In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Williams discusses her definition of what is mindfulness. Tune in today to hear what tips, advise and words of wisdom she can provide you in just 25 minutes.
Subscribe for more: www.nobu.ai/podcast
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nobuapp
Follow us on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NMIEgjblqmhwT6Uy3l0Nm
Subscribe to Dear Mind You Matter Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-mind-you-matter/id1573642046
Leave us a review: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-mind-you-matter/id1573642046
Interested in attending our Educational Events? https://bit.ly/eventsandeducation
____
Rebecca Williams is an award-winning author, psychologist, and wellness expert specializing in healthy recovery from mental illness, addiction, and life’s challenges. For the past 25 years, her work has focused on building resilience and embracing emotional well-being. She has been a program director at the VA San Diego Healthcare System and an associate clinical professor at The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. A life-long yoga enthusiast, Rebecca has also been a yoga instructor. She was able to combine the ancient wisdom of yoga and mindfulness with compassionate recovery from addiction in her books. Rebecca has collaborated for over ten years with marriage and family therapist, Julie Kraft. Their first book together, The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction: A Guide to Coping with the Grief, Stress, and Anger that Trigger Addictive Behaviors is popular with both therapists and recovering clients. Their workbook is used in virtual counseling, group therapy, and addiction recovery centers across the country. The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction has been translated into Korean, Japanese, Hungarian, and coming soon in Russian! Continuing their writing journey together, Rebecca and Julie created a new book, The Gift of Recovery: 52 Mindful Ways to Live Joyfully Beyond Addiction. The Gift of Recovery is like a pocket coach offering lots of in-the-moment mindfulness skills and adds powerful daily affirmations as clients continue on their personal healing journey.
The Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction: A Guide to Coping with the Grief, Stress, and Anger that Trigger Addictive Behaviors (winner of the San Diego Book Award) and The Gift of Recovery 52 Mindful Ways to Live Joyfully Beyond Addiction (Gold Winner of the Living Now Book Award and Silver Winner of the Nautilus Book Award)
Memorable Moments:
4: 32 So being mindful means to stay, it's to center yourself in the present moment, which a lot of us can do, if we really focus on it and we learn the skill.
5: 43 Mindfulness is a way to slow down the ability to react to craving. So if you have a craving for drugs or alcohol, for example, even during the pandemic, it's been a little bit out of control, of course. We'll talk about that I hope. You know mindfulness just tells you to be in the present moment, slow down, breathe.
9: 40 This is an ongoing practice of continually taking the negative thoughts that are agitating you, affecting you negatively and moving them through. Thoughts aren’t permanent. Feelings aren’t permanent.
16:00 In fact, addiction in the justice system is between 50 and 80% of folks who are incarcerated, have a substance abuse problem. So any clinician out there you're going to be dealing with folks who've been in the justice system if you're dealing with addiction.
17: 46 Usually there's softer emotions underneath that are being kind of protected, like feeling sad, hurt some of these softer emotions. Along with bringing it into the room, we also want you to bring patients into the room. My feeling is that stuck emotions really need your attention and they also need to have that kind of, that yin yang of self-compassion and patience.
22:20 A lapse is not a relapse. So if someone lapses to a substance I would recommend that they remind themselves that a lapse is a one-time, you know, falling off the wagon kind of thing, where you'd use a drug or alcohol, and then you realize, oh my god, let me get back on the horse. Let me, let me get back on track.
21:30 I would just want to convey to folks your listeners that call it a lapse, move into the lapse. If you have a lapse and get, go back to your wellness basket and return to the things that make you feel the strongest.
Dear Mind, You Matter is brought to you by NOBU, a new mental health, and wellness app. To download NOBU, visit the app store or Google Play.
This podcast is hosted by Allison Walsh and Dr. Angela Phillips. It is produced by Allison Walsh, Ashley Tate, and Nicole LaNeve. For more information or if you’re interested in being a guest on this podcast, please visit www.therecoveryvillage.com/dearmindyoumatter.
Allison: Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for being on our show today. Would you mind introducing yourself to our audience?
Dr. Rebecca: Yes. Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me onto Dear Mind, You Matter. I am a psychologist. I'm also an author and I am a wellness expert. I spent over 20 years at the VA in San Diego as a psychologist and also I was an associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at university of San Diego, which is a smaller liberal arts college.
So lots of lots of contact with clients, lots of contact with students and lots of contact with the staff just developing programs and taking care of business. I was also a yoga instructor for 15 years, believe it or not. And I use a lot of my skills as a yoga instructor to stay centered and balanced in the profession of psychology.
I recently relocated from San Diego all the way to Savannah Georgia. So I'm out here in the south to slow down a little bit and also to focus on my writing now. So that's a snippet of what's been happening for me.
Angela: Amazing. Well, we're so excited to have you. We sort of swapped locations, you and I, but we have so much in common and I love that you're here.
And first of all, I want to tell everybody about, you know, the amazing work that you've done. I think in, in actually what we utilize and some of our facilities, you can't see this, I'm holding up your work book. Thank you for sending it to me. My holiday was spent you know nights and weekends being curled up, looking through it and just making copious amounts of notes.
So now I really appreciate it and before we sort of jump into a lot of the work that you've done and a lot of what we're going to focus on in this conversation today, which is really around again, sort of mindfulness for addiction and sort of these really lovely, you know, books and resources that you've put together.
I always like to make sure we sort of step back really quickly. And we look at before we start a conversation, how do you define mindfulness and what sort of, what does that mean in your work and just help us sort of shape what that looks like for our conversation today.
Dr. Rebecca: Yes, that is the million dollar question. Right? What is mindfulness?
I think of mindfulness, probably like Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is a doctor in Massachusetts and it's been a leader in mindfulness and meditation. I think of it as being in the present moment and releasing judgment. So being mindful means to stay, it's to center yourself in the present moment, which a lot of us can do, if we really focus on it and we learn the skill.
The tricky part of course is releasing judgment. Judgment of yourself, judging of other people. So I think in recovery, releasing judgment is one of the skills we would need to tackle to be able to bring in mindfulness, because there's so much, you know, critical thinking of folks who are addicted and in early recovery, there's a lot of inner bullying going on.
So we'd like to bring in ways to calm the mind down so that you can focus and make good decisions about your recovery journey.
Allison: That's a beautiful definition. As easily into the next question that I have is really what can we do specifically for addiction recovery to incorporate mindfulness? Like what are some tips or advice or words of wisdom, right.
Dr. Rebecca: Right. Well, you guys know that addiction includes cravings and triggers, right? So the key here is to let's start with cravings first. And everybody, we all have cravings. I mean, this is normal natural stuff, right. The brain wants something and it, it craves it. So we're all kind of in the same boat in that people who are addicted have this constant every day, sometimes every hour craving for drugs or alcohol or could be shopping. It could be gambling, of course, all the behavioral addictions.
So mindfulness is a way to slow down the ability to react to cravings. So if you have a craving for drugs or alcohol, for example, even during the pandemic, it's been a little bit out of control, of course. We'll talk about that I hope. You know mindfulness just tells you to be in the present moment, slow down, breathe.
I even have on my desk a little, I don't know if you can see this, a little stone that says breathe. Cause I too need to breathe, as we go through life. So it's just a reminder and mindfulness is a reminder to slow down. Be in the moment, look at your environment, have your feet on the ground. Focus on the inhaling and exhaling before you make a decision, whether you're going to return to alcohol or drugs or, or shopping or gambling.
So that's what's so cool about it, so that's the cravings part and the trigger part is that most people get triggered in environments that are high risk. For example, walking by a bar or being with family members that really agitate you or, or what have you. And mindfulness, once again, the ability to breathe, slow down, be in the present moment, look around you and not react is one way to manage some of the triggers that are going to be happening for folks in recovery.
Allison: Oh, that's super helpful and I think, you know, there are so many triggers. There are so many, so many things that, and I would love to talk more about the pandemic too. And I think everybody can benefit from more mindfulness in their lives.
Right. Because I think if I've ever, there was a time where it felt chaotic and out of control and like everything's going wrong. It's now, right. It has been for the last couple of years. It's like, what the heck? We're still here. So, you know, somebody isn't necessarily needing to go into treatment or ready to buy a workbook or invest in any other, like, counseling services to address this.
Like, what are some of the things or what are tools that they can use that would be helpful for them?
Dr. Rebecca: Right. You know, I'm attached to mindfulness meditation, and I do really want to give a shout out to learning skills, to, to meditate. And for me, what I do every morning, I spend about 15 minutes on my meditation cushion and I look out to my backyard.
So I have a beautiful vista of nature, which is another important component to wellness. And what I do is I close my eyes and I count to 10 with my eyes closed. That's it. We don't have to complicate things, folks. It's really simple. So being able to meditate for someone in recovery is a game changer. I mean, you really do begin the process of slowing down your mind.
So counting to yourself from one to 10, with every in-breath and out-breath is a one. In breath out, breath is a two. Most people can't get to 10, that's normal. I get to about three and then my mind starts spinning around, that's normal too. The mind wants to think. So that's a skill that's used in recovery centers.
That's used all over the place, obviously in yoga to really begin the process of regaining a sense of mastery of how you're thinking and to decrease some of that. Another thing I like to do is have little mantras which could be mindful mantras, like a thought. If you have a negative thought coming in, like I'm stressed out about going to the grocery store or something like that, you can actually use the opportunity to have the thought float, like a leaf down the stream.
So the ability to kind of take the thought not attached to it, let it move down the stream. Just like it's in the water, going down the stream and releasing it. So this is an ongoing practice of continually taking the negative thoughts that are agitating you, affecting you negatively and moving them through. Thoughts aren’t permanent. Feelings aren’t permanent.
So once you learn that as someone in recovery, that hey, this feeling of anger is not permanent. You have a little more sense of mastery of what's happening to yourself.
Angela: I love the example that you use. I used to use the cloud in the sky floating by. I much prefer now the leaf floating down the stream.
And even as you were talking through, I think that really lovely example, too, of just, you know, incorporating some breath work in with the meditation and counting with it just up to 10. I mean, it is so interesting to me. So when I end up seeing people, sometimes that it's become such a challenge for them to kind of let go of over-complicating what meditation “should” be, air quotes around the should.
Dr. Rebecca: Right, Exactly.
Angela: It's just that constant struggle and really when you're able to, to give someone the tools and, and sort of that power to take it back, and it's really what you make it, and it can be this simple or complicated. It's just sort of working through that, seeing what works for you. So I really appreciate those examples and it's a great, great place to start.
Although I know it's very challenging for a lot of people who, when that is where they start, it's where they also tend to get stuck sometimes. So one of the things, gosh, I just keep going back to your books because they're so great. But one of the things I love and you know, this isn't necessarily something that's wildly different.
You know, with similar workbooks that might be out there, but I really appreciate how you specifically lay things out here. And one of the things I wanted to talk more about also is, you know, this, the idea of understanding loss and why that's so important. But I think before we get into that, I think it's really interesting you’ve already brought up, you know, cravings and triggers and emotions. Like all of these things are thoughts.
All of these things are our chapters within your workbook, right? So you're really taking people on a methodical journey step-by-step chapter by chapter on how to address these things. So I think one thing that's really important for people to understand, maybe, you know, if they're looking at really wanting to self guide through something like this is, how do you sort of come to that conclusion of, you know, this should really be the way that we're guiding someone on this journey versus taking another approach? How did you come to that with sort of what you're putting forth herein the mindfulness workbook for addiction?
Dr. Rebecca: Yeah, I mean, we wanted to make it user-friendly, reader-friendly, that's the most important thing for us. My co-author Julie, and I spent a lot of time making sure it was available, could be used by, and it is being used in prisons.
You know, folks who are struggling, who are incarcerated versus teen treatment centers, you know, so we really want to widen the scope of what, who could use the book. And we also wanted to make it this book, unlike other books, really integrates cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, which I'm sure you guys talk about on, on your podcasts and dialectical behavioral therapy.
These are different therapy approaches as well as of course, mindfulness and Buddhist concepts. So these are different approaches, but the concepts are so friendly that you can actually weave in any of the 60 plus exercises that we have. We're big fans of lots of exercises in the book.
You can weave, go in and out. Like I said, if you want to focus on feelings, you can go to the feelings chapter and choose one of a dozen or 10 or so, handout, worksheets, and actually weave it into your therapy approach. So it's the widest stoicness that I think we can possibly do.
Because we were seeing such diverse clients, Julie and I, we really wanted to make sure everyone was accounted for, you know in some of the worksheets in the workbook. So, you know, it's trying to heart to heart, you know go to the client and see what they actually need. We wore boots on the ground working when we did this work, but we weren't, you know, in an ivory tower just doing research, which I do love, but we were actually day to day seeing people, you know, that helps make a good word.
Angela: Absolutely. Now I really appreciate that and thanks for further explaining that. So to circle back to loss and sort of that over overall huge concept, why, why is this understanding and sort of being able to work through the process? Why is this so important specifically in recovery?
Dr. Rebecca: Yeah, I love this question. It's my favorite question because when Julie and I were working on this book, like literally meeting every week, talking about what's the most important thing to grab hold of, loss kept coming up for both of us. In other words, we scanned the research at the time and we said, what is out there on loss? And grief?
And there wasn't much out there on addiction and loss. We actually were almost going to call the book loss of addiction. That was my original title because in my family, there was a lot of loss and also addiction. So I was coming from that background and maybe Julie was also, so we were trying to figure out how to heal.
And of course, all of our clients at the time were struggling with a loss either coming from trauma, like you mentioned trauma and loss early, the traumatic events and, and then going toward addiction, and then they would have more loss, you know, so it was a huge cycle of loss addiction or addictive behavior and more loss.
And so we were kind of struggling to make sure we understood this and so what we did was we kind of developed the loss addiction loss cycle of understanding and to try to figure out how to best serve the clients. A lot of our clients had lost family members, you know, have lost families. They've lost jobs. They've also believed it or not lost freedom.
We worked with folks who were incarcerated coming out of being in the justice system, where they had lost freedom for a long period of time. In fact, addiction in the justice system is between 50 and 80% of folks who are incarcerated, have a substance abuse problem.
So any clinician out there you're going to be dealing with folks who've been in the justice system if you're dealing with addiction. Right? So in other words, we desperately needed to address this issue and the grief, and stuck feelings that were around loss. And so that's why we put two chapters in there on loss.
And we're proud of that because there's not a lot of still not a lot out there.
Allison: Well, thank you for explaining that it's definitely needed and very well, you know, very, very prevalent, but as you brought up being stuck, you know, I think for a lot of us, there are a lot of strong emotions that can leave us feeling stuck. Right.
So what should we do when that kind of comes into play in our lives, where we just feel very stuck in what's going on?
Dr. Rebecca: Right and these stuck feelings are fairly strong right. There’s fear, there's exhaustion, there's anger. There's, you know what I think of right now, isolation, very intense, strong emotions.
And traditionally, if you were using drugs or alcohol, you would obviously move to that, to numb yourself out and understandable, the emotions are strong. However, Julie and I, you know, we're working really hard to understand how do you get unstuck? And one of the ways that we like, along with taking the emotion, like let's just say anger, for example, inviting it in and try to figure out what is actually going on underneath the emotion.
So in other words we want anger to be a beloved teacher that you learn from or a respected coach that you learned from, we want you to bring it into the therapy room or if you're at home working on your workbook bring it in and see if we can figure out what's going on underneath it.
Usually there's softer emotions underneath that are being kind of protected, like feeling sad, hurt some of these softer emotions. So along with bringing it into the room, we also want you to bring patients into the room. So my feeling is that stuck emotions really need your attention and they also need to have that kind of, that yin yang of self-compassion and patience, I'm a big fan of self-compassion being your best friend at seeing what your best friend would say to you in a situation where you're feeling really angry and enraged and bringing that into the room so you can kind of begin the process of healing.
Angela: I love that. I really appreciate that in your, I don't know if it's in your workbook as well, but I know in The Gift of Recovery, see me plug in more of your work. That you have a whole section, you talk about emotions, but then you go into these really strong emotions and I think another thing that's really helpful and Allison and I have talked about this a lot in the past, and we both use affirmations a lot, but what I, I know you love them because the other thing that I noticed about the book is you have so many, and they're not the cookie cutter that you see out there that no one can relate to.
Dr. Rebecca: Right.
Angela: And so I love that you've really added, you know, each topic. I mean, you've got such a plethora to pull from and just like you're saying, when, when you're someone that's in this position and you're constantly beating yourself up and you're constantly struggling with these really strong, intense emotions.
For example, in one of these here especially strong feelings and affirmation can just be “today, I allow my feelings to exist without judgment” and that just being what someone's going to work towards. It doesn't need to be, I'm this amazing person and I'm going to say something that I don't actually believe about myself, but it's really putting forth, you know, something that you're, you're really going to try to just allow yourself to do, which I think is so great.
So I could talk about these all day. But yeah, so I think again, you know, we've talked a little bit about the pandemic and, you know, potentially how that's impacted. So what have you seen there and have you seen any shifts and what you feel like has been more or less helpful for people during this time?
Give us a glimpse into the kind of work you're doing there and what you're seeing as the most helpful or beneficial during this really difficult period.
Dr. Rebecca: Yeah, well, obviously we're all in the same boat here. I mean, there's no one who gets away scot free these last two years. What I want to convey about the pandemic and, and lapses, which do happen during this time, a lapse is not a relapse.
So if someone lapses to a substance I would recommend that they remind themselves that a lapse is a one-time, you know, falling off the wagon kind of thing, where you'd use a drug or alcohol, and then you realize, oh my god, let me get back on the horse. Let me, let me get back on track. Whether you need to talk to your mental health provider or you want to go to a virtual AA meeting or whatever it is, or talk to friends and family, whatever it is you do for your wellness basket.
If you have a lapse just jump back into the basket and so I want to convey that. So a relapse is when you just use the drug or alcohol for a long period of time. In other words, you go back to old behaviors and we want to say, Ooh, before we hit that, we want to say, Ooh, that's old behavior. That's old material that's coming up because I'm stressed due to the pandemic.
I’m isolated, I haven't seen my family, whatever the situation is and there’s a lot of situations. So, I would just want to convey to folks your listeners that call it a lapse, move into the lapse. If you have a lapse and get, go back to your wellness basket and return to the things that make you feel the strongest.
Allison: Well, that is beautiful advice and I hope that anybody that's listening right now that has experienced that lapse to go back to the wellness basket, move forward. Don't beat yourself up, don’t shame yourself. Like that's not going to do anything, tomorrow is a new day. So, thank you for bringing light to that. I think it's a really important message for sure.
Rebecca, we love to ask everybody that comes on this show one question, and at this point in your life, what matters to you most right now?
Dr. Rebecca: Oh, thank you for that question. It kind of, it makes me reflect on a lot of what I've been seeing and also myself personally, and what matters to me most right now is a hundred percent mental health.
I mean, I know you guys are doing this and this podcast and you're talking about it every day or every week, but it is so important what you're doing and it is so important for me to recommit to my mental health. Even after 25 years of being a psychologist, I still need to go back and recommit every single day and that's what is most important to me right now.
Angela: I love it, we were talking about that earlier today and just how interesting it is when we sort of are the folks that are pushing forward, you know, trying to be, you know, a lot of us now, even beyond, you know, experts or people who are clinicians and work in this space, right.
Just so many people are. Putting their story and their face out there, but at the end of the day, we also have to lead by example. Otherwise, what good are we going to be to helping other people? So it's such an important message, and I'm glad that that's on your radar as to what matters most to you. Thank you so much for sharing that.
So thank you again for joining us today. I wish we had the rest of the day to talk, but can you share with our listeners how they can find you?
Dr. Rebecca: Sure. I always keep it simple. My website is mindfulnessworkbook.com. and to contact me, you can click on that and get in touch with me that way.
It also has a lot of information about books. I want to put your podcast on there too. So once it's finished, we'll have that up there up and running for other folks who come to the website to find you and us, and also another great thing I wanted to mention to you guys, you can get CEU, continuing education credits for reading our workbook, and that's also on the website.
So if you're a therapist listening and you need CEU for your licensure or certification. I'm on 13 CEU sites and this way, you know, you already have the book. So just go ahead and take the test and get your credit. And that's a fun thing to do if you're up there.
Angela: Sign me up!
Allison: Yes, we should include that too.
We have this awesome program while we've got all of our continuing education events that we host through advanced recovery systems as well, but we're getting ready to launch ARS university. Shhh, don't tell anybody, but we will include all of this in there too. This is great, Rebecca. Thank you so much for being on our show today for all of the work that you have done and all of the tools that you have provided so many people with to help on their journey.
Thank you so much.
Dr. Rebecca: Thanks for having me. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it!
Angela: Thank you. Take care.
Dr. Rebecca: Bye-bye.