Using Mindfulness Skills to Deal with Distraction and Poor Concentration

Stress can be very distracting. Often, when people are under a lot of stress, they find that they have a difficult time focusing on anything else. Is this one way in which stress affects you? When you are stressed, do you find it difficult to think about anything else? Do you find that you spend a lot of time thinking about the sources of your stress and the impact this stress has on you? If this is one way stress affects you, you may find that it gets in the way of accomplishing other things in your life, which can add to your stress by making you feel like you are behind in your tasks or not productive. Or it may take your attention away from positive things in your environment or aspects of your life that are not stressful.

Fortunately, DBT has a skill that can help you refocus your attention and manage this symptom of stress. Specifically, the DBT mindfulness skill of focusing attention on one thing at a time (Linehan 1993b) can be used to help you refocus your attention on whatever you are doing in the moment, making sure that you return your attention to the present moment and the task at hand when you are distracted by stress. As mentioned in chapter 3, this skill is all about doing one thing at a time: focusing all of your attention on only one thing and letting go of distractions. So, if you are writing, write. If you are playing with your children, play with your children. If you are doing something comforting or self-­soothing, focus all of your attention on just that. So many times when people are stressed out, they believe that it will be better to try to multitask and work on many things at once. They think that this will help them get more done and, as a result, feel less stressed. But, as common as that belief may be, it is just not true. Instead, focusing all of your attention on only one thing at a time and letting go of distractions that come up will help with your stress much more than multitasking.

So, the next time you find yourself getting distracted by everything that is causing you distress, take a deep breath and then bring your attention back to whatever you were doing in that moment. Focus all of your attention on just that one thing, throwing yourself into that activity and concentrating only on that. If you get distracted by your stress, notice that, and then return your mind to the activity at hand. Do this as many times as you need to, refocusing your attention again and again. Remember that minds get distracted; the goal of mindfulness is to simply notice when this happens and then to refocus your attention as needed, again and again.

This skill also can go a long way in helping you to endure stress in general. As Dr. Marsha Linehan recently told one of us, “When you just do one thing in the moment, you never really get overwhelmed” (personal communication). Have you ever noticed that what really stresses you out is not what you are doing right that moment, but a sense of doom or a bunch of worrisome thoughts about what you need to do in the future? Granted, sometimes the present moment, in and of itself, can be fairly stressful, but if you just focus on exactly what you are doing right now, rather than the mountain of things you need to get done at some point in the future, you will feel as if you are carrying around much less weight. When you are working on one task, stick to that task; when you walk from one place to another, just focus on the act of walking (rather than on getting to your destination or all of the things you will need to do when you get there). Practice this skill the next time you find yourself getting overwhelmed by all of the demands or stressors in your life, and see if it works.