Participating in Life

By: Michael Upston, LCSW

Dr. Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, describes mindfulness as having three aspects: to observe, to describe and to participate.  The first aspect of this is to observe.  Mindfulness means being aware. Contrary to the often blissful pictures describing it on magazine covers, it doesn't necessarily mean being peaceful. Sometimes being aware means acknowledging feelings and circumstances we would rather avoid.  The point being though, that by observing reality (both internal and external) as it is, we enter into a space from which we can have a choice about how we are going to respond to that reality.  By virtue of observing something we are separate from it.   We have created space outside of it from which to see it.  This gives us the ability to choose how we are going to respond to it. For example, we can observe a thought or feeling without choosing to act on that thought or feeling, just like we can observe a car without choosing to get into the car

This leads to the second aspect of mindfulness, which is to describe what we observe. In other words, recognizing thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings, and facts as facts.  Quite often we confuse thoughts and feelings with facts.  This is a major cause of anxiety. We have a thought about some negative (often we imagine it as catastrophic) event happening in the future, and rather than recognizing it as a thought, we assume it is a fact, something which is definitely going to happen.

The way forward is found in the third element of mindfulness, to participate. We have thoughts and feelings about reality, but we don't know what reality actually is until we participate in it. I may have concerns about how I am going to do on a certain task.  I may have thoughts that I will not do well on the task, which would produce feelings of anxiety and insecurity. But I don't know how I am actually going to do until I participate in doing the task. If we think about it, we are terrible at predicting the future. Whenever we have a fantasy about what is going to happen in the future, that fantasy does not reflect what is actually going to happen. Even if we are pretty sure of the outcome, for example I'm pretty sure that tomorrow morning I will drop my son at the school bus, I don't really know what that is going to be like or what I'm actually going to be doing.  I cannot know what the reality is going to be until I participate in the process of dropping my son off at the bus stop.  

This leads us to the idea of radical acceptance, something which has been explored in much more detail by Dr. Gardini in an earlier blog.  Radical acceptance is fully accepting reality as it is, living life on life's terms. After visiting a Buddhist monastery, Marsha Linehan realized that what her clients needed to do was to fully accept reality. When I first heard this statement, I was both intrigued and baffled.  Why would acceptance be so important? What helped me to get an understanding of this was thinking about the meaning of participation. One cannot effectively cope with life, if one is merely interacting with one's own thoughts and feelings. I can only create change in my life by fully engaging in my life as it actually is, in other words by participating in it. This is the only place where we can actually live, and in the words of Dr. Linehan, build a life that is worth living. Doing this involves trust and a leap of faith, but the world we encounter, with all its ups and downs, and successes and disappointments, will have much more depth, richness and potential than we ever could experience or imagine by merely staying within the limitations of our own minds.