118 The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
When you like, you can shift your attention and focus to a friend or someone you know who
is troubled. You can also focus on groups of people, such as “all my friends” or “all my brothers and
sisters.”
When you wish, you can experiment with difficult people in your life. Try sending them
kindness and your wish that they might be happy, and watch your inner response. In doing loving-
kindness for a difficult person, you are not allowing them to abuse or hurt you but are making
an attempt to see that they, too, are human beings who seek happiness. This can change your
relationship to the situation and release you from resentment you may be holding.
Please note that in doing lovingkindness meditation, you are likely to experience many
different feelings! Some may even be disturbing, such as sadness, grief, or anger. If this happens,
you have not made a mistake. It is common for deeply held feelings to be released as one practices
lovingkindness. This release is actually a kind of healing in itself. Just pay attention to all of your
feelings, honoring each one, and continue your practice.
ATTENTION TO SPACIOuSNESS AND STILLNESS
DEEPENS MINDFuLNESS
The core dialectical behavior therapy skill of mindfulness includes the “what” skill of observing
and the “how” skill of nonjudging. But old habits of attention can often make it difficult to observe
fully or to really be nonjudging. When it seems especially difficult to be mindful, observe closely, or
be nonjudging, you simply may not be relaxing enough or resting in your wholeness. Instead, you
are very likely overly identified with some active and present smaller part or parts of yourself.
Meditation teachers often use the metaphor of an ocean when illustrating your wholeness
compared to identification with a smaller part of yourself (your thoughts and judgments or your
feelings of anger or fear, for example). In this metaphor, it is noted that the waves and the ocean are
not separate. Although the waves are varied and can be intense and dramatic, they still are made
of water and are part of the greater ocean, even down to the deepest depths. It is said that your
wholeness (sometimes called big mind or some similar term) is like the ocean, while the parts (feel-
ings, thoughts, stories in your mind) are like the waves—constantly rising and falling, appearing
and disappearing, while their essence, the ocean, is always present.
The tendency to identify with the wave and to lose your feeling of connection with the larger
ocean of who you are is very strong. Practicing mindfulness, learning to recognize the reasoning
mind and the emotional mind when they arise, can offer freedom from rigid identification with
your smaller parts, as you have discovered.
And by shifting your focus at times, on purpose, to experiences often not noticed or taken
for granted, you can become much more flexible in your attention, more mindful, and more able
to break the habitual identification with old habits of thinking and feeling.