Ramblings Of A Quetiapine Infused Rainbow.

Join me on my journey to mindfulness. - Day 1 - 21.5.2013

Today was my first session at a mindfulness group run by the organisation I see my psychiatrist. It was…bizarre to say the least. I have never attended a group for anything even related to my mental health. I’ve always been ‘imgonnafixthisonmyown’ kind of thing, I’ve involved doctors and therapists. But never group therapy, in fact I would have ran away from the offer, and straight away said No.

There was twelve of us, plus three members of staff, one youth worker, a psychologist and a med student. (They are expecting three more to take us up to a group of 15) we started with introductions, we went around the table saying our name, one fact about us, who we live with and what we know about mindfulness. I hate this sort of thing. -__- But I was second, so got it out of the way real quick!

Once we had done intros Chrissy (youth worker) explained we were going to do our first piece of mindfulness practice. She passed around a pot of sultanas, and told us to take one…but not to eat it. (I so don’t like sultanas.) she told us to put it in our hand… Really focus on it, feel the weight of it, the patterns, the way the sun may be casting shadows of it on your hand. Feel the texture of it between your fingers. - now I’m sat the like WTF. This is so silly OMG I don’t even like sultanas. It’s ugly and tastes gross! - put the sultana in your mouth, don’t eat it, just put it on your tongue. How does it feel? On yor tongue, when it touches your teeth. Can you taste it? - I’m thinking yes. It’s gross. - bite into it. How does it taste? How does it feel? - eurgh. It feels and tastes gross. - slowly chew it. And when your ready swallow it. Is there an after taste? What does it feel like going down your throat? - ew. Ew. Ewww> - this is mindful eating. I feel this may go better if we were mindfully eating chocolate…as I will repeat sultanas are. Grossss. I’ve saved a piece of chocolate, and at bed time am going to try and mindfully eat it.

After that exercise we were asked how we felt. One of the boys said silly, I’m so glad he did as there was another nine of us who felt the same! I felt stupidly silly and like WTF. This is stupid… Chrissy told us if we were feeling sceptical to stick with it. I’m feeling sceptical. But I’m going to stick with it.

We did a group contract, which is standard with group work. then exercise on values and beliefs in pairs, which I was fine with I’ve done that hundreds of times, and delivered to young people before now.

We finished with a seven minute mindfulness practical. Again I felt so silly, and my heart was beating and felt like it was going to explode from chest. Paranoid that everyone was watching me! *blush* we then filled it in in our work books. Yes. Mindfulness sends you home with homework! Five minutes everyday I have to practice mindfulness. And document it all. We were sent home with disks that have meditation things on. And have been given a link that has podcasts we have to download for the program.

I’m still alive. It didn’t kill me. Just need to get past the sceptical feelings and hopefully it will be helpful.