Dbt Quotes

It is hard to be happy without a life worth living. This is a fundamental tenet of DBT. Of course, all lives are worth living in reality. No life is not worth living. But what is important is that you experience your life as worth living—one that is satisfying, and one that brings happiness.

The bottom line is that if you are in hell, the only way out is to go through a period of sustained misery. Misery is, of course, much better than hell, but it is painful nonetheless. By refusing to accept the misery that it takes to climb out of hell, you end up falling back into hell repeatedly, only to have to start over and over again.

All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived.

The great thing about treating borderline patients is that it is like having a supervisor always in the room.

Build a life worth living. I stare at this phrase on my ceiling every morning before I decide to get out of bed. I painted it a few years ago after completing a few months of dialectal behavioral therapy. It is a quote by Marsha Linehan, who created DBT. After therapy, I impulsively decided to paint it on my ceiling in black, as some sort of reminder to build a life worth living. I don’t regret painting it up there - well, not yet, at least.

The desire to commit suicide, however, has at its base a belief that life cannot or will not improve. Although that may be the case in some instances, it is not true in all instances. Death, however, rules out hope in all instances. We do not have any data indicating that people who are dead lead better lives.

Acceptance can transform but if you accept in order to transform, it is not acceptance. It is like loving. Love seeks no reward but when given freely comes back a hundredfold. He who loses his life finds it. He who accepts, changes.

I honestly didn’t realize at the time that I was dealing with myself. But I suppose it’s true that I developed a therapy that provides the things I needed for so many years and never got.

DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.

When a person is in emotional pain, it’s hard to be rational and to think of a good solution. Nevertheless, many of the coping strategies used by people with overwhelming emotions only serve to make their problems worse.

When we are free, we can look in the face of our cravings and desires and say "I don't have to satisfy you.

It's important to keep in mind that most people have no idea how to respond effectively to someone who self-harms.

This might surprise you, but one of the best ways to manage your emotions is simply to experience that emotion and let it run its course.

Acceptance is the only way out of hell.

We want to be clear: The skills we [teach] you for managing your emotions and controlling your urges to self-harm will never be quite as effective or satisfying as self-harm in the short run.

Criticizing yourself all the time or being overly judgmental of a situation is like wearing dark sunglasses indoors.

Keeping a stiff upper lip may be needed while around the person invalidating you, but on your own, there is every reason to be compassionate and self-­soothing. It does hurt to be invalidated.

I listed my triggers (carrot cake, deadlines, weight gain, mice, insomnia), studied relapse prevention, and learned dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) skills, which I liked because you could apply them to life, not just recovery. My favorite was “Teflon mind,” where you imagine your brain being like nonstick cookware: negative thoughts just slide right off.

A patient's passivity must not be unilaterally interpreted as lack of motivation, resistance, lack of confidence, or the like. Many times, passivity is a function of inadequate knowledge and/or skills.

Compassion is a fundamental principle of meditation. Meditation is not a narcissistic, self-interested path. It provides the foundation for love, integrity, compassion, respect and sensitivity (Feldman, 1998, p.2).

Remember, sometimes pain can’t be avoided, but many times suffering can. Take,

Wisdom and freedom require the ability to allow the natural flow of emotions to come and go, experiencing emotions but not being controlled by emotions. Always having to prevent or suppress emotions is a form of being controlled by emotions.

The trick is, don’t give in to the grief. Instead, I let myself feel it, embrace it, learn from it. In bed by 9:30, up at 7:00, breakfast, then off to school where I spend five mind-numbing hours living by the dictates of San Diego County’s Board of Education, the Western version of Mao’s Little Red Book.

Responding to a suicide attempt by insisting that it must stop, and devoting the full resources of therapy to preventing it, is a communication with compassion and care at its very core.

Having a strong urge is like having a child throw a temper tantrum inside you, screaming "Hurt yourself!" But if you repeatedly ignore the urge's request and don't harm yourself, your brain will learn that urges don't work, just as a child learns that throwing a tantrum won't work.

When emotions turn and stay sour, when thoughts become cynical and judgmental, good and compassionate treatment is on the line. Helpers who become sour and cynical tend to begrudge their high need clients for their neediness. There is a risk that helpers become too well-practiced at taking a bleak view of those they have avowed to assist. There is a temptation to begin to blame clients for their failure to improve. If treatment ends pre-maturely, with either a client never returning to treatment or a helper 'firing' them out of frustration, there is a tendency for the client to take the fall. Of course what we are talking about here are signs of burnout.

Then I go on to say that one of the reasons I’m doing so well is because of how much I’ve learned about BPD and DBT, especially the part about Linehan’s biosocial model and how BPD develops through a combination of biological vulnerabilities and an invalidating environment. When I explain what an “invalidating environment” is like, she stops chewing her spring roll.

However, do not confuse distraction with avoidance. When you avoid a distressing situation, you choose not to deal with it. But when you distract yourself from a distressing situation, you still intend to deal with it in the future, when your emotions have calmed down to a tolerable level. The

Those who practice DBT are compassionate and dedicated to understanding the experience of BPD but at the same time believe, unwaveringly, that the most compassionate thing we can do is help people with BPD to change.

Environments become invalidating when they fail to protect you or neglect your basic needs. Environments for children invalidate when they regularly communicate that their needs, feelings, and preferences are bad, or wrong, or otherwise lack validity

Even when emotions seem to overtake life, such as when we are depressed or anxious or angry, it is important to remember that those emotions still give us important information. Rather than judging our emotions, practice acceptance of them and open your mind to their messages. Rejecting emotions or trying to push them away usually intensifies them. If the message is not heard, it needs to get louder. As an example, invalidation by others tends to intensify emotions, and self-invalidation has the same effect.

Even though alcohol abuse is frowned upon by society, it's generally considered acceptable to drink in moderation in many social situations. In fact, society has a pretty high tolerance for drinking, even when people drink to the point of getting tipsy. This is definitely not the case for self-harm, though. On the contrary, society generally sees self-harm as unacceptable at any level and under any circumstances.

Creating a life worth living may be the most difficult work that you’ll ever do. There will be some days that you won’t feel up to the task but if you keep moving forward this will become easier. In the end, though, success can be yours and we’ll have been cheerleading you all the way.

DBT works on the premise that people who have lives that include meaningful relationships, activities, and purpose do not attempt suicide. In other words, to be less suicidal, people have to have a life worth living. I have never met someone who said, “I have people I love and who love me, a job I enjoy, and hobbies that keep me engaged, and I want to die.” People become suicidal or engage in problem behaviors because they do not believe they have love or meaning and often because they are consumed by overwhelming despair about what has happened in their lives and hopelessness about what will happen in the future. People

Emotions are not good, bad, right, or wrong. The first step to changing our relationship to feelings is to be curious about them and the messages they send to us.

Go easy on yourself. There are reasons or cause even for denying. Sometimes the truth of our reality is incredibly painful and we need to approach it slowly.

Once we learn that thoughts are just thoughts, they have a lot less power over us.

You just have to believe it and be willing to use it. It takes courage and strength,

Many people with PTSD feel numb emotionally, particularly when it comes to positive emotions.

Also, you may feel there is no reason to plan for the future, or that you may not live to experience positive things in your life.

When you experience stressful events early in your life, you may have difficulty trusting other people, and you may have no models of what a “good” relationship should look like.

Everything we do, we do in a context in which we influence, and are influenced by, multiple opposing forces

El camino para salir del infierno pasa por el sufrimiento. Si te niegas a aceptar ese sufrimiento que forma parte de salir del infierno, volverás a caer en él.

For many of us with emotion regulation issues, they can also be super challenging and emotionally draining. We may have never learned how to have healthy relationships and are trying to figure it out now as adults.

Hear me out. The idea of 'radical acceptance' is that sometimes in order to reduce suffering, you have to stop fighting the situation and do the counterintuitive thing. Wholeheartedly embrace reality, spiky bits and all.

Even you, the professional helper, often mistaken for the enlightened Guru or Staretz, can become lost in your thoughts that you must be competent without fault. You may become enthralled with your identity as a professional, even the pressures of the culture of mastery that expects you to heal your clients without fail. Never mind all of the variables over which you have no control, it is up to you, according to the canons of mastery, to control the health and well-being of those for whom you provide professional care. This potentiates a furthering alienation between you and your clients. You are at risk to become, if you have not already, the one who does to your clients; to be the one the active subject acting upon the passive and receptive objects, your clients; to be the one in possession of special knowledge, technique and mastery. All of this conspires to coax or coerce you into treating your client as reduced, a mere case. Unawareness to these influences gives you little chance to consider their influence on your practice in the clinical setting, much less give attentive efforts to resist or change them.

The way in which I do this, the tools that I use, derive from a school of psychology known as dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, developed in the 1990s by Marsha Linehan. Based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, which seeks to teach patients new ways of thinking about or acting on their problems, DBT was developed to help individuals with more serious and potentially dangerous issues, such as an inability to regulate their emotions and a propensity to harm themselves or even attempt suicide.

Many of us go through our days attending to multiple stimuli simultaneously without giving any one thing our full and complete attention. We eat while watching TV and check our email while in the presence of our families. We think about our problems in the middle of a conversation or during an otherwise positive experience. We talk on the phone while driving and choose to distract ourselves from everyday tasks rather than attending to them. We escape the small moments rather than recognizing life is the small moments.

The word dialectic (in dialectical behavior therapy) means to balance and compare two things that appear very different or even contradictory. In dialectical behavior therapy, the balance is between change and acceptance (Linehan, 1993a). You need to change the behaviors in your life that are creating more suffering for yourself and others while simultaneously also accepting yourself the way you are. This might sound contradictory, but it’s a key part of this treatment. Dialectical behavior therapy depends on acceptance and change, not acceptance or change.

In other words, when an emotionally vulnerable child is born into a family where others don’t share this trait, it’s difficult for the rest of the family to understand, and this in itself can cause invalidation as parents become frustrated with the child and don’t know how to help.

A chart review (Herman, 1986) found that 67 percent of twelve psychiatric outpatients with BPD had a history of abuse in childhood or adolescence. And a qualitative study (Bryer, Nelson, Miller, & Krol, 1987) found that 86 percent of fourteen hospitalized patients with BPD had experienced sexual abuse before the age of sixteen.

If for example you are diagnosed with depression, then your clinician might prescribe therapy to reduce your depression and or recommend anti-depressant medication. As we have discussed previously though, reducing the symptoms of mental illness does not seem to reduce the probability that someone will make a suicide attempt. Two treatments in particular, dialectical behavior therapy DBT and cognitive behavioral therapy for suicide prevention, CBT-SP, have demonstrated the ability to reduce the probability of suicidal behaviors in multiple studies conducted by multiple research teams. Other treatments that share many of the same characteristics and components as these treatments via attempted suicide.

When we feel we cannot tolerate emotional pain, we want desperately to escape. Our attention wanders to all the distractions available to us, such as food, alcohol, drugs, sleeping, eating, having suicidal thoughts, lashing out in anger, isolating—anything to avoid feeling the emotion. These temporary escapes are easy to access. We forget about the promises we’ve made to others or ourselves, we forget the long-term consequences of these “solutions,” and we fall victim to old patterns. By design and linked to our survival mechanisms, emotions function to get our attention and organize us to act in accordance (Ratey 2001). The very nature of emotion makes it difficult to focus the mind on anything else.

That is a sure sign you are confused.” “You mean because I change my mind?” “That’s right. When you know, you know. When you don’t, you go back and forth.” “So what do I do now?” “Take your time. Don’t be in a rush. Don’t give in to pressure. Just listen inside, like when we used to listen for the owl at Grandpa’s, remember? Just listen and you’ll hear. And don’t make a move until you do.

It allows us to relax, stop clinging, and accept the facts of the situation and how we feel about it. An answer will come, but it might take time for it to arrive. The key is not to give in to impulses, but to wait for clarity. Spaciousness of mind is not resignation or fatalism. It is acceptance of reality in the moment. A hurricane may be blowing, but we are in the calm center, awaiting wise mind.

Mindfulness is intentionally focusing in the present moment and accepting what is in that moment without evaluating it as good or bad (Germer 2004). We can be in a mindful state for a few moments, for most of a day, or for days, weeks, or years at a time. We can be mindful while undertaking all kinds of activities, from putting out a forest fire to eating a popsicle, from carrying on a conversation to having sex.

From a dialectical perspective the big picture includes recognition that everything is interconnected, that change is constant, and that nothing is permanent. When we are able to step back from catastrophizing—perhaps after taking a cold shower or running on a treadmill for twenty minutes, or after weeks of tolerating uncertainty—we can see that there is much more to the picture than the narrow, scary perspective on which we have been fixated.

inconsolable? That’s where I was. I was, for the umpteenth time, unknowingly reliving trauma from my past, incidents that likely helped greatly in setting the stage for my developing borderline personality disorder: trauma involving feeling more alone than any human being, let alone a child, should ever feel. Utterly abandoned. Terrified. Each time that memories or flashbacks from the past trauma would arise in the here and now, as an adult, I would become emotionally

Although substance use helps in the short term to numb you to feelings of sadness or anxiety, in the long term it simply makes it more difficult to function from day to day. For example, although drinking several drinks every evening may help you cope with anxiety and help you to fall asleep, this same behavior almost always has a downside. You might find that you wake up very easily in the middle of the night, and that the anxiety you suffer when you are sober is even worse.

Evidence shows that mindfulness reduces emotional pain by bringing our attention into the present moment and helping us focus on what is real in the moment (Grossman et al. 2004). As we will see in chapter 2, strong emotions produce powerful urges to act before we think. When we focus mindfully, we are building in a brief pause before we act. Within that pause we can actually recognize that we have a choice about how to act, rather than being slaves to our emotions and their urges.

When we are in a vulnerable state of emotional dysregulation, it often doesn’t take much to push us over the edge of feeling completely incapacitated by overwhelm. On days when our emotions are heightened and intense, if we take care to just do what is necessary, this is part of good self-care. We reaffirm that we need rest and to slow down.   We challenge thoughts that we have to be a superman or superwoman day in and day out with no break.  When we take the time to slow down and allow ourselves some downtime and rest, we can prevent further vulnerability

The quality of silence in my life speaks to the health of my soul/mind. If the silence is deafening, suppressive, terrifying... (it speaks to a fever raging silently in the psyche because the life I am living doesn’t align with your core values and/or the presence of something or someone harmful.) This quality of silence holds within it the unfelt, the unsaid, the unspeakable, the unrecognized, the unhealed, the unreconciled, the unconscionable...in addressing what lives in the silence and learning how to tolerate it—just sit with it—we begin the work that need be done to integrate the parts of ourselves sequestered into suppression.

Should you operate upon your clients as objects, you risk reducing them to less than human. Following the culture of appropriation and mastery your clients become a kind of extension of yourself, of your ego. In the appropriation and objectification mode, your clients’ well-being and success in treatment reflect well upon you. You “did” something to them, you made them well. You acted upon them and can take the credit for successful therapy or treatment. Conversely, if your clients flounder or regress, that reflects poorly on you. On this side of things the culture of appropriation and mastery says that you are not doing enough. You are not exerting enough influence, technique or therapeutic force. What anxiety this can breed for some clinicians! DBT offers a framework and tools for a treatment that allows clients to retain their full humanity. Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to cultivate a fuller presence to the moments of your life, and even with your clients and your work with them. This presence potentiates an encounter between two irreducible human beings, meeting professionally, of course, and meeting humanly. The dialectical framework, which embraces contradictions and gives you a way of seeing that life is pregnant with creative tensions, allows for your discovery of your limits and possibilities, gives you a way of seeing the dynamic nature of reality that is anything but sitting still; shows you that your identity grows from relationship with others, including those you help, that you are an irreducible human being encountering other irreducible human beings who exert influence upon you, even as you exert your own upon them. Even without clinical contrivance.

Criteria for Diagnosing Borderline Personality Disorder 1. Frantic efforts to avoid being or feeling abandoned by loved ones. 2. Instability in relationships, including a tendency to idealize and then become disillusioned with relationships. 3. Problems with an unstable sense of self, self-image, or identity. 4. Impulsivity in at least two areas (other than suicidal behavior) that are potentially damaging, such as excessive spending, risky sex, substance abuse, or binge eating. 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, including thoughts, attempts, or threats of suicide, as well as intentional self-harm that may or may not be life-threatening. 6. Mood swings, including intense negative mood, irritability, and anxiety. Moods usually last a few hours and rarely more than a few days. 7. Chronic feelings of emptiness. 8. Problems controlling intense anger and angry behavior. 9. Transient, stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociation.

Keep a gratitude journal. The mind tends to focus on problems to be solved rather than on what is working. Change this up by starting a gratitude journal. At least once a week write in your journal about the things for which you are grateful. Leave complaining out of this journal! This practice increases the likelihood that you will notice positives in your life, a skill that will reduce your vulnerability to emotion mind. Track your worries (Behar et al. 2009). Each week write down the top three worries in your mind and rate them as to how likely they are to happen. Once a month review your list and see how many of the things you worried about did or did not become problems. Chances are you will find a higher percentage of your worries never manifested. Reflect on the usefulness of constant worrying. Look for ways to make lemonade (Linehan 1993a). As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Reflect on things in your life that have seemed like lemons at the time (such as a divorce) that ended up being lemonade (allowing you to find a happier relationship). Try to find opportunities in your daily life to make lemonade out of disappointments or reversals.

According to the RO DBT neuroregulatory model (see chapter 2), when we are excited, elated, or proud of an accomplishment, our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) excitatory approach/reward system is activated, and, because of neuroinhibitory relationships between the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the SNS, the excitatory approach/reward system functions to downregulate or impair the social safety system mediated by the ventral vagal complex of the PNS (the PNS-VVC). Excitatory reward mood states are energizing and associated with feelings of joy, self-confidence, and agency. When we are in positive mood states, we are more likely to be assertive, arrogant, and opinionated. Despite feeling on top of the world, we lose our ability to empathically read the subtle social signals displayed by others and also are less aware of how our behavior may be impacting them.

DBT posits that borderline patients possess a genetic/biological vulnerability to emotional overreactivity. This view hypothesizes that the limbic system, the part of the brain most closely associated with emotional responses, is hyperactive in BPD. The second contributing factor, according to DBT practitioners, is an invalidating environment: that is, others dismiss, contradict, or reject the developing individual’s emotions. Confronted with such interactions, the individual is unable to trust others or her own reactions. Emotions are uncontrolled and volatile. To calm these erratic emotions, DBT emphasizes mindfulness, the process of paying attention to what is happening at the moment, without extreme emotional reactivity, judgment, or invalidation. In the initial stages of treatment, DBT focuses on a hierarchical system of targets, confronting first the most serious and then later the easier behaviors to change. The highest priority addressed immediately is the threat of suicide and self-injuring behaviors. The second-highest target is to eliminate behaviors that interfere with therapy, such as missed appointments or not completing homework assignments. The third priority is to address behaviors that interfere with a healthy quality of life, such as disruptive compulsions, promiscuity, or criminal conduct; among these, easier changes are targeted first. The fourth priority is to focus on increasing behavioral skills.

When you know what you need, you can start taking steps to get those needs met.

This means that you should not say sorry all the time.

look at your trauma and see it for what it is - a combination of thoughts and feelings.

The neurodivergent brain is like an exec without an assistant.

She taught me the four key skills in DBT. First is mindfulness. It’s the ability to radically accept things as they are and be present in the moment. The second is distress tolerance, which is the ability to tolerate negative emotions instead of trying to escape from them. The third is emotional regulation, which teaches you the ability to manage and change intense and problematic emotions. The fourth is interpersonal effectiveness, which teaches you to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.

Build a life worth living. I stare at this phrase on my ceiling every morning before I decide to get out of bed. I painted it a few years ago after completing a few months of dialectal behavioral therapy. It is a quote by Marsha Linehan, who created DBT. After therapy, I impulsively decided to paint it on my ceiling in black, as some sort of reminder to build a life worth living. I don’t regret painting it up there - well, not yet, at least.

The artist is the master of his universe, often choosing his own themes, colors, shapes, materials, and images. The art therapist encourages individuals not to judge themselves, to let their work flow. Participants learn that self-expression becomes the most important aspect of creative work. The art doesn’t have to be perfect; each person’s designs are unique. The concept, that we are allowed to experiment and make mistakes, is crucial in the development of self-esteem. When individuals acknowledge that they don’t have to be perfect, they are better able to accept their perceived flaws and “themselves as a whole.” They are often able to identify and focus on strengths instead of weaknesses.

When you use emotion regulation skills, you focus on dealing with difficult emotions without acting on behaviors that might have adverse consequences. On the other hand, distress tolerance skills are used for the tolerance and momentary acceptance of difficult situations without making the situations worse. Using all of these ideas on a regular basis is the DBT way to find emotional balance. Identifying the emotion: SUN Many people who struggle with emotional intensity and reactivity recognize that they don’t know precisely which emotion they are feeling, and so it makes sense that they might not know what to do when they are feeling unbalanced. One way to identify the emotion is to use the acronym SUN: Sensations: Focus on what you feel and the physical sensations in your body. Notice whether there is tension in any part of your body. Urges: Do you have any urges to do anything in particular? Most emotions come with an action urge. For instance, people who are angry have the urge to attack, while people who are sad have the urge to cry or isolate. Name (the emotion): When you put together the body sensations and action urges, it’s easier to name the emotion. Riding out the emotion like a WAVE Emotions are like waves: They will start to form, peak, and

mindfulness skills allow us to focus attention in the moment in order to recognize that we have a choice about how to proceed.

When the three treasures of essence, energy, and spirit remain calm, they nourish you day by day and make you strong. When they are hyperactive, they deplete you day by day and make you old.

You’ll then use your responses to the Valued Living Questionnaire in the following exercise, which will help you move toward engaging in what you value.

My sense, influenced by principles in DBT, is that it’s inevitable that you’ll face dissatisfaction in relationships.

This book is different from similar workbooks because of its focus on BPII, which is treated and managed differently than BPI. This book also includes strategies for managing anxiety, which frequently co-occurs with BPII. Finally, as opposed to other books, in this book we present strategies from several different psychotherapeutic approaches, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), family-focused treatment (FFT), and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Although some of these skills were developed from research studies involving people without bipolar disorder, we will show you how they can be applied to the specific needs of people with BPII.

DBT was originally developed to help individuals with borderline personality disorder. However, it has been adapted to successfully treat other conditions, such as eating disorders (e.g., Safer, Telch, and Agras 2001; Telch, Agras, and Linehan 2001), suicidality (Rathus and Miller 2002), and depression (Lynch et al. 2003). We the authors of this book, along with our colleagues, have also started using DBT skills in the MGH Bipolar Clinic and Research Program, with promising early results (Eisner et al. 2011).

down to the family or person in question. Besides medication and therapy, it is important to have a healthy lifestyle when dealing with ADHD symptoms. It is often recommended that those with ADHD focus on building healthy eating habits, getting in as many vegetables, fruits, and whole grains as they should. Protein should also come from lean sources. Daily physical exercises or routines also help and should be designed with the age and capabilities of the person in mind. It helps to have less time with screens, whether television, cellphones, or any other electronic device. Also, adequate sleep does amazing things for the ADHD mind.

Neurodivergent Checklist Time Blindness: Many neurodivergent people have trouble properly perceiving time as it passes. It either goes by too quickly or slowly. The perception of time depends on the level of stimulation the neurodivergent person is dealing with. It also can vary depending on what you’re focused on. If you’ve ever found yourself unable to account for time, you may be neurodivergent. Executive Dysfunction: This is what you experience when you want to accomplish a task, but despite how hard you try, you cannot see it through. Executive dysfunction happens for various reasons, depending on the type of neurodivergence in question. Still, the point is that this is a common occurrence in neurodivergent people. Task Multiplication: What is task multiplication? It happens when you set off to accomplish one thing but have to do a million other things, even though that wasn’t your original plan. For instance, you may want to sit down to finish some writing, only to notice water on the floor. You get up to grab a mop, and on the way, you notice the laundry you were supposed to drop off at the dry cleaners. Stooping to pick up the bag, you find yourself at eye level with your journal and remember you were supposed to make an entry the previous day, so you’re going to do that now. On and on it goes. Inconsistent Sleep Habits: This depends on what sort of neurodivergence you’re dealing with and if you’ve got comorbid disorders. Most importantly, neurodivergent people sleep more or less than “regular” people. You may also notice that your sleep habits fluctuate a lot. Sometimes you may sleep for eight hours at a stretch for a week, only to suddenly start running on just three hours of sleep. Emotional Dysregulation: With many neurodivergent people, it’s hard to keep emotions in check. Emotional dysregulation occurs in extreme emotions, sudden mood swings, or inappropriate emotional reactions (either not responding to the degree they should or overreacting). Hyperfixation: This also plays out differently depending on the brand of neurodivergence in question. Often, neurodivergent people get very involved in topics or hobbies to the point of what others may think of as obsession. Picking Up on Subtleties but Missing the Obvious: Neurodivergent people may struggle with picking up on things neurotypical people can see easily. At the same time, they are incredibly adept at noticing the subtle things everyone else misses. Sensory Sensitivities: If you’re neurodivergent, you may be unable to ignore your clothes tag scratching your back, have trouble hearing certain sounds, and can’t quite deal with certain textures of clothing, food, and so on. Rejection Sensitivity: Neurodivergent people are often more sensitive to rejection than others due to neurological differences and life experiences. For instance, children with ADHD get much more negative feedback than their peers without ADHD. Neurodivergent people are often rejected to the point where they notice rejection even when it’s not there.

Trouble Making and Maintaining Eye Contact: Neurodivergent people may not always do well with eye contact. For some, it can appear as though they’re staring right into your soul, which is something not many people are comfortable with. Other neurodivergent people find eye contact distracting and uncomfortable, so they’ll opt to look everywhere but at you. Rich Inner World vs. The Outer World: Neurodivergent people often tend to be in their heads. They feel things more deeply than neurotypical people and tend to think a lot more.

Narrow Stimulation Range: With neurodivergence, you’re either easily underwhelmed or overwhelmed. There’s no balance where you sense enough to hold your interest but not so much that you’re overwhelmed by what’s happening. Low Tolerance for Frustration: You’re probably neurodivergent if you think that trying things once and failing means you should never try again. The reason this happens is that neurodivergent people learn differently from neurotypical ones.

Being Motivated by Shame: Neurodivergent people don’t learn as others do and are shamed for how they learn and their choices in life. So, they discover that shame is a driving force for learning and other accomplishments. This shame isn’t something neurodivergent people are born with. Instead, it’s something that is beaten into them as the years go by, and society continues to tell them they’re broken — which is not true. Stimming: Stimming refers to any action that’s meant to help the neurodivergent person feel stimulated for whatever reason. There are all kinds of stims, from vocal to tactile. Stimming helps to alleviate boredom and to regulate and express emotions as needed. Examples of stimming include throat clicking, finger-snapping, rocking back and forth, running hands through hair, pacing, repeating sounds or words, and so on.

The first category needs to be done, the second needs to be planned for, the third can be delegated, and the final category doesn’t need to be handled. However, with the neurodivergent brain, since there’s no “assistant,” everything winds up on the exec’s desk vying for their attention. As a result, either the wrong thing gets done, or nothing gets done at all.

Las técnicas formuladas y propuestas quieren ayudar a la persona a "vivir lo que es", y a moverse en la dirección deseada, con toda su historia, en un proceso cíclico descrito en tres fases: - reconociendo la fusión cognitiva y el comportamiento de la evasión experimental; - dejar de lado estos eventos y establecer relaciones funcionales flexibles con estos eventos; - se mueven en la dirección elegida, construyendo patrones de comportamiento más amplios.

Communication is much more complicated than words spoken or typed. Researchers note that up to 70% of communication is nonverbal, including facial expressions, gestures, and other body language. Further, spoken words communicate differently based on verbal variations in rate, tone, pitch, volume, and speaking styles. Because so much of what is communicated goes beyond mere words, users of technology-based communication and social media need to consider what might be lost in those formats as opposed to if the same communication happened in person.

I want to touch people's hearts and minds by writing words that give hope, help them heal, and inspire them to be better versions of themselves.

Austin Trauma Therapy Center offers inclusive therapy for all people! We offer: EMDR, DBT, Depression, Anxiety, PTSD treatment, etc. We provide child, adolescent, adult, couples, and family counseling services.

Invalidating Environment Most parents, upon seeing this intense emotional reaction to a seemingly (to them) minor issue, will be confused and upset themselves. When confronted by your child’s painful emotions, you’ll try to find ways to help her feel better, sometimes by inadvertently trivializing or dismissing her emotions. When you are not aware of your child’s emotional sensitivity, you may (1) attempt to help her get over her feelings by saying things like “It’s really nothing” or “Just forget about it”; (2) try to comfort or reassure her with statements like “It’s okay,” “Don’t worry about it,” or “Tomorrow will be a better day”; or (3) try to fix the situation or give advice by saying something like “Did you talk to your teacher about that problem?” or “Next time, why don’t you do it this way?” For many children, these statements may help them feel better and move on. For your child who has emotional intensity, these statements may actually serve to “invalidate” how she feels, making it seem as though her feelings don’t matter or do not make sense. The impact of the invalidating environment. A child who feels her emotions intensely will become quite confused when the environment (parents, teachers, friends, and so on) around her dismisses, trivializes, or questions what she’s feeling. This response invalidates the child’s experience. She will begin to wonder why she feels awful when others say it isn’t a big deal or what is wrong with her that she feels something that others tell her not to feel.

DBT, there is recognition that people are doing the best they can in this moment, given the circumstances and difficulties of their lives, and that they have to make changes so that they can live a life that is fulfilling to them.

times. It might be helpful to avoid confrontations or increasing demands. Being aware of vulnerabilities—yours and your teen’s—allows you to choose the most effective time to discuss situations with her. Awareness of vulnerability factors may help you to minimize anger and frustration within the family.

Picture yourself as a ship in a stormy sea. DBT gives you the tools to steer the ship, no matter how rough the waters get.

If we regularly check in with our bodies, we become aware of how we are and what we might adjust to make ourselves more comfortable. When we are feeling more aware of how we feel and implement ways to feel better, we are less likely to sabotage.

I think I was afraid that if people saw that I have a mental illness, that I’m not composed a hundred percent of the time, and that I have times of instability, I’d lose everything -- their friendship, my job - everything. I would catastrophize and then create the very situations I feared by acting out in destructive ways.

We often think that we are at the mercy of our urges, feelings, and thoughts. With this exercise, we can notice and experience the urge to quit and not quit at all.

May my heart remain open. May I realize the beauty of my own true nature. May I be healed. May I be a source of healing for this world.   May you be at peace. May your heart remain open. May you realize the beauty of your own true nature. May you be healed. May you be a source of healing for this world.

Consciously and mindfully pushing thoughts away is a different process than flat out denying that something happened. You’re not denying anything in this case. You are acknowledging what happened and your feelings around it and then giving yourself a much needed and deserved respite.