At the beginning of the year, we trialled a new online event on mindfulness for people with epilepsy and family members of a person with epilepsy. The online event is led by our Community Resource Officer, Cliona Molloy.
These sessions have proven to be extremely popular amongst those in attendance. In order to help people understand the link between mindfulness and management of epilepsy, Cliona has further expanded on how the practice can help support those living with the condition and their families…
Epilepsy is a long-term condition that can come with many uncertainties leaving people with feelings of confusion, frustration, and often fear. For some, not getting answers or at least definite answers can drive fear and worry, often leading to increased stress.
When we are in a space of stress, we begin to see things less clearly. Our mind goes time traveling to past or future thinking. Our body moves into the fight, flight, or freeze mode, we are on high alert – muscles tensing and tightening, we begin to suffer physically and mentally.
All these feelings are natural responses to a stressful situation and part of the human experience when we or a loved one is diagnosed with a long-term condition, especially an unpredictable one like epilepsy. The ups and downs can be exhausting. There will be good days and challenging days. We need self-help strategies to build our resilience.
All of these ups, downs, questions, frustrations and lack of clarity can leave us in a spin of mindlessness – ruminating on past experiences or fearing the future. Some of that can be helpful in that we can reflect on past experiences to learn more positive ways forward and, we can use our future fear to plan, self-manage, and reduce risk. So… sometimes the bad stuff can be good - if used correctly!
However, the rest of it can be utter nonsense – our busy and misbehaving minds taking us away on stories that lack any facts serving only as a weapon for self-doubt and worry.
Mindfulness offers us an opportunity to pause, to invite stillness of mind and body to observe what is going on in our mind and body – it provides us with some time to get curious about and investigate our thoughts and feelings – check if there is truth in our thoughts – check if we are holding our body in tension – check if we need support right now.
This time away from mindless/habitual/unhelpful thinking can provide space to investigate our true experience with kindness. The more we practice and develop this skill of being mindful the more we can support ourselves in bringing a helpful quality of presence to all our experience – the bad, the neutral, and the good.
Our mindfulness sessions, hosted by Cliona, are open to both people with epilepsy and their family members. Having read Cliona’s explanation of the practice, if you would like to join us for some or all of our next series of Mid-Morning Mindfulness events, visit our registration page on zoom.
If you or your family member need any support or information regarding your or a loved one’s epilepsy, please do not hesitate to get in contact with your local Community Resource Officer. You can find their details in the 'Our Services' section of our website.