Whenever I’ve taught DBT, helped clients, or consulted with clinicians, the topic of mindfulness of emotions has come up at some point. When I teach clinicians about DBT, I often talk about the value of helping clients to step back and notice how their emotions feel. Just experience the body sensations of the emotion, in whatever form they take: changes in body temperature, muscle tension, feelings in the stomach or behind the eyes, and so on. Watch these experiences as they rise and fall, and try not to avoid or escape or think your way out of them.
By practicing mindfulness of current emotions in this way, clients often learn that their emotions are not as threatening as they might’ve seemed, and that if left alone, they always come and go. One of the Zen teachers who used to run a yearly retreat that I attend used to say, “Emotions just want to be felt.” Once we give our emotions what they want, they often become more bearable and might even stop tormenting us quite as much.
With clinicians/therapists, this skill can be invaluable when they find themselves struggling to provide compassionate and effective care. It might seem surprising to some, but therapists sometimes need to find ways to manage their own emotions about their work with clients. Student therapists often feel anxious about seeing their first clients. In these cases, it’s important to recognize that this anxiety is normal, allow themselves to feel it for a bit, and then figure out what to do next. Even seasoned therapists sometimes find themselves anxious about sessions, frustrated that their client isn’t doing the things they need to do to help themselves (such as showing up for sessions, arriving on time, doing their therapy homework, and so on), sad about things happening in their clients’ lives, and so on. Therapists also sometimes have difficult interactions with their clients. Clients might be critical or angry with their therapists, and this isn’t always easy to deal with.
In all of these situations, it’s important for therapists to recognize how they’re feeling, step back and observe the situation, and proceed wisely and compassionately. Mindfulness of emotions is an invaluable tool. Once we recognize how we’re reacting to someone else, we can try to understand where that reaction is coming from, and we’re less likely to act on our feelings without thinking things through.
I recently was reminded of how invaluable this skill is in dealing with personal stuff. A relative with severe substance use and mental health challenges overdosed, was revived with medical intervention, and then ran off and went missing over the weekend. A missing persons report was filed and the police and family were doing what they could to search for them, to no avail. A press release went out. They finally returned, thankfully. In the meantime, we were all incredibly worried, scared, and sad about the possibilities. It was impossible, and not even desirable, to avoid these feelings. I found it helpful, instead, to just stop doing whatever I was doing, allow the emotions and thoughts about the situation to arise, and to experience them for as long as I had to. Sometimes they lasted for a few minutes and then subsided, and other times, they lasted much longer. I’m pretty good at thinking my way out of feeling things, reassuring, and distracting myself, and I avoided those strategies. As painful as they were, these emotions just needed to be felt. ~Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.