![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett[I am using The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook. Content notes as implied by the subject.]
The way I'm currently working through the book seems to be to go about half a chapter to a chapter ahead, to the point where I can't easily fill in blanks, and then head back to where I started to do a more thorough work-through and set of practice, followed by writing up. The book is divided into nine skills sections and one synthesis chapter; there are three pairs and one triplet of chapters, addressing four areas: distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
I think that when it comes to writing up I'm actually going to be subdividing chapters further: Basic Distress Tolerance Skills, f'rex, splits sorta-kinda neatly into (i) the subject of this post, (ii) distraction, and (iii) relaxation.
One of the things this chapter is leaning on quite heavily is a distinction between pain and suffering:
Coping strategies they describe as "self-destructive", they argue,
Use the Cost of Self-Destructive Coping Strategies worksheet to see how, they say, and list twelve of them in a two-column table; the second column is "possible costs", with some suggestions filled in and a blank space for you to write more. Relevant, at this point, isvass's comment on my previous post (CN self-injury methods and also suicide mention): everywhere else, the book asks you to list positives as well as negatives, so that you can work out how to get those needs/desires/drives met, or compensated for, without falling back on behaviours you would rather reduce.
Which is a very good point, so in the gaps in the first column -- there's enough space for my tiny handwriting -- I thought about it and then wrote down positives for basically all of them (and should perhaps write down positives for the couple I didn't). I also crossed out several Possible Costs I consider irrelevant or scare-mongering (like "infection" and "possible death" -- no, not with my methods of self-harm) or a problem of society and the social model, rather than an inherent problem of the strategy (like: "shame" is not actually a necessary outcome of "self-injury", and I'm much more into being compassionate to myself on this one, thanks).
(The strategies in question are: spending a great deal of time thinking about past pain, mistakes, and problems; getting anxious worrying about possible future pain, mistakes, and problems; isolating yourself to avoid possible pain; using alcohol and drugs to numb yourself; taking painful feelings out on others; engaging in dangerous behaviours, like cutting, pulling out hair, and self-mutilation; engaging in unsafe sexual activity; avoiding dealing with the causes of your problems; disordered eating; reckless behaviour and suicide attempts; avoiding pleasant activities; and surrendering to your pain and living an unfulfilling life. To these I have added "sleep deprivation", which is great when used in moderation while under-medicated for depression but is really shitty beyond about 48 hours and does actually make everything except for the emotional experience of existence significantly worse.)
Whiiich was the first exercise.
The second exercise introduces radical acceptance: "acknowledg[ing] your present situation, whatever it is, without judging the events or criticising yourself." I do not fundamentally have a problem with this; it's something I've been putting into practice for... Some Time Now, in various forms.
... oh my goodness the suggested Radical Acceptance Coping Statements exercise is a pile of platitudinous meaningless bullshit full of value judgements, by and large, with the occasional kernel of something useful. "This is the way it has to be"? Oh, fuck off. (I want to note explicitly, at this point, that something not working for me does not mean I think it's inherently bad or wrong, just that I am being prickly and spiky and slightly defensive in my own space about how to make this book work for me.)
"This is the way it is": yes. "It doesn't have to be this way" is, in fact, an important statement for me for managing other things -- you don't HAVE to resign yourself to living in this much pain in perpetuity, you don't HAVE to resign yourself to tolerating abuse, etc. "This is the way it is" has its own pitfalls, of course, cf that time I convinced myselfme_and had de facto broken up with me and just hadn't bothered to tell me yet on the basis that, basically, Google was lying about which messages he'd seen, and he was in a field with poor reception for three days, but -- it's rather less This Was Fated And There Is No Such Thing As Free Will, which works better for me.
As suggestions I'm willing to tolerate go, "I can't change what's already happened" is one; "this moment is the result of many other decisions", yep; "the present is the only moment I have control over" no no NO (i) you don't have absolute control over it and are still dependent on other people and (ii) you can exert influence on the future by doing things in the present: like, making it easier for me to do horn practice by unpacking my horn at a point when I'm not about to play, or moving things through to the room they're supposed to be in to make it easier to eventually put them away, or not being massively douchey to somebody now so that the future etc etc etc.
And obviously that isn't control of the future but I'd argue you don't meaningfully have control of the present either, so.
Statements I've added, which are of rather more use to me, in addition to the above: "here is temporarily who I am"; "do the job in front of you"; "you don't have to play wall". (I don't have any ready reference for that last one but it's Vorkosiverse.)
We are then encouraged to use these statements to Practise Radical Acceptance with things other than our own Very Painful Events.
The suggestions (you see where this is going) are "read a controversial story in the newspaper without being judgmental about what has occurred", "the next time you get caught in heavy traffic, wait without being critical", "watch the world news on television without being critical of what's happening", "listen to a news story or a political commentary on the radio without being judgmental", and "review a nonupsetting event that happened in your life many years ago, and use radical acceptance to remember that event without judging it".
... I really do think "wait in heavy traffic" is fundamentally different from "expose yourself to news stories about atrocities that are being filtered through a subjective and non-neutral point of view and quite possibly directly affect you in terrifying ways". I think this book was very obviously written by three white guys. I furthermore think that I actively find it a great deal easier to be accepting of how unpleasant and distressing shit is playing out in my life, and getting on with the job in front of me, than to be asked to turn off critical analysis of how information is being disseminated in an increasingly fascist (have you not been keeping up with the Tory party conference? YEAH.) political climate.
Which does, of course, probably mean that this is a valuable exercise for me to attempt -- but I think also means that for me this exercise doesn't belong under "basic distress tolerance". (I can already do traffic. I think I did a pretty good job, eventually, of getting to "okay, but this is how it IS, so what am I going to do about it next" after first flush of towering rage/panic over the first half of this year. I definitely did it without getting overwhelmed with respect to work last week, more than once.)
The other point being that I found Ozy's example -- part of a sequence of posts flagged up to me bywildeabandon, specifically the rate at which people die -- much more usable, in the first instance, than the Listen To The News variant, despite (I think) aiming at a fairly similar thing. I am going to try to think of other exercises, but honestly I think Get Better At Doing This One Rapidly When Shit Goes Down is highest up my priority list.
The way I'm currently working through the book seems to be to go about half a chapter to a chapter ahead, to the point where I can't easily fill in blanks, and then head back to where I started to do a more thorough work-through and set of practice, followed by writing up. The book is divided into nine skills sections and one synthesis chapter; there are three pairs and one triplet of chapters, addressing four areas: distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.
I think that when it comes to writing up I'm actually going to be subdividing chapters further: Basic Distress Tolerance Skills, f'rex, splits sorta-kinda neatly into (i) the subject of this post, (ii) distraction, and (iii) relaxation.
One of the things this chapter is leaning on quite heavily is a distinction between pain and suffering:
The costs of these self-destructive coping strategies are clear. All of them lead to your pain being prolonged into long-term suffering. Remember, sometimes pain can't be avoided, but many times suffering can.
Coping strategies they describe as "self-destructive", they argue,
are paths to even deeper emotional pain, because even the strategies that offer temporary relief will only cause you more suffering in the future.
Use the Cost of Self-Destructive Coping Strategies worksheet to see how, they say, and list twelve of them in a two-column table; the second column is "possible costs", with some suggestions filled in and a blank space for you to write more. Relevant, at this point, is
vass's comment on my previous post (CN self-injury methods and also suicide mention): everywhere else, the book asks you to list positives as well as negatives, so that you can work out how to get those needs/desires/drives met, or compensated for, without falling back on behaviours you would rather reduce.Which is a very good point, so in the gaps in the first column -- there's enough space for my tiny handwriting -- I thought about it and then wrote down positives for basically all of them (and should perhaps write down positives for the couple I didn't). I also crossed out several Possible Costs I consider irrelevant or scare-mongering (like "infection" and "possible death" -- no, not with my methods of self-harm) or a problem of society and the social model, rather than an inherent problem of the strategy (like: "shame" is not actually a necessary outcome of "self-injury", and I'm much more into being compassionate to myself on this one, thanks).
(The strategies in question are: spending a great deal of time thinking about past pain, mistakes, and problems; getting anxious worrying about possible future pain, mistakes, and problems; isolating yourself to avoid possible pain; using alcohol and drugs to numb yourself; taking painful feelings out on others; engaging in dangerous behaviours, like cutting, pulling out hair, and self-mutilation; engaging in unsafe sexual activity; avoiding dealing with the causes of your problems; disordered eating; reckless behaviour and suicide attempts; avoiding pleasant activities; and surrendering to your pain and living an unfulfilling life. To these I have added "sleep deprivation", which is great when used in moderation while under-medicated for depression but is really shitty beyond about 48 hours and does actually make everything except for the emotional experience of existence significantly worse.)
Whiiich was the first exercise.
The second exercise introduces radical acceptance: "acknowledg[ing] your present situation, whatever it is, without judging the events or criticising yourself." I do not fundamentally have a problem with this; it's something I've been putting into practice for... Some Time Now, in various forms.
... oh my goodness the suggested Radical Acceptance Coping Statements exercise is a pile of platitudinous meaningless bullshit full of value judgements, by and large, with the occasional kernel of something useful. "This is the way it has to be"? Oh, fuck off. (I want to note explicitly, at this point, that something not working for me does not mean I think it's inherently bad or wrong, just that I am being prickly and spiky and slightly defensive in my own space about how to make this book work for me.)
"This is the way it is": yes. "It doesn't have to be this way" is, in fact, an important statement for me for managing other things -- you don't HAVE to resign yourself to living in this much pain in perpetuity, you don't HAVE to resign yourself to tolerating abuse, etc. "This is the way it is" has its own pitfalls, of course, cf that time I convinced myself
me_and had de facto broken up with me and just hadn't bothered to tell me yet on the basis that, basically, Google was lying about which messages he'd seen, and he was in a field with poor reception for three days, but -- it's rather less This Was Fated And There Is No Such Thing As Free Will, which works better for me.As suggestions I'm willing to tolerate go, "I can't change what's already happened" is one; "this moment is the result of many other decisions", yep; "the present is the only moment I have control over" no no NO (i) you don't have absolute control over it and are still dependent on other people and (ii) you can exert influence on the future by doing things in the present: like, making it easier for me to do horn practice by unpacking my horn at a point when I'm not about to play, or moving things through to the room they're supposed to be in to make it easier to eventually put them away, or not being massively douchey to somebody now so that the future etc etc etc.
And obviously that isn't control of the future but I'd argue you don't meaningfully have control of the present either, so.
Statements I've added, which are of rather more use to me, in addition to the above: "here is temporarily who I am"; "do the job in front of you"; "you don't have to play wall". (I don't have any ready reference for that last one but it's Vorkosiverse.)
We are then encouraged to use these statements to Practise Radical Acceptance with things other than our own Very Painful Events.
The suggestions (you see where this is going) are "read a controversial story in the newspaper without being judgmental about what has occurred", "the next time you get caught in heavy traffic, wait without being critical", "watch the world news on television without being critical of what's happening", "listen to a news story or a political commentary on the radio without being judgmental", and "review a nonupsetting event that happened in your life many years ago, and use radical acceptance to remember that event without judging it".
... I really do think "wait in heavy traffic" is fundamentally different from "expose yourself to news stories about atrocities that are being filtered through a subjective and non-neutral point of view and quite possibly directly affect you in terrifying ways". I think this book was very obviously written by three white guys. I furthermore think that I actively find it a great deal easier to be accepting of how unpleasant and distressing shit is playing out in my life, and getting on with the job in front of me, than to be asked to turn off critical analysis of how information is being disseminated in an increasingly fascist (have you not been keeping up with the Tory party conference? YEAH.) political climate.
Which does, of course, probably mean that this is a valuable exercise for me to attempt -- but I think also means that for me this exercise doesn't belong under "basic distress tolerance". (I can already do traffic. I think I did a pretty good job, eventually, of getting to "okay, but this is how it IS, so what am I going to do about it next" after first flush of towering rage/panic over the first half of this year. I definitely did it without getting overwhelmed with respect to work last week, more than once.)
The other point being that I found Ozy's example -- part of a sequence of posts flagged up to me by
wildeabandon, specifically the rate at which people die -- much more usable, in the first instance, than the Listen To The News variant, despite (I think) aiming at a fairly similar thing. I am going to try to think of other exercises, but honestly I think Get Better At Doing This One Rapidly When Shit Goes Down is highest up my priority list.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 04:12 pm (UTC)I can't yet decide whether this book would make me too shouty to be worthwhile. Hmm.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 04:20 pm (UTC)Book seems to be a bit "one size fits all". Silly book.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 04:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 08:07 pm (UTC)Also wtf to 'perfect' I mean, sure, you can't change it and probably need to accept it and move forward but it sure ain't perfect. Why would they want you to suppose it is? I thought the aim was 'appropriate emotional reactions' not 'be a zombie', that's too far!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-08 07:45 pm (UTC)This is the core of my disagreement, too, though I do find it easier to be Radically Accepting of (distant0 bad current events than I am about bad things that directly affect me. Perhaps the feeling of the authors is that, for them, much of current events don't directly affect them? Sure speaks to a lack of empathy on their parts...which is where I guess the workbook doesn't seem to spend a lot of time. Or at least hasn't done so in your descriptions so far.
Do you think they would consider empathy to be a "...path to even deeper emotional pain?" Because that seems like a huge misunderstanding...though I acknowledge that excessive empathy (to the point of always putting others ahead of yourself) can undercut your own ability to cope.
I love your description of taking your horn out a while before you play. When I do things like that, I consciously tell myself I'm giving myself a gift in the future, and then in the future I remember when I did it and both give thanks and feel loved. Most recent time I did it was when I laid out my clothing for the next day, the day before I had to catch an early flight. I tend to get a bit panicky so it feels really good knowing all I have to do when I wake up is get dressed, take my medication (which I've set out for myself too, from already-packed bottles), grab my already packed bags and go.
Yes, you can affect the future with good planning and do your best to affect your immediate reality...tying control into everything is a problematic phrasing, I agree.
on control
Date: 2016-10-08 08:59 pm (UTC)You can't ever have absolute control of a situation, but even when it's oppressive, you don't have zero control.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-07 06:31 pm (UTC)Wow, they really have missed the point in that article you linked to about the technique working by starting by meeting the patient halfway!
I've been actively trying not to!
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 09:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-08 12:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-12 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-15 05:54 pm (UTC)I think ... I want to try to spend some energy on *new* strategies for helping myself brain better ... when I have the energy. Because I know a lot of my current strategies *work* but they aren't keeping up with the pace of things in my life. So, time to Learn Something.
I think it is extremely cool that you are willing and able to share some of what you are working on.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-08 10:25 am (UTC)I tend to use "it is as it is" for RA.
YES to everything you've said about the news.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 09:55 am (UTC)1. Spending a great deal of tme thinking about past pain/mistakes/problems: actually experience intense emotion and embodiment as opposed to a weird vague dissociative fog; possibly feel as though you can ~~ritually purify~~ yourself, especially if you're coming (as I am) from a Catholic background, which emphasises Confession; plus the massive emotional rush of Proving to yourself that you're Right about how Awful you Are.
2. Anxiety worrying about possible future pain/mistakes/problems: gives some sense of security/control via contingency planning (this is false -- I am working on awareness-without-anxiety, and after a certain point you do nobody any good by rehashing things endlessly, but still -- security/control/feeling prepared).
3. Isolating to avoid posible pain: reduced exposure to distressing stimuli; conviction (false(?)) that at least you're not hurting anyone.
4. Using alcohol and drugs to numb yourself: being generally spacey is nice and does, in fact, make the headnoise shut up or at least quiet down a bit.
5. Taking out your painful feelings on others: self-righteous rush; pride in a well-directed blow (which DOES give way to shame, but, immediate reward!); "at least I'm not alone" (in hurting); "you hurt me and now you know how it feels" (however irrational); Misery Loves Company.
6. Engage in dangerous behaviours: intense sensation anchoring to body/one moment; endorphin release.
7. Unsafe sexual activity: intense sensation anchoring to the body/one moment; endorphins; adrenaline; sense of usefulness/being used; and possibly confirmation of how you see yourself, in terms of what you're good for/what other people actually value about you (probably nothing); outsourcing treating yourself poorly.
8. Avoiding dealing with the causes of your problems: putting off facing The Worst Thing In The World; avoiding self-reflection also means you get to side-step the "how did I end up here AGAIN" and "there must be something WRONG with me that people keep thinking it's okay to treat me like this" etc etc etc. Plus the Gifted Child/perfectionist thing, of "if you don't try you can't fail" (which is just a facet of TWTITW, I think, for me at least) -- and "if you don't tell people how you'd actually like to be treated, you can believe that they just don't know as opposed to facing up to the fact that they don't care".
9. Food-related habits: altered state of mind; intense (embodied) sensation; sense of control.
10. Engaging in activities that risk death: sense of relief about being in control/having options other than carrying on; adrenaline.
11. Avoiding pleasant ativities like social events and exercise: less/differently intense social anxiety/self-hatred; less exhaustion; less risk.
12. Surrendering to pain and living an unfulfilling life: "safe" in that it's comfortable and predictable; Gifted Child "if you don't try you can't fail".
13. Sleep deprivation: euphoria (short-term).
14. Neg-stimming: at least you know why you feel bad; easy to find people who confirm your negative views of yourself (the Internet is FULL of cranky judgmental wrong people), which gives you the well-at-least-I'm-right-about-SOMETHING rush; intensifying sensation (and if all you've got access to is bad sensation, well then at least you're FEELING something...)
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 02:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-20 11:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-20 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-08 09:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-12 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-15 11:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-15 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-09 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-09 10:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-09 02:21 pm (UTC)Oh EXCELLENT point.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-09 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-10 02:15 pm (UTC)~K.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 09:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-12 03:04 pm (UTC)To these I have added "sleep deprivation", which is great when used in moderation while under-medicated for depression but is really shitty beyond about 48 hours and does actually make everything except for the emotional experience of existence significantly worse.
Good catch. That's one of my biggest ones. And doing it repeatedly, long-term, it gets less effective and more damaging, or so I find.
or a problem of society and the social model, rather than an inherent problem of the strategy
Oh, very good frame and thing to flag, I like that.
(like: "shame" is not actually a necessary outcome of "self-injury", and I'm much more into being compassionate to myself on this one, thanks).
Y E A H. My immediate reaction on reading that one in the self-injury and disordered eating columns was "it sounds like you're the one who thinks I should be ashamed, not me."
... I really do think "wait in heavy traffic" is fundamentally different from "expose yourself to news stories about atrocities that are being filtered through a subjective and non-neutral point of view and quite possibly directly affect you in terrifying ways". I think this book was very obviously written by three white guys.
I think so too. Three liberal enough white guys that a man having an argument with his boyfriend was one of their case studies, and I am imagining that perhaps they wrote that example in reaction to a lot of friends and family and clients getting very caught up in either Fox News or MSNBC, but since when I read that passage, there was already a recent news article open in a tab on my phone about a child being abused by teachers for having a condition I also have, and the tone of the article was sympathetic to the teachers for not being well trained enough to know not to treat children with that condition in a flagrantly abusive way that they would never consider treating a child who doesn't have that condition... yeah, I do not think that is an experience those authors have had themselves.
Their passage on radical acceptance: I actually found this extremely funny. Laugh out loud and scare the cats, howlingly, hilariously funny.
I had therapy on Monday, and I brought the book along and talked about that part of it. As a preface, I said "I'm really not sure if they meant it to be. If they did, it's brilliant, it's just the sort of humour I like. But I'm not sure they did." After I read the passage in question aloud, my psych laughed too, then said "No, I don't think they did."
"Instead [of judging the events or criticizing yourself], try to recognize that your present situation exists because of a long chain of events that began far in the past. For example, some time ago, you (or someone else) thought you needed help for the emotional pain you were experiencing. So, a few days later, you went to the bookstore and bought this book. Then today you thought about reading this chapter, and eventually you sat down, opened the book, and began reading. Now, you are up to the words you see here. Denying this chain of events does nothing to change what has already happened. Trying to fight this moment or say that it shouldn't be only leads to more suffering for you. Radical acceptance means looking at yourself and the situation and seeing it as it really is."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-12 05:25 pm (UTC)It is quite alright; your input and engagement and interaction are always welcome, and are welcome whenever. <3
Good catch. That's one of my biggest ones. And doing it repeatedly, long-term, it gets less effective and more damaging, or so I find.
Yeeeeeeeeeep.
I have also added neg-stimming, prompted by someone remarking on it as a concept on tumblr earlier, with the specific context of, er, I spent some of yesterday afternoon making myself utterly miserable by reading multiple articles by someone who's trying to be A Feminist Kink-Aware Sex Educator and instead was reinforcing rape culture. Like, self, no, after the first half-article you really didn't need to keep going, you really didn't need to read another two and a half...
Yesss re the Queers Case Study, but -- yes, aren't they, uh, trying.
Their passage on radical acceptance
ISN'T IT BIZARRE. Like. I didn't laugh at it, exactly? But I do have it underlined, and annotated "This is a bad example that would have been less alienating had it contained the word 'perhaps', given it's in the second." and also "it's just factually incorrect. (I am too autistic for this.)"
WHY IS IT LIKE THIS. Why are they so bad! Etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-13 06:47 am (UTC)Uuuugh. I'm sorry. <3 And yeah, been there, will be again.
Yesss re the Queers Case Study, but -- yes, aren't they, uh, trying.
*snort* Very.
I was amused at just how many items on the list of good distractions were similar or the same as Kate Bornstein's alternatives to suicide. Which isn't surprising -- a lot of them are also things I've seen on "things to do instead of self-harming" self-help lists I've seen floating around the internet, since before this book was published.
But it comes over very differently written by someone who's also dealing with "difficult emotions" writing for peers, vs professionals writing TO clients. Especially the advice to masturbate. Like, it's enlightened and all that that they're acknowledging it as a beneficial thing to do. But still weird coming from someone positioning themselves as an authority figure.
(Not that Kate Bornstein doesn't, but it's a very different sort of authority. It's your weird queer aunky who's been through this shit telling you about what helped hir, not some dudes with tertiary degrees who carefully don't tell you anything about their lives because professional boundaries.)
ISN'T IT BIZARRE. Like. I didn't laugh at it, exactly? But I do have it underlined, and annotated "This is a bad example that would have been less alienating had it contained the word 'perhaps', given it's in the second." and also "it's just factually incorrect. (I am too autistic for this.)"
*nod* I didn't go to the bookstore! I ordered it online. And it wasn't a few days later. I waited until it was on special! Nearly ten dollars off! And for all they know I am a psychologist who bought it to evaluate for their clients, not someone who needs help with difficult emotions themself!
What I found so hilarious was that they were describing the act of reading this book as a painful and unpleasant situation that we are in as the consequence of a long chain of events that began far in the past, a thing you might need to use radical acceptance to manage.
It's Tom Lehrer I'm thinking of -- it took me a while to remember the reference. That thing where the narrator breaks the fourth wall and condoles with or taunts the audience for having to suffer through the work itself. Lemony Snicket does it too.
My tragic tale I won't prolong
(Sing rickety-tickety-tin)
My tragic tale I won't prolong
And if you did not enjoy this song
You've yourself to blame if it's too long
You should never have let me begin, begin,
You should never have let me begin.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-10-14 09:42 am (UTC)I ORDERED IT ONLINE EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER FIRST CONSIDERING IT BECAUSE I KNEW SOME OTHER PEOPLE WORKING THROUGH IT AND WAS AWARE OF DBT AS A POSSIBLY USEFUL SKILL AND THIS AS A FORMAT OF BOOK THAT MIGHT WORK FOR ME. And just... YES re the Radical Acceptance to Manage This Awful Book. (Which, okay, okay, they are working on the principle that you're engaging in this therapy at best reluctantly, but EVEN SO.)
yesssssss Tom Lehrer