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Study on mindfulness treatment vs CBT


Guest anatta

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This one concluded they were as effective as each other. Sample size 215. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/286190.php

I find mindfulness helps in general with everyday, non-clinical anxiety, conflict, boredom, anger etc. Never had formal mindfulness treatment, but for a few years when my OCD was mostly absent, I found regular practice made me enjoy life far more than usual, even when I was already a pretty happy person. When my OCD is bad, I can't summon the discipline to get into a mindful state consistently, I'm too scared to sit with the fear. But it seems to me that the approaches should in theory complement each other perfectly, in fact from what I understand of CBT and ERP, they arguably use mindfulness already, just not as explicitly and articulately explained and focused on as with mindfulness-based therapies, or recommended as homework in itself.

I would love to see a study where the two approaches are used together. I imagine it would be a perfect combination. I definitely draw on the skills and insights I developed from studying non-clinical uses of mindfulness when I am more successful in applying standard CBT principles. The less mindful I am, the harder it is to resist compulsions, certainly. Unfortunately, the harder I find it to resist compulsions, the less courage I feel to get into a more mindful state, because I do find it initially makes my mind throw up obsessive thoughts more easily than ever, because you're turning off the daydream mechanism that flits uncritically from one thought to another, and that seems to allow obsessions that the brain has come to treat as important threats to watch out for, more opportunity to enter the normally scattered mind.

Edited by anatta
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Good point PolarBear, they don't specify what anxiety disorders the patients had. Probably GAD or Anxiety Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (if they're still using that term with the DSM-V), but it could have been a hodgepodge cohort as well. Ha, OCD has become such a prominent feature in my mind that I see key the words "anxiety" and "CBT" and manage to read the whole article still interpreting it as being about OCD specifically.

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