Blog

Learn how the three essential “what” skills in DBT can support teen mental health and help build emotional resilience.

Last month our Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) column discussed the Mindfulness idea and skill of Wise Mind. The column listed a few ways to practice Wise Mind and how to take steps toward the Middle Path and your own innate wisdom. You can find it here.

The Six Core Mindfulness Skills, which are central to DBT and rooted in Marsha Linehan’s original program, include three Mindfulness “What” Skills. As with all mindfulness skills, the goal is to increase joy and reduce suffering.

Observing: Think of how different it is to observe your thinking than to think, or how different it is to observe running than to run. Observing has us observe a thought “I don’t like this” and not always seek to change it or hold on to it. Or use a positive thought “This is the best day ever” and do the same, observe it without necessarily changing it or holding on to it.

You may recognize this skill in both Eastern and Western psychological approaches. Western approaches may include the label ‘nonreinforced exposure’ and an Eastern approach might be labeled ‘experiencing the moment.’

Either way, with this skill you want to attend to something, allow something, without avoidance, judgement, and step back from it, observe. This is a muscle that builds a foundation for future skill building.

Describing: If you are building self-control and better communication, giving verbal labels to the behavioral or environmental events you experience assists in facing emotions and thoughts with more emotional neutrality. Linehan uses the example of fear. The sensation of being afraid can become linked to a situation that is not threatening to your life.

It often creates this chain: physical feelings of fear (stomachache) get confused with an event (parent leaving on a trip) and then produces a dysfunctional thought (I am unloved and abandoned) which we then make a fact. I feel unloved and abandoned is not the same as I am unloved and abandoned.

Participating: Have you ever driven home and not really remembered the way there? This would be ‘mindless’ participating.

Have you ever watched an athlete rock climb a large surface? They are smoothly and flexibly moving without self-consciousness, which is participating mindfully in that activity.

Being able to participate mindfully brings consciousness and awareness into everything you do.
Here are a couple of ways you can practice:

1. Observe your body sensations. Control your attention but not the content of a thought. Do not push it away. Do not cling to it. Observe both your internal experience and what is happening around you. Wordlessly watch your thoughts enter your mind and slip away.
2. Describe your experience when a feeling or thought comes, acknowledge it, label what you observe, put a name to a feeling. Do not interpret or have an opinion. Who, what, where, and when is the content of your label.
3. Participate by becoming one with what you are doing, put your whole attention on it, act intuitively using your Wise Mind and go with the flow, respond to spontaneity.

In our next column, we will dive into the Core Mindfulness Skills the Linehan calls “How” Skills. The above are concepts adapted from Marsha Linehan’s DBT Skills Training Manual Second Edition.

Shannon Calder, PhD, LMFT is the Clinical Program Manager for Casa Pacifica’s Camino a Casa RTC/PHP/IOP programs.

Shannon Calder, LMFT, PhD
Clinical Program Manager

Shannon Calder, Ph.D., LMFT, serves as Clinical Program Manager for Camino a Casa. An expert in mental health assessment, crisis intervention and clinical supervision, Shannon began her career in psychiatric hospitals and addiction treatment centers and joined Casa Pacifica in 2012 as a doctoral practicum student. Over the years, Shannon has held key roles at the agency including serving on the Crisis Intervention Response team and its commuity-based Wraparound program. Prior to Camino a Casa she served as Clinical Program Manager for Cliffside Malibu, overseeing the Sherman Oaks Outpatient adult program.

Shannon earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology and her MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.