In dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mindfulness is broken into six core skills split across two categories: the “What” skills and the “How” skills. The What skills tell you what to do when practicing mindfulness: Observe, Describe, and Participate. The How skills tell you how to do it: Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully, and Effectively. Together, these six skills form the foundation of DBT’s entire approach to emotional regulation.
The What Skills: Observe, Describe, Participate
The What skills answer a deceptively simple question: what exactly are you supposed to do when someone tells you to “be mindful”? DBT breaks that vague instruction into three concrete actions.
Observe means noticing what’s happening right now, both inside and outside of you, without trying to change it. That includes your thoughts, physical sensations, emotions, and surroundings. A classic exercise is observing your breath: paying attention to which parts of your body move, how the air feels entering your nose, and whether your breathing is fast or slow. The goal isn’t relaxation. It’s simply noticing what is, including things that are unpleasant or distracting.
Describe means putting words to what you’ve observed. You label the experience using factual language. If you pick up an object, you might describe its color, texture, weight, and temperature out loud. If you notice an emotion, you name it: “I’m feeling anxious” rather than “something is wrong with me.” Describing creates a small gap between you and your experience, which makes it easier to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting on autopilot.
Participate means fully throwing yourself into whatever you’re doing. Instead of watching your experience from the outside or analyzing it in real time, you engage completely. Dancing without worrying how you look, having a conversation without rehearsing your next sentence, eating a meal while actually tasting it. Participation is the opposite of going through the motions while your mind is somewhere else.
You don’t use all three at once. Observing and describing are more deliberate and analytical. Participating is immersive. The skill you reach for depends on what the moment calls for.
The How Skills: Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully, Effectively
The How skills layer on top of whatever What skill you’re practicing. They describe the quality of attention you bring to it.
Non-judgmentally
This means focusing on facts instead of evaluations. Almost all judgments reflect personal preference, but in the moment they feel like objective truth. Words like “unfair,” “stupid,” “terrible,” and “wrong” are signals that you’ve slipped from describing reality into evaluating it. During intense stress or emotional distress, judgmental thinking ramps up and drives more negative emotion, which creates a self-reinforcing cycle.
The shift looks like this: instead of “anger is a bad emotion and something is wrong with me for feeling it,” you reframe to “anger is a normal emotion, it isn’t good or bad, and experiencing it doesn’t make me a bad person.” Instead of “this driver is an idiot who shouldn’t be on the road,” you notice “that person is driving slowly in the wrong lane, which makes me feel unsafe, and it makes sense that I feel annoyed.” The facts stay the same. What changes is stripping away the layer of moral evaluation that amplifies your emotional reaction.
Self-judgment follows the same pattern. Thoughts like “I am weak” or “I am worthless” feel like descriptions, but they’re evaluations. Turning them into genuinely descriptive statements (“I’m struggling with this right now”) reduces their emotional grip.
One-mindfully
One-mindfully means doing one thing at a time. It’s the direct opposite of multitasking. The practice involves noticing when your mind starts pulling you somewhere else, wanting to check your phone during a conversation, planning dinner while playing with your kids, mentally replaying an argument while trying to work, and then gently redirecting yourself back to the single activity in front of you.
The key word is “gently.” Your mind will wander. That’s not failure. The skill is in the return: noticing the drift and coming back, again and again. If you catch yourself doing two things at once, you stop and choose one. The instruction from Kaiser Permanente’s DBT curriculum puts it plainly: “Let go of distractions. If other actions or other thoughts, or strong feelings distract you, go back to what you are doing, again and again, and again.”
Effectively
Acting effectively means doing what actually works in a situation rather than what feels satisfying or “right.” This is the most pragmatic of the six skills, and for many people, the hardest. It asks you to let go of being right in favor of getting the outcome you need.
A useful example: you arrive at a hotel and the front desk claims you don’t have a reservation. You do, and you could make that point loudly and angrily. That might feel justified. But calmly pulling up your confirmation email is more likely to get you a room. The effectively skill asks one question: what is my goal here, and what action is most likely to achieve it? Sometimes that means swallowing your pride, tolerating unfairness in the moment, or choosing a response that doesn’t match the intensity of your feelings.
Why Practice Volume Matters
These skills sound straightforward on paper, but they require repetition to become usable under stress. A 2024 study of 75 people with borderline personality disorder who completed a 10-week DBT mindfulness training program found a clear dose-response relationship: only participants who practiced at least three days per week for more than 30 minutes total saw a significant decrease in emotional dysregulation. People who practiced less didn’t get the same benefit.
The study also found that the relationship runs both directions. More mindfulness practice reduced emotional dysregulation in the following week, but higher emotional dysregulation also impaired the ability to practice mindfulness the next week. This means building a practice habit during calmer periods is important, because the skills become harder to access precisely when you need them most.
How the What and How Skills Work Together
The six skills aren’t separate tools you pick from a menu. They combine. When you observe your breath, you do it non-judgmentally (noticing tightness in your chest without labeling it “bad”) and one-mindfully (bringing your attention back when it drifts to your to-do list). When you participate fully in a conversation, you do it effectively (staying focused on what will actually help the relationship rather than proving a point).
The What skills give you something specific to do. The How skills shape the quality of your attention while you do it. Over time, the combination trains a different default response to emotional intensity: instead of reacting immediately from a place of judgment and scattered attention, you learn to observe what’s happening, describe it accurately, and choose a response based on what will actually work.