Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Graduate

The Wednesday after I got back from California (Aug 3), I graduated from the Dialectic Behavioral Therapy class I had been taking for the last year.  I'm sure I've mentioned it in my blogs before, but DBT is basically reteaching oneself how to understand, describe, and handle emotions.  It also deals with interpersonal communication skills as well.  Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy.  You'll notice it does say it's used for patience who exhibit self-injury behavior.  And yes, that is me.

I supposed I don't need to get into complete details about my self-injury behavior, as to when specific incidents happened and what not.

Things you should know about MY cutting (and this is probably true for most other cutters as well, so DO NOT judge before you know the information):
  • I'll tell you that I would cut my upper left arm with a knife in little half inch superficial slits. .
  • Suicide was never the intent, nor was it really on my mind.
  • Severe injury wasn't either.
  • It was not an attention-getter, as I hid it from everyone anyway.
  • To me, the cutting was a way of taking an inside pain that I had no control over and bringing it outside to where I did have control over it.  I caused it.
  • And I will tell you I haven't done it in almost a year and a half
If you have questions about it, don't assume anything, just ask me.  Yah'll know, I'm an open book!

I've learned so much through DBT. 

It's helped me understand my emotions.  Instead of saying, "I just don't feel right," I can now specifically tell myself what emotion I am having because of physical sensations (such as teeth clenching, hot ears, chest tightening, etc) and thoughts/urges (such as wanting to cut, wanting to give up, wanting to curl up in bed, etc). It's an amazing ability to actually understand your feelings.  You have no idea how much that makes them actually tolerable.

I've learned how to handle my emotions, how to not make them go to the extremes (I'm so sad I want to die, I'm so anxious I want to give up, etc), how to talk to someone about them, how to get through a major emotional time (distress tolerance), how to feel the emotion and remember that it's not going to stay like that forever.

I've learned how to talk to people and how to understand that I don't know everything about them so I can't judge.  How to relate to them, how to sympathize, how to firmly request what I need and to accept when I am told no.

I've learned to love the little things in life.  I've learned that even though something shitty has happened in a day, there's probably something here and there that made the day worth while....and even if there wasn't, tomorrow will be better.  To see that a bad thing happening doesn't have to ruin the rest of the day.  That it happened, and I can't change that it happened, so I can move passed it.

I've learned to take time for myself to just reflect and think.  To not let my emotions take over my brain so that I can't think straight, and to not get too analytical so that I don't feel anything at all.  To not overreact, and even when I do over react to be able to step back and say, "I did that, now I can fix it."

My mother-in-law said something a couple months ago.  She praised me for what I have been doing over the last year to better myself and to get a hold on my emotions.  She said, "I'm glad to have my Taylor back."

Me too!

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