My journey with Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

In our first session, we practiced a short meditation. My thoughts wouldn’t stop racing: “This is pointless. I can’t sit still. I’m doing it wrong.”

At first, it was frustrating. I felt like I couldn’t do it right, and all the doubts about whether this would work crept in. I thought, “Why am I even here?” The tension in my body was palpable, and I was overwhelmed by how hard it was to just sit with my own mind.

For the first time, I realised how tiring it was to constantly fight my own thoughts. The frustration and self-doubt were overwhelming, but acknowledging these feelings was the first step toward change.

In week three, we tried body scan meditation, where you think about your body and focus on the physical sensations. That’s when I noticed something surprising: my stomach was always tense. I had never realised how much anxiety lived in my body as well as my mind.

Later that day, when I felt anxious, I paused and noticed my jaw was clenched and my shoulders were tight. Instead of panicking, I just noticed. And for the first time, my anxiety didn’t feel so overpowering. This awareness brought a sense of relief and control. I realised that anxiety wasn’t just a mental experience – it was physical too. This was a new revelation, and it made me realise I could become aware of it and manage it better.

One of the hardest lessons was about cognitive distortions. These are the automatic, negative thoughts I had always believed were true.

I wrote down a thought that often haunted me: “I don’t deserve anything good.”

Then I was asked: Is this a fact or just a thought?

That simple question was surprising because I had never questioned it before. It was hard to confront a thought that had felt so true for so long, but it was an eye-opening moment. I felt a shift, a glimmer of hope. For the first time, I saw that my mind wasn’t always telling me the truth. This realisation was both liberating and empowering. The difficulty in breaking free from these long-held beliefs was real, but as I worked through them, I started to feel lighter.

By the final session, I noticed improvement. My anxious thoughts still came, but they no longer consumed me. I had learned to observe them without getting lost in them.

One night, I caught myself worrying about the future. But instead of dwelling on it, I took a breath and told myself, “It is just a thought”. I felt a relative ease compared to before. This was the start of a new experience.