My therapist is very big on mindfulness, and it's HARD!!!

She encourages mindfulness to help me deal with anxiety, because I tend to get lost in worrying and dissociate. She also thinks it will help with my OCD.

For me, it's very difficult, because I'm never really in the moment. I'm always trying to be 10 steps ahead, figuring out what needs to be done, who I need to be, how I need to act, to get things just right. 'Cuz, when I screw things up, people get mad and "bad things" happen (and, yes, I realize this is a defense from my childhood, and it's no longer a necessary one, but it's very hard to let go of).

Mindfulness seems to me to be about just experiencing a single moment fully, and letting yourself be completely aware of that moment and nothing else. In that moment, there is no past or future, there's only right now, and it completely surrounds you. Then, you experience the next moment fully, and so on.

The way that I've finally figured out how to practice mindfulness is to focus on one single physical thing, and let everything else in my brain be still, just for that moment. If I start slipping back in to my worrying thoughts, I simply notice those thoughts and then bring my attention back to that physical thing I'm focusing on. So, I'll make a cup of hot tea (or any hot beverage) and sit down to drink it...then, I wrap my hands around the cup and focus on how that feels; then bring the cup up to take a sip and focus on the smell; then how the hot cup feels against my lips; then take a sip and focus on the taste, warmth, etc, then swallow and focus on feeling that heat as it travels down my throat...repeat. Another one that works well is when taking a shower, I tilt my head back, and focus just on the water traveling down through my hair, to my scalp, and then all the way down the back of my head, down my back, etc. Another is petting the dog - I'll focus all my concentration on the sensations of their fur or something.

For me, focusing on breathing is kind of a last resort. I do better with mindfulness when I have a physical sensation to focus on. My brain is always so busy, and I'm always thinking so far ahead that if I don't have an outside physical sensation to focus on, I tend to slip back in to my thoughts.