In the past few months, I have been under more stress than usual. (I have been attempting to start a psychological practice to provide Applied Behavior Analysis to individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, including Autism.) It has been stressful for a number of reasons that are irrelevant; we all feel stress at times.
I display a symptom that is pretty common when I'm under stress; I typically wake up around 3:00AM with a sense of dread and all sorts of worries about the problems I am trying to solve. It is highly unlikely there is anything I can actually do about these problems at 3:00, but the worry is often very persistent. In fact, it is so persistent it frequently interferes with sleep, which is very maladaptive since I need to be well rested to effectively deal with the problems when I actually can do something about them.
I lost sight of another great use for the practice of Mindfulness. Since I remembered I could use Mindfulness when I'm under acute stress, I have been able to solve the problem of worries that occur in the middle of the night. I simply lay still in the present moment with an empty mind, while I just wait for whatever comes next (usually natural sleep). How did I forget about this?
I often forget the most important things when I'm all stressed out.