MARSHA LINEHAN AND MINDFULNESS SKILLS

How DBT’s core mindfulness practices create the foundation for lasting change

Mindfulness DBT therapy in Fort Collins at Mindful Transitions draws on one of the most important contributions to modern psychology — the work of Dr. Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Linehan did something remarkable. She took the ancient practice of mindfulness — developed over centuries in Buddhist contemplative traditions — and translated it into a set of concrete, learnable, evidence-based skills that anyone can practice. Furthermore she placed these skills at the very heart of DBT — not as a supplementary technique but as the foundation upon which all other skills are built.

Who Is Marsha Linehan?

Dr. Marsha Linehan is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Washington who developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy in the late 1980s. She created DBT originally as a treatment for borderline personality disorder — a condition characterized by intense emotional dysregulation, unstable relationships, and chronic self-destructive behavior.

What made her approach revolutionary was the central dialectic at its core — the simultaneous acceptance and change of the person exactly as they are. Additionally Linehan has spoken publicly about her own experience of severe mental illness and hospitalization as a young woman — making her work not just academically rigorous but deeply personally informed.

The Three Core Mindfulness Skills

In the video below Marsha Linehan explains the three foundational mindfulness skills that sit at the heart of DBT practice. These skills are deceptively simple — and profoundly transformative when practiced consistently.

Observe

Observing means noticing your experience — your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and urges — without immediately reacting to them. It is the practice of stepping back from the content of your experience and simply watching it.

Most of us live inside our thoughts and feelings so completely that we cannot distinguish between what we are experiencing and who we are. When anxiety arises we do not observe it — we become it. Observing creates a crucial separation between the experience and the self that is having it.

Furthermore observing is the gateway to choice. When you can notice a feeling without immediately acting on it you create space — and in that space you find the possibility of responding rather than reacting.

Describe

Describing means putting words to your experience — labeling thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings, and sensations as sensations — without adding interpretation or judgment.

Instead of “I am worthless” — which is an interpretation — you describe: “I am having the thought that I am worthless.”Instead of “I am overwhelmed” — you describe: “I notice tightness in my chest and racing thoughts.”

This skill is more powerful than it first appears. Additionally naming an experience activates the neo-cortex — the thinking brain — which helps regulate the emotional brain’s intensity. Neuroscience research has confirmed what mindfulness practitioners have known for centuries — naming what you feel reduces its power over you.

Participate

Participating means throwing yourself fully into the present moment — engaging completely with whatever you are doing without self-consciousness or judgment. It is the opposite of the dissociation and disconnection that so many people with trauma, anxiety, or depression experience.

Participating is where mindfulness becomes life rather than just a practice. When you are fully present — with a conversation, with a meal, with a moment of beauty, with the experience of your own breath — you are not ruminating about the past or anxious about the future. You are here. And here is where healing happens.

Why These Skills Matter in Therapy

In my work offering mindfulness-informed integrative therapy in Fort Collins I use these three skills as a foundation for almost everything else we do together.

Observe, Describe, and Participate give clients a practical framework for working with difficult emotional experiences — not by avoiding them or suppressing them but by developing a new relationship with them. Furthermore when combined with the depth of psychoanalytic understanding — exploring where these emotional patterns come from and what they mean — the result is both practically skilled and genuinely self-aware.

This is precisely what integrative therapy offers — the skills of DBT alongside the depth of depth psychology. Tools that work in the moment alongside understanding that lasts a lifetime.

Watch Marsha Linehan Explain These Skills

In the video below Dr. Linehan explains these three core mindfulness skills in her own words — with the directness, clarity, and occasional humor that characterize her approach. I share this with many of my clients because hearing these concepts from their creator gives them a weight and authenticity that no summary can replicate.

If you are curious about how mindfulness DBT therapy in Fort Collins might help you develop a new relationship with your own emotional experience I invite you to reach out for a free 15-minute consultation.

— John Kinnaird LCSW, EMDR Level II, CHt.