Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

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No, prefrontal cortex is about planning, reasoning and inhibiting emotions (we do it all the time without realizing) among a lot of other things. Amygdala is based on reacting to fear, among other emotions.

CBT gives you a toolset to ask yourself questions to understand (a) which perspective you're currently looking things from and (b) which other perspectives you could use.

The 10 cognitive distortions and recognizing them is a good start. Cognitive distortions happen mostly through emotional processes (e.g. the amygdala but the whole limbic system really).

Mindfulness meditation is an emotional-based approach as it mostly relates (for laymen like me) to scanning the body. Scanning the body gives marked improvements to the insular cortex. It also gives marked improvements to the PFC (the inhibition part, not the planning part).

This is all written way too short and my knowledge is a bit stale on it. I used to be really into this a couple of years ago. It was during the time when I studied psychology (I even published a neuroscientific literature review :D).

I love the spirit of your response, but I feel the need to disagree a bit and elaborate about your statement: >Mindfulness meditation is an emotional-based approach as it mostly relates (for laymen like me) to scanning the body

The REAL essence and power of mindfulness is becoming aware of the contents of your attention. For some reason, focusing the attention inwards on bodily somatosensory experiences tends to encourage that, but the two are not the same. Body-scanning is more a technique to help encourage the development of mindfulness rather than the end goal in itself.

The reason this distinction is so important and powerful is that the brain regions which are feeding the contents of your attention are the ones that get reinforced. When you combine mindfulness with practice in redirecting your attention, it becomes an insanely powerful tool to fundamentally reshape your reality by restructuring your brain.

Yes exactly. The "mindfulness" designation is a recursive one, where first you are mindful, then you are mindful of that which is mindful, and all the way down.

Until you find the first turtle, then it's turtles all the way down.

I will send turteCore, but you have to ask for it. Ribbit.

My problem with these terms is there's no chance of not being mindful. It seems to refer at once to both immediate awareness of surroundings and kind of meta self-awareness. You're in the present moment no matter what you do but redirecting focus seems to help get a grip on emotions.

There's some irony there given that excessive body-scanning and hyper-vigilance can be common symptoms related to anxiety.

Though the CBT stuff in general and being aware of your attention does seem empirically helpful, I just find the body scanning focus as a common start may not be the best.

The primary difference is that the kind of awareness cultivated during meditation is non-judgemental. Mindfulness helps put thoughts into perspective, where you can observe them rather than feel absorbed by them. So in this sense you can pay attention to your body without getting carried away by the stream of anxious thoughts.

And therein lies the difficulty of the process: shifting towards objectivity, in a sentient being that is primarily (if not entirely) a subjective experience. I appreciate CBT, but often feel saddened to see that this doesn't get addressed in most of the resources attempting to educate about the practice.

"Mindfulness and psychotherapy" (by Germer, Siegel, Fulton) has helped me with these issues by giving multiple perspectives on the process to develop. It's a book for therapists, which is one of its strengths, since we essentially are trying to get people to sustain being their own therapists in the long run.

Could you expand on the "practice in redirecting your attention". What kind of practice you do? Thx!

I'm not the person you replied to, but you might want to check out The Mind Illuminated by John Yates, a modern meditation guide (based on Buddhist practices) that delves deeply into mind's systems of attention & awareness.

There are some studies that seem to indicate decision making is inhibited when emotions are inhibited. That is, you can ask someone to explain what the rational choice is, and justify it, but they will not actually make that choice until an emotional prompt spurs them on. They can be very, very good at planning extensively but won't take action. The study I'm thinking of was on brain-damaged patients without emotion but perfectly intact reasoning.

So I wonder how that fits in with what you've experienced. Is analysis through CBT in fact opening up new information to change how you feel about certain things (rationality induced emotion, spurring change)? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding the conclusion (I've seen it presented as such elsewhere so I'm not the only one).

> His insight, dating back to the early 1990s, stemmed from the clinical study of brain lesions in patients unable to make good decisions because their emotions were impaired, but whose reason was otherwise unaffected

https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/06/17/172310/the-impor...

> Mindfulness meditation is an emotional-based approach as it mostly relates (for laymen like me) to scanning the body

Just to clarify, body scanning is just one type / approach to meditation. Many practices don't utilize it at all, or only do so in conjunction with other techniques.

I appreciate the clarifications. I did write it a bit too hastily. Sorry about that.

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