Wise Mind is a core dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) mindfulness skill. In DBT, wise mind is one of three states of minds we can operate out of. Through wise mind we can access our inner wisdom and intuition, but in order to comprehend what we mean by wide mind, it’s helpful to first understand the other two states of mind, reasonable mind, and emotional mind, also known as simple emotion mind. Watch the video below to learn more:
DBT Skills: Distress Tolerance
Distress Tolerance is one of the four core dialectical behavior therapy (BDT) skills. Distress tolerance helps us experience crises without making things worse. The videos below explains what distress tolerance is and how to practice distress tolerance skills. Please also check out my posts on Emotion Regulation, and Wise Mind, Emotional Mind and Reasonable Mind.
DBT Skills: Distress Tolerance & Crisis Survival
Learn How to Meditate in 5 Easy Steps
Starting to meditate can be intimidating, but mindfulness meditation is really quite simple. You can learn all you need to know to begin practicing meditation from this five-minute video:
DBT Skills: Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation is a core dialectical behavior therapy (BDT) skill. In some earlier posts about emotion regulation we learned that the ways in which we often try to deal with emotions—such as trying to problem solve, control, or avoid them—tend to be counterproductive. We also looked at a number of more helpful ways we can deal with our emotions such as validation and acceptance. The video below puts this altogether and explains the DBT skill of emotion regulation. To learn more about emotion regulation, please check out my free DBT Skills Course.
DBT Skills: Emotion Regulation and Acceptance
Meditation Tips: Emotions and Pain
Recently I posted about How to Meditate in 5 Easy Steps. In the last post we looked at what to do with a wandering mind when we meditate. The video below explains how we manage emotions and discomfort that arise during a meditation.
Cognitive Fusion and Defusion in Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
In a previous post we looked at some ways to practice letting go of thoughts, but it can often be difficult to let of thoughts because they have such a powerful pull, especially when the thoughts are related to a strong emotion. In my post, What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?, we learned why acceptance is so important in ACT. Cognitive defusion is a way of accepting our thoughts, allowing them to pass into and out of our minds, without getting stuck in our heads.
Steven Hayes, who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), coined the term “cognitive fusion” to describe times when we are so tightly stuck to our thoughts, we become “fused” to them. When we’re experiencing cognitive fusion, we can’t separate ourselves from our thoughts. Our thoughts become our reality. We feel removed from the world outside of our thoughts, removed from our senses, from what we’re doing, and even from the people around us.
The opposite of “cognitive fusion” is “cognitive defusion.” Cognitive defusion involves taking a step back from what’s going on in our minds, and detaching a little from our thoughts. In this state of defusion, we can observe our thoughts and other internal processes without getting lost in them, stuck in them or fused with them. We can simply notice our thoughts, watch them, accept them and let them go if we choose to.
Watching Thoughts and Letting Them Go
In a recent post we looked at how mindfulness can help us let go of our thoughts when we get caught up in ruminating or worrying or just thinking in circles. Letting go of thoughts is never easy, however, and in this post we’ll look at how simply watching our thoughts can help us let them go.
Thoughts pop into our heads all the time, and usually we don’t pay any special attention to them: they enter and leave our minds all on their own, just like a car that drives into our line of sight, remains in our field of vision for a few moments, and then drives along and passes out of our line of sight again.
Letting Go of Thoughts Mindfully
It’s easy to get swept away by our thoughts, especially in the face of strong emotions. We get stuck ruminating and dwelling about the past, filled with guilt or regret. Or our minds start racing and we can’t stop worrying about the future and imagining all the things that could go wrong. Or we replay conversations over and over again in our heads, trying to make sense of them or figure out what we could have said differently.
When our minds get going like this, not only is it exhausting; these patterns of thinking tend to make us feel bad, intensifying the emotions we’re already feeling and generating additional negative emotions as well. Because this experience is so unpleasant, it’s natural to want to these thoughts to stop, and to be able to prevent yourself from even having them in the first place. We often wind up trying to make these thoughts go away, and shut them out completely and make sure they don’t come back. But just like we can’t control our emotions or suppress our emotions, neither can we control or suppress our thoughts.
STOPP and Be Mindful
STOP is a distress tolerance skill from dialectical behavior therapy we can use whenever we’re feeling overwhelmed by stress and anxiety or distressing emotions.
Often we allow our stress and anxiety and emotions to build and build all day without doing anything to calm them, trying to just ignore them and hoping they’ll go away. Then, when we finally can’t take it anymore and start feeling overwhelmed and desperate, things have often accumulated too much and begun to spiral downwards and it can be so hard to get any relief.
Following Your Breathing By Measuring Breaths
Free Clip Art (CC BY-SA 4.0) from Wikimedia Commons
In a previous post we practiced Following Our Breathing By Counting Breaths. Now we’re going to learn how to follow our breathing by measuring our breaths.
Measuring Your Breaths: Each time you take a breath, silently measure the length by counting to yourself:
In … two … three … (four)
Out … two … three … (four)
Out … two … three … (four)