This is the first module in the DBT instruction. There are three parts to it.
- Wise Mind
- “What skills”
- “How skills”
First, an explanation of mindfulness itself – the definition of Mindfulness found on the Linehan Institute website is long and complicated. Boiling it down, it basically means “engaging all your senses to pay attention to the moment you are presently living.” To be mindful, one must control the mind instead of being controlled by it, bringing it’s focus back to the present when it wanders to the past, future, or other distractions currently happening.
At Timberline, we did mindfulness exercises every day. I’m not sure if I referenced this before, but so many people that focus on the past are depressed, and so many people that focus on the future are anxious. This was the principle reason we practiced mindfulness – to bring our minds into subjection in order to focus on the present and live fully in it. Usually mindfulness exercises were just a couple of minutes, with the primary focus to be on how well we could bring our minds back to the exercise when we were distracted. It’s not a matter of whether or not we’ll be distracted; with the way our minds function, we will be distracted. And it wasn’t supposed to be about how well we completed the exercise. After every mindfulness exercise, we each shared how easy it was for us to notice distraction and bring our mind back.
Here are a few examples followed by potential distractions…
- Write the ABCs with your nondominant hand. (Noticing how messy the letters were)
- Close your eyes and count a minute – one one thousand, two one thousand, etc. (Focusing on miscounting)
- Trace the fingers of one hand with a finger of the other hand, inhaling as your finger moves up toward the fingernail and exhaling as it moves down into the valley between fingers. (Moving the finger while thinking about other things instead of noticing how it feels)
- Close your eyes and speak each distracting thought aloud to a partner – I’m noticing a door closed. I’m noticing the ticking of the clock. I’m noticing someone coughed.
- Choose two words to repeat in your mind, while inhaling on one and exhaling on the other. (Focusing on breaths and forgetting to say the words; distracted by outside sounds and forgetting to say the words.)
- Using the five senses to describe our surroundings.
By doing simple exercises like these, we train the mind to notice the present moment instead of thinking about other things. After a while, it’s supposed to carry over into every day life, such that when we’re walking down the street or having a conversation, we are fully present, paying attention to that one activity. It’s supposed to help us be better listeners, be calmer, happier, and enjoy life more.
Now, just a little about the first section of mindfulness – Wise Mind. Back when I first started posting, I explained about the brain having two halves and how one is more logical and one is more emotional. When the two are working together, it’s called Wise Mind.
The way it was explained to us at TK, was that both sides are important, and we are using both sides all the time; it’s just a matter of what percentage each one is being used. The ideal is not to take black and white to make a gray. The Wise Mind is not gray, but both black AND white. When you have a piece of white paper with black ink on it, it’s discernable. Both black and white are necessary, because if the black and white were stirred together like mixing paint, the gray would make the printed information useless.
In order for us to see that both sides are necessary, we talked about the pros and cons of each one. Each side is necessary (pros) and too much of each side upsets the balance (cons).
- Rational Mind – pros: Learning, analysis, facts, structure, control, risk management, thinking things through
- Rational Mind – cons: Too much control, numbing, lack of empathy, too safe
- Emotional Mind – pros: Empathy, connection, enjoyment, impulsive, fight or flight for protection
- Emotional Mind – cons: Impulsive, chaotic, can’t process, don’t listen well
It will take a couple of posts to explain each DBT module, so please check back!
