Training the attention muscle, key to strengthening resilience

In these times of confinement caused by the pandemic, thousands of people are facing a complicated reality both due to economic difficulties and the impossibility of leaving home when we want and the risk of contagion.

Therefore, in many cases it is necessary to develop resilience skills, that is, the psychological capacity to face crises or catastrophic situations with a constructive mindset and without letting painful emotions paralyze.

These resilience skills are diverse, and psychologists help empower many of them in the psychotherapy sessions with patients, but in this case we will focus on a very important one during these weeks: the ability to modulate attention focus.

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The importance of training the attention muscle in the face of difficulties

One of the characteristics of sadness is that, if we allow ourselves to be carried away indefinitely, we tend to see everything from a clearly pessimistic point of view. This not only makes us feel bad; In addition, it continues to feed that emotional state marked by negativity and, more importantly, the actions that expose us to more discomfort.

When it comes to managing this emotional imbalance, there is a very important element that we often overlook: care management. And it is that where a person afflicted by anxiety and pessimism sees a hostile world full of difficulties, many times there is, at least in part, a problem of managing the attention focus. If we get used to focusing our mind on the negative, the discomfort will attract more discomfort to us in a vicious circle from which it is convenient to get out as soon as possible.

However... What to do to improve our attention regulation skills? For this, we have a very valuable tool: Mindfulness.

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Boosting resilience through Mindfulness

Mindfulness, also called Mindfulness, is a state of consciousness characterized by making us focus on the present, letting go of worries about the past and the future, and adopting a more distanced and value-free perspective.

It is also a series of exercises of a psychological nature that we can use to induce that state of consciousness in us. These are practices inspired by the traditional Vipassana meditation of India and the countries close to it, although it differs from it, between other things, in that it is stripped of any religious or mystical element: it forms a therapeutic tool scientifically investigated for decades.

Thus, Mindfulness has several beneficial effects for the mind, most of which are very useful when it comes to developing resilience in the face of crises and moments in which we must adapt to complicated and painful situations, such as the death of loved ones, the sudden drop in income level, or a dismissal from the company where we worked. Of course, in all these cases there is an objective fact that produces emotional pain and that exists outside of us, but Through resources such as Mindfulness, it is easier to adapt to these circumstances in the best possible way and continue towards go ahead.

How does this happen? Mindfulness helps us to "clean the slate" when it comes to painful emotions and especially anxiety. For example, if there is a thought that appears again and again in our consciousness and it is disturbing or generates anxiety, through Mindfulness practiced in a regularly we can gradually lose our fear, we become desensitized to it and we learn to see it as one more thought, which like so many others arrives at a certain moment and then it goes. In this way we can focus our attention on more stimulating and constructive aspects of our day to day.

In addition, Mindfulness fosters a philosophy of life based on the acceptance of what cannot be controlled, and the action aimed at reaching concrete solutions in what you do have control over. This combination is very useful where resilience is required.

Are you looking for support to face difficult times?

Even during the days of confinement at home, psychologists do not stop working offering professional support to patients. We continue to help people especially through online therapy by video call, a service that many of us have been using it for a long time and it has proven effective in addressing most of the cases.

Therefore, if you are interested in starting a psychotherapy program in which you can learn the principles of Mindfulness and other psychological tools to better regulate your emotions, we invite you to get in touch with U.S. On PsicoTools We put at your disposal a team of psychologists specialized in different areas of mental health and a professional career of many years to adapt to your needs and help you overcome problems such as generalized anxiety, depression, work stress, low self-esteem, trauma psychological, and more. If you are interested in seeing our contact information, go to this page.

Bibliographic references:

• Didonna F. (2011). Mindfulness Clinical Manual. Bilbao: Editorial Desclée De Brouwer.
• Dreeben, S.; Mamberg, M. & Salmon, P. (2013). The MBSR body scan in clinical practice. Mindfulness. 4: pp. 394 - 401.
• Garland, E.L. & Howard, M.O. (2018). Mindfulness-based treatment of addiction: current state of the field and envisioning the next wave of research. Addict Sci Clin Pract, 13 (1): 14.
• Hassed Craig and Chambers, Richard (2014). Mindful learning: reduce stress and improve brain performance for effective learning. Exisle Publishing.
• Lutz et. to the; Slagter, HA; Dunne, JD; Davidson, RJ. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in cognitive sciences 12 (4): pp. 163 - 169.