DBT re-named

I am a cruiser (with regard to learning that is).  I always knew that, but I didn’t quite see the impact that has on me until I’d had chance to reflect on my last appointment with Joy.  The one where she told me that using skills by accident was not going to do me any good.  I hate to admit I was wrong, but I was.  Joy was absolutely right.

It took a few days for me to reach this enlightened position.  Despite being a bit discouraged at having done all my DBT wrong up to that point, I gave the new way a try.  In the morning I would pick a skill or two to try during the day.  It was really difficult.  I couldn’t remember what the various skills involved (I still can’t).  I couldn’t even remember what they were called at first, even though so far, I’m only practicing a third of the distraction skills and some mindfulness.

To help overcome this I wrote the headings and sub headings in a notebook application on my i-phone.  Since then, when my mind goes blank I’ve been able to refer to those notes, and to anyone watching it just looks like I’m checking a text message.  Doing this has meant that some of the new skills, and how to apply them is starting to sink in!  I feel like I am actually learning.  This is a new feeling.  I didn’t know I hadn’t actively learned before – not till I started to experience it this last week or so.

Obviously I have been able to learn before.  I passed exams with quite good grades at school, and I very much enjoyed doing my degree despite towards the end getting bored and handing my dissertation in unfinished.  I even referred to my time at university as a three year holiday!  I learned just by being in a lesson or lecture, with minimal additional reading, and a last minute blitz of writing the night before an essay hand in deadline.  This approach has served me well enough.  I even passed A level English without reading most of the texts.  I just bought revision notes which I read instead.  Thomas Hardy, Canterbury Tales and such like were just too boring.  I think I might be a habitual under-achiever!

I think this passive approach to learning, and not bothering if it’s boring has been the root of my problems with maths.  I couldn’t get the hang of it by passive absorption which has meant I believed I can’t do it.  It’s possibly time for me to re-evaluate this belief.  DBT has triggered in me a glimmer of hope that maths may not have to be the stumbling block that denies me the opportunity of a new career.  Watch this space on that one!

The same trait has affected other areas of my life.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned already that I’m a Christian.  I have been since I was sixteen and many times it has been my faith that has given me strength not to give in to suicidal thoughts and feelings.  However, much as I have never lost my faith I have found it difficult to feed my faith through prayer and reading in the way I would’ve liked.

Prayer is part and parcel of the distraction skills.  A prompt to pray is now in my  i-phone.  Because of the DBT homework I am starting to experience a change – an improvement in this area of my life.  So much so, I’m wondering if it might be appropriate to re-name DBT from Dialectic to,

“Discipleship and Behavioural Therapy.”

Towel Throwing

For the most part I’ve tried to keep my posts on here either, informative, creative or light.  I think on the whole I’ve managed to succeed with that.  I’ve avoided relating the most extreme examples of BPD in my life.

The thing is that isn’t a real picture of BPD.  The intense emotions I experience and inner distress I live with are horrible.  I have placed a lot of hope in my ability to make DBT work for me.  Today I seriously doubt if I can do it.  DBT is very structured and I’m not used to it.  I want to kick against it – I want to throw in the towel – a great big wet, sweaty bath sheet at that!  I want to have a tantrum and scream at the DBT team.  Why?  Because I’m useless at it!

Then, having done that, I want to carry on with DBT as if nothing had happened, and, since life’s not like that, I will have to pick up that smelly old towel and throw it in all over again!

Right and Wrong

I thought I was doing ok at DBT.  I was managing to do my diary sheets and homework.  I felt I was understanding most of the theory of the skills being taught in the group sessions.  I thought for a beginner I was doing ok.

I don’t have that many named DBT skills as yet but I was managing to record ones I’d tried on my diary sheet by reflecting on events of the day last thing at night.  With hindsight I would identify the skills I tried to use and record it.  I mentioned this was how I did my diary sheets to Joy in my one to one.  This triggered a big reaction.

 “Using DBT skills by accident won’t enable you to learn to use them when you need them” 

Joy asserted.  It took a good few minutes for her to finish making this point, by which time I was despairing and told her there was no point in reviewing my diary sheets as they were all wrong.  She spent at least as long again trying to convince me that they weren’t wrong she just wanted me to do them differently in future.  I still believe this is therapy jargon for wrong and so said I wasn’t convinced.  This led her to make the point again, that I had done what I knew how, so that was ok, and now she wanted me to do it differently.  In other words, it was wrong due to ignorance as opposed to wilful choice.

Sometimes it would be really nice to hold to a belief that “there is no right and wrong – just opportunities to learn and grow”.  If that were true I could accept what she says as true.  However, this idea is not practicable in real life.  In real life there has to be rights and wrongs.  Rules are essential for existence.  For example, the rules of gravity, if they get broken and become wrong the whole world is in big trouble!  The rules of football – take them away and you have a bunch of people aimlessly charging after a ball and running away with it wherever they like, however they like for as long as they like!  It is wrong to abuse a child, to inflict violence on someone, to take what belongs to someone else without consent – if it was ok we would not need prisons and perhaps the victims of such behaviours would not mind, and it wouldn’t hurt them. 

 

Ignorance does not make wrong things right.  It may well be a reason for a wrong – but the wrong is still a wrong.  When I played in my first ever football match I had never heard of the offside rule.  In my ignorance I went running up the pitch only to have the referee stop me in my tracks for being offside.  (By the way, for any men who may read this, I am female and I do now understand the offside rule).  The ref did not let me off the misdemeanor because I didn't know.  I had broken a rule, done a wrong in football.  I learned from that so I didn't do it again.

The existence of rights and wrongs if an unavoidable fact of life.  It's how you respond to them that matters.  This is one of my areas of weakness.  I hate being wrong, making mistakes, failing, not being good enough etc.  These things feed despair, self loathing, hopelessness, a sense of inferiority etc.  That was how I left my one to one with Joy.

With some water under the bridge the cloud of despair triggered by getting my DBT practice wrong has lifted, and now I have started to try and do it differently.  I aim to name a skill that I will try during the day.  It is much harder this way, and I soon found myself floundering to remember what I had to do for  particular skill.  I think I've cracked it now though.  My i phone  holds a summary of all the skills so I can select and revise the relevant one when I need it.  

I pray I am now really on the right track for DBT success.

Inconvenience

I am an inconvenience!

I don’t want to be.  I don’t try to be, in fact I actually try not to be – yet I am still an inconvenience.

This was true at home as a child – I caused my brother to be violent towards me and then when he hurt me I didn’t even have the decency to be quiet about it so the neighbours complained about my screaming.

It was true at school when I couldn’t or wouldn’t fit in with my peers.

It has been true in work and voluntary organisations I’ve been involved with.  When I see injustice and discrimination to myself or others I won’t tolerate it and choose to be an inconvenience to the antagonist.  In those circumstances I can be as inconvenient as a stone in your shoe when you need to run for a bus.  Being an inconvenience is not always a bad thing, not when it means you are a catalyst for positive change.

Just now however, I am simply an inconvenient inconvenience for Joy.  She has real difficulty finding a slot where she can offer me my weekly DBT appointment.  Her schedule is far too pressured to take into account my needs and personal circumstances.  Last time we met she offered me an appointment that was impossible.  She had offered me this slot before and I had explained quite clearly that the slot she proposed was totally impractical for me as it was after school finishing time and I have no child care.  Therefore, when she suggested it the following week I was disappointed that she had not listened to me.  She muttered about having to swap this and that and change other people’s appointments to slot me in at an earlier time.  After which I thought we agreed that for the most part this new slot would be a regular time and day so that in future I can make it and she doesn’t have to get flustered changing things round.

Today Joy called because she needed to cancel my appointment.  That’s ok – things happen and plans have to be changed.  The bit that has got to me is her comment,

“I’ll call you tomorrow to arrange another time!”  I thought it was arranged – same time, same place, next week!  No doubt she will offer me another, equally impossible time as she made it clear last time that she really didn’t have any other slots I could have, and the one she eventually changed it to was a hassle for her.

I don’t quite get the problem really.  When not doing home visits she is based in the building I attend.  I only need an hour of her time.  It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me that she could block me in for a regular slot.   

You may think at this point I am being a little selfish – why should I have my own slot and other people fit in around me?  The reason is this.  The geographical area that Joy covers and is based in is the opposite side of the county to where I live.  It’s a 50 minute drive there and 50 minutes back again.  I am her only DBT client, and as such I am her only client who does not live in her patch and has such a long way to travel.  I don’t think a bit of flexibility is inappropriate in the circumstances.

Why oh why oh why didn’t they link me with a keyworker based in my side of the county?  

Oh yes, I forgot – living where I do, I am just an inconvenience.

Rant over!

Happy Ever After

Sometimes I immediately know what I want to write.  This is not one of those occasions.  For more than a week now I have not been able to decide what to write.  Things are happening and have happened, so it isn’t that there is no stimulus for ideas.  It is just me in a “stuck” patch.  My plan to “unstuck” myself (re. writing at least) is this: keep writing until it turns into something readable.

Since my last blog I have had two DBT appointments and been on holiday.  I have a shed load of work to do compiling and editing a book ready for publication as soon as possible.  I have to complete an online maths course, and I am struggling to make sense of it (that’s an understatement by the way – the bit I am on is gobbeldy-gook to me).  This in turn has a serious impact on my future plans – if I can’t get to grips with this bit of maths than I’ll have to do a complete re-think.  We are part way through doing some serious decorating.  My dog smells and needs a major bath and groom.  The house is a mess, and I am in a “stuck” patch.  Not good!

Disneyland (or the idea of it) is a place where people tend to stand either in the “love it” or “hate it” camps – I don’t meet many people who stand in the middle ground.  I love roller-coasters and theme parks so despite finding crowded places difficult I am in the love it camp along with Jenny and her older brothers and sisters.  Jo is firmly in the hate it camp – or he thought so anyway.

We have just returned from Disneyland Paris.  Jo is a Disneyland convert.  Despite his dislike of rides and theme parks he actually had a really good time.  I even have a photo of him laughing and smiling on a ride!  For me it excelled all my expectations.  The rides, being built into a set became an intense experience rather than just a ride.  The atmosphere exudes the Disney ideal of happy ever after and the baddies getting their come-uppance.  It is like a bubble, or a parallel universe of fun.  During the evening sound and light show I was so mesmerised it was like being a child where Disney cartoons reflect real life and you still expect there to be a happy ever after.

I think my current stuckness relates to that escape from reality.  I don’t want to be back!  I know the Disney experience is not real life.  Real life is a slog.  There are more tragedies, hardships, disappointments and injustices than happy ever afters.  Real life is hard and it hurts.  It hurts so much I feel I can’t bear it.  I have to do whatever works to ease that distress.  For me that is self-harm of one sort or another.

This is changing however.  I have only just started my DBT adventure and already I have embryonic skills that have helped me reduce self-harm without denying or repressing those urges.  Perhaps through DBT, with hard work and support from the team I might be able to find my own bit of genuine  “happy ever after”.