C1, U4, S34 Next module. Post graduate. Wise mind, mindfulness.
I graduated this course and now basically I'm going over it again in order to help me really really ingrain those skills I never learned when I was growing up and developing.
There's still a lot to unlearn and unpick and still a whole plethora of adult emotional coping skills to learn along side my faulty coping patterns to counter them and banish them into the cage, lock the monster back up for good, be able to talk to it through my rib cage, keep my lock unrattled.
Pretty basic notes and screenshots notes this week:
"Nothing changed without acceptance"
Fair point. To true.
Dialectics: two opposing but intrinsically connected components.
Acceptance and change.
Poles of opposites.
Wise mind - inner wisdom
Emotional mind - reactive, fast reactions, emo driven decisions, impulsive behavior, addictions, risky behaviors, damaging. (there is an upside! Creativity and empathy etc)
Rational mind - Reasonable, intellect, facts, planning, experiences, research, focus, grounded, slower more spacious thinking. (down sides are cold clinical thinking that can lead to neglect etc)
The goal is to join the two up and arrive somewhere in the middle, somewhere more zen and wisdom driven through skills practices and sheer hard work that pays off.
Key points to be mindful always, these are mantras:
Acknowledge our pain
Intuition vs emotions
Check the facts! Fact checking in any emotionally challenging situation is key.
Task: take notes of physical sensations when possible when confronted with a situation that you are able to practice a journey to wise mind on, in. Note the feeling in the gut, the heart, your breathing, how tense your muscles are, how tense your jaws are, your temperature and anything else that is of note. this is important on our journey in DBT. Be mindful of your physical sensations.
Somatics:
Somatic mindfulnesscreates mind-body integration where it had been lacking. It allows us to use oursomaticresponses as one source of information without letting them run the show. This kind of therapeutic work softens and reduces the hypervigilant threat response and hyperarousal in the nervous system.
https://somaticmindfulness.org/
I will return to somatics much more later throughout this course module.
"No emotion will last forever"
Emotions are always temporary.
Be mindful of reacting and making bad decisions when in the grips of a particular mood.
Some decisions do not serve our long term interest especially when "splitting" or raging in a BPD melt down. I can testify to that much!
Some decisions and behaviors that are kept unchecked when in the throws of mental illness can be very dangerous and irreversible. No coming back from them. Again, I can testify to that I am sad to say.
This is why I am here. Still. And I will be until I get it right. While I am alive and on this planet I have a moral obligation to get it right and not be a dick anymore.
People like me with intense severe BPD co morbid severe regressive depression and some other SNAFU's more often than not have actual brain damage of which I will address more later in this course and have done already in previous blog entries on my site.
For now though the fact is I have extreme spikes in brain chemistry intensity and no it's not bi polar in my instance as one of my ex friends leveled at me in a sharp snarky accusation. I do however have some actual brain damage caused by cortisol, a chemical released in the brain under stressful situations. Neurological in-balances and damage and a lot of faulty neural pathways (wiring) which, luckily, can be rewired through neuro plasticity which is done through DBT! Hence me going through all of this unit over again. It takes time, practice and commitment.
Anyway, I digress.....
Triggered states take a lot longer to come back down to baseline than than non triggered states.
The goal is to swerve triggered states and learn to take time in our thinking and reactions and not react and behave ineffectively and I have been an expert in behaving ineffectively, a fucking master at triggered state assholeness.
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⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆⬆ The truth right there.
I know all about the above slides inside out and upside down. All of it. And this is changing but more work must be done. DBT is THE best remedy clinically. far better than some quack or fantasist leading you up the garden path imparting there own ego driven drivel in your mind when vulnerable and impressionable. That happened to me. If you are researching DBT and you are reading this weird ass blog to get as taste for DBT, please, stick to DBT and a professional service.
Again, I digress .....
The point about arousal above doesn't mean sex. Arousal is a loaded word.
Arousal can mean a few things like flight/flight/freeze, but here for me it means triggered and when aroused I have dealt with it in all the wrong ways, all the unhealthy ways, all the dickhead ways. I've not had the skills to do otherwise and I have had no skills and no, zero insight into coping adultly when mentally ill. Very ill at times.
I have done all the shit impulsive things in a bid to cope, i just didnt know these things at the time or at least I lost insight. I'm not actually a bad person.I have been very ill and that has made be a toxic horrid angry cluster fuck.
Drinking, binge drinking, angry drinking, fight drinking .....
Binge eating
Comfort eating
Hellish rage and violent outbursts
Self harm and suicide attempts, fucking real ones and screams for help which my ex labeled attention seeking and emotional blackmail which really really helped a lot. Kernels of truth in there of course but I was "ill". I was. I was fucked.
For me now I think about the longer term crisis that boozing will cause when thinking about getting bladdered to fight off the demons, reacting to my triggers through alcohol to num the pain temporarily. It makes it worse and the monster in his cage in side loves the booze. Makes him noisy and angry and even more "black". So I must not feed it. Same for food.
Stress = urges = crisis (avoidance patterns in me too)
Remember from previous sessions: OPPOSITE skills and distractions skills.
"Trigger urge" A term to remember on this journey. I am mindful very much of it now i have given up the alcohol and that's a tricky thing still when stressed or lonely or "triggered". Trigger urge. That counts for other urges or old patterns of behavior too, all of them in fact.
I have been challenging a strong urge to kick off at someone this week as it goes and the skills and the practices and all the discussions i have engaged in so far on my DBT journey has taught me the skills to walk away and accept it and find peace and not give in to those old urges bubbling up inside, those "old tapes" running through my mind. I will keep practicing and practicing and subduing the negative shit in my mind.
The payoffs of unchecked triggered behaviors are not worth the consequences after it all kicks off. It really isn't. Triggered urge kick off plus consequences equals double trouble. Damage done.
Find the skill(s) that works for you and practice it over and over and over until it clicks.
Drop skill examples that don't work for you and find another and persist and employ it. Keep going. Be mindful.
Remember these key things:
Breath. Really be mindful of the breathing techniques learned here.
Slow down. Create space.
Slow down in order to behave skillfully and mindfully and calm our physical and neuro reactions down. Breath. create space.
Accept realty as it is in the moment for good or bad. Come back to the things you want addressed calmly and skillfully and get what you need.
Acceptance. THE key word here and always. this will free you, free me.
"We have the freedom to make choices even when we are suffering"
And that wraps up another sweary uncouth badly written unproof checked DBT_path blog entry just for the record.
M.