In this guide, I’m going to share my favorite mindfulness exercises from DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy).
DBT is one of the newer forms of therapy and was created by Marsha Linehan in the 1970s. It is largely based on mindfulness and other Buddhist practices [2] and is rapidly becoming the go-to solution for a lot of mental health issues, most notably borderline personality disorder, along with other emotional complications. [1].
I have personally gone through DBT for my BPD, and I now teach these skills in my online meditation lessons.
In this guide I’d like to share the skills and exercises that I personally find most useful for me, and why. Note that this does not mean that other exercises are not equally valuable, simply that I have personally had most success with the following.
10 Best Mindfulness DBT Exercises (In My Experience)
10: STOP Skill:
We’ve all had those moments when we wish we could go back and stop ourselves from saying or doing something, such as when I, as a teenager, blurted out “I love you!” to my favorite person, a girl in the year above me at school just because I felt a moment of intense romantic connection. Oh boy. Well, the DBT STOP skill is here to, errr, stop all that. STOP stands for “Stop, Take A Step Back, Observe, Proceed Mindfully”. Basically, it’s about noticing when you’re having an intense emotion, and choosing not to jump at it but instead act in a mindful way. Oh boy do I wish I’d learned this one sooner.
9: Naming and Describing Emotions
When we are unaware of our emotions, when we don’t understand them, that’s when they take control of us. Buddhists have known this for years, which is one reason why they practice Vipassana, a form of emotion in which we name and describe emotions and other mental phenomena. Research shows that the practice of describing and naming emotions makes us less reactive to them [2]. The DBT skill for this is called just Describing, and is great for raising emotional awareness. It is as easy as it sounds. You simply observe your emotions and choose the most accurate name for whatever you are feeling. By practicing your awareness and your emotional vocabulary in this way you will raise your emotional quotient.
8: Pleasant Activities
Do you go through long sections of life failing to actually plan anything enjoyable for yourself? I do. I have to make a concerted effort to make myself plan pleasurable activities so that I actually enjoy my life. And that’s where this DBT exercise comes in. The Pleasant Activities skill works in two steps. In the first step we simply plan something pleasurable. This could be anything from a simple walk in a park to a vacation. We then do that activity, and while doing it we fully engage in the activity. This trains us to make plans, and to enjoy the things we do.
7: Dialetics
If you have BPD then this will be a big skill for you to master. People with BPD, like me, tend to “Split” and see something as all good or all bad. This is done as a safety mechanism designed to stop us from having to deal with the complexities of emotions and relationships, because it’s easier to think of something as all good or all bad rather than exploring the million possibilities in between.
Dialetics helps us to see both sides of the coin. It means that two seemingly opposite things can be true. For instance, if you’re overweight you might judge yourself badly for it and enter self hatred. In dialectics we would say that yes, perhaps we are overweight, but we can accept it and work on it. So, it’s about seeing that two seemingly opposite things can be true, such as judging ourselves for a weakness but also accepting that weakness and working on it. This helps us to overcome splitting and to gain a healthier perspective on things.
6: Wise Mind
We humans often get stuck in one way of thinking. Sometimes we are all logic. Sometimes we are all emotion. Well, if you’re me, you’re one hundred percent emotion one hundred percent of the time (hey, I’m working on it!). It’s better if we can work somewhere in the middle, between logic and emotion, making the most of both sides of the mind. And that is what Wise Mind is all about. It’s about working with both emotion and logic without being dominated by either. There’s a wonderful meditation in DBT for wise mind, which you can try below.
5: DEAR MAN GIVE FAST (Mindful Communication)
DEAR MAN GIVE FAST is an exercise in mindful communication and one of the Interpersonal Effectiveness skills. It stands for:
Describe
Express
Assert
Reinforce
Mindful
Appear (Confident)
Negotiate
Gentle
Interested
Validate
Easy (Manner)
Fair
Apologies
Stick (to values)
(be) Tactful.
Wow, that’s a lot! Basically it means that to communicate well we should Describe the situation and express our feelings, be assertive and mindful while looking confident, give the other person a sense of reward, be willing to negotiate so that both people feel okay with things, be gentle in how we communicate with others, appear interested and validate the other person, all while smiling and having an easy attitude, being fair and not apologizing for no reason, sticking to your values, and being truthful.
Okay, that’s still a lot, but I hope you get the gist of it! If not, here is a worksheet you can use.
4: ABC (Accumulate positive emotions, build mastery, cope ahead)
The ABC skill is one of the longer DBT exercises but is definitely a skill worth working on. It stands for:
Accumulate Positive Emotions:
This is done both in the short term by doing nice things that are possible now, and also in the long term by making life changes so that positive events can happen more frequently.
Build Mastery: Building skills helps us to feel empowered and combats the feeling of hopelessness. That’s why we should work on developing talents and skills, such as by picking up the piano again, Paul, which you played for 25 years straight and then dropped (I cant have a piano where I am now). By the way, you are working on the “Build Mastery” skill right now by reading this article and learning more about DBT skills.
Cope Ahead Of Time: This part of the DBT ABC skill is to cope ahead of time so that you have ways to deal with emotional situations.I don’t really understand why this is lumped in with the other two because it is quite different and in my opinion should be separate. But anyway…
3: Mindful Breathing
I very almost didn’t include mindful breathing in this list, because, as a meditation teacher who always teaches meditation, I wanted to focus on other aspects of DBT. But, let’s be real, mindful breathing is so essential to the entire DBT system that it would be ridiculous to leave it out. You already know what mindful breathing is, but in case you’ve been staring at a blank wall dissociating for the past 50 years, here is my guide to breathing meditation.
2: Body Scan & Somatic Meditation
These are two of the techniques that I teach the most when I’m working with people with intense emotions. Body Scan is a form of meditation in which we scan our awareness around the body. Somatic meditation is also a body-focused meditation but is different because we allow the body to lead the meditation instead of the mind. Both methods are excellent ways to heal our emotions and increase emotional awareness because the body often stores our emotions, and tuning in to bodily sensations can help to release our emotions in healthy ways.
1: Opposite Actions
This is my absolute favorite DBT exercise. Most of DBT is designed to help us cope with painful and intense emotions so that they don’t interrupt our quality of life. But here’s an idea. What if we just learn to feel those emotions and act positively anyway? What if we feel anxious about presenting our idea at work but we go ahead and do it anyway? What if I don’t feel like going for my hike today (ahem) but I do it anyway? By doing the opposite of what we are feeling we train the mind to be master over our emotions, rather than the other way around. I have found this to be a revolutionary DBT exercise both in my own life and in my students. It works wonders! Just feel the emotion that tells you to not do something, and go ahead and do it anyway! It’s beautiful in its simplicity and oh so effective.
And those are my top DBT exercises. You might also like to see my big list of mindfulness exercises!
Note: There are some DBT exercises, like the TIP skill, that I didn’t include in this list simply because they are not really mindfulness / meditation, which is the subject of this site.
I would like to thank the staff at the Hamilton Family Health Team for the wonderful work they do teaching DBT among many other things. Thank you.