The last 2 posts I've written about implementing more skills from the Emotion Regulation module of DBT, the treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Today, when I woke, I did my usual thing and wrote a little list of skills I'd like to use today and made a conscious effort to do them even though I was out house most of the day.
To increase positive emotions I made contact with 2 of my friends (through text) that I wish to keep in regular contact with. This in itself is huge because just 6 - 9 months ago I was shutting myself off from everyone. Luckily, because I don't handle rejection very well (a day in the life of a person with BPD), both my friends responded and I had a great to and fro with a friend I thought I'd lost. I also had a couple of gaps in between jobs and so I spent those times at the beach. Again this is huge for me because I was almost agoraphobic the same amount of months ago. Not only that, I would never go to the beach even before that because I never saw the beauty in it. Even though I only spent a little time there it gave me time to experience it with all of my senses. I also shouted myself to lunch and even though up til recently I was using this as my positive experience almost everyday I decided this week that this was the one day I would allow it (long story short, I am putting on tons of weight so had to cut it back).
To reduce vulnerability to negative emotions I put the following PLEASE MASTER skills, (see last post), in place. I built mastery by doing a bit of a strange art journal page. I'm not a fan of weaving but decided to give it a shot and love my page. Also I think I did a pretty good job today at a particular job where I knew I would be with a client that I consider difficult. I didn't need to treat any physical illness today, I balanced my eating well (ate at regular times and made good choices) and I avoided mood altering drugs. I didn't participate in exercise however I did think about it. I'm concerned that magpies and plovers will get me because they're out now but I am trying to convince myself to wear a hat if I walk (hate to because I feel stupid - a fear that I look dumb and people will talk about me if I wear a hat - silly I know). Will need to act opposite to emotion and just go for that walk with a hat. I'm working on it.
So that's my day. I will use pictures next time I talk about my skills. It's just late and I needed to finish this post before the night was over.
Till next time.
Showing posts with label PLEASE MASTER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PLEASE MASTER. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Monday, 19 August 2013
More about regulating emotions
Today I made a bit of an epiphany (refer to last post) where in order to regulate my emotions I need to be focusing more on the Emotion Regulation module of DBT - yeah I know, der! Because I have been having an extremely difficult time with my marriage I have been spending all of my energy on distress tolerance skills and not enough on regulating my up and down emotions. Doing distress tolerance skills is great and I am in no way going to stop doing them, however I am now aware that I need to be spending an equal amount of energy on emotion regulation skills.
According to Dr Marsha Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) in order to regulate your emotions the goals are to:
understand the emotions, understand the function of the emotion, reduce vulnerability to negative emotions and decrease emotional suffering
To understand the emotions experienced it is recommended to observe and describe emotion/s by filling in a worksheet or mentally go through the model shown below:
I have seen some of these models with another section called 'Vulnerability Factors' which slots in after Prompting Event. I won't go into the model too much here but will post about it separately.
The list below helps to understand the functions of emotions:
1. Is the emotion to motivate/organise action?
2. Is the emotion to self validate?
3. Is the emotion to communicate to others or to influence others?
To reduce vulnerability to negative emotions the skills are PLEASE MASTER (an acronym) and increasing positive emotions.
PLEASE MASTER skills:
Treat PhysicaL illness
balance Eating
avoid mood Altering Drugs
balance Sleep
get Exercise
build MASTERy
To increase positive emotions:
1. do things in the short term that are pleasant and possible now
2. for the long term work towards goals, attend to relationships and avoid avoiding
3. be mindful of positive experiences
4. be unmindful of worries
Letting go of emotions through mindfulness and changing emotions by doing opposite action can assist to decrease emotional suffering.
Just briefly, to let go of emotions through mindfulness notice the presence of the emotion and step back from it, experience it, don't act on the emotion, don't judge it, practice willingness and radically accept it.
To act opposite to the current emotion you do exactly that. If anxiety causes withdrawal then do the opposite and face it. If sadness creates curling up in a ball do the opposite by doing something that is opposite.
Of course none of the above are easy to do but by learning about them through therapy or DBT classes and practice it can be done. I hope that with this new found epiphany I can make a new goal now to focus on doing more of my PLEASE MASTER skills and increase positive emotions.
According to Dr Marsha Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) in order to regulate your emotions the goals are to:
understand the emotions, understand the function of the emotion, reduce vulnerability to negative emotions and decrease emotional suffering
To understand the emotions experienced it is recommended to observe and describe emotion/s by filling in a worksheet or mentally go through the model shown below:
The list below helps to understand the functions of emotions:
1. Is the emotion to motivate/organise action?
2. Is the emotion to self validate?
3. Is the emotion to communicate to others or to influence others?
To reduce vulnerability to negative emotions the skills are PLEASE MASTER (an acronym) and increasing positive emotions.
PLEASE MASTER skills:
Treat PhysicaL illness
balance Eating
avoid mood Altering Drugs
balance Sleep
get Exercise
build MASTERy
To increase positive emotions:
1. do things in the short term that are pleasant and possible now
2. for the long term work towards goals, attend to relationships and avoid avoiding
3. be mindful of positive experiences
4. be unmindful of worries
Letting go of emotions through mindfulness and changing emotions by doing opposite action can assist to decrease emotional suffering.
Just briefly, to let go of emotions through mindfulness notice the presence of the emotion and step back from it, experience it, don't act on the emotion, don't judge it, practice willingness and radically accept it.
To act opposite to the current emotion you do exactly that. If anxiety causes withdrawal then do the opposite and face it. If sadness creates curling up in a ball do the opposite by doing something that is opposite.
Of course none of the above are easy to do but by learning about them through therapy or DBT classes and practice it can be done. I hope that with this new found epiphany I can make a new goal now to focus on doing more of my PLEASE MASTER skills and increase positive emotions.
Revisiting my weekend
Unfortunately, after having set GIVE skills as one of my goals this weekend, I was not very good at following through. I spent Friday night and most of Saturday and Sunday irritable. I blasted my son over trivial things and was snappy and sarcastic towards my husband. I have spent time trying to figure out where this irritability is coming from but because I lack skills in behaviour chain analysis and struggle to sometimes get my head around observing and describing emotions I am really having a difficult time figuring it out. The only solution I had over the weekend was to try and de-escalate by distracting and self soothing as well as to stop myself carrying on (repeating myself, escalating more and more) by just shutting my mouth and literally biting my tongue. So here I am the Monday after still confused as to why I was, and still am, feeling this way. I have a few different scenarios, better known as vulnerability factors, that possibly could be contributing to this feeling of irritability.
1. Friday was my dad's birthday (he passed away just under a year ago and I have PTSD).
Yet, I struggle to accept that this is the reason I am irritable because on Friday I had a great day. I felt fine. I wasn't ruminating, in fact, I was suppressing it.
2. A few things my husband did reminded me why our marriage is failing. I have days where I don't think about it (more suppressing) and days where it just smacks me in the face
3. I have had a stressful week (by stressful I mean in my Borderline perspective I have had a lot on and I've been given bad news, all which overwhelms me).
4. I reduced all my meal portion sizes on Friday (I have been overeating and comfort eating a lot since giving up alcohol and drugs in the last year).
With all of those things in writing I can now see where of course it would be normal for the average person (not just a person with BPD) to have these feelings of irritability after all the above situations. All anger and frustration comes from a place of hurt, sadness, disappointment and all kinds of other emotions. Suppression is also never a good thing but I guess it is just how I am dealing with things right now so I don't crumble. It's getting me by but unfortunately I do now see the consequences.
I realise I am on the road to recovery and can't have the answers straight away. It feels like things would just be easier if I could do the skill of observing and describing my emotions as they come but because a multitude of emotions can occur so fast it is difficult to do this. As I think back to Friday when I first got cranky with my son it would have been better for me to fill out an observe and describe emotions worksheet. I did think of it, however, it requires you to fill in one sheet for each emotion. The problem is I didn't know which emotion started first and there were so many that I decided not to. This is where I think a behaviour chain analysis would have been good also.
Anyway, looking forward, I think the following post on 'coping appropriately with feelings of anger and irritability' by Debbie Corso (another person with BPD with a fantastic Blog) is a great strategy to try while I am unsure of the exact origin of the irritability. Another thing I have tried today is reading my Emotion Regulation workbook again from DBT class. Just going over the goals of the Emotion Regulation module has really encouraged me to focus more on these skills. The start of the module explains (paraphrased by me):
1. Friday was my dad's birthday (he passed away just under a year ago and I have PTSD).
Yet, I struggle to accept that this is the reason I am irritable because on Friday I had a great day. I felt fine. I wasn't ruminating, in fact, I was suppressing it.
2. A few things my husband did reminded me why our marriage is failing. I have days where I don't think about it (more suppressing) and days where it just smacks me in the face
3. I have had a stressful week (by stressful I mean in my Borderline perspective I have had a lot on and I've been given bad news, all which overwhelms me).
4. I reduced all my meal portion sizes on Friday (I have been overeating and comfort eating a lot since giving up alcohol and drugs in the last year).
With all of those things in writing I can now see where of course it would be normal for the average person (not just a person with BPD) to have these feelings of irritability after all the above situations. All anger and frustration comes from a place of hurt, sadness, disappointment and all kinds of other emotions. Suppression is also never a good thing but I guess it is just how I am dealing with things right now so I don't crumble. It's getting me by but unfortunately I do now see the consequences.
I realise I am on the road to recovery and can't have the answers straight away. It feels like things would just be easier if I could do the skill of observing and describing my emotions as they come but because a multitude of emotions can occur so fast it is difficult to do this. As I think back to Friday when I first got cranky with my son it would have been better for me to fill out an observe and describe emotions worksheet. I did think of it, however, it requires you to fill in one sheet for each emotion. The problem is I didn't know which emotion started first and there were so many that I decided not to. This is where I think a behaviour chain analysis would have been good also.
Anyway, looking forward, I think the following post on 'coping appropriately with feelings of anger and irritability' by Debbie Corso (another person with BPD with a fantastic Blog) is a great strategy to try while I am unsure of the exact origin of the irritability. Another thing I have tried today is reading my Emotion Regulation workbook again from DBT class. Just going over the goals of the Emotion Regulation module has really encouraged me to focus more on these skills. The start of the module explains (paraphrased by me):
The goal of emotion regulation is to decrease labile emotions. In order to regulate my emotions I need to observe and describe them and understand what they do for me. I need to reduce emotional vulnerability by using PLEASE MASTER skills and increase positive experiences. To decrease suffering I need to let go of painful emotions through mindfulness and change these emotions through opposite action.
Here I have been madly distracting and self soothing with Distress Tolerance skills, possibly to the point of suppression, where I could have been focusing more on Emotion Regulation. It's not to say that Distress Tolerance skills won't come in handy, (I love them way too much), but for this moment it makes sense if I want to regulate my emotions and moods to focus on the module specifically designed for that.
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