Mindfulness
5 Simple Steps to Learn Mindfulness That Really Work
If mindfulness has never worked for you, your childhood may be the reason.
Posted August 12, 2026 Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
Key points
- Mindfulness is often hardest for people who grew up with their emotions unseen.
- Noticing and naming your feelings is a skill you can learn at any age, even if no one taught you.
- As you learn to feel again, you also become able to see and answer your own children's feelings.
Quite some years ago, a colleague dragged me to a mindfulness training for mental health professionals. At that time, mindfulness was not considered a fully valid concept in psychology.
As a psychologist who valued science, I viewed it as nothing other than new age, mystical hippy nonsense. I anticipated a flaky conference, and I was not disappointed. At one point, they had us all stand up and mill about aimlessly while humming for 20 minutes. Then we had to ask and answer some very personal questions with the strangers next to us.
Ugh. Not my cup of tea.
Fast forward to today, where mindfulness and science have met and married. And oh, what a glorious union it is! Mindfulness studies have been pouring from many researchers for over a decade. And the meaning of mindfulness has matured from simply "being in the moment" to a richer, more complex definition.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is being aware of what you are doing, experiencing, and feeling in the moment.
Here is a brief list of just a few of the benefits of mindfulness that research has documented in recent years:
- It helps you sleep better.
- It reduces your stress levels.
- It actually changes the structure of your brain, for the better.
Why Mindfulness Is Hard After Childhood Emotional Neglect
I have noticed that certain types of people struggle more with mindfulness than others. In fact, it’s particularly absent and difficult for people who grew up in families that were not tuned in to the present moment or to their emotions (childhood emotional neglect).
Did your parents notice what you were feeling as a child? Did they help you name your emotions, express them, and manage them? Attending to your inner experience, and especially to your own feelings, does not come naturally to most. If your parents didn't teach you how to do this, then you have to teach it to yourself.
This is not about blaming your parents. Most emotionally neglectful parents are loving people who were simply never taught to notice feelings themselves. They could not give you what no one had given them. It's so often no one's fault.
But never fear. Because the good news is, you can! In fact, one of the best things about mindfulness is that it is astoundingly learnable.
Here is a simple exercise that combines both vital aspects of mindfulness: focusing and controlling your mind, and being aware of what you are feeling in the moment. It is taken directly from my book, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. This kind of mindfulness will actually help you recover from childhood emotional neglect.
If you take five minutes to do this exercise three times a day, you are asking your brain to perform a function that is novel. Studies of meditation training have found changes in the brain networks that manage attention and emotion. You are building those networks, and they get stronger each time you use them, even when you are not successful in identifying or naming a feeling.
The Identifying and Naming Exercise
Step 1: Sit in a comfortable chair in a room alone. Close your eyes. Picture a blank screen that takes over your mind, banishing all thoughts. Focus all of your attention on the screen, turning your attention inward.
Step 2: Ask yourself this question: "What am I feeling right now?"
Step 3: Focus in on your internal experience. Be aware of any thoughts that might pop into your head, and erase them quickly. Keep your focus on: "What am I feeling right now?"
Step 4: Try to identify feeling words to express it. You may need more than one word.
Step 5: If you are able to feel something but have difficulty putting a word or words on it, it may help to use a list of feeling words.
If you're having difficulty identifying any feelings, it's okay! Do not put pressure on yourself. Coming up with a word is less important than simply going through the process of trying to focus your attention and feel your feelings.
Imagine that there is a brick wall between you and your emotions. Each time you follow this process, you are putting a chip in that wall. If you keep chipping away, again and again by doing this exercise, eventually you will, bit by bit, break down the wall and gain control of your own mind and access to your emotions.
What I See Now
If I went to a mindfulness training today, I would view it very differently than I did all those years ago. I would see it as a remarkable opportunity to learn more about an amazing, cutting-edge approach to improving mental health in this world.
I would see it as a way to combat emotional neglect in this generation, so that it will not be passed on to the next. I would see it as a tool that can bring calm, and sleep, to anyone willing to invest 10 minutes per day.
Who wouldn't want to take advantage of that?
A version of this post also appears on emotionalneglect.com
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
References
Hölzel, B. K., Carmody, J., Vangel, M., Congleton, C., Yerramsetti, S. M., Gard, T., & Lazar, S. W. (2011). Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191(1), 36–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006
Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E., & Fournier, C. (2015). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 78(6), 519–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.03.009
Rusch, H. L., Rosario, M., Levison, L. M., Olivera, A., Livingston, W. S., Wu, T., & Gill, J. M. (2019). The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1445(1), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13996
Tang, Y.-Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), 213–225. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3916
