In 1979, Kabat-Zinn developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to teach individuals with chronic physical health and mental health problems how to improve their lives. The cornerstone of the MBSR program is Mindfulness Meditation, an ancient practice originally derived from Buddhist Vispassana meditation.
MBSR is often used as an adjunctive therapeutic modality for a range of problems and disorders, and is finding its way more and more into the formal treatment of addiction and addictive disorders.
“Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally”
Mindfulness promotes awareness and acceptance of thoughts, feelings and sensations as they arise, and recognition of their impermanence. Practitioners of Mindfulness are taught to acknowledge and accept their experiences rather than to judge, modify or suppress them. This fosters a unique relationship with present-moment experience: a change often referred to as “attentional control” or “reperceiving”.
What’s the result? More mindful behavioral choices and decisions.
It’s Not a Religious Thing
Even as Mindfulness is rooted in the tradition of the Zen Buddhists, the set of core skills associated with mindfulness practice are often taught independent of religious or cultural background, and in a variety of forms and interventions when dealing with addiction and addiction treatment.
In addition to MBSR, mindfulness-based interventions used in the treatment of addictive disorders include:
- Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT),
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Recent modifications have been made to these evidence-based approaches specifically for substance abusing populations, including:
- Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) and
- Mindfulness-Based Therapeutic Community (MBTC) treatment.
The Results Are In: Mindfulness Works
Just as an example, let’s consider “experiential avoidance”, or an individual’s refusal or unwillingness to remain in contact with unpleasant experiences and thoughts, which has been implicated in large numbers of substance abuse cases. Studies have confirmed that mindfulness meditation reduces experiential avoidance by fostering judgment-free acceptance of thoughts and feelings on a moment to moment basis. The impact this can have on an individual’s potential for relapse is obvious – and significant.
Overall, the evidence of Mindfulness-Based interventions working in favor of long-term addiction recovery is compelling, and experts agree that the relatively few available studies highlight what is only the augury of a major shift toward effective, holistic practices across the addiction treatment field at large.
Pennsylvania Drug Rehab Centers Offering Mindfulness-Based Addiction Treatment Programs
For individuals and families looking for quality PA addiction treatment programs, it’s important to consider the various therapies being offered. Bradford Recovery Center – a fully licensed and accredited PA Addiction Treatment Center – offers Mindfulness-Based Therapies as core psychoeducational and experiential pillars in our continuum of care.
But that’s all pretty clinical stuff. What does it mean? It means we work with patients as individuals. We help people become friends with themselves and with the world. We help people recover. For life.
