On the eve of the start of my next Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression class, I have been reflecting on the connection between mindfulness practice and the healing of depression. It’s an association that I’ve seen over and over, and which the research on MBCT bears out: people who practice mindfulness are less vulnerable to falling into slipping into, and staying in, a major depression.
What I’ve also seen beyond this research, is that practioners are also generally happier, more resilient, more able to find motivation for their lives, and especially, are able to make meaning out of even the experience of depression (which is characterized by a sense of meaninglessness).
So why is this?
One way of understanding this goes back to Freud’s favorite topics, and the psychologists oft lampooned preoccupation, your mother.
There’s a field of psychology that’s been around for about four decades, which studies this very relationship, called “Attachment Theory” (technically, it studies the relationship of the child to the “primary care giver,” and the results of that relationship on into adulthood-but that usually means, primarily, Mom).
One of Attachment Theory’s conclusions (there’s been a lot of research done in this field) is that the quality of this relationship determines whether a child, and then an adult, is either “securely” or “insecurely” attached. Securely attached children believe, through their testing of their mother, that the world holds what they need, that their caretakers understand their needs and can consistently provide them. Insecurely attached people, through the same testing, basically believe the opposite: the world is depriving, their caretakers are clueless about their needs, if not actually threatened or hostile towards those needs.
Now, you might ask, “So what’s the connection between MBCT and this attachment stuff?” The connection is essentially in what happens to a person’s ability to freely attend to their experience, when they grew up without their needs being consistently met. Which is: attention get’s pinched.
Attachment, you see, is not optional. A child is wired up to attach to Mother in order to feel a base of security in the world. An animal might go to its warren when scared; a child goes their own “place,” being Mom (and as an adult, to the very deeply symbolized and encoded “image” of Mom). And if a child has that base, then they feel secure enough to then take in the view of the world, trusting there is somewhere to go to feel soothed and taken care of.
But if you never felt that you had that base of safety, but are biologically required to try to find safety, then you’re going to have to pick a strategy to deal with the lack. Which means you either deny your painfully unmet needs for security (“Mom? Who needs her?”), or you cling desperately to your contact with your caregiver (“Mom! Where are you!”). In other words, your attention is not freely deployed. Rather, it’s locked up in the search for safety, or in denying the longing for that very safety.
So then, what’s mindfulness practice, that which is at the heart of MBCT, about? In a nutshell, it is the practice of deploying attention freely, of cultivating the ability to observe one’s own experience (inside and out) without trying to either shut it out, or get lost in a particular aspect of what you’re seeing.
With depression, the non-mindful approach (which feeds depression) is: “I’m a horrible person. Well, duh! Horrible. Now, how am I going to be a better person. Or maybe, how will I just ignore the truth of my horribleness.” With mindfulness: “I’m a horrible person. Huh. That’s a curious thought. Let’s explore what that’s doing in me. How’s my body reacting when I have such a thought? How about my heart? Huh, curious.”
You see how the first approach automatically jumps a person to either action or denial, but never questions the initial thought/belief? And the latter allows the person to open up their attention to be curious and question? The latter is the mode of the “securely attached individual,” and it’s what mindfulness practice cultivates.
In other words: practicing mindfulness builds a better Mom. Not identical; it seems that if you didn’t get that safety as an infant, that’s pretty much gone. But you can earn that security as an adult, through practice which builds the same qualities that are there in the securely attached individual: resilience, a sense of safety, and an exploring mind. Practicing mindfulness builds these qualities, this trust in the world and in one’s self.
So, perhaps to sum it up in a way that challenges the voice of depression: since virtually everyone can practice mindfulness, no one is doomed. What’s been lost as a child can be found as an adult. The way of the world, and our basic natures, provides an escape clause.
And, well, how cool is that?
