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Alive99
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Default Jun 11, 2021 at 05:54 AM
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by eskielover View Post

This is a link with some basics about "teflon mind"DBT Skill of the Day: Teflon Mind from Mindfulness Module – Anything to Stop the Pain
Thanks for the link. It says:

"Teflon Mind is part of the “Observe” portion of DBT’s Mindfulness. Teflon Mind is intended to prevent emotional dysregulation, defensiveness and judgmental responses. When we use Teflon Mind you:

Notice what is happening around you and not react immediately or reflexively.
Let thoughts, emotions and sensory experiences pass through our mind like clouds passing over a clear sky.
Focus your attention on the present experience (which is also important in another skill “One Mindfully” which I will cover later) and not allow past disappointments or future fears to color the experience.
Attend to internal thoughts and feelings as they arise within you.
Don’t “latch on” to the resulting emotions and don’t follow action impulses to react in an ineffective way.
Let the emotional experience pass and not take root so that the emotions lead to resentment or ruminating.

Teflon Mind can be a very effective skill when your amid and among others who are expressing powerful emotions."


I feel like this isn't the first time that I see mindfulness recommended for situations where I just do this stoic, rational approach. That's what I have when others express strong emotions and I also do it for situations where I just have to endure them. It's also me being present, cool, calm, collected, alert. That's my default state.... trauma tried to eat a lot of it but I'm recovering from that. But anyway I don't think it's mindfulness because I don't let stuff just "pass through my mind", and that's because I'm not even focused on my mind, I'm not focused internally at all, and instead I'm just focused on the environment. Mindfulness to me is like, when I read about it, it always makes me feel like I'm supposed to focus internally. Is that true? Does it require you focusing internally, on your mind and your emotions? Let me know, I'm curious. Because I don't really understand how you are supposed to BOTH focus internally and externally. The latter would be by doing stuff like "notice what is happening around you" and "focus your attention on the present experience".

What the stoic mindset shares with this mindfulness/teflon mind is:

- It pays attention to what's happening around you, it observes a lot
- No immediate reaction/no latching on to emotions/does not follow action impulses/goal is to react in an efficient, effective way
- It's focused on the present
- Thoughts are like fleeting clouds on a clear sky (that's always how I describe my mind by default...like that's my default, that's my normal, I don't count cPTSD as my normal of course)
- The emotions pass fast, no ruminating etc

What it *probably* doesn't share:

- It's rational control over the emotions (rather than just accepting them and living them "from the inside")
- It's not focused internally on the mind or on the emotions
- It "invalidates" the irrationality of emotion by the rational control
- The emotions pass fast because they are "invalidated" like that and they are never allowed to become strong
- Attending to the emotions is for a very short time, because the rational control deals with them very quickly
- Thoughts are truly owned rather than trying to be distanced from them. Distance is only from emotion, not from rationality

I'm curious if this made sense.

Btw, you mention compartmentalising. The way you described it, to me it seems very much a normal thing. I do think you've got to only think about work at work, and not think about work when at home. And if there is something urgent or important, then allocate a specific time to deal with it, yeah. I thought that was the healthy approach actually. I did not understand what you meant when you said "I think when we can adapt to something more like that "teflon mind" works better." Do you mean that compartmentalising had some bad side effects for you and this teflon mindset works better for you in its place?
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