Name, age, city/town:
Daphnée, 25, Vancouver
What was the most rewarding thing about learning skills?
For years, I struggled with feeling intense emotions, suicidal ideation, and other mental health problems, like anxiety and depression. When I started to learn skills, I realized that there was a way to lessen to my suffering. I felt empowered, but most importantly, I felt hopeful. As someone who has always loved school and learning, my DBT skills group was a therapeutic environment, and it was a key component of my path towards recovery.
Meeting other participants who were going through similar challenges made me feel less alone, and my group facilitators were always encouraging and genuine with us. Learning skills led me to the belief that I could build a life worth living despite struggling with mental health challenges. I remember always feeling giddy and excited the day before group, and I enjoyed every single minute of it.
The most rewarding part? Learning skills helped me build mastery, increased my confidence, allowed me to make better decisions, and made it possible for me to embrace the present moment.
As I like to say, the present is a present!
What are your favorite skills to use?
That’s an easy one to answer! My top 3 include Self-Validation, Wise Mind, and Mindfulness, and more specifically, the skills of Observing and Participating.
Growing up in an environment that sent me the message that my emotions weren’t important, I spent years feeling desperate for another person to validate my perspective and my experiences. When I constantly invalidate myself, it makes it hard to feel good about myself, and my trauma responses kick in, which makes everything difficult in the moment. When I validate myself, my distress goes down almost immediately. Usually, self-validation by itself isn’t enough, but it’s a key step in managing my emotion dysregulation. When I validate myself, I feel warm on the inside, and it’s the equivalent of giving myself a warm hug or applying balm on a painful wound.
I would also say that when I can access my Wise Mind, I’m sort of a badass! My Wise Mind knows what I need in the moment, and won’t hesitate to let me know, even if I don’t like it. In the spirits of dialectics, I’d say that my Wise Mind can be both gentle and assertive. Sometimes it’s a powerful force, and other times a gentle whisper.
I tend to minimize my life difficulties or deny what is going on in the moment, so my favorite way to access my Wise Mind is to take a deep breathe, focus inward, and ask myself, “Deep down, what do I know is true?” Usually, the answer will appear on its own, without me having to ruminate about it.
Finally, mindfulness has been incredibly helpful in lessening some of my emotional pain. I think the best part of practicing mindfulness is that I can savour all sorts of experiences using my five senses, and that’s powerful. I love walking around my neighbourhood and noticing the beautiful pink and purple flowers. I love observing ocean waves, focusing on the sound of the rain, and throwing myself in the moment, because 9 times out of 10, it intensifies my experience of being human. There’s beauty in appreciating the fact we live in world that owes us nothing, and yet can offer us so much.
What advice would you give someone who is starting to learn DBT?
My advice: don’t give up. I know that’s cliché, but learning DBT skills is so hard, and the treatment itself requires a fierce commitment, loads of efforts and a ton of energy. I personally did not feel like treatment was beneficial until about 6 months into it! I felt discouraged and hopeless a lot, but I was told to “just trust the process,” and eventually, I was able to do that. Then, one summer day, I was walking to work when I naturally noticed leaves falling off the trees around me and felt the warm sunshine on my face. I had a “God” moment when I realized that, for the first time in years, I had a life I experienced as worth living.
I would warn people ahead of time that DBT as a treatment can feel unfair at times. Sometimes it is structured in a way that people can feel unheard, like the 24-hour rule where you can’t have contact with your therapist after self-harming or making a suicide attempt.
I would say that you need to practice skills a hundred times before you can see the benefits. I had to practice mindfulness of current thought for an entire month before I saw a tiny bit of a difference. And even then, I was only able to notice my thoughts for less than 2 minutes. Without my therapist at my side, I would have given up, for sure.
I would also advise to have reasonable expectations. Sometimes, people get their hopes up when they are told that DBT is the gold standard treatment, and therefore assume that their life will change drastically. Of course, that can happen.
At the same time, the truth is that DBT gives you amazing tools, but it’s up to you to make use of them. There are so many factors that come into play – whether you have a good therapist, whether you have access to skills coaching, whether you are stuck in difficult circumstances – all of those can impact treatment outcomes. I speak with a lot of people who get disappointed when they realize that DBT will not make their emotional pain go away. There’s still pain, and you still have to go through it – but hopefully, you can do so without having to deal with negative consequences.
How has your life changed since learning DBT?
So many things have changed since I “graduated” from DBT. After almost a decade of suffering, I’m able to function, go to school, hold a job, have solid friendships, and so on. I had all those things before, but I was also in and out of hospital, burnt out from school stress, struggling to keep my friends around, and experiencing weekly, if not daily, mental health crisis. Above all, I was emotionally suffering. Nowadays, I’m able to go through life without being on the verge of a crisis each week. I can manage my emotional ups and downs better than before. I am also ready to do more therapeutic work in addressing my core issues. I wasn’t able to do that in the past, simply because I didn’t have the tools necessary to tolerate trauma treatment. My life has also changed because I’m experiencing more joy than I ever have in my life, and I’m insanely grateful for that.
How are you creating a life worth living today?
I’m in my final year at university, and my goal is to complete a BA in English literature and counselling psychology. I publish creative writing pieces to give hope to others, and partly because books played a big role in making me feel less alone as a teenager. I work as a Youth Peer Support worker alongside other mental health professionals, and my clients motivate me to stay well and in recovery every day.
I recently started going to the gym, I like to sing and dance, and I enjoy knitting and painting watercolor cards for my loved ones. I am adding to my quality of life by taking care of myself first, instead of people pleasing and allowing others to cross my boundaries. I’m recognizing some of my strengths for the first time in my life, and some of them include public speaking and empathizing with other humans. I work hard in therapy and I’m slowly starting to feel worthy of love and belonging. I’m making space for me in the world. I have fleeting moments when I accept myself for who I am, and that is enough.
