ObjectivesMindfulness meditation practices have become increasingly popular in clinical therapies, changing patterns of depressogenic thinking for individuals who experience consecutive episodes of depression. We were interested in finding out how mindfulness‐based cognitive therapy (MBCT) worked for programme participants by focussing on how meditative practices changed their relationships with their thoughts. Design Data for the study came from six semi‐structured research interviews carried out with individuals who had taken part in an 8‐week MBCT programme. Methods We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to analyse the experiential accounts. Results We report on two superordinate themes – Engaging the Neutral Mind (with subordinate themes ‘breaking the paralysis of worry’ and ‘choosing to think differently’) and Experiencing the Neutral Mind (with subordinate themes of ‘reflection on previous thinking styles’ and ‘becoming psychologically self‐reliant’). Conclusions Themes from the present study offer support to the assertion that mindfulness meditation helps facilitate a different mode of meta‐cognitive processing with which to handle depression‐related cognitions.