Posted by sunnydays on August 13, 2009, at 21:52:14
In reply to Re: Distress tolerance, posted by Phillipa on August 13, 2009, at 19:50:02
Mindfulness Skills:
Observe
-Just notice the experience. Notice without getting caught in the experience. Experience without reacting to your experience.- Have a "teflon mind", letting experiences, feelings, and thoughts come into your mind and slip right out.
- Control your attention, but not what you see. Push away nothing. Cling to nothing.
- Be like a guard at the palace gate, alert to every thought, feeling, and action that comes through the gate of your mind.
- Step inside yourself and observe. Watch your thoughts coming and going, like clouds in the sky. Notice each feeling, rising and falling, like waves in the ocean. Notice exactly what you are doing.
- Notice what comes through your senses - your eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue. See others' actions and expressions. "Smell the roses".
Describe
- Put words on the experience. When a feeling or thought arises, or you do something, acknowledge it. For example, say in your mind, "Sadness has just enveloped me.".... or... "Stomach muscles tightening"...or..."A thought 'I can't do this' has come into my mind"...or..."walking, step, step, step."- Put experiences into words. Describe to yourself what is happening. Put a name on your feelings. Call a thought just a thought, a feeling just a feeling. Don't get caught in content.
Participate
- Enter into your experiences. Let yourself get involved in the moment, letting go of ruminating. Become one with your experience, completely forgetting yourself.-Act intuitively from wise mind. Do just what is needed in each situation - a skillful dancer on the dance floor, one with the music and your partner, neither willful nor sitting on your hands.
- Actively practice your skills as you learn them until they become part of you, where you use them without self-consciousness. Practice:
1) Changing harmful situations.
2) Changing your harmful reactions to situations.
3) Accepting yourself and the situation as they are.Non-judgmentally
- See but don't evaluate. Take a nonjudgmental stance. Just the facts. Focus on the 'what', not the 'good' or 'bad', the 'terrible' or 'wonderful', the 'should' or 'should not'.- Unglue your opinions from the facts, from the 'who, what, when, and where."
- Accept each moment, each event as a blanket spread out on the lawn accepts both the rain and the sun, each leaf that falls upon it.
- Acknowledge the helpful, the wholesome, but don't judge it. Acknowledge the harmful, the unwholesome, but don't judge it.
- When you find yourself judging, don't judge your judging.
One-mindfully
- Do one thing at a time. When you are eating, eat. When you are walking, walk. When you are bathing, bathe. When you are working, work. When you are in a group, or a conversation, focus your attention on the very moment you are in with the other person. When you are thinking, think. When you are worrying, worry. When you are planning, plan. When you are remembering, remember. Do each thing with all of your attention.- If other actions, or other thoughts, or strong feelings distract you, let go of distractions and go back to what you are doing - again and again, and again.
- Concentrate on your mind. If you find you are doing two things at once, stop and go back to one thing at a time.
Effectively
-Focus on what works. Do what needs to be done in each situation. Stay away from 'fair' and 'unfair', 'right' and 'wrong', 'should' and 'should not'.- Play by the rules. Don't 'cut off your nose to spite your face.'
- Act as skillfully as you can, meeting the needs of the situation you are in. Not the situation you wish you were in; not the one that is just; not the one that is more comfortable; not the one that...
- Keep an eye on your objectives in the situation and do what is necessary to achieve them.
- Let go of vengeance, useless anger, and righteousness that hurts you and doesn't work.
poster:sunnydays
thread:911764
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090730/msgs/912002.html