Making a Mindful Movie of the Current Moment
A favorite distress tolerance skill for many of us is listening to music. When all else fails, disappearing into our headphones can provide great help in surviving a challenging moment. What we listen to and how loud we listen is a matter of taste, but the act of listening (also, an observe skill), is powerful to most. Plus, music can change our emotions, either through nostalgia and memory, or through tonal quality or lyrics alone.
And so adding visuals to music is a doubly-potent distress tolerance skill. One thing this writer likes to do is to sit on the beach, or in the park, or to look out a window in my home or on the train while listening to music with headphones, imaging that all I observe outside myself, everything happening before me, is synced somehow to the music playing in my ears. In this way, the music becomes a soundtrack for whatever random events unfold before my eyes. Watching the visual world unfold in this way without interacting or acting (or judging, wishing something were other than it is) is using the DBT observe skill.
Notice how at unpredictable moments, it’s as if people walking down the street are walking to the rhythm playing in your ears, or birds might be soaring in sync with the dreamy ambient song you’re listening to, or a dog might run by wagging its tail in perfect beat, as if you are making a mini-movie in your mind. You might also observe how judgments creep in. You might wish that the person walking by in front of you would get it together and stop walking out of sync with your music. All good things to note, and very distracting in the short term, when you are looking for relief in the moment.
So grab your headphones and phone, or whatever device you store music on, and step out into the world. Sit outside a market or grocery store and listen to Bhangra, watch kids play on a playground while listening to Bach or Mozart, mix it up and listen to something contradictory, like ambient and dreamy instrumentals while walking through a crowed transportation terminal, sit in view of an airport, and watch planes take off while listening to Coltrane, Miles Davis or Sarah Vaughn.
This writer remembers once listening to hip hop while watching a seagull ride an air current. It was stunning, like a scene from a film. The bird seemed to correspond perfectly with the music. The irony is that I had been sitting on the beach that day because I was upset with someone in my life. After watching that bird for five minutes, I forgot what was so distressing, and got on with the business of my day.
