Overview: Core Mindfulness Skills

 

 

 

 

Three sets of skills form the backbone of mindfulness practice: wise mind; the “what” skills of observing, describing, and participating; and the “how” skills of practicing nonjudgmentally, onemindfully, and effectively.

Wise Mind: Finding inside yourself the inherent wisdom that each person has within.

“What” Skills: The “what” skills are the skills that tell you what you should actually do when you practice mindfulness. There are three ‘what’ skills: observing, describing, and participating.

“How” Skills: The “how” skills are the skills that teach you how to practice your mindfulness skills. Without the ‘how’ skills, you can veer far away from mindfulness itself. There are three ‘how’ skills: acting nonjudgmentally, one- mindfully, and effectively.

Overview of the Core Mindfulness Skills

 

States of Mind and the Mindfulness “Wise Mind” Skill

The core mindfulness skills are covered in more detail in future lessons. In DBT, three primary states of mind are presented: “reasonable mind,” “emotion
mind,” and “wise mind.”

 

Reasonable Mind

A person is in reasonable mind when he or she is approaching knowledge intellectually; is thinking rationally and logically; attends only to empirical facts; and ignores emotion, empathy, love, or hate in favor of being planful, practical, and “cool” in approaching problems. Decisions and actions are controlled by logic. DBT and IFS align here in this concept, as in IFS, reasonable mind is similar to “manager” and “concerned” parts of one’s Psyche.

 

Emotion Mind

A person is in emotion mind when thinking and behavior are controlled primarily by current emotional states. In emotion mind, cognitions are “hot”; reasonable, logical thinking is difficult; facts are amplified or distorted to be congruent with current affect; and the energy of behavior is also congruent
with the current emotional state. DBT and IFS align here in this concept, as in IFS, emotion mind is similar to “firefighter” and “exiled” parts of one’s inner world.

 

Wise Mind

Wise mind is the synthesis of emotion mind and reasonable mind; it also goes beyond them: Wise mind adds intuitive knowing to emotional experiencing
and logical analysis. In Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, two other states of mind are also discussed: “doing mind” or “doing mode” and “being mind” or “being mode.” [Bibliography] Doing mind focuses on getting things done. It is multitasking, task- oriented, and driven. In contrast, being mind is
“nothing-to-do” mind, where the focus is on experiencing rather than doing. These two states of mind are relevant to DBT mindfulness skills, because wise mind can also be considered as a synthesis of doing mind and being mind. DBT and IFS align here in this concept, as in IFS, wise mind is similar to the idea of a “Self” that is a pure moral and ethical conscience residing in your Psyche’s seat of consciousness. 

Mindfulness skills are the vehicles for balancing emotion mind and reasonable mind, being mind and doing mind, and other extreme sets of mind and action to achieve wise mind and wise action. There are three “what” skills (observing, describing, and participating). There are also three “how” skills (taking a nonjudgmental stance, focusing on one thing in the moment, and being effective).

 

Mindfulness “What” Skills

The mindfulness “what” skills are about what to do: “observe,” “describe,” and “participate.” The ultimate goal of mindfulness skills practice is to develop a lifestyle of participating with awareness. Participation without awareness is a characteristic of impulsive and mood-dependent behaviors. Generally, paying special attention to observing and describing one’s own behavioral responses is only necessary when one is learning new behaviors, when there is some sort of problem, or when a change is necessary or desirable. Learning to drive a stick-shift car, to dance, and to type are familiar examples of this principle.

Consider beginning piano players, who pay close attention to the locations of their hands and fingers, and may either count beats out loud or name the keys and chords they are playing. As skill improves, however, such observing and describing cease. But if a habitual mistake is made after a piece is learned, a player may have to revert to observing and describing until a new pattern has been learned. This same deliberate reprogramming is necessary for changing impulsive or mood-dependent behavior patterns.

Observing ourselves with curiosity and openness to what we will find can also, in time, lead to greater understanding and clarity about who we are. We find our “true selves” only by observing ourselves.

 

Observing

The first “what” skill is observing – that is, attending to events, emotions, and other behavioral responses, without necessarily trying to terminate them when they are painful or prolong them when they are pleasant. What the participants learn here is to allow themselves to experience with awareness, in the moment, whatever is happening— rather than leaving a situation or trying to terminate an emotion. Generally, the ability to attend to events requires a corresponding ability to step back from the event. Observing walking and walking are two different activities; observing thinking and thinking are two different activities; and observing one’s own heartbeat and the heart’s beating are two different activities. This focus on “experiencing the moment” is based on Eastern psychological approaches, as well as on Western notions of nonreinforced exposure as a method of extinguishing automatic avoidance and fear responses.

 

Describing

A second mindfulness “what” skill is that of describing events and personal responses in words. The ability to apply verbal labels to behavioral and environmental events is essential for both communication and self- control. Learning to describe requires that a person learn not to take emotions and thoughts as accurate and exact reflections of environmental events. For example, feeling afraid does not necessarily mean that a situation is threatening to life or welfare. Many people confuse emotional responses with precipitating events. Physical components of fear (“I feel my stomach muscles tightening, my throat constricting”) may be confused in the context of a particular event (“I am starting an exam in school”) to produce a dysfunctional thought (“I am going to fail the exam”), which is then responded to as a fact. Thoughts (“I feel unloved” or “I don’t believe anyone loves me”) are often confused with facts (“I am unloved”). 

 

Participating

The third mindfulness “what” skill is the ability to participate without self- consciousness. A person who is participating is entering completely into the activities of the current moment, without separating him- or herself from ongoing events and interactions. The quality of action is spontaneous; the interaction between the individual and the environment is smooth and based in some part on habit.

Participating can, of course, be mindless. We have all had the experience of driving a complicated route home as we concentrated on something else, and arriving home without any awareness of how we got there. But it can also be mindful. A good example of mindful participating is that of the skillful athlete who responds flexibly but smoothly to the demands of the task with alertness and awareness, but not with self- consciousness. Mindlessness is participating without attention to the task; mindfulness is participating with attention.

 

Mindfulness “How” Skills

The other three mindfulness skills are about how one observes, describes, and participates; they include taking a nonjudgmental stance (“non-judgmentally”), focusing on one thing in the moment (“one-mindfully”), and doing what works (“effectively”).

 

Nonjudgmentally

Taking a nonjudgmental stance means just that—taking a nonevaluative approach, not judging something as good or bad. It does not mean going from a negative judgment to a positive judgment. Although individuals often judge both themselves and others in either excessively positive terms (idealization) or excessively negative terms (devaluation), the position here is not that they should be more balanced in their judgments, but rather that judging should in most instances be dropped altogether. This is a very subtle point, but a very important one. The problem with judging is that, for instance, a person who can be “worthwhile” can always become “worthless.”

Instead of judging, DBT stresses the consequences of behavior and events. For example, a person’s behavior may lead to painful consequences for self or others, or the outcome of events may be destructive. A nonjudgmental approach observes these consequences, and may suggest changing the behaviors or events, but would not necessarily add a label of “bad” to them. DBT also stresses accurate discrimination of one thing from another and description of what is observed. In discriminating, one determines whether a behavior meets a required definition or not. For example, a lawyer or judge can discriminate whether a certain behavior breaks the law or not. A diving judge can discriminate whether a diver’s form matches the required form for the dive or not. Behavior may not be good or bad, but it can meet criteria for being against the law or for fitting the ideal model for a particular dive.

 

One-mindfully

Mindfulness in its totality has to do with the quality of awareness that a person brings to activities. The second “how” skill is to focus the mind and awareness in the current moment’s activity, rather than splitting attention among several activities or between a current activity and thinking about something else. Achieving such a focus requires control of attention—a capability that many individuals lack. Often participants are distracted by thoughts and images of the past, worries about the future, ruminative thoughts about troubles, or current negative moods. They are sometimes unable to put their troubles away and focus attention on the task at hand. When they do become involved in a task, their attention is often divided. This problem is readily observable in their difficulties in attending to skills training sessions. The participants need to learn how to focus their attention on one task or activity at a time, engaging in it with alertness, awareness, and wakefulness.

 

Effectively

The third “how” skill (Section IX), being effective, is directed at reducing the participants’ tendency to be more concerned with being “right” than with what is actually needed or called for in a particular situation. Effectiveness is the opposite of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” As our participants often say, it is “playing the game” or “doing what works.” From an Eastern meditation perspective, focusing on effectiveness is “using skillful means.”

The inability to let go of “being right” in favor of achieving goals is often related to experiences with invalidating environments. A central issue for people who have been frequently invalidated is whether they can indeed trust their own perceptions, judgments, and decisions—that is, whether they can expect their own actions to be correct or “right.” However, taken to an extreme, an emphasis on principle over outcome can often result in these individuals’ being disappointed or alienating others. In the end, everyone has to “give in” some of the time. People often find it much easier to give up being right for being effective when it is viewed as a skillful response rather than as a “giving in.”