Casper wrote:Hopeless isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
Apart from some unrelated despondency/depression, I am also ending my DBT. It is extending for 12 weeks due to my therapist wanting to work on my PTSD, but I came to a realization last night that burst a huge bubble I'd been living in for a while.
I had always thought of DBT as this way to sort of "cure" BPD. I have realized now that it isn't. All it is, is a way to control the outward symptoms and responses. I have been told by family that I have drastically changed (for the better) since I started DBT, but inside, I still have the same raging emotions; I'm still the same monster that I always was. I guess I always will be. I'm just better at keeping it bottled up now.
That sounds okay, but that emotion has to vent somewhere - it doesn't just vanish. I'm finding it goes to suicidal ideation, much more frequently than before. It has also gone further in action, which I really don't want to go into here.
But for some reason, the DBT therapists keep calling me the poster boy of their program. Some poster boy.
Sorry you're feeling bad Casper. Your post struck a real chord with me. I was referred for DBT but after a year of therapy I just couldn't face any more. As helpful as I know it can be, it's also painful and triggering too. So I told them to close their file.
But this is something I often wondered about DBT. I've read bits and pieces, but when you're one of the "quiet borderlines", when there are no outward symptoms or responses, how can DBT help? My problem is that for the most part my BPD is silent, all of it goes on inside my head. Because I don't express it I get very depressed with a lot of suicidal thoughts. Or that's what the therapist told me anyway.
I wondered though reading your post whether you found DBT went further than that? I mean at first it probably is about reigning in the bursts of emotion, but do you think that over time that might change the intensity of those same emotions? To take a really silly unrelated example - say you bite your nails. Just because you stop actually biting them, doesn't stop the urge to do it. But then as time passes, and you get used to not biting them, does the urge to do it, the need to do it dissipate? If you practise the distress tolerance type exercises (and remember I haven't done any DBT) will the brain continue to turn down the volume (or the intensity) of those emotions even if you are no longer letting them out? These things are often very entrenched and have been going on a long time, so it makes sense that it's going to take time for the brain to change the way it deals with the emotional turmoil.
Sorry I am thinking out loud now. I was just interested in what you'd written and curious about the longer term benefits of DBT. Are there other ways you can safely vent - writing, exercise, music? For me, I've always kept a journal. Well I say journal, but it's more for venting the emotional stuff. Or just trying to figure out the grey bits when I start the black and white thinking stuff. It helps me, but I know it's not for everyone. I started it when I was a kid for all the emotions I wasn't allowed to express. And of course there's PF too.
It's bound to feel difficult though coming to the end of the therapy. Every therapist I've ever seen have told me I have problems with endings though for me it's more, it's ending and I am not fixed yet. But then I have looked back on the reports of my older therapies and I can see changes now. It just takes time for me to really process stuff like that. I guess "getting well" is a long process for BPD and maybe a lot of it only starts when you've learned all you can in therapy. Are you glad you did it though - the DBT I mean?
Anyway enough jabbering. I really hope things start to feel better for you.