Mindfulness in DBT
In this article:
Learning Mindfulness skills will allow you to learn how to become more aware of thoughts, feelings and physical sensations
Developing Mindfulness skills will help deepen your understanding and awareness of your surroundings and relationships
Dr. Kabat-Zinn describes Mindfulness as a whole repertoire of formal meditative practices aimed at cultivating moment-to-moment nonjudgmental awareness.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is paying attention on purpose to what is happening right now.
When you practice mindfulness, you focus your attention on your present experience; just noticing whatever is happening in each moment, not lost in the past or thinking about the future.
Mindfulness is the opposite of being on automatic pilot.
When you’re on automatic pilot, you’re doing things by rote, or out of habit.
An example of being on autopilot that many people can relate to is arriving at work but not really remembering the car ride there. You didn’t have to think, ok, first I open the car door, then I sit down, then I put the key in the ignition, etc. You just did all those things automatically and found yourself at work.
Doing things on autopilot can be quite useful; it helps save time and energy.
Problems arise, though, when you live most of your life on automatic pilot, acting out of habit and not really being present in the moment.
Mindfulness skills will help you focus on one thing at a time in the present moment, and by doing this you can learn to better control and soothe your overwhelming emotions.
In the Mindfulness module of DBT, you will learn to identify and separate judgmental thoughts from your experiences. These judgmental thoughts often fuel emotional reactivity.
Practicing mindfulness also teaches how to become more aware of our own reactions as well as the environment around us so that we can make better informed decisions on what to say and how to act effectively.
Read below
In 1979, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed an eight-week program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR) - inviting patients to take some time for self-care down in the basement of UMass Medical School. More than forty years later, MBSR is taught the world over and has become the gold standard for applying mindfulness to the stresses of everyday life and for researching whether mindfulness practice can improve mental and physical health.
Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness
Kabat-Zinn is also the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at UMass Medical School. He is author of Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness; Wherever You Go, There You Are; Coming to Our Senses; and Mindfulness for Beginners. He trains, teaches, and lectures throughout the world on applications of mindfulness and is Professor of Medicine Emeritus at UMass Medical School.
Kabat-Zinn has emphasized that mindfulness is not a mental trick. Rather it is a basic human inheritance that is essential to life. We need to be optimally aware of who we are, where we are, and how we are in order to survive individually and as communities, and even as a species, in Kabat-Zinn’s view.
On the home page of his website, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes Mindfulness as a “both a formal meditative practice that has a lot of different dimensions and aspects to it, it requires some kind of commitment of time and energy to actually stop and drop into the only moment that we ever have to be alive in. We’re usually blasting through to get to some better moment at some future time when we get stuff off our desk or, whatever it is, off our to do list”.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn further describes Mindfulness as “a whole repertoire of formal meditative practices aimed at cultivating moment-to-moment nonjudgmental awareness.”, and “nonjudgmental really means that you’ll become aware of how judgmental you are and then not judge that and see if you [can let go], for a few moments at least, the restraining order that filters everything through our likes and dislikes or wants or aversion”.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn continues with explaining that “another aspect of mindfulness is pure awareness, is not just formal meditation practice, but in some sense living life in every moment that we have it to live”.
As described by Dr. Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness is not “a particular state that, if you were really good at meditating, you’d be there and then you could get back to it whenever you wanted. If you try to approach it that way, you’ll always be striving to get to some special state that you’re imagining is what mindfulness is all about and actually missing how special the condition of this present moment is, no matter what”.
And what we’re doing is we’re embracing it all in awareness so that we can actually navigate moments with as much clarity, equanimity and balance as possible, and not merely to be balanced for ourselves, but for the sake of being in deep connection with what’s actually happening. And since we’re social beings, that includes all of the different ways that we’re folded into our families, into our history and into our society".
DISCLAIMER: All information included is for educational purposes only. It is not meant to be used for self-diagnosis or to instruct anyone on how to proceed with their mental healthcare. A mental health diagnosis can only be identified by a trained professional that facilitates a proper assessment. Please speak to your healthcare professionals prior to making any changes.
