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Module 7.7: Mindfulness - Relapse Prevention

How We Can Use Mindfulness to Reduce Relapses

As you continue through your life, you will face new challenges and new situations. You will inevitably experience times of increased distress when you find it more difficult to continue your mindfulness practices. As we have discussed, mindfulness and skillful action are processes - we all need to continue to attend to these areas, notice when things are slipping, when our attention has wandered or we've begun to avoid feelings or situations, and gently bring ourselves back. This can be a very difficult and disheartening process. Often, the first response after noticing this kind of lapse is a feeling of disappointment and a thought like "I'm right back where I started" or "I can't do it on my own". It can be easy for this to start a cycle of self-critical reactions, increased distress and experiential avoidance, which feeds back into the sense of disappointment and self criticism, continuing the cycle and thus leading to a relapse. The longer the cycle, the more challenging it becomes to bring self compassion to the experience, to lessen self criticism and reactivity, and to reconnect to the practices that have been helpful.

Being aware that these kinds of lapses are natural and human helps one more quickly notice the pattern of self criticism and disappointment. With this increased sense of awareness, one can then stop the cycle by having a thought such as "Oh right, this is the part where I feel like I've lost my ability to be mindful and live a valued life". At this point you can either make room for more doubt and disappointment or you can find your way back to the practices of mindfulness that were helpful. You can make the commitment to do one thing that brings mindfulness back into your life. No matter how many times you may wander off the path of mindfulness, you are always one moment of awareness away from stepping back onto it.

One way of preventing relapse is by becoming aware of your warning signals (eg. becoming irritable, decreased social contact - "not wanting to see people", changes in sleeping habits, changes in eating habits, becoming easily exhausted, giving up on exercise, not wanting to deal with business such as opening the mail or paying bills, postponing deadlines)

Set up an Early Warning System. On a page under the heading "Warning Signs", write down the changes that you should look out for and if you feel comfortable, share this with someone close to you. Under another heading "Action Plan", write down suggestions to yourself for a plan that you can use a framework for coping. Remember to address the frame of mind that you will be in at the time, eg distressed or "down on yourself" or discouraged. For example, you might put on a yoga or mindfulness tape; refresh a mindfulness skill or exercise from this module; read something that will "reconnect" you with your "wiser" mind, or notice and focus on your breathing.

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