[DBT] Advanced Distress Tolerance Skills
Jul. 27th, 2019 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett[I am using The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook.]
This chapter is subtitled improve the moment. What it doesn't do, as far as I can tell, is make clear -- at any point -- that IMPROVE is one of Linehan's original acronyms, because she is very fond of acronyms that, in theory, act as mnemonics. (I assume this works for some people! It doesn't work super well for me.) It expands to Imagery/Meaning/Pray/Relax/One thing at a time/Vacation/Encouragement; I think I prefer the way my workbook structures it, talking you through a set of smaller exercises building up to writing an emergency coping plan.
Safe-place visualisation
The idea here is to imagine "a peaceful, safe place where you can relax", on the grounds that "your brain and body often can't tell the difference between what's really happening to you and what you're just imagining". This... is of minimal use for me as a tool to manage distress in most circumstances, because if I don't feel safe then... I don't feel safe to dial down the hypervigilance of my surroundings enough to actually engage usefully with this as a tool.
Plus I'm aphantasic - I only actually manage to visualise anything when I'm exhausted enough that I've started hallucinating - so, you know, I tried it, it's very occasionally helpful (if I'm at home and I know I'm freaking out over Functionally Nothing), but it's not ever going to be a key part of the rotation.
Cue-controlled relaxation
This one, however, I can do: it's essentially conditioning yourself to physiologically relax in response to a cue word, which doesn't require me to stop paying attention to my surroundings, but does actually help you approach the world in a slightly less adrenaline-soaked fashion.
I had, to my amusement, already been doing this (though it took me a while to work out what my cue-words were); at this point the main issue is maintaining the conditioning, which, hey, I can do this when I'm Only Slightly Stressed, and then it works better when I'm actually losing my shit, much like meditation. Hurrah for this.
Rediscover your values
This is all the self-affirmation shit (e.g. 1, 2): the bit where writing out what matters to and motivates you improves resilience and general capacity to learn.
The workbook provides a slightly more involved exercise here: the Valued Living Questionnaire of Wilson (2002) and Wilson & Murrell (2004). I did not find the categories here super helpful -- they... seem to assume a fairly allistic and monogamous approach to life -- but the bit that really tripped me up was "identify one intention for each of those valued components, which will help make your life more fulfilling" (emphasis mine). On reflection, this was in part because I'd already done a lot of this work as part of the grieving proces around disability, and in part because I couldn't e.g. see how to set myself physiotherapy goals (components "Recreation and fun" and "Self-care") without setting myself up to fail.
I spent a little time down the rabbit hole of "okay, what does giving myself a star-chart look like?" (with what was, in retrospect, a hankering for Simone Giertz's Every Day calendar), eventually filled out the subsequent worksheet ("A component of my life that I value is... My intention for this component is... The committed actions that I'm willing to take include the following (be sure to note when you'll begin these actions): ..."), and have subsequently... not done a great job of keeping up with any of it, whoops. But: I have done a bunch of work on why I'm not managing that, I've got systems in place that are helping me get much better at adjacent bits (largely via Regularly), and this might be an exercise it's worth me revisiting. Hmm. There's a note to self.
Identify your higher power
Across the top of this page I have scrawled GOD HATES FACTS.
I was particularly dubious about engaging with this exercise, given my theological background, but the workbook does in fact gently say it's okay if you just wanna do a humanism, so that's pretty much what I did here: reoriented myself, again, toward the power of stories; the nihilism of nothing you do matters, so all that matters is what you do; and the sanctity of choice. All of which help up my compassion and patience, and while some of the practices I identified as useful here have slipped, others have grown up.
There's then a checklist of activities, and you're encouraged to tick off the ones you're willing to do (or at least try), which... I did with a whole bunch of caveats, because fundamentally this section of the book is not aimed at A Scientist. Like: "Look up at the stars. ... You are connected to the stars... Now imagine your legs stretching down through the floor like giant tree trunks, going all the way to thecener of the Earth. Imagine these roots tapping into the energy that drives the planet. Feel your body fill with confidence as your legs absorb the golden energy flowing up from the Earth." "Think about our planet Earth", which I have grouchily annotated I'M A GEOLOGIST. Also sarkily scribbled next to: "On a subatomic scale, there isn't much difference between you and many other life forms"; "Everything about you is largely determined by your DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the instructions that are found in every cell in your body. Yet amazingly, each set of instructions that creates every part of your body is composed of just four chemical elements that are repeated in different combinations."
But, you know, this is quite a neat illustration of the bit where you get to resent the shit out of the work, and you get to be snide about it, and having and expressing those feelings is positive and part of the point, and having once been sarcastic I'm a bit more willing to take a deep breath and extend compassion and remodel the exercise according to what they were going for rather than what they... actually said. Which is probably, honestly, more useful active engagement than just following the instructions as written would be, and is certainly excellent practice in engaging constructively with a frustrating experience, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
Take a time-out
Basically my only significant criticism of this section was aimed, unsurprisingly, at the sentence "You need to take care of yourself, and that doesn't mean you're selfish." Yes it does! writes I, It's just that being selfish is not inherently bad!
I appreciated the suggestions for what this might look like: One Nice Thing, taking a walk and photosynthesising a bit, making a nice food; I noted also that I could use breathing meditations, physio, and brushing my hair as additional activities.
Live in the present moment
Okay, this is where all of my opinions about the distinction between meditation and dissociation come up; I've got a note to myself to write about this for Dreamwidth at some point, and I suppose I'd might as well at least sketch it here.
Broadly: as far as I can tell, a lot of the reason that Meditation As It Is Generally Discussed is a Bad Idea For People Prone To Dissociation is less to do with meditation per se, which can be perhaps more usefully conceptualised (depending on the tradition, but bear with me) as being about inhabiting one's body and the present more fully, and more about the ways it's talked about, in terms of "emptying your mind" and "being still".
The latter does in fact sound a lot like a dissociative state! I am entirely on board with being super fucking careful about uncritically telling people who are dissociating that they are doing the right thing and should keep doing that! But for me meditation is the exact opposite of dissociation and, in fact, a useful tool to combat it, in that when meditating I focus on the experience of embodiment, on breathing and on my heartbeat and on how my skin feels and on sensory input. It is, in my practice, about non-judgemental holistic presence, in stark contrast to the going-far-away absence and abandonment of dissociation, and I'm not really sure how to talk about this better in an accessible way but I think it is a conversation worth having.
(And the ways I do it might also be bad for people and indeed I know people they are bad for! But I maintain that the way meditation gets discussed in pop-psychology settings is probably misleading and unhelpful.)
There's a couplefew suggested exercises here that you're probably mostly familiar with: paying attention to where you are right now, e.g. by listening attentively to your surroundings for five minutes, and mindful breathing. All of which I tried, following the instructions (once modified for safety) at least once, and took a call from there on whether they were (for me) worth persisting with.
Using self-encouraging coping thoughts/Self-affirming statements
Acclimatising myself to this was deeply uncomfortable, but on the basis that we get better at what we practise -- that saying things makes them more true -- all of which I know from the self-reinforcement of depressive thoughts... again, this was one for taking a deep breath and at least trying it and noticing how I felt, under all the shame and the sounds fake but okay.
There were a whole bunch of suggested phrases to try out: "This situation won't last forever", "I've survived other situations like this before, and I'll survive this one too"; "I can be anxious and still deal with the situation". There's encouragement to come up with your own. I think there's a lot of overlap, here, with validation, and in fact the phrase I've ended up using most regularly is some variation on "hey, sweetheart, I know you're scared, that's understandable, and we got this." I also go through phases of using the "I'm scared of..."-->"I'm excited about..." trick. And, of course, "survivor means surviving" is one of my talismans here.
I have quibbles with several of the workbook's example coping thoughts, but this is absolutely a skill I use pretty much daily and that has unequivocally improved my life since... 2016, which was the point at which I first got to this section of the workbook. A thing I really liked: after the examples, there's a worksheet for you to fill out with coping thoughts that you deployed in anger. This helped me a lot with ingraining the habit, with noticing both opportunities to use the skill and how I felt about trying it out.
Self-affirming statements are separated out as a distinct skill, but I don't experience them as meaningfully different. "I will try to make good choices" is something I say to myself both in isolation, as I get up in the morning, and in response to Challenging Circumstances. Any distinction I draw feels both artificial and superficial, but hey, if it works for you.
Radical acceptance
This is difficult to sum up, as evidenced by the fact that the example case study is... not, I think, actually saying quite what the authors intended it to and indeed my frustration with the last time they tried to talk about this, but there is a whole lot here about being able to sit with something upsetting, and explore its nuances, and think non-judgementally -- and indeed compassionately -- about what happened, and how it happened, in detail, and sorting through one's impulsive reactions to reach a considered response.
I had a lot more to say on this worksheet than I managed to fit into the allotted space, even with my tiny handwriting, so I've got note scrawled to myself up and down the margins, too. It's a format that I've now largely internalised, I think -- I still often need to work through it with a spotter rather than solo, but as a workflow it's been enormously helpful to me. The series of questions provided by the book are basically an expanded structured version of the Serenity Prayer:
"What role did you play in creating this situation?" is the question I am always most resistant to, most unhappy about -- but when I take a deep breath, when I refocus on it as a neutral, non-judgemental question that does not assign blame or responsibility, it's also often one of the most useful: a lot of what falls out is "I didn't state a boundary clearly when it first came up", or "I did not discuss expectations in advance and then felt caught between conflicting priorities", or "I deliberately suppressed my distress until I couldn't any more, and then it exploded, and maybe it would have been possible to handle everything more gracefully if I'd honoured my discomfort sooner". I also, however, felt the very strong need to add a question to this framework:
Maybe I want to reframe that, now, more towards "How was this situation improved by my use of existing skills?" -- but this explicit recognition of how hard I've tried, even when I've not achieved an outcome I'd consider optimal, has been really valuable to me.
Consciously extending compassion to myself -- seeing where I've tried and where I haven't lived up to my standards for myself and where I can improve -- is difficult and scary and painful work, where splitting would be much easier, and simultaneously is the thing that has made the biggest positive difference to me. But hey: fear comes in flavours, and this is better.
Create new coping strategies
This chapter finishes with several pages of worksheet designed to help you create a personal coping plan for emergencies, both in company (helpful or unhelpful!) and by yourself.
I scrawled all over this, with varying levels of irritation -- "Unhealthy outcomesExpected outcome" in the columns after both "Old coping strategies" and "New coping strategies" -- but my wallet contains a wee laminated card, with Stuff To Do At Home and Stuff To Do When Out And About, with Coping Skills and Things That Make Me Feel Better listed from quickest-and-easiest to most-involved. I don't actually refer to it very often, but I definitely find it reassuring to know it's there, for when I can't remember the steps. I feel intensely vulnerable about the actual details of my list, so I'm not going to share it here, but on balance I think that's probably a good thing: the idea of posting it feels like painting targets on myselt, but that's because it's effective.
It is also a tangible commitment to (do my best to) take care of myself. That helps, too.
This chapter is subtitled improve the moment. What it doesn't do, as far as I can tell, is make clear -- at any point -- that IMPROVE is one of Linehan's original acronyms, because she is very fond of acronyms that, in theory, act as mnemonics. (I assume this works for some people! It doesn't work super well for me.) It expands to Imagery/Meaning/Pray/Relax/One thing at a time/Vacation/Encouragement; I think I prefer the way my workbook structures it, talking you through a set of smaller exercises building up to writing an emergency coping plan.
Safe-place visualisation
The idea here is to imagine "a peaceful, safe place where you can relax", on the grounds that "your brain and body often can't tell the difference between what's really happening to you and what you're just imagining". This... is of minimal use for me as a tool to manage distress in most circumstances, because if I don't feel safe then... I don't feel safe to dial down the hypervigilance of my surroundings enough to actually engage usefully with this as a tool.
Plus I'm aphantasic - I only actually manage to visualise anything when I'm exhausted enough that I've started hallucinating - so, you know, I tried it, it's very occasionally helpful (if I'm at home and I know I'm freaking out over Functionally Nothing), but it's not ever going to be a key part of the rotation.
Cue-controlled relaxation
This one, however, I can do: it's essentially conditioning yourself to physiologically relax in response to a cue word, which doesn't require me to stop paying attention to my surroundings, but does actually help you approach the world in a slightly less adrenaline-soaked fashion.
I had, to my amusement, already been doing this (though it took me a while to work out what my cue-words were); at this point the main issue is maintaining the conditioning, which, hey, I can do this when I'm Only Slightly Stressed, and then it works better when I'm actually losing my shit, much like meditation. Hurrah for this.
Rediscover your values
This is all the self-affirmation shit (e.g. 1, 2): the bit where writing out what matters to and motivates you improves resilience and general capacity to learn.
The workbook provides a slightly more involved exercise here: the Valued Living Questionnaire of Wilson (2002) and Wilson & Murrell (2004). I did not find the categories here super helpful -- they... seem to assume a fairly allistic and monogamous approach to life -- but the bit that really tripped me up was "identify one intention for each of those valued components, which will help make your life more fulfilling" (emphasis mine). On reflection, this was in part because I'd already done a lot of this work as part of the grieving proces around disability, and in part because I couldn't e.g. see how to set myself physiotherapy goals (components "Recreation and fun" and "Self-care") without setting myself up to fail.
I spent a little time down the rabbit hole of "okay, what does giving myself a star-chart look like?" (with what was, in retrospect, a hankering for Simone Giertz's Every Day calendar), eventually filled out the subsequent worksheet ("A component of my life that I value is... My intention for this component is... The committed actions that I'm willing to take include the following (be sure to note when you'll begin these actions): ..."), and have subsequently... not done a great job of keeping up with any of it, whoops. But: I have done a bunch of work on why I'm not managing that, I've got systems in place that are helping me get much better at adjacent bits (largely via Regularly), and this might be an exercise it's worth me revisiting. Hmm. There's a note to self.
Identify your higher power
Across the top of this page I have scrawled GOD HATES FACTS.
I was particularly dubious about engaging with this exercise, given my theological background, but the workbook does in fact gently say it's okay if you just wanna do a humanism, so that's pretty much what I did here: reoriented myself, again, toward the power of stories; the nihilism of nothing you do matters, so all that matters is what you do; and the sanctity of choice. All of which help up my compassion and patience, and while some of the practices I identified as useful here have slipped, others have grown up.
There's then a checklist of activities, and you're encouraged to tick off the ones you're willing to do (or at least try), which... I did with a whole bunch of caveats, because fundamentally this section of the book is not aimed at A Scientist. Like: "Look up at the stars. ... You are connected to the stars... Now imagine your legs stretching down through the floor like giant tree trunks, going all the way to thecener of the Earth. Imagine these roots tapping into the energy that drives the planet. Feel your body fill with confidence as your legs absorb the golden energy flowing up from the Earth." "Think about our planet Earth", which I have grouchily annotated I'M A GEOLOGIST. Also sarkily scribbled next to: "On a subatomic scale, there isn't much difference between you and many other life forms"; "Everything about you is largely determined by your DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the instructions that are found in every cell in your body. Yet amazingly, each set of instructions that creates every part of your body is composed of just four chemical elements that are repeated in different combinations."
But, you know, this is quite a neat illustration of the bit where you get to resent the shit out of the work, and you get to be snide about it, and having and expressing those feelings is positive and part of the point, and having once been sarcastic I'm a bit more willing to take a deep breath and extend compassion and remodel the exercise according to what they were going for rather than what they... actually said. Which is probably, honestly, more useful active engagement than just following the instructions as written would be, and is certainly excellent practice in engaging constructively with a frustrating experience, rather than dismissing it out of hand.
Take a time-out
Basically my only significant criticism of this section was aimed, unsurprisingly, at the sentence "You need to take care of yourself, and that doesn't mean you're selfish." Yes it does! writes I, It's just that being selfish is not inherently bad!
I appreciated the suggestions for what this might look like: One Nice Thing, taking a walk and photosynthesising a bit, making a nice food; I noted also that I could use breathing meditations, physio, and brushing my hair as additional activities.
Live in the present moment
Okay, this is where all of my opinions about the distinction between meditation and dissociation come up; I've got a note to myself to write about this for Dreamwidth at some point, and I suppose I'd might as well at least sketch it here.
Broadly: as far as I can tell, a lot of the reason that Meditation As It Is Generally Discussed is a Bad Idea For People Prone To Dissociation is less to do with meditation per se, which can be perhaps more usefully conceptualised (depending on the tradition, but bear with me) as being about inhabiting one's body and the present more fully, and more about the ways it's talked about, in terms of "emptying your mind" and "being still".
The latter does in fact sound a lot like a dissociative state! I am entirely on board with being super fucking careful about uncritically telling people who are dissociating that they are doing the right thing and should keep doing that! But for me meditation is the exact opposite of dissociation and, in fact, a useful tool to combat it, in that when meditating I focus on the experience of embodiment, on breathing and on my heartbeat and on how my skin feels and on sensory input. It is, in my practice, about non-judgemental holistic presence, in stark contrast to the going-far-away absence and abandonment of dissociation, and I'm not really sure how to talk about this better in an accessible way but I think it is a conversation worth having.
(And the ways I do it might also be bad for people and indeed I know people they are bad for! But I maintain that the way meditation gets discussed in pop-psychology settings is probably misleading and unhelpful.)
There's a couplefew suggested exercises here that you're probably mostly familiar with: paying attention to where you are right now, e.g. by listening attentively to your surroundings for five minutes, and mindful breathing. All of which I tried, following the instructions (once modified for safety) at least once, and took a call from there on whether they were (for me) worth persisting with.
Using self-encouraging coping thoughts/Self-affirming statements
Acclimatising myself to this was deeply uncomfortable, but on the basis that we get better at what we practise -- that saying things makes them more true -- all of which I know from the self-reinforcement of depressive thoughts... again, this was one for taking a deep breath and at least trying it and noticing how I felt, under all the shame and the sounds fake but okay.
There were a whole bunch of suggested phrases to try out: "This situation won't last forever", "I've survived other situations like this before, and I'll survive this one too"; "I can be anxious and still deal with the situation". There's encouragement to come up with your own. I think there's a lot of overlap, here, with validation, and in fact the phrase I've ended up using most regularly is some variation on "hey, sweetheart, I know you're scared, that's understandable, and we got this." I also go through phases of using the "I'm scared of..."-->"I'm excited about..." trick. And, of course, "survivor means surviving" is one of my talismans here.
I have quibbles with several of the workbook's example coping thoughts, but this is absolutely a skill I use pretty much daily and that has unequivocally improved my life since... 2016, which was the point at which I first got to this section of the workbook. A thing I really liked: after the examples, there's a worksheet for you to fill out with coping thoughts that you deployed in anger. This helped me a lot with ingraining the habit, with noticing both opportunities to use the skill and how I felt about trying it out.
Self-affirming statements are separated out as a distinct skill, but I don't experience them as meaningfully different. "I will try to make good choices" is something I say to myself both in isolation, as I get up in the morning, and in response to Challenging Circumstances. Any distinction I draw feels both artificial and superficial, but hey, if it works for you.
Radical acceptance
The word dialectic (in dialectical behavior therapy) means to balance and compare to things that appear very different or even contradictory. In dialectical behavior therapy, the balance is between change and acceptance (Linehan, 1993). You need to change the behaviors in your life that are creating more suffering for yourself and others while simultaneously also accepting yourself the way you are. This might sound contradictory, but it's a key part of this treatment. Dialectical behavior therapy depends on acceptance and change, not acceptance or change.
This is difficult to sum up, as evidenced by the fact that the example case study is... not, I think, actually saying quite what the authors intended it to and indeed my frustration with the last time they tried to talk about this, but there is a whole lot here about being able to sit with something upsetting, and explore its nuances, and think non-judgementally -- and indeed compassionately -- about what happened, and how it happened, in detail, and sorting through one's impulsive reactions to reach a considered response.
I had a lot more to say on this worksheet than I managed to fit into the allotted space, even with my tiny handwriting, so I've got note scrawled to myself up and down the margins, too. It's a format that I've now largely internalised, I think -- I still often need to work through it with a spotter rather than solo, but as a workflow it's been enormously helpful to me. The series of questions provided by the book are basically an expanded structured version of the Serenity Prayer:
- What happened in this distressing situation?
- What past events happened that led up to this situation?
- What role did you play in creating this situation?
- What roles did other people play in creating this situation?
- What do you have control of in this situation?
- What don't you have control of in this situation?
- What was your response to this situation?
- How did your response affect your own thoughts and feelings?
- How did your response affect the thoughts and feelings of other people?
- How could you have changed your response to this situation so that it led to less suffering for yourself and others?
- How could the situation have occurred differently if you had decided to radically accept the situation?
"What role did you play in creating this situation?" is the question I am always most resistant to, most unhappy about -- but when I take a deep breath, when I refocus on it as a neutral, non-judgemental question that does not assign blame or responsibility, it's also often one of the most useful: a lot of what falls out is "I didn't state a boundary clearly when it first came up", or "I did not discuss expectations in advance and then felt caught between conflicting priorities", or "I deliberately suppressed my distress until I couldn't any more, and then it exploded, and maybe it would have been possible to handle everything more gracefully if I'd honoured my discomfort sooner". I also, however, felt the very strong need to add a question to this framework:
- How could this situation have been worse if I'd not used existing skills?
Maybe I want to reframe that, now, more towards "How was this situation improved by my use of existing skills?" -- but this explicit recognition of how hard I've tried, even when I've not achieved an outcome I'd consider optimal, has been really valuable to me.
Consciously extending compassion to myself -- seeing where I've tried and where I haven't lived up to my standards for myself and where I can improve -- is difficult and scary and painful work, where splitting would be much easier, and simultaneously is the thing that has made the biggest positive difference to me. But hey: fear comes in flavours, and this is better.
Create new coping strategies
This chapter finishes with several pages of worksheet designed to help you create a personal coping plan for emergencies, both in company (helpful or unhelpful!) and by yourself.
I scrawled all over this, with varying levels of irritation -- "
It is also a tangible commitment to (do my best to) take care of myself. That helps, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-27 10:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-27 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-27 11:41 pm (UTC)You're welcome - thank you for saying!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 12:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 01:50 am (UTC)<3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 01:30 am (UTC)when meditating I focus on the experience of embodiment, on breathing and on my heartbeat and on how my skin feels and on sensory input
This is how I meditate too. Thank you for putting into words why the standard instructions don't work for me. I've always thought I wasn't really meditating, but ... maybe I am. I do know that sitting and paying attention and having time where I officially can't do it wrong has been compelling enough that I've been doing it daily on my own for 15+ years.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 01:52 am (UTC)This is definitely entirely consistent with mindfulness-based meditation! And, I mean, in the religious tradition I was raised in it's also Normal and Expected to have a focussed physical activity and Theme To Reflect On, so I'm pretty sure that's a widespread feature, though I haven't actually gone digging through the history.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 01:43 am (UTC)What really shook me about the meditation classes I took in... 2012, I think - was that they *didn't* focus on emptying one's mind. The word 'empty' never comes up, not once, on any of the guided meditation tracks! Stillness does, I think, but much less often on those professional-designed-for-group-therapy tracks than it does on, say, the Bhuddify app.
Let us not even talk about the amount of aggressive conversations I've had with people who, in response to me saying 'you know, meditation helps me with something similar', want to SHOUT about how they CANNOT EMPTY THEIR MIND THEY HAVE ADHD, or whatever. I mean. I kind of did the same at my first shrink, I know where it's coming from, but still... it's immensely frustrating, and kind of invalidating, to constantly hear that My Coping Strategy isn't what I actually experienced it as (I get this even if I'm *not* giving advice. Me: ugh I should go back to meditating. Someone: I CAN NEVER DO THAT SILENCE IN THE BRAIN IS HORRIFYING. Me... okay then).
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 04:47 pm (UTC)(ALSO I have your other comment open in tabs, response is forthcoming, just need to congeal my brain enough that words.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 03:35 am (UTC)(Mediation that works will always involve Something Not Me Based to focus on, be it music or the warm water of a shower or whatever.)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:40 pm (UTC)<3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 04:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 07:26 am (UTC)Yes good <3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 08:54 am (UTC)It helped a lot, I have to say, and was a helpful tool. If nothing else, going through the material so that everyone from wildly different background with wildly different psychiatric diagnoses could understand and engage. It was a fab time even if the book still gets a glare every now and then.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 03:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-28 09:05 pm (UTC)I spent a few years visiting a local Buddhist sangha and listening to their podcasts. It was worth it partly because I learned there are many many ways to meditate. It's quite unhelpful when Western-style mindfulness training focuses on a single modality like "empty your mind" (which puts me straight to sleep) or "focus on your breathing" (which ramps up my anxiety).
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:49 pm (UTC)mighthavesomefaults, but I'm still a good person."happenedwere done to mein the past, I'm still a good person."in the past, I'm still a good person."And yeah, I... am hit-and-miss with "focus on your breathing": when it works for me it REALLY works (like, playing the horn or singing are both really good for me if I'm having a panic and can make myself get started because 1. rhythm and 2. forcing better breathing patterns), but esp when e.g. I'm anxious because breathing hurts I... really need other approaches.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-01 09:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-29 02:40 am (UTC)i appreciated this post.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-29 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-29 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-29 06:36 pm (UTC)<3
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 11:39 am (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
I think there's a more recent remake (by google?) someplace, but I can't find it just now.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-31 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-08-12 10:53 pm (UTC)My therapist has me fiddling with some DBT principles, and I'm struggling pretty hard, most especially with the language used. "Emotion regulation" and "radical acceptance" are terms guaranteed to make me look like a Halloween cat. And the acronyms! OMG the acronyms! "PLEASE MASTER"??? Seriously??? Plus the elements of that particular acronym, which vilify certain foods (specifically sugar and fat, which, other than a deficit of them causing problems, studies generally show do NOT affect mood for most people), treat all alcohol and "drugs" (a grossly imprecise term, and far too general, as there are "drugs" that help stabilize mood) as bad and automatically destabilizing, and assume that exercise and sleep are readily accessible to everyone.
Aaaaaand I just hit a bit where someone who is angry is advised to speak softly and do something nice for someone, and this is the point at which I get really mad.
No. I was told to do this kind of thing over and over again growing up a "nice Southern girl", and whatever this article I'm reading may claim, that absolutely has the effect of denying the emotion. At least for me. No. I get to be mad, and I get to express that I'm mad, and fuck ANYTHING that tells me otherwise. Getting to the point of being done with being mad and moving on, sure. But speaking softly does NOTHING to help me do that, and I think that I'm not the only one for whom that's true.
Soooo... I guess it's safe to say I'm having a very mixed response to this.