Dr. Elisha Goldstein is a clinical psychologist who practices mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in West LA. He's also a professional mental health blogger writer for mentalhealth.net and psychcentral.com and author of audio CDs.
Therese J. Borchard interviewed Dr. Goldstein and put it in her blog in a post called Mindfulness and Psychotherapy: An Interview with Dr. Elisha Goldstein.
The interview answered some questions that I didn't think to ask in my research on mindfulness.
First, she asks if there are times when mindfulness is not the right approach to use and whether it can actually make things worse. I had thought about this in regards to depression. People with depression often maintain and increase the depression by ruminating. They analyze the events that make them sad, thinking about causes and consequences and so on. Mindfulness is a more adaptive approach than rumination, but it seems that sitting in silence and allowing thoughts to happen may lead to rumination. In this case, it would seem like a better idea to do something enjoyable and distract yourself from your thoughts.
Dr. Goldstein's answer is that mindfulness is a very effective technique to keep yourself in the present and to recognize when we are judging ourselves so we can learn to accept our thoughts. However, when a person is feeling extremely depressed, it is very difficult to be mindful. In this case,
distraction is a good way to go, just be intentional about it. The truth is, if you’re being intentional with the distraction, in a way, you are present.
Mindfulness is more effective to prevent future episodes of depression.
The whole interview is really interesting. You should definitely read it if you want to learn about accepting yourself, dealing with depression, or mindfulness.
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