How To Be Mindful When You Are Sad

I made a New Year’s Resolution to practise mindfulness and gratitude this year.

As with many things, life has made this good intention rather challenging to put into place.

Our New Year was marked with a goodbye to our old home and resettling into a new city, with new jobs, new childcare centres, and new schools to navigate. In the upheaval, I lost a number of my usual coping mechanisms, and became understandably sad (from the grief of letting go) and anxious (from worries about the future. How will I perform in my new role? How will we cope with school? How will I not fall apart?)

All the while, I tried very hard to practise mindfulness. I paid attention to sounds, sights, tastes, smells. I tried to live every moment. And I found out one thing. It’s very hard to be mindful when you are sad and anxious, because you become so aware of how very sad and how very anxious you are. You become aware of the heaviness in your heart, the constriction in your throat, the tears pricking at your eyelids. You become aware of the way you have been holding your breath for what seems like two weeks, of the tightness in your shoulders, the stabbing headaches. You become aware of just how overwhelmed you are right now, and even though you tell yourself “It’s ok to be sad“, “This is just a transition“, “Everything is going to be ok“, you still feel… sad. And very anxious.

Mindfulness has been hailed as the answer to so many ailments, and has been trialled for people with a history of depression. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy has been developed to help depressed patients. But I do not know if mindfulness is meant to help people who are just intensely sad after a loss or transition.

Perhaps, though, despite the weeks of feeling like I was a failure at practising mindfulness, I may have learned something from the practice after all. I am now no longer sitting with the feelings of sadness, or worry, but I am simply learning to be alive. That is all. When I return to the breath, it now reminds me that I am alive, and also that I am only alive in this very moment. Just focussing on being alive, rather than being sad, or worried, brings me some relief. Perhaps I am also a lot less sad and anxious as time goes on, as we start to grow tentative roots in our new community, as the unfamiliar becomes a little bit more familiar every day. Who knows.

Right now, I am grateful, that I am alive in this moment, just alive, nothing more. The knowledge that I am breathing, and being, and living, also reminds me that there is so much potential in this moment, and the next, and the next. And that helps me carry on.

Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “moment to moment awareness, without judgement”. I would re-define this as “moment to moment awareness of being alive, without judgement”. And that is how I think we could be mindful, even in the midst of emotional turmoil.

x

PS. Other ways to cope with sadness are talking to people, and exercise. If you are struggling with anxiety and/or depression, speak to a professional x