Earlier this year I had a bereavement, the first one of my life (I admit I am very lucky to have reached my late twenties before this happened). But it was still so painful. There were so many emotions bound up in it: guilt, sadness, shame, regret, hoping that this event was a bad dream, disappointment when realising it wasn’t. Up to that point, I had primarily been using my Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills to manage the overwhelming anger I felt almost all the time. But with this grief, I had to use skills for emotions that weren’t so well-known to me. Or, if they were well-known, they were as a secondary emotion. Now they were uppermost and I wasn’t sure how to deal with them. I also felt great shame for my reactions, for not reacting in the ‘right’ way (whatever that is) and for feeling out of my depth in dealing with the way grief showed up for me. All this was a real challenge.

A couple of months later, I had one of the worst depressive spells I have ever had. I don’t know if this was partly caused by the bereavement or by something else, but I have rarely felt so despairing and hopeless. I think it was one of the first depressive episodes I’ve had since being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and it’s safe to say that the symptoms of both were exacerbated by the other. BPD made my depression take on a very impulsive and dangerous quality; there was an element of f*** it, let’s do whatever to feel better. The problem was that what I was doing wasn’t really helping me, certainly not in the long-term and, to be honest, even 5 minutes after the immediate moment I was engulfed in shame and disappointment in myself for the way I acted. As I sank further into depression, I was also plagued by memories and realisations, many of which were extremely painful and which made me re-evaluate my past in a very negative way.

All this made me feel like I didn’t want to write, that I didn’t have anything to say to help others use DBT, particularly as my actions were not exactly in keeping with a life worth living or any other DBT maxim. I would have felt like a fraud if I was advising people how to use skills when I wasn’t even using them myself.

I am in a bit of a better place now and that’s thanks to a couple of things. Firstly, I heard something incredibly helpful on Wise Mind: A DBT Podcast, which is a great podcast from a couple of DBT therapists based in Australia. One of them said that they advised clients to be kind to themselves for engaging with target behaviours, because, whilst the behaviours are maladaptive, it showed ‘how hard [the client] is working to feel better.’ It might not be effective or helpful or a good idea, but the client was clearly trying to deal with difficult circumstances in the only way they knew how. Reappraising my own behaviours in this way made me realise that I wasn’t lazy or bad: I was just reaching for the wrong tools to deal with the problem. I then spoke to a therapist to help me get re-acquainted with the skills I needed. She was kind enough to realise that I could only really manage small things: she suggested that I focus on accumulating positives and the PLEASE skill.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing in terms of DBT skills in the last couple of months. I’m still not feeling my best and I don’t feel able to use more complicated skills, and I might not still feel up to that for a while. However, being kind to myself and adjusting my expectations to what I am able to do right now, has also really helped. I think, when I first enrolled on a DBT course, I approached it like a school assignment: take lots of notes, do all the homework, try as hard as possible, because that’s what would get me to my end goal where I would be fully recovered. However, this year has humbled me. It has made me realise that it is, of course, extremely important to try my best with using my DBT skills, but that, unfortunately, mental health recovery isn’t a project that can be finished and done. It will take my whole life and it will never be complete. There will be different things I need to deal with at different times, as well as some issues that might pop up repeatedly over the course of my life. The difference from before is that I now have the skills to help me through the difficult times and I have some people to turn to when I’m in a bad spot. It might be a 1% improvement on where I was before DBT, but 1% is still better than 0%.

I am not perfect, neither is my use of DBT skills. Maybe it’s ok that my writing starts to reflect that too. Here’s to trying to improve things, imperfectly!