What & How
Six pieces. Three things to do and three ways to do them. Today we figure out which combo fits which moment.
8 to 10 minAbout today
What and How are the six pieces of mindfulness that everyone keeps telling you to do. Three What moves: Observe, Describe, Participate. Three How ways to do them: Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully, Effectively.
A skill is one What plus one How. Nine possible combos. Each combo fits a different moment. Today we walk through the six pieces and then build the combos like a character build, with the moments from your actual life.
The eating disorder has a fake version of every single one of these. We name those too. The point is that you can tell the difference by what your body is doing, not by what the move is called.
What's shared here stays here. Names, stories, details, all of it. The only exception is safety.
You can pass at any point. No explanation. Say pass and we move on.
10 to 12 minBridge questions
Say your name, then take these one at a time. The first answer is the honest one.
8 to 10 minWhy two slots
Linehan, the person who built DBT, split mindfulness into two slots because each one can be done badly without the other catching it. You can observe with extreme precision and still be observing for the wrong reason. You can describe in calm neutral language and still be describing while half your brain is on a rule.
The What slot says what your mind is doing. The How slot says how your mind is doing it. A skill is both slots at once.
When a skill stops working, the diagnostic question is which slot broke. The What, the How, or both. Naming the broken slot is faster than asking "am I mindful enough."
The eating disorder is already running a counterfeit of each of these six. The counterfeits feel familiar, which is why they pass. The work is to know the difference by what your body does in the move, not by what the move is named. Body soft, jaw loose, attention single-pointed but chosen: skill. Body tight, jaw clenched, attention single-pointed on a rule: counterfeit.
Stacking more mindfulness when a skill fails. If the What broke, more How won't fix it. If you observed in surveillance mode, adding "one-mindfully" makes it more locked-in surveillance, not less. Diagnose first, then re-pick.
12 to 15 minThree Whats
Tap a card to open it. Each one shows the skill, the eating disorder's counterfeit version, and a body test for telling them apart.
The skill. Watching something happen without trying to make it stop or last longer. The breath. A thought arriving and leaving. The urge rising, cresting, dropping. You are not deciding anything yet. You are watching.
CounterfeitSurveillance. Calorie counts on the wrapper. Scanning the lunchroom for who is eating what. The mirror at every reflective surface in the hallway. Looks like observation. Has a verdict already written.
Body testObservation: jaw soft, breath ordinary. Surveillance: jaw set, breath shallow, eyes darting.
The skill. Tightness in my chest instead of I'm anxious. The thought "I ate too much" is here instead of I ate too much. The fact is the sensation. The thought is the thought. Words on each, separately.
CounterfeitJudgment. My stomach feels disgusting is not describing. That is a verdict. The fact is the sensation. The verdict is what you laid on top of the sensation. The body can hold the sensation alone. The body cannot hold sensation plus verdict, which is most of what we call "I can't deal with this."
Body testListen for the word too. Too full, too cold, too tight, too much. Every "too" is a verdict dressed as description. Try the same sentence without it. See what's left.
The skill. Fully into the activity. Becoming the activity. Eating the meal. Saying the thing. Walking from the chair to the door. No internal commentary on whether you are doing it right.
CounterfeitCompulsion. Looks like full engagement because both involve total commitment. The difference is whether you chose. Participating is chosen and reversible. Compulsion is automatic and resists interruption. Compulsion is also where most of the eating disorder lives.
Body testParticipation: when it's over you can describe what happened. Compulsion: when it's over you can describe the rule it followed, not the moment it happened in.
12 to 15 minThree Hows
Same format. Skill, counterfeit, body test. The How slot decides what kind of move the What slot is.
The skill. The fact is the meal contains 450 calories. The judgment is that is too many. The skill is to keep the fact and drop the judgment. The feeling underneath the fact stays. Only the verdict gets dropped.
CounterfeitAnesthesia. Many people hear non-judgmental and try to stop feeling anything. That isn't non-judgment. That's flattening. Non-judgment keeps the feeling. It just stops adding a verdict on top of it.
Body testTry saying it without the adjective. Most eating-disorder thoughts die at the second pass.
The skill. Eating one bite. Then the next bite. Fork down between them. When the mind goes somewhere else, bring it back without yelling at it. Mind wanders, you return it. Mind wanders, you return it. That's the practice.
CounterfeitRule-following. The eating-disordered mind can hold ferocious one-mindfulness on food rules. Gram counts. Intervals. Exact bite size. The mind calls that mindfulness. It isn't. One-mindfulness is full entry into the activity that's happening. Rule-following is escape from the activity into a number.
Body testReal one-mindfulness produces presence. Rule-following produces relief from anxiety. They feel different. Notice which one you got.
The skill. Pick the move that gets you the actual result you want. Even if the move breaks a rule you carry. The example Linehan gives: at the gate counter, "effective" is what gets you on the plane, not what proves the agent was wrong.
CounterfeitPerfectionism. Perfectionism does what follows the rule. Effectiveness does what produces the result. When the rule and the result split, perfectionism keeps the rule and loses the result. In recovery, the rule is often don't need anyone. Effectiveness is asking for help when help is what works.
Body testEffectiveness: you can name the goal in one sentence. Perfectionism: you can name the rule in one sentence and can't quite remember what the goal was.
15 to 20 minThe Combo Builder
Pick one What and one How. The card shows the combo, the moment it lands in, the counterfeit version it slips into, and the body test. Tap a scenario at the bottom to fire a pre-built combo. Unlock all nine.
Picking the same combo for every situation. Observe + One-mindfully is great for a meal and useless for a fight with your sibling, where the move you need is Participate + Effectively. Different moment, different combo. Same skill, wrong combo, fails.
10 minDiscussion
Pick the one that bugs you most. The one you almost want to skip is usually the one with something in it.
5 to 8 minPick one combo
One combo. One moment. One attempt. Not all nine. Not "whenever I remember." One.
Track one data point each time. Before the attempt, name the counterfeit your mind would have run instead. After, name whether the counterfeit showed up anyway. That's all.
One word
Around the circle. The word names what you noticed today. Not what you learned. What you noticed.
If a teen offers a learned word ("presence," "integration"), accept it and ask what specifically they noticed that the word is naming. The specifics are the data. The abstractions are the report on the data.