What Is DBT And How Is It Related To Mindfulness?
(online research)
Mindfulness is almost the structure of Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT treatment for pervasive emotion regulation problems. Every DBT skill begins with mindfulness meditation. Every skill depends on mindfulness. Often when trying to understand when something went wrong during your day or when something went right, mindfulness is implicated.
What Is Mindfulness? Mindfulness is simply being present. This means paying attention to what is happening right now. Without judgment. Without overthinking. Without invalidating your experience. Mindfulness is just being willing to show up to the present moment. It is acceptance of the present moment.
What Is DBT? Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a cognitive behavioral treatment developed by Marsha Lenihan. It skills was formed to help people learn and use new skills and strategies to develop a life that they experience as worth living. DBT skills include skills for mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. DBT was created to treat chronically suicidal individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). It is now recognized as the gold standard psychological treatment for this population. Research has shown that it is effective in treating a wide range of other disorders such as substance dependence, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and eating disorders and many more.
How Does Mindfulness Fit With DBT? DBT is skill based program that targets emotion dysregulation. Often people get emotionally dysregulated by seemingly insignificant or trivial events, not because of the events themselves, but by the judgments people have about the events. For example, you may have a job that you are reasonable happy in. Lets say its working at a clothing store. You like clothes, and you like interacting with people, so it seems like a good fit. What you dont like however, is folding clothes. You find it boring. Now, you may only have to fold clothes for about 30 minutes of a six-hour shift, which is really just a small portion of the job. You may find that as you fold clothes, your mind starts to make all kinds of negative judgments about folding clothes. This is terrible. What a waste of time. This is stupid. This job is awful. Rather than spending the time focusing on folding the clothes, your mind is busy telling all kinds of disturbing stories about this task, and will likely trigger emotions such as anger, resentment, even despair. Whats worse, these emotions have a way of coloring the rest of your day. Now instead of tolerating 30 minutes of an unpleasant chore, you spend the whole day in a foul mood, judging all aspects of your job negatively, feeling worse every minute. Because being in a bad mood for most of the day, more days than not, is very unpleasant, you start having judgments about your mood, thinking, I cant take this anymore. So what started out as a relatively insignificant thing has caused a lot of suffering.
A mindful approach to this dilemma would be to approach the unpleasant task in the spirit of acceptance, willing to engage in it without engaging in a lot of judgments about it. The moment you notice a judgment, your turn your mind to folding the clothes, aware of the sensation of the fabric against your fingertips. Noticing the movement of your arms. Describing the smell of the new fabric as it reaches your nose in waves. By fully engaging in the task, repeatedly turning the mind to it, there is little room for negative attributions. You may now even find it to be a calming, soothing activity. This is one way mindfulness can help avert an emotional downward spiral.
Another good point is mindfulness can help with emotional dysregulation by way of helping to relinquish the struggle with painful emotions. One of the reasons people develop emotion dysregulation is because they try to squash or control their emotional responses to things. Trying to control an emotion is kind of like trying to grab tightly onto jello. The more you try, the more of a mess it makes. With emotions, the more we try to control them, the more intense they become, and the longer they persist. Unfortunately, due to an environment plagued by invalidation from others, there is pressure from the outside to control the emotions, leading to more intense emotions, leading to more invalidation, etc. This tends to become a self-perpetuating feedback loop.
I'd like to know from the community what you think of DBT and adding it to Mindfulness. Please share your thoughts, questions and ideas here
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@yzzil
HI Yzzil great to see you Im glad to hear that DBT is in your life and you are a fan of it. Ehat DBT skills do you think are gonna be usful for this community?
@yzzil
Oh yes I agree with you on that one. Destress Tolerance Skill is used to "lesson" the intensity of a feeling over some very hard intrusive thoughts or memories. But thing is this area is tricky to learn. Thank you for sharing this. We are going to cover all areas.
@CameronRay
HI Cameron good to see you I am glad that you went through DBT classes. It does change your life I say. There are many skills that overlap,combine,support mindfulness. I am super excited to have you here and enjoy the DBT skills we share here
@soulsings
HI Souls good to see you here Thanks for this video-it reminded me of the videos we have to watch for our state testing for medical caregiving for demtia clients. I believe it is a fact when we don't use ALL our brain in our lives it tends to get lazy or develop a desease or illness. Like you lose that area. I do hope that this new DBT area can bebefit many in this community as well as many do share on their DBT experiences.
@RumpleSteeleSkin
They do really look similar and for a lot of people it might work.
I gotta be honest though, I don't really like the idea of 'therapy'. When I practise mindfulness, I do it out of self-care, just like showering and eating healthily, things like that. Making it into a therapy sounds to me like I'm sick, that there is something wrong and that it needs to be 'cured'. I just don't like that idea 
But fine, that's very personal and most people will probably not feel that way. I just wanted to put this out here to start a discussion. I'm open to other opinions
@JayTheBird14
Hiya Jay wonderful to see you hereYes mindfulness and DBT are very alike in many ways. That is why it has been proven to work both of them together shows great results in managing our emotions and thinking. I'm glad that you shared on how you feel about therapy. It is true that therapy isn't for everyone, and for some it is. My goal in adding this DBT area is NOT therapy, but also me learning to mix both together for this community.
@RumpleSteeleSkin
Thank you for the explanation, I actually feel better about it already, now that I've done some research of my own as well.
I guess I just needed to reevaluate the negative conotation I had with the word 'therapy'
@JayTheBird14
Jay I'm glad you are feeling better on this. You are not alone on the therapy stuff. We don't want it here in this area-but to offer skills
@wizeakre
Hey there Wize good to see you(got coffee) Wow that is great that you discovered DBT doing your own self care research! That really is wonderful. DBT to me is like a "back door" into mindfulness-lol I do know alot of people who use DBT or Mindfulness to better themselves and not the traditional methods of today. Keep up the good work Wize
@EmunahHere
Emmunah hi there That is great
Mindfulness is the core of DBT and I think it's awesome that we are exploring this here. Could we possibly have a weekly DBT Skills Study Group in the future? That would be super cool @RumpleSteeleSkin
@sendingyoulove
HIya Love good to see you hereI love that idea of having a "light" DBT discussion. I say "light" as long time ago we wanted to run DBT with mindfulness. But as 7cups admin mentioned we needed a therapist to get into "deep" DBT. But yes I'd love to start a discussion on this.Thank you for this idea
@oakhenge
Hiya OakYes DBT Skills are actually great for everyone who has breath! We are doing these skills slowly not fast. So if there is anything you like to share with the community just let me know