i hate how thoroughly capitalism and "wellness" industry have poisoned the term "mindfulness meditation"
when the words come out of my mouth i feel like i'm talking about "manifesting", or embracing my "inner girlboss" or having a "growth mindset".
it fuckin sucks.
mindfulness meditation as a practice has been so important for us in so many ways, and it's infuriating that now the term is drenched in this connotation of corporate retreats and becoming a more productive manager. fuck.
Mindfulness is a huge base skill for DBT that all the other skills are based on. It's a way of slowing down the space between thoughts and action to regulate impulsiveness and feel able to think through what coping skills will help.
But when I talk about it everyone thinks about the fucking Headspace App and the ways it gets prescribed to people as a way to Fix Stress when they're overworked and underpaid.
It makes me so mad because I really do feel like it fundamentally fixed something in my brain when I learned how to be mindful and returning to my mindfulness exercises always helps me center and ground myself.
I can't tell you how much red I saw at that moment. Maybe it wasn't very mindful of me, but that would be fine actually, because mindfulness, as well as other mental health and spiritual techniques—and this should go without saying—should never be weaponized to make someone accept an unacceptable situation. That was the moment I was sure the public conception of mindfulness had been totally poisoned.
The penultimate moment was when my girlfriend's psychiatrist told her to try meditating instead of refilling the ADHD meds that she's demonstrably required to function for the past decade and a half. (Maybe it's not that surprising. This is the same state where a nurse practitioner specializing in gastrointestinal issues offered to refer me to a naturopath at the end of our very first meeting.) Mindfulness is really important and useful, but my DBT therapists made sure people got their meds so they could get to a headspace where they could access their mindfulness skills!
The degradation of mindfulness may be especially sick because the practice was derived from Hindu and Buddhist spiritual traditions, but America is pretty good at making money off of Jesus, so that figures.
