Concepts of Therapy
What if we all had these skills?
One of the units I have been studying this semester is Managing Challenging Behaviours. It has 5 modules: Self Injury, The Aggressive Personality, The Difficult Person, The Suspicious Person and Eating Disorders.
I touched on Self Injury in my blog post-High School Blues which is my most-read post to date.
I’ve reflected on many things relating to this unit and disagree with the labels people have been given. These “challenging” behaviours are associated with trauma; they are adaptive turned maladaptive trauma responses. Giving someone a label like borderline personality disorder because of their behaviour due to what happened to them doesn’t sit right with me. I do understand that for some people, it would be helpful; labels can help you understand the situation and why you are the way you are. But diagnosing with these labels also indicates that the person is a problem that needs to be fixed. From what I can see, eating disorders are the most misunderstood mental health condition. Eating disorder behaviours are emotional dysregulation coping responses associated with trauma. Gabor Maté would term each category as normal responses to abnormal situations. People do what they feel they need to do to survive.
My last assignment is on a therapy intervention called Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). This therapy draws on the biosocial theory of emotional dysregulation, which is believed to underpin “challenging” behaviours.
Dialectics is “the art of investigating the relative truth of opinions, principles and guidelines”.
DBT recognises that environmental context can influence behaviour and that behaviour will differ depending on the context. (We behave differently around different people and in different environments.)
Two of the primary aspects of DBT are acceptance and validation.
Validation is “communicating the non-judgemental acknowledgements and acceptance of one’s or another person’s feelings, thoughts and experience”.
Acceptance is “the process or fact of being received as adequate, valid, or suitable”.
It got me thinking, what if we all applied these principles? People wouldn’t necessarily stop needing therapy, but we would be more comfortable with ourselves. I believe acceptance and validation are the critical areas of improvement in society that will directly impact mental health, lower suicide rates and improve general health outcomes. Accepting that all humans are different and that we won’t like everyone, and that it’s okay to be who we are will truly make us thrive and grow. Imagine if, instead of working against each other, we worked together to be the best versions of ourselves. What if we shifted from blaming to understanding?
After finishing the second draft of my assignment on DBT, I watched this interview with Gabor Maté.
I will share my takeaways if you don’t have a spare 1.5 hours to watch.
We suppress our emotions, suppressing our immune system (making us more susceptive to illness/disease).
We have been conditioned to be acceptable only when certain emotions are present.
We thrive off meaning, connection and belonging.
Wealth = connection.
Suppression of anger (or any emotion) doesn’t make it go away; it turns against you.
Depression is a response to life and a sign you need to reconnect with yourself and feel your emotions.
Grief is a healthy response.
We push down our emotions to fit into the expectations of others.
Trauma is an imprint that makes you react to the present as if you are a child.
The need to reframe our questioning from “What’s wrong with you” to “What happened to you?”.
These patterns can be reversed.
Women get more diseases than men because of cultural conditioning, and women take on the emotional needs of men.
The things that stress people the most: Loss of control, Uncertainty, Conflict, and Lack of information. (All of which are running pretty high right for most populations right now!)
We can learn together, but we are responsible for our self-development.
Trauma is the hidden influence of the world.
To be blind to your trauma is to your own detriment.
I have got Gabor’s book, The Myth of Normal ready to go on audible and hope to get some solid reading/listening in during my European trip (I also have his other books scattered minds and when the body says no, on my reading list.)
As always, your comment/discussion is always welcome :)
DBT saves lives! I was told it was the ‘gold standard’ when my 12 year old daughter went through a mental health crisis that included very scary self-harming. The program was intense- 4 hours a week, group therapy + individual sessions for the adolescent and caregiver for 6 months. At the last session, everyone agreed ALL adolescents would benefit from the mindfulness/validation/life skills lessons we learned. Can’t say enough good things. I saved my folder I still reference it for so many areas of my life. Great post!
This is a bloody ripper, Clare! Love this stuff!
I agree with what you say about labels. I have ADHD. Getting diagnosed was amazing not because I could wear the label, but because I could then research and identify strategies to help me cope with some of the adverse affects of the condition.
I like to think that we are all on the same spectrum in a sense. We are all damaged, we are all traumatised. It's simply not possible to navigate life without experiencing those things. But because we are all in different situations at different times with different tools or coping mechanisms, we react differently to each other based on those (and other) contributing factors.
I really wish stuff like this was taught in schools so more people understood both their own and others behaviors. I have been guilty in the past of writing someone off because they displayed a certain behavior or reaction to a stress because I didn't understand at the time that basically all behaviors, good or bad, are a reaction to something else. These days when I observe something in someone else or even myself that I find peculiar, my first instinct is to ask why. What has happened to that person that makes them react this way? What does it actually mean? What are they scared of? Do they even understand themselves that what they are doing is actually a sign of fear or a need to protect themselves, etc.
I think a huge part of any solution to these types of things is education. Teaching people so that they understand when someone does something untoward, inappropriate or even just a little different to the "normal", there is almost always a far deeper and more understandable reason why. A reason that if you knew, you'd stop and think, "yep, that type or behaviour/reaction actually makes perfect sense now."
I think through education/knowledge we could learn to be more empathetic, compassionate, considerate and understanding, the exact things that people experiencing these problems crave so badly.