Take Control of Your Mind (Part I)
Goal
To take control of your attention and thoughts.
States of Mind (Linehan; Fulton State Hospital, p. 14)
There are three states of mind: reasonable, emotion, and wise. Your reasonable mind is your rational, thinking, and logical mind. It is the part of you that plans and evaluates things logically. You are in your emotion mind when your emotions are in control-influencing and controlling your thinking and behaviors. Wise mind is the integration of emotion mind and reasonable mind.
Wise mind is that part of each person that can know and experience truth. It is where the person knows something to be true or valid. It is almost always quiet; it has a certain peace. Wise mind is the integration of all ways of knowing something: knowing by observing, by analyzing logically, by what we experience in our bodies, by what we do, and by intuition.
WHAT Skills (Fulton State Hospital, p. 15)
These “WHAT” skills will teach you what you can do to live life in your wise mind:
Observe
- Be curious about what you feel.
- Notice how you feel without trying to make your feelings go away.
- See how long your feeling lasts, and if it changes.
- Notice how feelings flow in and out of your body like waves.
- What comes through your senses (touch, smell, sight, sound, taste)?
- Be like a non-stick pan, letting things slide off of you.
Describe
- Use words to describe your experience.
- Use “fact” words, call a thought “just a thought”, call a feeling “just a feeling.”
- Use words that everyone would agree with.
- Don’t paint a colorful picture with words, or magnify a situation with words. Try to avoid emotional words.
- Try to let go of your emotions about being “right” or about someone else being “wrong” while searching for words to describe.
Participate
- Get “lost” in an activity.
- Let go of your sense of time while you are doing something.
- Allow yourself to be natural in the situation.
- Practice your skills until they become a part of you.