A few things have entered my awareness recently, and combined with my present struggles and goals to produce an inspiration.
I’ve been introduced to the DBT skill radical acceptance. I’ve come across strategies for reparenting and for relearning responses. And have discovered that the creator of DBT herself persevered through psychiatric struggles.
Radical acceptance
At DBT I have been taught radical acceptance. This is a strategy for identifying resistance to acceptance, for reacting effectively, and for practising the acceptance of dissatisfaction.
One mechanism of radical acceptance might be to increase self-awareness of the internal phenomenon of non-acceptance. Sometimes there is something going on (outside me) which I don’t like yet I’m not aware that it is bothering me. Examples can be mundane (an irritating sound) or existential (worried about a social encounter). If you were to ask me, then I would say something like, “I guess that bothers me, but I don’t think about it.” In this way, radical acceptance can have the corollary benefit of allowing suppressed thoughts and emotions to express themselves (and once expressed, sometimes dissipate).
My own experiences of radical acceptance are directed towards internal phenomenon, especially emotions, limitations, and aspects of my biography that I’m not accepting. But I’ve heard of the common experience for applying radical acceptance to social situations, the limitations and ‘faults’ of others, and learning to accept a negative interaction without reacting impulsively.
One of the hardest aspects of radical acceptance is trying to truly accept something of which I disapprove, with all my heart. It is so very hard to truly accept (as opposed to distract away from) past traumas – the things that happened to me, that were done to me, that I did and regret. Which is why radical acceptance is described as a “turning”, whereby every resistance is an opportunity to move closer towards the asymptote of acceptance, or not. This concept of ongoing modulation is a common motif.
Reparenting
I watched a youtube about reparenting. This is a strategy for strengthening one’s own voice, especially in the domains of self-discipline and self-endorsement.
In my own mind everything I do is related to what other people would think. If people in my life think that an activity is valuable, then I am driven towards it so as to avoid their disapproval. If people in my life think that an activity has low worth, then I procrastinate around it or even away from it so as to stay within the confines of what “does” have worth.
Reparenting means nurturing the inner voice that fulfils the role of the parent within the mind dynamic. This includes actively encouraging positive behaviours, and actively disciplining negative behaviours.
By actively encouraging I mean using internal dialogue, “It is good that I am doing this,” or “That is a good thing that I achieved.” I also mean rewarding my positive behaviours, perhaps buying myself a gift and telling myself that it is because I was admirable. This feels unintuitive to me, because I believe that I should be a complete adult, and do things simply and purely because I tell myself that I need to. I have two responses to this: (1) perhaps the strength of the inner adult is dependent on the validation of the inner child, so that it is a natural process (albeit one which some of us have not satisfied already) to allow and endorse the needs of our inner child; (2) perhaps this model of inner-child-parent-adult is to be seen as a phenomenological tool, whose validity should be measured by its ability to conceive, perceive, and develop aspects of our identity.
By actively disciplining I mean using internal dialogue, “This is not in my best interest,” or “I sympathetically know that it is hard to do this, but doing it anyway is an important value.” I also mean encouraging the transformation into a positive behaviour, using the approach of actively encouraging. I make the same two considerations here, but add a third: (3) perhaps I have mislearned the role of discipline, and have developed a habituated, blindly reactive opposition to its voice. In the past I may have found a need to negative the disciplining voice, invalidate it because I perceived it as a voice of irrational abuse. But without knowing the value of discipline, my behaviours can only be driven by deeper fears, including the fear of an amorphously (and subconsciously) imagined discipline, or by a drive for transcendent rewards (which can never be satiated and hence be repetitively disappointed).
Training the mind
I watched a youtube TEDx about training the mind. A strategy was described for using goal oriented evaluations (e.g. “this is good”) to overwrite mental instincts (e.g. “this is painful”).
The speaker gave an example of soldiers running up a hill, carrying packs, in the rain, singing. She said that the singing told the brain that “everything is alright, despite what you may have thought,” and over time it stops prompting the consciousness to suffer in those circumstances. The same can be done with an internal dialogue, saying “No this is actually good because…” This is not denying the discomfort, or trying to submerge the discomfort in positive thoughts. Rather, this is adding a positive emotional and rational vector into the mix, so that over time the brain knows that the same discomfort is uncomfortable but emotionally rewarding and aligned with its rational values.
DBT, Linehan, and the road
I learned that the creator of dialectical behavioural therapy herself underwent and overcame psychiatric struggles.
The creator revealed that she had been institutionalized with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and was compulsively self-harming. In retrospect she believes that a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder would have been more correct, and developed many of the tools that iterated into modern DBT as a means for helping herself.
The lesson here is twofold.
(1) Inspiration is to be found in the ability for a human being to overcome personal demons and become immeasurably stronger. Thus one may say, “I am about to treat the path that has been walked by a woman and her many followers. An indolent person cannot follow that path. May I succeed.”
(2) Inspiration is to be found in the precedent of a human being directing their own salvation. Thus one may consider, “I am the greatest explorer of my own labyrinth, and I may discover and imagine with confidence the solutions to my dilemma.” This especially is an epiphany; for myself, I am reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy of long-term strategies that I have imagined myself. And although it is true that instincts can gravitate towards coincidences and superstition, this does not preclude it from formulating its own strategies. Linehan did, and so can others.
Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be a refuge to yourselves.
