I often doodle during meetings where I can’t knit. Keeping my hands busy is an ADD management strategy that helps me suppress the impulse to speak out of turn and interrupt. For some reason, that minor distraction of doing something with my hands aids in overall behavior management.
So I’ve been doodling during DBT group. It’s a bit awkward since I feel like they want me to be more “one mindful” about what’s going on in the room, and I haven’t explained the doodling as being helpful for maintaining attention.
Anyway, I posted my DBT doodles along with my summary of the session last time, but I still have a couple pages of doodles from prior sessions. So here they are…
Doodles from the second week of DBT group.
Doodles from the third week of DBT. I rather like this one.
Wow…I wish my doodles looked *anything* like that! Those are beautiful!
Thanks! I tend to draw a lot of the same things over and over, so I get some practice on them. And lots of abstract patterns, which are easy to do “well” I guess.
You have surprised me with your doodles Chickadee! That’s mindfulness at work right there! haha
Gotta do something while they’re talking about distress tolerance, right? Nothing I doodle tends to be particularly reflective of the conversation. It’s just something to keep my hands busy.
Impressive!
Love the PhD hatching chick. hehee. Lovely. Ok that’s the last comment. Sorry.
oh man! i’m so glad you posted this strategy. i have a big problem with interrupting and have struggled with finding ways to deal with it. i’m going to try this one out.
Glad it’s helpful – I usually doodle or knit. In a pinch, there’s also origami, since scraps of paper or wrappers are often available. Keeping my hands busy seems to work best. If I open my laptop, I’m pretty much checked out and sucked into the screen, so that doesn’t help much even when it’s permissible.