How DBT Has Changed My Life 

How in control of your life do you feel? Do you think you are calm or reactive in the circumstances you go through? Do you feel that you can handle when things don’t happen in a way that you thought they would? Are there times in your life that you wish you could feel better about, or even just have some peace in your heart about some losses that you have experienced? Have you ever felt that you are out of control with your thoughts and emotions? Have you felt that you are a horrible person because of something you have done and there is no hope for your life? I’ve felt that way before and discovered a type of therapy that changed my life. Let me introduce you to Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT. 

In my younger years I was very reactive to situations. When something would happen to me, I would hold my emotions in because, for the most part, I would get in trouble for expressing my emotions. I had so many pent-up emotions from not knowing how to self-regulate. My earliest memories of not being able to express any “negative” emotions go back to my parents, as early as age 4. I had developed a very negative outlook on feelings of sadness, anger, or disgust, all of which I was not allowed to express, so I didn’t learn how to appropriately express them. When I felt angry or explained that I was sad or scared, I was told that those feelings were not good to feel, and I should not feel them. I started to struggle with suicidal ideation at the age of thirteen. My emotions were so extreme: if I was happy then I was on top of the world, but if I became sad or one thing went wrong, it would immediately send me into a depressive and suicidal state. As I grew older, I started to experience a lot of depression and anxiety, and the suicidal ideations became noticeably worse in intensity after I started having children. I became more reactive to situations by yelling or getting aggressive with my words. It wasn’t until my thirties, and after my first suicidal attempt, that I started to hear about DBT. 

I became obsessed with getting better and getting a stronger mindset. I learned about DBT in a Partial Hospitalization Program at Henry Ford. It was something that I had heard of before but didn’t understand. I talked about my anger stemming from my childhood upbringing and it was accepted. I was told that all emotions are valid and should be felt. I started to open up in therapy about exactly how I was feeling. Talking about my abusive childhood, in a safe environment, was suddenly a lot easier. I was so moved by this experience because they gave me permission to feel those emotions, like grief, sadness, fear, and anger, that I had been holding in for so long. I was able to reframe my thinking and not always put myself down. I started to believe, with the help of the DBT principles, that I could start to change the way I viewed hardship. 

One major component to DBT is to radically accept what you are going through even when it’s hard. I have learned that radical acceptance isn’t just stating that a situation is happening, and it is what it is, but to also be proactive in the acceptance. How was I showing that I accepted it? An example of this would be, I had a life changing event happen to me–I lost a fiancé to suicide. It sent me spiraling into depression and I couldn’t function. With the help of DBT concepts like radical acceptance, I’ve been able to not only accept that this situation happened but also take steps to move forward. I started going to therapy and talking about how it was affecting me and taking medication I was prescribed to be able to kind of ease the pain I was experiencing. I believe that over the years I have developed some good coping skills that I have learned and had to put into practice thanks to DBT. 

We cannot talk about DBT without talking about Marsha Linehan. Marsha was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943. She experienced mental health struggles as a teen which led to hospitalizations. She was isolating herself in her room as a teen and struggled with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. She received a diagnosis of schizophrenia but later realized she was misdiagnosed because the symptoms she was facing were not directly in line with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Her treatment plan and medication were not working for her, so she did some research. She worked through her symptoms of constant suicidal thoughts and unregulated extreme emotions and later studied behavior therapy in college. She wanted to find relief from suicidal feelings and intense emotions, so after college, she worked on creating the therapy concept of DBT, a type of behavioral therapy meant to rewire the brain’s thinking, especially in patients with borderline personality disorder. 

Marsha and I are similar in the fact that we both faced similar symptoms. I can relate to her story because as a child it was never recognized that my symptoms were of something more severe than basic depression, so I was mistreated and not taught how to work through what I was experiencing. It was also really cool to know that someone else fought what I have been through and has come up with a way to cope with these symptoms. Now when I am faced with a hard emotion, like sadness, I am able to apply some techniques I have learned to lessen the impact that they have on my brain and process them more easily. Let’s say for example that I am overstimulated, my kids are yelling at each other, dinner is on the stove, and my dog keeps walking underfoot and I am struggling to keep my wits about me and get things done. Had this been before I learned DBT, I would be raging out yelling at the kids to stop fighting, being frustrated at my dog because I am trying to cook and clean, and she won’t move out of my way, so I am constantly tripping over her. Now because of a few skills, one being the STOP skill, I now pause and literally STOP when I am starting to feel overwhelmed. I will walk away or outside for a few minutes and take some deep breaths. Then I will think to myself about what I can control and what I can’t control. Well, I know I cannot control my kids arguing and so I will ask them to either go outside or separate them until they can calm down, I will ask the dog to go lay in her bed and I will put some music on and go finish dinner. I may need to use a cold compress on my forehead to calm the anxiety running through my body or even step outside barefoot to ground myself. But I have options now. I don’t have to suffer in silence. 

Dialectical Behavior Therapy has saved my life. Learning that accepting something doesn’t mean that you agree with it, but that you admit that it’s happening and change what you are in control of changing–this has made a big difference for me. When I was growing up, I was severely abused. I was pushed down the stairs more times than I can recall but it developed in me a fear of stairs. When I started learning DBT this was one thing I wanted to address because this fear would keep me from going up and down stairs and I lived in a two-floor home. The first thing I had to do was accept that I am afraid of the stairs and then ask, what can I do to change this experience? It was in this example that I learned why acceptance and change are so important. If I cannot admit that I am afraid of stairs, how can I work on solutions to overcoming that fear? DBT does just that. It gets you to see that what happened to you doesn’t have to be you. I don’t have to be afraid anymore, I just have to do the work to challenge the behavior and make the change. 

Source:

Who Is Marsha Linehan?: Understanding Dialectical Behavior Therapy | BetterHelp