True Recovery

Mindfulness seems to be a simple concept, but actually practicing it takes a lot of work. It's hard to stop what we've been doing since we were children. Take your time, do the exercises and practice the skills we describe in this section, and before long you'll find yourself better able to separate facts from your thoughts about them.

There are three components of Mindfulness: Observe, Describe and Participate.  Observe is the ability to experience life without allowing your judgments to cloud the experience.  Describe are the skills necessary to consciously put words to the experience.  Participate is the ultimate goal, that is to actively and consciously participate in whatever is happening in life, not just see or understand it.  This article describes these three What skills of Mindfulness.

Mindfulness is key to our success with DBT, and with recovery.  At the same time it's a very hard skill to master; one that takes a great deal of practice and patience.  When we were kids, learning to tie our shoes was difficult, challenging and hard to remember.  Personally, I can recall saying a little poem to remember what I was supposed to do.   Now, decades later, I don't even look.  I grab the laces and just tie.  In fact, I can't remember that little poem.  When I teach my son how to tie his laces, I'll have to really stop and think just how I do it.  It's that automatic.  Learning mindfulness is similar, though even more challenging.  It's trickier for two reasons:

• I'm older -- so it's that much harder to learn anything.
• I have to UNLEARN first -- Over many years, I've developed my own thinking style.  I have to consciously stop that thinking, and replace it with mindfulness.

So what are these What skills?  There are three of them:

• Observe — Here we work on seeing things as they are, without placing our judgments on them.  Look at things as they are, and experience them, free from our own thoughts and feelings about them.  They just are.  It's not a sad girl, it's a girl with tears streaming from her eyes, looking toward the ground.  Forget that it's about to rain, feel the cold wind blowing past your head, watch the dark gray clouds slowing moving in, see people taking out their umbrellas.  Smell the air.  What do you smell?  Use each of your five senses to experience the moment.
• Describe — Put the experience in words.  Make a conscious effort to articulate what you're experiencing.  Think, "I'm feeling uncomfortable", "I bet she's mad at me", "My stomach is tense", "It's cold", "I started wondering if I left the iron on", "I feel my shoes on my feet".  Describe what you're experiencing with each your senses.  Also describe the thoughts & judgments running through your head.