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.