A National Library of Medicine report shows that 26 to 30% of students combat emotional regulation problems in recurring patterns. The dysregulation results in periods of excessive emotional reactivity, difficulty in calming down, and random outbursts. Such behaviour is quite common in PhD students, affecting their ability to concentrate on their research work.
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) mindfulness exercises have been found helpful in controlling emotions in a better way. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy helps people become more aware of themselves, their surroundings and their sensations. By practising DBT mindfulness exercises, doctoral students can gain control of their emotions and reduce their stress.
In this article, we shall guide you through the top 5 mindfulness exercises that improve the emotional regulation of PhD students.
Let’s get into the details.
A List of 5 Best DBT Mindfulness Exercises for PhD Students
The DBT mindfulness exercises are particularly helpful for the students pursuing their PhD. A doctoral journey is exhaustive, and students often feel challenged by the toughness of their PhD programs. They have to go through quite a lot of stress, and they usually stay overwhelmed with fatigue and anxiety.
If you face the same challenges, seek help from a professional PhD dissertation writing service. The trained academic writers of such firms can assist you in refining your papers. Apart from that, the DBT mindfulness exercises can help students regulate their emotions.
To practice mindfulness, the first thing to do is find a place to sit in peace for a few moments. For starters, it is advisable to set a time limit of 10 minutes, but once you are deep into it, you should not mind the time you spend meditating.
Here is the detail of all those techniques:
1. Body Scan
During this exercise, you must pay thorough attention to the physical sensations that run throughout and overall in your body. The goal is not to relax or change your body but to fully observe and become more aware of its changes. You should not worry about how long you have been practising; you should move about it slowly.
As per Rastrick High School guidelines, you should start to pay attention to your feet. Check for sensations like warmth, coolness, pain, pressure or any other feeling, Slowly, you move up towards the upper parts of your body. The final stop of this scan is going to be your head.
In this mindfulness exercise, students must focus on each body part by keenly noticing all the sensations. After completing the scan, you start the process again and move back down. Remember to move slowly and pay attention to the sensations in your body.
2. Mindful Eating
This is again one of the DBT mindfulness exercises that focuses on regulating the PhD students’ emotions through mindful eating. You have to pick a food you want to observe and practice mindfulness. It should be something that you can pick and keep in your hand without things getting messy.
So, before you pick the food up in your hand, notice how it may look on the table when placed in front of you. You can notice the colour and see how the light reflects from the surface that the food object has. You can also consider its size. This mindful eating will help you regain the power of focus and concentration once again.
The next thing to do is to notice the weight and see how the food feels in your hands against your skin. When you start chewing it, notice how your teeth go deep into it and how the texture seems different inside your mouth. Don’t forget to pay close attention to the food’s flavour.
3. Mindful Seeing
For some PhD students, their vision gets so blurred that they lose the ability to focus and concentrate on things that are present right in front of them. For some of them, the absence of stimuli that can be seen can be quite stifling. A healthy imagination cannot occur to anyone.
As per Positive Psychology, mindful seeing is a simple exercise which requires a simple kind of window which can offer some view. The steps to follow during this kind of DBT mindful exercise are the following:
- Find a place near a window where you can see the outside world.
- Look at everything that can be seen from the window and categorise whatever you see.
- You will also have to pay attention to the movement of leaves or grass blades.
- Keep in mind that you have to be observant but not critical.
- If you fear that you will become distracted, you should gently pull your mind away from the disturbing thoughts and start practising mindfulness again.
This can help you focus on the things present in front of you in a better way. A PhD student can also regain their focus and concentration when learning how to focus all their attention on the objects in front of them. It is particularly effective when students have to craft a concise, systematic literature review and they have trouble focusing on the required section due to cluttered information.
4. Mindful Breathing
As per Mental Health Center Kids, it is important for students to start with the breathing DBT mindfulness exercises. There are two famous methods to try this. In one method called deep breathing, you must inhale deeply through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Saying words like ‘in’ and ‘out’ each time you inhale and exhale can make you more aware of the activity that is been happening.
In the second method, breathing colours, you must choose two colours before starting deep breathing exercises. When you inhale, you have to imagine one colour and picture the second one when exhaling.
Such conscious breathing will make a pattern that lets students concentrate meaningfully on the breathing rhythm. Also, it calms the nerves of students down and helps them relax. It further leads to students feeling a sudden decrease in their feelings of anxiety.
5. Observing 5 Senses
As a PhD student, whenever you feel overcome and overwhelmed by intense or bothering emotions, you should always try to come back to your five senses. This is more like the self-soothing DBT mindfulness exercises. Once you face a challenging situation, you should focus on what you can smell, touch, hear, see and taste and take all your attention away from the negative emotions.
Once you take the attention away, you take away all the power of stressful emotions. It allows you to appreciate the present and current moment. When students engage with their physical senses individually, they ground themselves and shift their focus from anxious thoughts.
This can create a sensation of calm and spaciousness and bring forth feelings of security, confidence and safety. So, as a doctoral student, observing your senses can help you get out of the down feelings whenever you feel challenged by tough and unpleasant circumstances.
What Is Core Mindfulness in DBT?
You can take mindfulness as a type of meditation in which one has to focus on being intensely aware of what you are feeling and sensing in a given moment. As per Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, core mindfulness is about taking control of your hands and focusing on what is happening in the present moment.
It relates to the basic skill of being fully present in a given moment and actively observing your thoughts. It has the following main elements:
- Mindfulness
- Emotional regulation
- Interpersonal effectiveness
- Distress tolerance
Image Credits: Medium
What Is Mindfulness Exercise?
A mindfulness exercise is a practice that lets people fully concentrate their awareness on the present moment. They must observe their physical sensations, thoughts and feelings without judgment. Usually, they have to follow several techniques, such as body scans, walking and mindful breathing.
According to Mayo Clinic, the mindfulness exercises include the following:
- Body scan meditation
- Sitting meditation
- Walking meditation
You have to focus on the present moment, and once again, the observation should be non-judgemental. Students also have to pay attention to the physical sensations. They must be intensely aware of what they sense and feel in the given moments.
Conclusion
We have discussed the top 5 best DBT mindfulness exercisesthat can help students regulate their emotions in a better way. The students struggling with a lack of concentration and focus can benefit from all the exercises we have included. Students often struggle with academic worries, which makes them lose control of their emotions.
If you feel disoriented and don’t know what to do as a doctoral student, you can contact reliable PhD dissertation writing firms in the UK for assistance. Professional writers at these platforms have years of experience in specific domains, and they can assist students in fulfilling all their requirements.
Regularly practising these exercises can guide students towards calmer states where they can name and acknowledge their feelings. It further helps them separate their feelings from the moment’s reality so they do not feel overwhelmed.
Author Bio
Dr Hannah Tilly Morgan is a professional PhD dissertation writer who helps students fulfil the requirements of their academic papers and projects. Morgan has two PhDs to her name and understands all the challenges well. When she is not working on academic projects, you can either find her whipping delicious treats in the kitchen or exploring new mindfulness exercises on a regular basis.
