Working With Anxiety and Depression from a Buddhism Framework

Abstract

Buddhism as a spiritual discipline is concerned with freedom from suffering, conceptualizing suffering as originating in false views about the nature of self and reality. Buddhist psychology conceptualizes emotions and mental habits as being wholesome or unwholesome based on the tendency of these habits to promote or hinder the quest for enlightenment, and contains a rich diversity of methods to transform unwholesome emotional tendencies. Many of these emotions, such as anger, fear, and despair, are commonly dealt with in clinical or therapy settings. Buddhist ideas about the genesis and cessation of suffering can be used as an overarching model to organize a diversity of therapeutic techniques, bridge different therapy models, and select particular techniques at particular times in the treatment of emotional disorders. Learning objectives: after this session, participants will be able to use the Buddhist Yogacara model of mind and karma as a model of how negative emotions are transformed. After this session, participants will be able to describe indirect methods (evoking wholesome feelings) in order to transform negative emotional tendencies and how this overlaps with current therapy models such as supportive and compassion-focused therapy. After the session, participants will be able to conceptualize how Buddhist “direct methods” of mindful awareness and contemplating right view overlaps with methods used in cognitive behavioural therapy, marital therapy, or acceptance and commitment therapy. Self-assessment questions: according to Buddhist psychology, what is the primary cause of negative emotions? Broadly speaking, what are 3 types of techniques for transforming emotional habits?

Disclosure of interest

The author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.