On today’s episode of Being Well, Dr. Zindel Segal joins Forrest and me to talk about Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), an eight-week group therapy program designed to help those who suffer from chronic unhappiness and prevent relapse after episodes of severe clinical depression.
About our Guest: Dr. Segal is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, and one of the creators of MBCT. He specializes in mood disorders, particularly depression, and has had an enormous influence on the clinical adoption of mindfulness-based practices and their addition to more traditional forms of cognitive therapy.
- 0:00: Introduction
- 2:00: Origins of MBCT
- 4:30: Why Segal prioritized studying mindfulness as an intervention to depression
- 7:10: Comparing MBCT with traditional CBT
- 10:20: What about depression makes us more reactive to thoughts and feelings?
- 13:15: Mindfulness of sadness vs direct experience
- 18:35: MBCT practices explained
- 23:10: Three-minute breathing space exercise
- 31:00: Attentional control training
- 33:45: Managing feelings of inadequacy
- 39:00: Motivation and implicit compassion
- 43:15: Ongoing practices after the MBCT course
- 45:45: Creating access to mindfulness resources
- 48:15: Recap
