Ironically, the main thing that I like in DBT is the emphasis on validating. The T should find the truth in whatever it is that the patient is saying, no matter how far out there it may be, because anything that someone says has some truth in it, and some meaning for them. I find reading Linehan's books validating because I feel that she understands what it is like for me.

I just read through this thread, and I have so many things that I would like to say and probably won't even if just because I can't keep track of all of it. It is an interesting discussion. People don't seem to have neutral reactions to DBT. They hate it or they love it, most of the time. It's not a neutral kind of therapy. Dialectics deal in balancing extremes, so it goes to the extremes - both sides of them - and then synthesizes them.

I'm triggered right now, and it isn't all from this thread. I've been triggered and spaced out for most of this week, over something not too huge, but I feel powerless. A few days ago, my husband cornered me in the bathroom and I felt trapped, and told him I felt trapped, and tried to dodge around him to get through the door, and he wouldn't let me, and I think he was trying to make the point that I didn't ask properly to be let out. I didn't think that I should have to ask to be let out of the bathroom. And DBT would say to do what is effective, which is probably to ask him to let me go, even though I don't think he should make me like that. To intensify it, I just dreamed that T did the same thing my husband did, trapping me in a corner and not letting me out, and that I shoved her rather than asking her to let me go.

I wanted to share something about manipulation, from DBT. People with BPD are often accused of being manipulative, and Linehan suggests that it is the unskillfulness at manipulation that others perceive as manipulativeness. We all manipulate the environment - everyone. Manipulation means to change something. When manipulation is skillful, as in assertive communication, others feel that they choose to do what you ask them to do (or not), rather than feeling like they were coerced. If I had been able to ask my husband to step aside and let me through, he wouldn't have felt manipulated, as he probably did when I darted back and forth, tried to get around him, and eventually cried. Then he lectured me about crying over it. So, Linehan says that we need to learn to be manipulative more effectively.

I do DBT groups. I'm interested in DBT, and want to learn more about it, because these are skills that I need and don't have. And because most of DBT feels like a good fit for me. The skills from the skills groups are not original, but they are the skills that people like me don't have. They are drawn from mindfulness and meditation and Zen practices, as well as from what people who live effectively in the world know how to do and don't have to be told. A lot of it is intuitive, but some of us need to be taught it because we haven't thought of it on our own. That might be why some people can feel talked down to.

I don't know if I ever could do the irreverence and some of the strategies that Linehan teaches therapists to do. They are pretty far removed from me now, and I'm not sure that I can see myself being assertive to that extent, which does feel like it borders on aggressiveness. I still want to learn more though. One thing I have learned is that assertiveness feels like aggression to people like me who are used to being very passive. I'm not sure how clearly I can see it yet. But there are things in DBT that I like and know I can benefit from. Probably most people could find things that they agree with, as well as things that they don't like. That would probably be true of almost anything that has thousands of pages written about it.