Situations for Interpersonal Effectiveness

Attending to Relationships

• Don’t let hurts and problems build up.
• Use relationship skills to head off problems.
• End hopeless relationships.
• Resolve conflicts before they get overwhelming.

Balancing Priorities vs. Demands

• If overwhelmed, reduce or put off low-priority demands.
• Ask others for help; say no when necessary.
• If not enough to do, try to create some structure and responsibilities; offer to do things.

Balancing the Wants-to-Shoulds

• Look at what you do because you enjoy doing it and “want” to do it; and how much you do because it has to be done and you “should” do it. Try to keep the number of each in balance, even if you have to:
• Get your opinions taken seriously.
• Get others to do things.
• Say no to unwanted requests.

Building Mastery and Self-Respect

• Interact in a way that makes you feel competent and effective, not helpless and overly dependent.
• Stand up for yourself, your beliefs and opinions, follow your own wise mind.

These are pretty self-explanatory I think. Relationship skills can be a problem for many people, Borderlines or not. I don’t know one person that couldn’t benefit from these classes I’m taking. And then I know a few that may need it worse than me For me the difficulty is more about me doubting the validity of me and my right to feel however I do. I can handle many situations just fine in areas that I don’t lack confidence in myself.

In my wanderings tonight I ran across the Leonard Lopate radio show with a segment on Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s presented as an mp3 file about 24 minutes long. It’s so good to have this treated like the serious legitimate illness that it is. I’ve felt plenty of shame through my life, both when I didn’t understand what was so different (wrong) about me; and as much so afterwards when I did know and we were looked at as the one abhorrent and untreatable disorder in psychiatry.

Listening to these women talk about experiences so totally like mine was very reassuring and freeing. I spent so many years receiving negative feedback even from the mental health community that was supposed to be there to help me, it’s uplifting to know that some people do recognize the pain we feel.

When I basically became non-functioning in California in 1995 I sent my kids back to Michigan to stay with friends of mine. I gave them guardianship for the school year. A few months later I decided to move back to Michigan, and that meant back to my parent’s house. When the school year ended the courts wouldn’t give me guardianship back because I had no job and no place of my own. So they gave guardianship to my parents. (that’s a whole ‘nother story) I was in and out of the hospital and it was the worst time of my life.

I eventually got SSDI retroactively and had the money to rent a house so I went to court to ask for guardianship again. This lawyer who represented my kids was there (my kids weren’t there) and he was totally rude and hostile and said if he had his way I’d never see my kids again. I was floored. Especially since he never once talked to either of them. Miranda asked to talk to him months before and he wouldn’t/didn’t for whatever reason. Considering that she was 16 at the time you’d think he might have considered her input. She wrote him a long letter at one point and he never responded to that either. Luckily for me and my kids, the judge said he saw no reason they couldn’t be back with me. I still have no clue why that lawyer felt that way, except that my diagnosis of BPD was that looked down on. He never bothered to talk to me either so I guess he was into making sweeping judgments.

The hopelessness of that time, both the situation and the medical outlook, has changed much for the better. I was always a good mother, but I’ll concede that I had very little to offer for a while. It would have been nice to have had some support that helped me and my kids together, but that sure wasn’t happening. After the anguish (and guilt) I felt losing my kids like that, all I can say is I am so glad those days are past me.

The mindfulness segment of DBT training consists of “What” and “How” skills,

What:

1. Observe
2. Describe
3. Participate

How:

1. Non-judgmentally
2. One-mindfully
3. Effectively

What Skills

Observe is sometimes a tough one for me. Just notice the experience without getting caught up in it. Have a “Teflon Mind” letting feelings and thoughts come into your mind and slip right back out. Push nothing away, cling to nothing. Notice everything with all of your senses. Be alert to every thought, feeling and action that comes into your mind.

Describe is just that. Put words on the experience. Say in your mind “I’m suddenly sad” or “a thought that ‘I can’t do this’ has just entered my mind” or “my stomach is queasy” Call a thought just a thought. A feeling just a feeling, don’t get caught in content.

Participate is jumping on in. Enter into experiences, getting completely involved. Act intuitively from wise mind. Actively practice your skills until they become a part of you. Practice changing harmful situations, changing your harmful reactions to situations, accepting yourself and situations just as they are. (boy that last one is a toughie!)

How Skills

Non-judgmentally means to see but don’t evaluate. Focus on what, not “good” or “bad”. Unstick your opinions from the facts. Accept each moment. Acknowledge the helpful but don’t judge it. Acknowledge the harmful but don’t judge it. When you find yourself judging, don’t judge your judging! Whew, that can be hard!

One-mindfully means to do whatever you are doing completely. If you are eating, eat. If you are worrying, worry. Do it with all of your attention. If other thoughts or actions distract you, let go of those distractions and go back to what you were doing, again and again. Concentrate your mind. If you find yourself doing two things at once, stop and go back to one thing at a time. Another tough one. How many of you drive the same route to and from work and barely remember the drive?

Effectively is to focus on what works. Do whatever you need to for each situation. Stay away from fair, unfair, right, wrong, should, should not. Play by the rules. Act as skillfully as you can in the situation you are in. Not the situation you wish you were in, not the one that is just, not the one that is more comfortable. Keep in mind your objectives in the situation and do what is needed to achieve them. Let go of vengeance, useless anger and righteousness.

That is it for the mindfulness section but it’s a lot! I’m getting better at this but I think it’ll take me years for it to just be second nature. Then start adding on all the other segments and it’s easy to feel pretty overwhelmed with it all. I am such a work in progress

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’~ Charles M. Schulz