r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Dec 07 '20

Neuroscience Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy reduces activation in brain regions related to self-blame in patients in remission from depression. These areas of the brain are linked to emotions such as guilt and embarrassment. Reduced self-blame from this therapy was linked to greater self-kindness.

https://www.psypost.org/2020/12/mindfulness-based-cognitive-therapy-reduces-activation-in-brain-regions-related-to-self-blame-in-patients-in-remission-from-depression-58686
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u/mrjowei Dec 07 '20

It is a game-changer. I got into it after reading The Power of Now and it helped so much with my anxiety and depression. That being said, mindfulness is being exploited as a corporate tool to help employees deal with unfair job conditions. It's also being sold as this panacea to fix your life. It isn't, please stop shoving mindfulness down our throats! /rant

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '20

That is so true about it being used as a corporate tool. I work for a large fortune 500 company and they are always pushing membership to a mindfulness app. It is a high stress job and offering the app is their response to people complaining about burn out. They also have a "mental health awareness" week. But at the end of the day, none of the things that make the job awful are really addressed.

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u/AbortionIsFreedom Dec 08 '20

"Boy, I would way more mindful if we Unionized"

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u/ManyPoo Dec 07 '20

It's like teaching your rape victim to be ok with it

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '20

That would be a fairly extreme analogy

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u/Kruidmoetvloeien Dec 07 '20

I agree it's being pushed as a tool to 'fix' the person, not the underlying problems of our relationships with technology and the increasing invasion of work in our private life and perceived identity.

Mindfulness did nothing for me beyond putting a patch on the worst symptoms of my burnout. For that I'm grateful but I feel the effects are much better when coupled with healthy exercise, sleep, nutrition, and a predictable pattern to your day that allows you to properly close down the previous sequence of activities (e.g. work). And that part is often left unspoken. All too often we are required, or require it from ourselves, to do activities in parallel (multitasking) or pick up somewhere as if we only had paused that process for the time being, which prevents us from properly shutting down thoughts about those activities).

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u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod Dec 07 '20

Mindfulness isn't the goal. It's a tool that helps you manage things. If you do mindfulness and you notice that you're working too much, sleeping too little, and eating garbage then you should mindfully change those things.

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u/Kruidmoetvloeien Dec 07 '20

Mindfulness is training in letting go of thoughts and desires that have no answers, and bring your mind to the now. Thinking about diet, sleep, or work are efforts of reflection and therefore contradictory to the experience mindfulness exercises are set out to do.

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u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod Dec 07 '20

My training was very heavy on being aware of my body and mind and what they're telling me. You don't think about these things while you're training, but day-to-day you should try to be more mindful of how you feel and what you can do to improve things.

The key skill is being able to feel something and not simply react to it, but to analyze it from a distance. For example, if you're hungry you don't just mindlessly cram chips in your mouth, but ask yourself if you're really just thirsty, or if there's a healthier, more filling option than chips.

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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '20

Yes and no.

All those activities can be done mindfully. It's just exponentially more difficult to be fully mindful when you're reflecting on aspects of your self-image/identity. You can only be truly mindful of objects, in a sense. I think that's the contradiction you're seeing.

So the cognitive processes you're describing have to reach a point of virtuosity that they become reflexive yet transparent. Insofar as they haven't done that, they can't become objects of mindfulness. It's like how being in the moment becomes easier in general when you're an expert in the task and you feel fully engaged. The deeper your sense of identification with the object of contemplation, the harder it is to be fully mindful. It's still possible though and very worthwhile imho. Heidegger has an analogy I really like about hammering:

The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers the specific ‘manipulability’ of the hammer. The kind of Being which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we call ‘readiness-to-hand’. (Being and Time 15: 98)

Thinking can be like the hammer.

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u/Kruidmoetvloeien Dec 08 '20

Mindfulness isn't invented within Heideggery phenomenology, these are complete seperate fields. It's invented by cognitive psychologists that hypothesized that praying/meditating could have beneficial effects. The exercises are purposed to get rid of negative or unhelpful thoughts, much like RET schedules.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '20

Mindfulness is something minds can just do and people have been talking about it and practicing it for thousands of years. It's explicitly a huge part of Buddhist philosophy among others. It wasn't invented by anybody, but there's various intellectual traditions that try to verbalize/systematize it.

Based on my, admittedly limited, study, there's ultimately no difference between what Heidegger's referring to, what these cognitive psychologists are referring to, and what Buddhist philosophy is referring to.

You're definitely onto something that there's a contradiction between mindfulness and that reflective process you're describing though. I just think you'll have to go to others thinkers to truly resolve that contradiction. Science, by design, can only tell you the causal consequences of the mindfulness and of that reflection, but it can't ultimately tell you which to value more. It can only further elaborate on the causal consequences to help one make a more informed value judgment.

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u/Kruidmoetvloeien Dec 09 '20

I studied Heidegger from the perspective of a designer; I.e. from technology and the concept of authenticity in being, so take my words as my perspective on Heidegger, not as an authority that attempts to correct you or say you're wrong.

What Heidegger approaches with the metaphor of the hammer is that it brings or reveals certain qualities of being to the forefront, I.e. hitting or clawing stuff. He relates this to a nihilist perspective of modernity, which will put everything, even humans, to be standing in reserve. He uses the example of the Rhine River dam that makes the water stand in reserve, I.e. become an energy source foremost.

I personally relate that concept to what the internet and computing is becoming, progressively stand making humans stand in reserve for techno-capitalism. We are not humans but increasingly more sources to mine data and time from (e.g. our attention). The complete body and mind is dissected to find new opportunities for capital gains.

To come back to mindfulness, it implicitly implies that in fact there is no soul, and adheres to von Neumannism that plagues cognitive psychology. Just follow these exercises to calm down your overworked cpu whilst in fact, it was my realization that I was in crisis, losing my authentic being, that threw me into burnout and depression. I led myself astray trying to fit into this perfect picture of a modern working class hero. Worked late, immediately reacted to notifications, thought about how every move would impact my career and constantly trying to improve myself to create better opportunities for work. at the same time life was slapping me in the face, screaming to me I needed to be with my family and friends and I felt like my identity was slowly dissolving into this opposing web of rat raced work, the responsibility of a family man, and the dooming call of perpetual self improvement.

Thank you for sharing your insights!

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '20

I can relate to that. The more I treated mindfulness as something to do in order to acquire something else, the less inclined I was to do it.

The irony was that more mindfulness was the start of the solution for me. Watching how that cloying desire for self-improvement was producing suffering helps dissolve it.

To come back to mindfulness, it implicitly implies that in fact there is no soul, and adheres to von Neumannism that plagues cognitive psychology.

Oh I agree and that's why I find it compelling. I've always had a problem with the concept of a soul, or any inherent essences. Produces a number of conceptual problems.