What mindfulness is

Mindfulness is being fully aware of and focused on the present, rather than worrying about the past or the future — and doing that without judging or rejecting what you find there. Practiced over time, it means being in control of where your attention goes, instead of your attention controlling you.

It is one of the four skill sets taught in dialectical behavior therapy, and in practice it underpins the other three: distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness all start with noticing what is happening.

Why it matters

Automatic responses get in the way of seeing a situation clearly, solving the problem in front of you, expressing what you feel, communicating with other people, and being at peace. When attention is not under your control, it shows up as not being able to stop thinking about something, or not being able to concentrate on a task or a person.

Three states of mind

DBT describes three ways your mind can be running. None of them is wrong; the goal is to be able to tell which one you are in.

  • Emotion mind. Emotions are in control.
  • Reasonable mind. Facts are in control, and you act almost mechanically.
  • Wise mind. Both at once. It is the state to aim for when a decision matters, because you get your feelings and your reasoning on the same side.

The What skills: what you do

  • Observe. Just notice the experience as it is happening. Use your five senses to take in where you actually are. Do not try to change anything yet.
  • Describe. Put words on it. Who, what, where, when. Naming a feeling turns it into something you can look at rather than something you are inside of.
  • Participate. Enter into whatever you are doing completely, including the difficult parts. Not standing outside your own experience narrating it.

The How skills: how you do it

  • Non-judgmentally. Do not sort the moment into good and bad. You still have values, wishes and reactions — you notice them rather than putting them on trial.
  • One-mindfully. One thing at a time. When your attention goes somewhere else, notice where it went and bring it back. It will go again. That is the practice, not a failure of it.
  • Effectively. Do what works in the situation you are actually in, rather than what would work in the situation you think you deserve. Being right and getting somewhere are often not the same move.

Things to try

Mindfulness does not require sitting still with your eyes closed. Almost anything works if you do it with your whole attention:

  • Washing the dishes
  • Taking a shower, or washing your hands
  • Going for a walk
  • Cooking a meal
  • Journalling
  • Reading
  • Colouring
  • Slow, deliberate breathing
  • Yoga or stretching
  • Meditation

On the evidence: reviews of mindfulness-based programmes find moderate evidence that they improve anxiety compared with general controls like education, and not enough evidence to say whether they beat specific treatments such as exercise or cognitive behavioral group therapy. It is worth practicing. It is not a replacement for treatment.

Sources

  1. Cleveland Clinic — Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) (mindfulness as one of the four DBT skill sets — checked September 2026)
  2. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — Anxiety and complementary health approaches (the evidence note — checked September 2026)
  3. McLean 3East Outpatient DBT Manual (print; the source the original page's material came from, credited on our DBT skills page)

Sources were last checked September 2026. Every source links to the exact document cited, never a homepage.