Question from someone about Mindfulness:
Can you explain to me why I need mindfulness?
After all, it feels bad to notice that you are in pain, why would you purposely try to be aware of it? I don't understand why you would want to do that.
My Answer:
I used mindfulness for pain management. It helped me to develop skills to cope with physical pain so that I wasn't debilitated by it.
As with all things, it's better to know the truth because you know what you're dealing with. And, that's what mindfulness did for me – it let me see/feel the truth of the pain, where it was coming from, and then as I “took control” of it in my mind, to reduce its power to stop me from leaving the house and participating in life. It also helped me to eventually become pain-free and medication free (one of many tools I used … diet, exercise, hobbies, prayer, etc.)
So noticing that you feel bad or that you feel pain simply means you're seeing the truth of things and can then do something about it.
If you ignore feeling bad or pain then you simply prolong the experience of feeling bad and the pain.
You see, you never completely ignore it, it is always present.
Better to be able to cope than to deny and suffer the consequences that usually result in more pain.
