Mindfulness skills are a way for us to build internal awareness. They allow us to see our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations without being attached or identifying with them. One way of looking at it is sitting on the beach and watching the waves come in and out versus being in the waves and being thrown around by them. Being on the beach is a much calmer spot to be, and you don’t worry about drowning. Mindfulness lets you sit on the beach. Mindfulness also allows you to sit with emotions and thoughts rather than avoid them.

One way to explain mindfulness skills is being able to understand the 3 levels of awareness we tend to be in. The middle level (or the main floor), is where we are continually using our brain which creates thoughts and emotions in order to problem solve how to survive in everyday life, whether that be physical, social, or occupational. Living on the main floor and being in continual problem solving mode can be exhausting and so we will often drop down to the lower level of awareness, (the basement). In the lower level is where we numb out, we escape the exhaustion of problem solving and try to give our brains a break. With the numbing out mode there can be healthy and unhealthy ways of numbing out. Healthy may be appropriate sleep or watching a few episodes of your favorite show. Unhealthy numbing out may be things like addictive behaviors. We will discuss more the healthy ways of numbing out versus unhealthy ways when we talk about distraction tools. The highest level of awareness (the upstairs), is unique because we are not numbing out but we are not completely intertwined with our thoughts and emotions either. We can see them from a distance, and not become distressed when they appear.

When we are in the mindfulness mode we also get the mental break we need from the problem solving mode. And this can cause greater peace and ability to handle stressful challenges. Since our thoughts and emotions are more distant from us we do not feel as much pressure to react to them. This makes it easier for us to A.see other options to a scenario, and B.help us determine which action will be healthiest for us. In other words the greater ability we have for mindfulness the greater ability we have to see and make a choice.

Mindfulness skills can be effective for whenever we appear to be stuck in our head. If we have racing thoughts, anxiety, depression, anger, and continual worry, mindfulness can help us disconnect from the emotions and thoughts, but not avoid them. If we continually try to avoid difficult thoughts and emotions we tend to struggle more with them, but mindfulness can help us relate differently to them so they are not as powerful to us. Often we may have a thought like, “I’m not good enough.” and this thought will hook us and sink us where we will feel bad for a couple hours or maybe the whole day. Mindfulness helps us to get unhooked from these thoughts.

Also mindfulness skills differ from, but compliment processing skills. With mindfulness you can sit with the emotions and thoughts and be non-judgmental about them, this reveals a lot about the nature of what’s going on inside us, and can in turn be helpful when we are processing them. The mindfulness gives us a birds eye view of what is happening before we go in to diagnose and fix it. And sometimes after taking that birds eye view that alone is enough to fix the challenge. There are mindfulness skills that can be applied in a matter of seconds, and then there are ones such as meditations that can take longer. The ones that can be used quickly are great for disarming any heavy emotions or hooking thoughts.

• Meditating

• You Tube Meditations

• Defusion Techniques

• Forming the Emotion

• Leaves on a Stream/Clouds Technique

• Curious Scientist (having a nonjudgmental attitude towards thoughts and emotions)

• Mindfulness apps