Let's do Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

[Catcakes]

It’s the egg thing 😉

here is is a drawing I made whilst I was doing my DBT course.

i struggled at first and I used drawing to feel more comfortable staying in the room.

@Phoenix_Rising,also @Former-Member

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Catcakes Ooooh I am so excited that you are posting your first ever picture here on our DBT thread!!!! I'm about to go and have a shower, so hopefully the triangle of doom will have transformed into your picture by the time I check in again. 

ROFL at the fact you are more impressed by my egg balancing skill than you are by the absurdly long post that I laboured over for days. 

[Phoenix_Rising]

Hi @Catcakes,

I SUPER like your drawing!!!! Thank you so much for posting it. Having now seen your picture, I am even more excited that you chose to post your first-ever picture here on the DBT thread. 

I am wondering which person in the picture represents you - but it is a bazillion percent ok if you don't want to share. 

[Catcakes]

Ha ha @Phoenix_Rising,
I could be any of them but I’m going to say the one with ‘help’ on her lap.....

[Phoenix_Rising]

@Catcakes That was the person I was thinking you might be.  It looks like some of the other people were finding it tricky being in the room too, given the positioning of their arms.

I am heading off to bed now. I'm super glad you are joining us on the DBT adventure, Catcakes. Don't forget to practice balancing an egg! When I was doing it, I got the sense that the egg knew when I was getting frustrated! It is definitely a super cool mindfulness exercise. 

[Faith-and-Hope]

Love the drawing @Catcakes ......❣️

And love that you drew your DBT group ...... I think that’s really cool .....

[Catcakes]

Thanks @Faith&Hope,
It helps...

[CheerBear]

Hello DBTers ☺

I was going to reply to the conversation I sort of dropped out of, but it could make this thread a little scattered. So a big hi to everyone and a wow @Catcakes - your drawing is fab! That's an awesome way of feeling more comfortable in a group ☺

I'm currently practicing a skill called Opposite Action when you do something that is the opposite to how you're feeling, in order to (hopefully) bring about positive change. Right now I don't feel like being around people, I do feel like retreating, and I don't feel like doing much of anything etc - so here I am. It's one of my favourite skills because I find it often works (though it can be SO annoying to try out sometimes).

Mindfulness skills I struggle with sometimes (lots of the time), particularly when I feel extra not-great. I get so frustrated trying to sit with anything when I desperately want something to be different. Fighting for things to be different doesn't always make them different though and it just leads to more and more frustration for me. I have no idea what the point of me writing that was except maybe to say that mindfulness can be an incredibly difficult practice sometimes, but maybe a helpful one also.

I love the concept of flow @Phoenix_Rising ☺. Funnily enough it is where I was looking for the answer to the question about how to "just do it" as I have an awesomely cool text book on performance psychology which is all about the factors that play into "flow".

One of my favourite ways of 'participating' mindfully in an activity is when I am crocheting. Sometimes I really have to push myself to sit and crochet but often when I do I find myself engaged in it, feeling the movement of my hand, the yarn being wrapped around the hook, the hook going in and between stitches. As you said Phoenix_Rising - I simply do. Flow states are very cool ☺

Regarding your questions about telling people what they are thinking or feeling - I can understand how and why you would detest this. My psych and I have clashed a few times with this one. I am ok with people trying to work out what I am thinking or feeling (to an extent) and sometimes it can be helpful to have some prompting to understand it myself, but if I try to correct an assumption and it isn't met with respect or understanding, it doesn't tend to go down well. No-one except me knows what is going on inside me. Just as I don't know what is going on for someone else. 

In terms of me telling someone what they're thinking or feeling, my kids stand out to me here. I try to support them to have the language to be able to identify and express what they are thinking and feeling, but it has often come from getting it wrong with them. One of mine can completely lose it when I get it wrong (and fair enough!). One however, is quite open to considering others views which can make them easily influenced. Seeing this happen, highlights to me how much better a position of respectful curiousity can work than one of authority.

Thank you for your post Phoenix_Rising and all of the work and thought you put into it. I really enjoyed reading it ☺

Oh and I have this to drop off here:

I started this off with a whole lot of "stuff this egg, I hate this egg, I want to smash this egg, maybe I am doing this wrong...". Then I stopped and started to notice how the egg felt, and how it's insides slightly shifted around in the shell, and it gently tapped my fingers trying to balance etc. It became just me and an egg and we were kind of one (I'm totally normal) 😉. 

I will definitely be looking for more activities like this to "do" mindfully!

[Awpgirl]

Hi everyone, I don't know each person yrt to individually tag them in.

I am using an app called DBT self help and at the moment using it to record my daily diary and to get a feel for which skills I can already do and which I need to practise.

I do my best to practise mindfulness each day as part of my spirituality.
I am focussing on distress tolerance and inter personal effectiveness as at the moment I feel those are my two areas that require most focus.

My case manager suggested I ask my psychiatrist of of I could do a course of DBT as an inpatient or to see if there is an outpatient course at a time and place Ivan attend.i see him this week so fingers crossed.

Last night I had a huge fight with boyfriend.
I am staying with him for the weekend.
I had been drinking (not much but enough so that I found hard to mamage my PTSD flashbacks)

I packed my stuff to run away however with his support I calmed down and stayed the night.
We have just got up and apogised to each other and made up.

I feel im making progress!!!!!

[Catcakes]

Thanks @CheerBear for the compliments on my drawing. Reading these posts brings the DBT skills to mind and I have tried to practise some mindfulness again.
In my DBT class we usually started and finished with a mindfulness exercise .
Sometimes it involved a single square of chocolate, or a young green leaf, a birthday candle, an ice block,
A piece of music, a word.....
I must look out my notes...