When individuals are struggling with emotional dysregulation, one of the stuck points that lots of people face is an overwhelming feeling that there are too many important topics to address at once. There is often a perception that every mental health topic feels like a “red flag” and that all problems need to be addressed concurrently and immediately. If the overwhelmed person signs up for therapy with a clinician that is not able to help with prioritization, the client can overwhelm the clinician by switching topics frequently, leading to dissatisfaction and slow progress for the client working toward decreasing emotional dysregulation. To avoid this pitfall, individuals who struggle with emotional dysregulation need structure and help to prioritize the one next step that they need to learn. A therapy session that involves one key takeaway with follow-up (i.e., the client practicing throughout the week) is more effective than a therapy session with a long list of potential solutions with little-to-no follow-up.
In the mindfulness skills section of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), one of the key skills that is reviewed (as a way to practice mindfulness) is the one-mindful skill. One-mindful means doing one thing at a time. When you eat, eat. When you talk, talk. When you listen, listen.
This simple practice is a powerful tool to decrease the amount that people multitask, as trying to do multiple tasks at once is less efficient and consumes excess energy. People often naturally use one-mindful when doing concrete tasks that require specific steps. For example, loading the laundry involves putting in the laundry soap, loading the clothing, shutting the lid, and pressing the start button. If those steps were completed in reverse order, none of the laundry would get done! This is intuitive. Yet, sometimes it is more difficult for people to implement one-mindfulness and taking one step at a time with abstract tasks (e.g., decreasing emotion dysregulation, improving a relationship, mitigating anxiety).
Although mental health improvement is more abstract than doing laundry, there is a solid case to be made for using a step-by-step approach to reach these objectives. Unlike the monotony of loading the laundry in your washing machine, the steps to improved mental health do not need to be exactly the same across individuals, and the order can vary with slightly more flexibility. Nevertheless, there are times where “red flags” outweigh “yellow flags” and need to be addressed first. Here are some examples:
- A parent screams that they need to fix their child’s toy if not the child will not be happy. That parent needs to take a step back and do some paced breathing.
- A person rants for hours about how they need to go overseas to complete their mission after staying up for 72 hours. That person needs to go to sleep.
- A client who is extremely emotionally dysregulated tells the therapist on the first session that they have to talk about their sexual assault that happened 10 years ago. That person needs to stay in the present moment and avoid contemplating that traumatic event until it is an effective step for their mental health and therapy.
Thus, a key part of mental health recovery involves following a step-by-step process and completing one thing at a time. DBT, like other evidence-based treatments, recognizes the importance of structure. Therefore, DBT uses multiple target hierarchies (e.g, in individual therapy, the therapist targets life-threatening behavior, therapy-interfering behavior, and quality-of-life interfering behavior, respectively) to help clients to organize their mental health treatment when there are complex and pervasive problems. In sum, making one-mindful a cornerstone skill in one’s mental health recovery can often be a solid step to achieve optimal outcomes, leading you toward a more effective and functional life.
About the Author
Samuel Eshleman Latimer (he/his), Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist that specializes in effective conflict management and dialectical behavior therapy. Samuel also works to help individuals, couples, and families decrease interpersonal difficulties and manage challenges associated with borderline personality disorder. he believes that people do not need to choose between learning effective techniques that are based on science and developing warm, genuine relationships, as both of these styles complement each other. Click Here to learn more about Samuel’s experience and therapeutic style.