Category Archives: Mind & Body

Mindfulness and Wise Mind

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This is the first module in the DBT instruction.  There are three parts to it.

  1. Wise Mind
  2. “What skills”
  3. “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!

DBT

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DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy.  This is a treatment program developed by Marsha Linehan, PhD, to treat clients with depression, anxiety, other mental health problems, or just being stuck in the acceptance/change dilemma.  When someone looks at life with only two options, it can be downright painful.  I know I got stuck in the A or B dilemma of either I have to try to change everything (me, others, circumstances) or I have to accept everything the way it is (and like it.)  The beauty of DBT is to find the AND, and learn how to balance acceptance and change.  DBT was one of the main programs taught at Timberline.

Here’s an excerpt from the website Behavioral Tech: A Linehan Institute Training Company found at  https://behavioraltech.org/resources/faqs/dialectical-behavior-therapy-dbt/

“Problematic behaviors evolve as a way to cope with a situation or attempt to solve a problem. While these behaviors might provide temporary relief or a short-term solution, they often are not effective in the long-term. DBT assumes that clients are doing the best they can, AND they need to learn new behaviors in all relevant contexts. DBT helps enhance a client’s capabilities by teaching behavioral skills in areas like mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. These skills help people develop effective ways to navigate situations that arise in everyday life or manage specific challenges.”

And then, here’s an excerpt from the same website explaining the way the program is taught…

“There are four modules in skills training:

  • Mindfulness: the practice of being fully aware and present in this one moment
  • Distress Tolerance: how to tolerate pain in difficult situations, not change it
  • Interpersonal Effectiveness: how to ask for what you want and say no to what you don’t want while maintaining self-respect and relationships with others
  • Emotion Regulation: how to change emotions that you want to change”

Even the modules are balanced between the acceptance/change dilemma – The first two are about acceptance and the others about change.

The curriculum at Timberline was taught on a rotating schedule of four modules every four weeks, and since most people were there for 4-6 weeks, they were able to learn and practice each module.  I hope to be able to explain the basics of what we learned in the coming weeks.

Many times we said the Serenity Prayer together as this too was part of the recovery process, and specifically part of the 12 Step Recovery Program.  Here’s an interesting diagram of it!

Last week I wrote about progress and perfection. Progress is all about the acceptance/change balance, and here is an awesome example of it:  God accepts me “Just as I Am” and then desires to sanctify me to be more and more like him.

Dialectical or Dichotomous

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Time to get back to therapy topics! Before the last few devotional posts, I was talking about positive self-talk, perfectionism, automatic negative thoughts, etc.

One of the automatic negative thought patterns is “All or Nothing Thinking” or “Black and White Thinking”, as referenced in the Perfectionism post. The technical psychological term for black and white thinking is Dichotomous Thinking.  It comes from the Greek roots for “in two” and “to cut.”  It basically means to look at life with an Either/Or perspective.

⇒Either I’m right or you’re right.
⇒Either I can do this perfectly or I’m a failure.
⇒Either I am loved or I’m worthless.
⇒Either I choose option A or option B.

This kind of thinking leads to real problems.  How can we do our best if we are either expecting perfection of ourselves or calling ourselves worthless?  How do we get along with others if one of us always has to be right?  Isn’t it true that we can have different opinions and still both be right?  Isn’t it true that we can make mistakes and still be a person worthy of love?

⇒I like seafood restaurants and you like steakhouses; we’re both right.
⇒I can make mistakes and not be a failure; everyone makes mistakes.
⇒Sometimes I mess up and I’m still loved.
⇒Sometimes option A and option B are both viable options along with many more choices.

Do you notice the difference between the first set of statements and the second? The operative word is AND.  When we can think with AND instead of OR, it’s called Dialectical Thinking.  Dialectical means “a synthesis or integration of opposites.”  Dialectical thinking is flexible and open to options as well as opposites.

When I went to ACCFS for counseling there were so many times I would ask “What do I do in this situation? Should I do this or should I do that?”  My counselor always answered, “Are there only two options?”  After a while I made sure when I was asking for help to either ask open ended without options or to offer more than two options!