​Practicing this DBT Skill can help us stay grounded and connected this holiday season! Mindfulness is a skill that, when practiced regularly, is a great tool to reduce stress, connect with our personal goals and create genuine connection with others. The holidays can be rich in memory, sentiment and relationship. They can also be full of family expectations, grief and reminders of trauma. These, and many more experiences, can overwhelm, cause us to disregard our own needs, and flood us with many different emotions. In order to enjoy the positive aspects of the holiday and skillfully navigate the challenges, try practicing mindfulness throughout your holiday season!

Mindfulness has three components:

1. Present moment awareness
2. Non-judgement
3. Experiencing present moment as it is, without enhancing or avoiding the moment

Mindfulness as Stress-Reduction
For many, the holiday season means a busy schedule and many more tasks and to-dos than normal. Practicing mindfulness in the midst of the whirlwind helps to produce moments of calm to catch our breath and remember our priorities. Mindfulness also helps us evaluate where our time and energy are going and make the most intentional decisions for ourselves in this season.
 
Mindfulness as Social Support
Paying attention to the present moment, without judgement can give us a lot of important information about what is happening in a room, or in a conversation. In the midst of a holiday gathering, take a moment to simply observe what is happening inside and outside of yourself. Allow yourself the gift of a few deeper breaths. Notice who is talking with who, and what those dynamics are like. Notice what is happening inside yourself as you connect with different people. Hold this information lightly and without judgement, and allow this information to guide your interactions.
 
Mindfulness to support Intentional Decisions
If you find yourself navigating a lot of spoken and/or unspoken expectations over the holidays, mindfulness skills can help you identify your needs and desires and to stay connected to them throughout the season. Spend some intentional moments noticing where you would like your time and energy to go this season, what would make it memorable and special for you and yours. Notice how other’s expectations are making you feel, especially if those expectations cause you to disregard your own needs and desires. Give yourself the gift of staying connected to yourself and your values, which becomes a much more congruent and grounded holiday experience.  

​Social anxiety can be consuming and can really limit the life experiences one might be open to. Imagine having to overcome a wave of panic, accompanied with rapid heartbeat, muscle tension and even blurry vision when walking into certain social circumstances. This dizzying experience can feel disorienting and even dissociative. When this happens regularly, it is understandable that we might start to avoid situations that cause this response all together. When this becomes a pattern, we may experience a narrowing of life experiences, a decrease in self-esteem and a reduced willingness to try new things.
 
It is possible to learn skills that help us navigate social events with more ease. Feeling confident and calm in social situations allow us to be present with ourselves and with others in the room. We are more able to be genuine and operate within our natural personality, making higher quality connections.
 
There is one skill that has been the most helpful for our clients who are unlearning social anxiety. It is the DBT Mindfulness skill OBSERVATION. To understand this skill the most, let’s take a quick look at Mindfulness. When we are practicing mindfulness, we are 1) noticing our internal/external environment,2) without judgement and 3) without minimizing or enhancing what we find there. It is simply a practice of noticing. Noticing what we are feeling in any given moment. Noticing what is happening around us. Noticing what might feel like a threat. Simply noticing. Mindfulness practices like this slow us down and bring us into the present moment. And when we break this mindful practice into even smaller skills, one of the most impactful skills is that of OBSERVATION. We are simply taking in information, through our senses, thought processes and relationships. To observe skillfully, we need to create enough distance from what we are encountering to fully take it in. And this observable distance can make a big difference for social anxiety.
 
Let me explain a little more clearly. Imagine yourself preparing to go to a social event where you do not know anyone. You are expecting to walk into a room of people milling around and forming small conversation groups, and you are expected to go and have a good time. Practically speaking, this might be a business networking event, an awards ceremony, a college orientation day, etc. What I am encouraging you to try, is to enter the event as an OBSERVER first and foremost. Find a comfortable place in the room to sit or stand. Once you are there, take a few deep breaths that bring you into the present moment and allow the room to stop spinning. As you do this, you are creating an observable distance from which you can take in all that is happening in the room in that moment. Notice what is happening around you. Notice how many conversation groupings there are, how are the people in conversation feeling, are there other nervous people present, where are the food and beverages located, are there people who are also looking for someone to talk with? You are simply noticing what is happening in the room. And from this observation point, you might start to notice where you’d like to be in the room. You may prefer to stay right where you are at, you may notice a conversation you’d like to join, you may notice that you’d like to get a drink before doing anything else. Regardless of where you go from here, mindfully observing your surroundings has allowed you more choice to be genuine in your interactions. And with practice, you may just feel more open and confident in new social situations!