groups have gone through the program with tremendous results. One patient came into a session saying, “It’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t deserve it” in reference to her painful childhood. Her harsh critical voice was replaced with a kinder and gentler one. It was the turning point in her treatment. Imagine, she was no longer beating herself up for her misfortune and could actually receive compassion. Her mood became more stable, she was happier, more engaged with life, and her relationships with others improved markedly.

For other patients, the times between sessions became much easier, and as they learned to comfort and soothe themselves they were no longer so overwhelmed with life. They reported feeling less “needy” and more satisfied with life in general. For both groups, an increase in mindful awareness and a kinder, wiser, more balanced way of being has developed.

Indeed, this does seem to be the salve the world needs. Research has shown that self-compassion greatly enhances emotional well-being. It boosts happiness, reduces anxiety and depression, and can even help people stick to their diet and exercise routine. And it’s easier than you think. Most of us feel compassion when a close friend is struggling. What would it be like to receive the same caring attention whenever you needed it most? All that’s required is shift in the direction of our attention—recognizing that as a human being, you too, are a worthy recipient of compassion.

Previously published in The Center for Integrative Psychology Newsletter (Fall 2013). Published here with permission of the author.

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Michelle Becker, M.A., LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in San Diego, CA utilizing mindfulness and compassion based psychotherapy. She is Director of Compassion Programs at the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness where she teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindful Self-Compassion. She is co-founder, along with Drs. Germer, Neff and Hickman, of the MSC Teacher Training.

We're excited to have Michelle in Edmonton this August to co-lead Mindful Self-Compassion: 5-Day Residential Intensive!

Welcome to Our New Website!

Brad Stewart - with permission

We are excited to launch our new website - and we look forward to hearing your feedback!

Since we developed our first website 5 years ago, mindfulness has flourished. Just last year, we saw 2014 become The Year of Mindfulness, with everyone from school teachers to CEO's abuzz about the benefits of mindfulness. Underneath the buzz there have been significant developments. Research on mindfulness is booming - just visit The American Mindfulness Research Association to see how much research is being published each month. The benefits of mindfulness for our health and wellbeing are increasingly recognized, as is the need for mindfulness in settings ranging from schools to hospitals to the workplace. 

Here at The Mindfulness Institute.ca, we've heard the need for more resources on mindfulness - to begin or deepen a mindfulness practice - and for more mindfulness programs taught by experienced mindfulness teachers. We're pleased to be able to offer these resources, and to expand the selection of mindfulness programs that we offer. This summer, we're excited to host a Mindful Self-Compassion: 5-Day Residential Intensive, led by Steven Hickman and Michelle Becker from the UCSD Center for Mindfulness.

Stay tuned for details about our Fall programs, including Introduction to Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and MBSR for Professionals!