Dbt therapy

[Sidney37]

Has anyone done DBT therapy to recover from cptsd and narcissistic abuse?  I've just started not so long ago,   I feel like my "emotional mind" keeps me safe and prevents more abuse.  The "wise mind" seems to feel like I have to be the bigger person and accept abuse, unfair situations and other really frustrating things that contribute to my cptsd.  Any tips or is dbt the wrong thing for me?

[Starboard Song]

We used Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and also immersed ourselves in the principals of Radical Acceptance (the book in my signature). Together, that amounts to an amateur version of DBT: establishing new behavioral and thinking patterns based on a simultaneous acceptance and need for change.

I really believe in acceptance as a critical component of our healing, and also recognize we need to adopt healthy ways of thinking and behaving. It worked for us.

[Call Me Cordelia]

I'm not familiar with that terminology or DBT. But is your "wise mind" really giving you wisdom? Or has it been trained that way? Because if your interior thoughts are leading you to actions that are harmful to you, maybe that's what you're going to therapy to work on? It seems to me that in a healthy mind, the feelings and the thoughts of the intellect would be in harmony with each other and external reality.

[Boat Babe]

My son was misdiagnosed with BPD when he was 19. Turns out he has very high functioning autism instead. The diagnosis was removed from his medical records four years later. What fun!

Anyway, he was able to access DBT through our marvelous National Health Service because of the BPD diagnosis because he was in a bad place mentally (long story and not mine to tell here). The DBT has been amazing for him. He is so clued up for a 25 year old. Has amazing boundaries and self awareness. It was a real gift even though it was aimed at the wrong diagnosis.

The autism diagnosis was a massive relief for him and he has gone from strength to strength since then.

[Wilderhearts]

I did do DBT in my early twenties.  The cPTSD and childhood narcissistic abuse left me very emotionally dysregulated, since I was only taught my "negative" emotions were unacceptable, and could elicit murderous rage from uNPDf.  I didn't really learn how to self-soothe or integrate "negative" emotions, given the levels of distress and lack of parenting I experienced.

DBT really helped me with that.  I understand "wise-mind" as the integration of our feelings, and logical, cognitive understanding of facts.  Because DBT is designed for BPD, where "feelings make facts," "wise mind" is specifically geared towards evaluating what is feeling and what is fact, and using the understanding of both.

Is your current understanding of wise mind based on being in the course, or on something specific you've read?

[Sidney37]

Thanks everyone.  I'm not that far into DBT.  I think the cPTSD has me emotionally dysregulated, too.  Any expression of emotion was unacceptable to PDm and possibly PD gradmother.  I'd get shamed for doing anything that wasn't emotionally flat.  Then PDm would pick at me and pick at me and pick at me with the expectation that I had no reaction until I blew up and slammed a door. I'd blow up, she'd take a tranquilizer and go to bed and I'd be free from her for hours.  So the only emotion that was rewarded was frustration and door slamming.  So my emotional mind of blowing up did serve a protective purpose.  I'm still trying to work out how wise mind helps when things are very unfair. 

[Starboard Song]

...So the only emotion that was rewarded was frustration and door slamming.  So my emotional mind of blowing up did serve a protective purpose.  I'm still trying to work out how wise mind helps when things are very unfair.

Slamming a door gets a response like a baby crying does: by hoping for the other party to respond. It is loud and kinetic, but is ultimately a completely passive approach. The Wise Mind approach takes ownership: you decide what you will or will not do, or engage with, and then you apply those boundaries daily to yourself. You hold yourself accountable, and you take calm, decisive actions to create a world in which you can thrive in peace. I don't mean to make it sound easy, but it is usually possible.

Remember the old joke, "I wouldn't want to join any club that would haev me as a member"? The Wise Mind is above the judgments of others. If someone calls you stupid, they are simply mistaken. Wise Mind doesn't argue, doesn't justify, doesn't defend or explain. Wise Mind is very confident in itself, and shrugs off such insults in a friendly way, while taking immediate steps to disengage from the conversation. Again, this is not easy but it is usually possible.

Radical Acceptance has a lot to say on this, as does The Book of Joy. I commend both to you, and wish you so much good strength.