Tamsin Bishton: My journey with mindfulness

How mindfulness helped me with anxiety and depression

“My inner critic was loud – and it got a bit quieter when I meditated, ” explains Tamsin Bishton, a communications specialist and mindfulness teacher. “For me that has been a gift that has stayed with me for the last 15 years.

In the first of a series of blog posts featuring different people Tamsin describes her journey with mindfulness. For Tamsin, mindfulness was a last resort as she struggled to deal with the depression and anxiety that has followed her since she was a teenager. She describes how mindfulness has helped her make friends with herself and support others.

How I came to mindfulness

I was in my late thirties when I was referred to an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) course after an extended course of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) with Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust. I had no idea what mindfulness was. I think I was a bit suspicious at first.

But the CBT course had really helped me get on top of my anxiety and depression, sparked by workplace stress. And I dreaded relapsing. Depression has been with me since I was an older teenager and I was starting to feel overwhelmed when I relapsed. I was keen to try anything that might help me avoid that. And as I learned, mindfulness was at least as effective as antidepressants, so I was up for giving it a go.

I am so glad that I did. Right from the first practice we did in the first session of that eight-week course, something just clicked. Not that it was easy or without its challenges. But I felt connected with myself in a more gentle and understanding way. My inner critic was loud – and it got a bit quieter when I meditated. For me that has been a gift that has stayed with me for the last 15 years.

Teaching mindfulness has helped me deepen my practice while supporting others

After several years of practising mindfulness and attending day retreats at the Sussex Mindfulness Centre I made the decision to learn to teach mindfulness to others. I spent a year learning to teach Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Stress Reduction with the compassionate team at Sussex Mindfulness Centre. Because it’s a part-time course I was able to do this learning alongside my other work. It involved a mixture of in-person training with the other trainees, practising a lot, observing an eight-week course and then co-teaching a course with a very experienced and patient teacher. I made a couple of friends for life through that course. And it helped me to understand that mindfulness isn’t something you can read about and then mimic. It requires embodied learning – that means committing to the journey of practising mindfulness regularly, learning about yourself, reflecting and listening to what experience has to teach you.

I now teach adapted eight-week courses for people with long-covid. I also host a regular weekly online drop-in on Monday evenings with a group of people who started practising together at the start of the pandemic. I do this teaching alongside my other work in communications. Mindfulness has helped me to rediscover a love for my work that I thought I had lost for good. And I have learned so much from people as they embark on their mindfulness journey and then deepen their practice. It is an honour to walk alongside them on that journey.

Mindfulness can help us to make friends with ourselves and ride the waves

Mindfulness has also taught me that being human means experiencing challenges and, sometimes, suffering. And it seems to me that a certain amount of anxiety is a perfectly reasonable response to what’s going on in the world in 2025. So, yes, the low moods do sometimes come. And I do get anxious sometimes. But mindfulness has helped me to see that these states of mind do not define me. Instead of getting overwhelmed, I can be gentle with myself when they come. I can make friends with the scared and sad parts of myself and take care of them. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

I’d encourage anyone suffering with depression and anxiety to explore mindfulness for themselves. If I can “learn to surf” then anyone can.