Psychology: Existential And Mindfulness Approaches

Compare and contrast the existential and mindfulness approaches to understanding and working with fear and sadness. Which of these two approaches do you feel more drawn to and why?

Fear and sadness are the largest single cause of disability in our society, grave and the most common debilitating mental illnesses in these days. Nowadays, there are many therapeutic approaches that confront these mental illnesses such us Humanistic approaches, existential psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness approaches among others. The purposes of this assignment is to elicit the significant roles of existential and mindfulness approaches, which have an important role in the treatment of psychopathologies in contributing to understanding

Initially, therapist and client have to build an equal relationship between each other, and later this relationships can become like a colleague who coaches them or somebody whose expertise and experience and understanding and knowledge they do rely on (2010, audio, excerpt 10). Therapist’s aim is to guide the client to find the direction in their life, they keep their on the goal and the purpose at all times, but allow the client to take that in charge themselves. Therapist helped him look at things in more breadth or more depth, i.e. exploring why it is they have this position or why it is it seem like this to them rather than like that to them (2010, audio, excerpt

Evidence suggested that this approach go back up to Siddhartha Gautama (later called Buddha) who is also the founder of Buddhism. For Buddha the life is to engaged directly with suffering rather than avoid it. His essential teachings are also called ‘the four noble truth’: attending to suffering, understanding its roots in craving, let go of craving, and thus end suffering, cultivate the path. In trying to keep the self save and happy, people crave what we want (as cited in Barker, 2010, p.169/170). Through attention and awareness it is possible to achieve a full understanding of the self and it is also possible to understand the meaning and purpose of the lives. These basic concepts has generated different types of meditation such mindfulness meditation, transcendental Meditation (TM), meditation Zen and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) developed by Kabat-Zinn very popular nowadays also in western country. Indeed, mindfulness workshops have been included into many of the governmental mental health initiatives in the UK (as cited in Barker, 2010, p.172).
One key point of mindfulness is about awareness, bringing the attention to the present. It’s an awareness of how things are in the present moment, connecting with the present moment in just the way things are (2010, audio, excerpt 12). Mindfulness makes an individual aware of the origin of their thoughts; this therapy do