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<p>Don’t worry about prying. If I don’t feel like answering a question, I just won’t, but I won’t be upset by anything you ask.</p>
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<p>First, I will explain how the various skills help. Then I will explain how the personal sessions and classes help. This is going to be another reallllly long message.</p>
<p>Skills-</p>
<p>Improving the moment:
There are times when the moment is just ****ty, and instead of wallowing in it, savoring it (as people with BPD may be used to doing – the pain becomes familiar), you do something to distract yourself. In some sorts of therapy, and even later on in DBT, you work on dealing with your pain instead of distracting yourself from it, but this is a place where you start just to get to a place where you’re even sane enough to do the other things. For example, one time I really wanted to cut myself, so I headed to the kitchen to grab something but suddenly I remembered to DISTRACT and instead of grabbing something, I slipped on my shoes, picked up my purse, and went to a movie.</p>
<p>Mindfulness:
This is being present in the moment without judging. It helps because I was previously caught up in my emotions instead of being present, being there… even while doing pretty much what I felt like in the moment, I would also spend a huge amount of time in pain from torturing myself about regrets from the past and worries about the future. I would also think, “This moment is so horrible, it’s beyond what I can handle,” or even if I wasn’t thinking that in so many words, it was definitely the core idea about what was happening, and when you tell yourself something is unbearable, it becomes unbearable. Another part of mindfulness is exercises. You might sit still and pay attention to your breathing or all the sounds around you for a while. It’s very hard to just be present like that. Or you might imagine a stream where every thought you have is a leaf floating away, and you just notice and let go of each thought without beating yourself for having the thoughts.</p>
<p>Which leads to…
Emotion regulation:
This is more advanced in that it builds on skills of mindfulness. The first thing to do is to recognize what emotions you’re actually having. I know it sounds silly, but before I did this, I hadn’t the faintest clue what I was feeling except “bad” and “good”. I would confuse sadness, anger, shame, guilt, confusion, embarrassment, regret, and so forth. So I’d end up being angry at someone else and then I thought I felt ashamed so I’d hurt myself. Or I was sad about something and I’d yell at someone because I thought I was angry. Eventually you learn how to sit through your emotions, to just be present while they happen. I might be extremely hurt by something my boyfriend says, and I’ll just go to the bedroom and lie down in bed and think, “I feel very hurt, and it’s making me angry.” It’s funny but it really helps the emotions to dissipate. In the past, I felt (and still sometimes feel) that my emotions were crashing over me like an immense hurricane, throwing me every which way. I also felt that they happened to me rather than being a part of me. Another emotion regulation thing, when you’ve gotten pretty advanced, is to sit there and purposely think about something upsetting to you… and you just pay attention to it all and wait until the emotion changes or goes away.</p>
<p>Interpersonal skills:
This is a big one. One of the big things is validation. You learn how to recognize and think about what the other person is feeling, and you also learn to self-validate when others won’t do it for you. One big borderline thing is a desire to have others validate you and infinitely love you and never be mad at you. So in the past if someone got mad at me, I might scream and go hurt myself and sob and feel entirely broken inside. I would break things. The last thing like this I remember doing, and it was somewhat mild compared to other things I’ve done, was to throw my dessert on the floor and stomp on it when I had a fight with my boyfriend (which had been instigated by me interpreting a mild criticism as a horrible indictment). Another thing you learn is how to stand up for yourself, not by arguing or anything, but by examining whether your need is valid and then firmly (rather than angrily) stating what that need is. Of course, someone doesn’t have to fulfill that need, and when they don’t you need to deal with it (and there are a variety of ways to do that that DBT covers).</p>
<p>Personal sessions and classes:
They help intensely because, unlike a workbook, the advice is tailored to me. In the personal sessions that’s especially the case – I can be like, “Well, this situation happened, and I handled it in an unhelpful (not “bad”! don’t judge! and if you judge, don’t judge yourself for judging haha) way,” and then we can talk about it for as long as necessary, figuring out at exactly which point I let a thought, which caused a feeling (this is CBT-ish) inspire me to do a particular behavior, which aggravated things. In the classes, that happens (with less time spent on each individual though), and there’s also a lot of talk from the instructor about a specific new skill or extension of a skill already covered, and the instructor will give a lot of examples to help us understand. Then there’s homework to work on before the next class, like writing down times we were not validated and to then validate ourselves or times when we could have validated others. It’s also nice because we get to talk to other people dealing with the same issues, but in a positive environment. I used to post on a message board for people with BPD, and that was just a mess and didn’t help me at all. It was people kind of wallowing in being sick and being like, “I totally understand,” which is helpful to a point but at some point needs to involve, “I understand, and it would be helpful if that changed.”</p>
<p>One of the things that has helped me the most has been the phrase, “I am doing the best I can, and I can do better,” which is radical acceptance. Accepting something fully without letting the thing you’re accepting overcome you… working for better even while not judging.</p>
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<p>I have jobs in the summer but not during the school year because I’m able to contribute to the apartment my boyfriend and I share with a combination of scholarships and loans from school. I got to school late because of my issues, but now I go full time (but not in the summer) and do very well. I really enjoy it, but I do have to note that part of that, surprisingly, comes from one of the bpd symptoms… desire for a lot of praise. I love to get praise from professors. I could just eat it with a spoon. As a teen I did not care about praise from authority figures in the least, in fact I had contempt for it, but now that I want to have a good life I do.</p>
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<p>Yeah, though it still is not as helpful as the DBT. I feel as though the stuff I talk about with my “real” therapist is stuff I could say to any close friend. It’s mostly to monitor my meds now.</p>
<p>Everyone’s issues are different though and I know people who’ve been less successful in getting better, and the biggest thing I notice is they don’t have a support system conducive to practicing skills and aren’t necessarily motivated on their own to practice the skills. So practicing skills is the big thing.</p>