Mental freedom involves the ability to experience your psychological and emotional world fully while still pursuing what matters most to you. It means being open to, accepting, and experiencing what is, without living to avoid or manage psychological and emotional pain.
Benefits of Increased Mental Freedom
- Improved psychological health: What differentiates psychological health from disordered suffering is whether people are willing to experience the totality of their psychological and emotional world and still do what matters most to them.
- More meaningful life: Mental freedom involves finding a way to live a meaningful and productive life, taking personal pains and joys along for the ride.
- Reduced suffering: Suffering occurs when we push psychological pain away and do things to escape from experiencing it.
- Increased happiness: The ultimate goal of mindfulness is happiness in terms of freedom from unnecessary suffering.
Ways to Increase Mental Freedom
- Mindfulness: Regular mindfulness practice, such as the “sitting and breathing” exercise, can help bring you more fully alive in the present moment.
- Emotional Willingness: Choosing to experience anxiety, without trying to change the experience, is similar to mindfulness. It means being open and accepting of your experience, whatever it may be.
- Values Clarification: Identifying your values and committing to actions aligned with those values can help you live a valued life.
- Self-Compassion: Develop caring kindness toward yourself.
- Self-Liberation: A belief in your ability to change your own behaviour and your commitment and recommitment to act on that belief.
- Accepting difficult feelings: Allowing and accepting difficult feelings is positively associated with well-being.
- Honouring Feelings: Some feelings and emotions need to be simply honoured and felt.
Professionals and Techniques for Enhancing Mental Freedom
If someone struggles to increase their mental freedom, several professionals can offer support:
- Solution Focused (SF) therapist: They operate on the assumption that clients have the inner resources to construct effective solutions.
- Techniques: SFBT aims to increase positive emotions by bringing back the best from the past by asking questions about previous successes. Therapists help clients find exceptions to their problems and amplify them.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) therapist: ACT therapists focus on willingness and values.
- Techniques: ACT uses mindfulness and defusion techniques to help clients move with internal barriers rather than struggle against them. Mindfulness is not used as a control strategy. Instead, it is used to foster a non-evaluative approach toward the world of experience.
- Havening Techniques practitioner: A practitioner is skilled in applying Havening Touch, a gentle and soothing touch to the upper arms, palms, and face, which generates delta waves in the brain associated with a sense of safety and well-being [Truitt]. They are also knowledgeable about the different types of Havening (Event, Transpirational, Affirmational, Outcome, Hopeful, Role and Iffirmational) and how to apply them.
- Trauma-Informed Approach: Practitioners understand how trauma is encoded in the brain and body, enabling them to pinpoint the cause of anxiety quickly. They also recognise that people may crave things like drugs and alcohol to self-sooth trauma.
- Mindfulness Teacher: Mindfulness teachers can guide you in your mindful practice and put you in contact with like-minded others.
Summary
Mental freedom involves experiencing your psychological world fully and willingly pursuing what matters most. Benefits include improved psychological health, a more meaningful life, and reduced suffering. People can increase their mental freedom through practices like mindfulness, emotional willingness, values clarification, and self-compassion. Professionals such as ACT therapists, Havening Techniques practitioners, and mindfulness teachers can provide guidance and support in this process, using techniques such as mindfulness exercises, defusion techniques, and values clarification.
Tags: mental freedom, mindfulness, acceptance, values, ACT, solution focused therapy, havening