A Safe Place

As part of the DBT I am being encouraged to develop a personal safety plan.  This a list of strategies, things and people that are tried and tested sources of relief if I’m very distressed and likely to self-harm.  It sounds like it should be something useful to do, but I don’t like it.

It’s very existence makes me feel more of a loser than I already am.  I hate it.  I can’t imagine I will ever use it, and yet I have dutifully started to fill it in.  One of the group facilitators told us that we should stick it in a prominent place like the fridge or cupboard with the tea and coffee.  I think I managed to maintain an impassive expression at that suggestion while inside I was yelling “No Way” and imagining the sort of place I wanted to “stick it” instead!  Imagine the shame I would feel having such a window to my weaknesses and failings on public display.  What sort of questions might Jenny ask when she saw it?  No, the safety plan is not for me.

However, I am trying to fill it in.  The first part is to write down my safe place.  An imaginary or real place where I am totally and utterly, 100% safe.  This was my first point of failure!  I cannot think of or imagine a place where 100%, total safety is possible (excluding the grave that is).

In the end I remembered a picture I had drawn for something else on the theme of hope.  I can’t put it here as it is a self-portrait, but it shows me resting in a cloud of things that engender hope, like love and faith.  At the same time there are bricks of all the bad stuff such as abuse, anger and hate hurtling down towards me on the cloud.  The point being, that whatever comes my way, hope remains even if I can’t see or feel it,  and that is as safe as it gets in this life.

I showed this to Joy when she asked if I’d started my safety plan.  She basically said I had to change that picture because it wasn’t safe enough.  I told her I don’t believe a safer place exists.  We discussed it for a while before she closed the conversation with,

“We’ll bang out heads together on that one another time!”  

 What fun!  I shall look forward to that.  In the meantime I have deleted the picture from the document, and filed the picture less safety plan in the back of my DBT folder where as far as I’m concerned, it can stay..

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”.

Angry Birds

Diary sheets! 

Apparently these are an essential part of DBT and I will need to do one every week till the end.  Joy had given me one at the last session saying I may as well get started.  The idea is that as I gain the skills I will learn and apply them more often and the giving in to the self destructive urges will ultimately stop as the urges become less intense and less frequent.

Fair enough!

I’d dutifully recorded my moods and urges to self-harm alongside things I did that helped.  At the next session we looked at what I’d recorded.  I had listed as one of the things that helped when the urge to self-harm was getting intense, 

“playing stupid computer games”

Mistake!  In Joy’s words,

“If it helps it’s not stupid!” 

I can see what she’s saying.  If faffing with a game prevents me from acting on powerful urges to self-harm, the game has a useful purpose.  What was a silly, pointless, frustrating, time-wasting game of “Angry Birds” became a helpful, even therapeutic Angry Birds.   

What a great investment that 69p app for my i-phone was!

Tale of a Shaggy Dog - part 5

Jake's closing comment

After the day I went upstairs by myself we were even closer.  She didn’t go to school as much after that.  She would dress for school, go out and come back once her mum left for work so we had whole days at home together.  That was lovely!  It was good to be with her and not locked in the kitchen all day.  She still seemed sad, but she kept her promise to me.  When she was really sad she started to get angry.  One time she even kicked me – I was scared and she was devastated.  After that she used to beat her arm against furniture.  She said she was trying to break it, and got upset when she couldn’t.  I didn’t really understand, but like she stuck around for me, so I stuck by her.

When she was sixteen her brother left home. It was a bit more peaceful after that.

When she was nearly eighteen I became ill.  My heart and kidneys were failing and I asked a friend to write this down to give her because I knew I would be leaving her soon.  I needed her to know I’m glad she stuck around for me and that I hope and pray someone does the same for her.

Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance is one of the most helpful aspects of DBT (if I’ve understood it correctly).

In essence radical acceptance is the ability to accept a person as they are, including their behaviours and difficulties and, at the same time, without undermining that acceptance pushing for change.

I guess that’s as clear as mud?  I’ll try again….

In response to intense emotions I cut myself.  This behaviour works.  It diffuses and reduces the emotions leaving me able to function more normally.  A DBT therapist will (and I’ve yet to get to this bit with Joy) will accept that in the light of past experience this is a logical response because it is a tried and tested coping strategy.  The therapist will still promote change by giving alternative skills to use in similar situations.  I guess the end result will be when in that situation I will have more than one option of how to deal with it instead of going straight to my cutting kit.

I really like the sound of radical acceptance simply because the last time I tried CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), much as it made some sense, the starting premise of “You have faulty thinking – your thoughts are wrong – if you had better thoughts you wouldn’t be in this state” was very destructive.  After a few weeks of trying with limited success, and on-going pressure to purge my head of all kinds of distorted thoughts, catastrophising and negative thinking I was ready to quit.  Quit not just the therapy, but life itself.  How could I change thoughts and ideas that were true, into lies (however positive they may seem).  How could I kid myself into being someone I am not.  My failure to grasp these skills just proved the hopelessness of my ability to change and increased the self-hatred and despair I often live with.  Not good!

It is a tragedy for me that knowledge is not the answer.  In my head I understand the concept of radical acceptance and much of what DBT is about – but I can’t live it.  Knowledge without skill is useless.