Begin

Four small steps today: a short attention check-in so we have a baseline, a few routing questions, your first one-tap check-in, and setting the reminder times. No techniques yet — just the starting line, measured honestly.

What this program is

Let's clear this up first, because it will save you six weeks of confusion: this is not a relaxation program. Mindfulness — the version every other DBT skill stands on — is attention training. Its job is not to make you feel calm. Its job is to help you notice which part of your mind is driving, before it has driven you somewhere you didn't choose. Calm may show up. Treat it as a side effect.

Two honest warnings:

• Some of this practice is boring. That's not a flaw in the method — the noticing you do while you're bored is the exercise.
• Your mind will wander. Hundreds of times. That's not failing the practice. Each wander you catch is the practice working.

How the six weeks work

• Short sessions, about ten minutes, two or three per week: first the three states of mind, then three skills for what you do with attention, three for how you do it, and finally a practice sized to fit your actual life.
• The engine is small on purpose. Guided practices log themselves. And twice a day, one tap: which mind am I in right now — emotion, reasonable, wise, or don't know? "Don't know" is a real answer — early on, the most common one. Watch what happens to it across six weeks. Its decline is the progress.
• A weekly review reads your numbers and sets next week's practice dose from them. Miss days, and the practices get shorter — not the guilt bigger.

One practical note, said plainly

If you have a history of trauma, or closing your eyes tends to make you feel unreal or far away, the app will route you to the grounded track: eyes open, attention anchored outside the body — sounds, objects — and shorter practices first. Same training, different door. It's a routing switch, not a warning label.

And a standing note: mindfulness here is skills training. It is not a treatment for acute conditions on its own.

Right now: the baseline check-in — our own questionnaire, not a medical test — the routing questions, and your first tap.