Mindfulness Skills Training in DBT: The What and How Skills

The what and how skills. The what and how skills are mindfulness skills. This is what to do and how to do it when it comes to mindfulness. There are three what skills, observe, describe and participate.

So when we observe, we do so without an attempt to change anything. And again, this is a mindfulness skill of being present. We can be present by observing. This isn’t just observing with your eyes. This is observing with all of the five senses and this is observing thoughts. So we are observing regardless of whether what we observe is something that we want or we don’t want. We can observe our senses, our thoughts, our emotions. There are many things we can’t observe but we cannot observe the feelings and thoughts of others. We cannot observe concepts or meanings or causes or changes. So one of the things I will ask in session or I may ask in group is what’s happening? I may ask, what’s happening? And for a person who is not using the observe skill, they might provide a concept like I’m distracting or I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do or my life is slipping away from me, some sort of abstract concept. For a person who is practicing observing, they might say something like I observe my stomach tightening, I observe the leaves on the tree, I observe the sound of the white noise machine. So if they’re practicing observe, they’re observing what is present in this moment. This is where we distinguish the difference between facts and opinions.