Imagery

"Imagine things going well for you. Imagine that you know how to take care of the situation you are in. If you practice doing this, you will find that it begins to work for you. Things DO go better, and you CAN cope better. You can deal better with the crises in your life, if you practice feeling like you can take care of things."

That's from a DBT Self Help Site which seems to have some pretty useful information. I'm not finding that much time to dip into it though, what with work and commuting and kids and all. Still, it seems good to keep tucking things away here as reminders to myself.

Tiredness has just come crashing in for the night, so I think I need to call it a day. I just wanted to do a quick check in, really. It's enough for today.

 

 

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DBT Skills

1. Mindfulness
2. Distress Tolerance
3. Emotional Regulation
4. Interpersonal Effectiveness

Well. I didn't get that far (yet) with my explorations into mindfulness, but I was just thinking last night - perhaps the two biggies for me are actually distress tolerance and emotional regulation.

Maybe I'm just trying to squirm out of figuring my way through mindfulness. I don't know. Just in the past few weeks, I hadn't really felt that gripped by getting really into exploring mindfulness. Mind you, in the past three weeks I've had two really bad weekends with my partner, so perhaps mindfulness might have helped prevented that, had I been exercising it.

Anyway. Let's get back to distress tolerance. Distress tolerance is identified as a DBT crises coping skill. It seems that distress tolerance can be enhanced in a number of ways: distraction, self soothing, improving the moment, thinking of pros and cons.

I guess it would be a really good thing for me to read up on these strategies, and to somehow, maybe with the help of my partner, come up with some kind of an 'emotional crises first aid kit' - something we could dip into in an "emergency". A strategy, or set of options that we could reach for in times of need.

To me right now, the best two of those distraction strategies (the ones that sound like they might work the best for me) seem to be self soothing and improving the moment. So I think that over my next few posts here, I might aim to delve into those two aspects of utilising distraction as a way to deal with times of emotional crisis.

 

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Oops

I had another massive regress over the weekend, which of course leads to massive regrets. Add that to the leftover rib from last week that I just ate as a pre dinner snack and it all adds up to pretty uncomfortable. Not nearly as uncomfortable as I was on Saturday night and again on Sunday evening. What the hell happened? And whatever it was, it was definitely HELL.

Yuk. Again and again and again and again I say never ever again. I never want to feel like that again. And again and again and again and again, when the moment comes, when the tension gets too great, my brain just snaps. Then I cry and I scream and I rage and I drink and I smoke and I slam things and I curl in a shaking ball in a small dark place and I wish the earth would swallow me up.

Any progress? Maybe microscopic micro shuffles. I actually didn't voice the thoughts in my head about leaving my partner. I didn't (apart from drinking and smoking) self harm. I stayed at home - even if I did go and hide in the car .... Still hopeless, still miles to go, still 36 hours of hell. I so don't want to do that stuff anymore. I am so unsure of what it is I need to do to prevent it. I'm so frightened that one day the whole ugly scene will just chew me up and spit me out as something no longer recognisably human, and finally completely beyond repair.

But still I hope. And still we strive to find one another again. And still we scoop the shreds of our love back together again, and yet again. We want, we hope, we try, we cling. We love, we truly do love. Will it ever be enough?

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