Quote:
Originally Posted by JustAnUntakenName
I am not. I was when I was a teen, I was very proud but then **** happened and it died; then more **** happened, and **** just kept happening until it was gone. I am not proud of who I have become as a result of all the ****. I could have handled it better, or even prevented it if I knew better. I'm trying to get some of my pride and confidence back this year. I want to do well at and finish my degree this year, do a bunch of online courses to gain skills and learn self-defensive - that's the plan anyway.
I finished my DBT course last week. It was very disappointing for me because the skills only work for anger, not for despair and loneliness. And the more I pointed this out to the psychologist team, and asked for alternatives that actually work, the more they just ignored me. And I applied my skills when asking, I stayed calm and polite and patient.
I left there feeling unaided, disrespected and invalidated. But *bleep* them, and their psychologist attitude - at least now I've learnt I can't trust or depend on psychologists - I'll do this by myself. I'll prove them all wrong.
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You could for instance be proud of gaining insight into your psychological condition decades earlier than I did. Of living through all the difficulties you faced, including the side effects of your BPD. I think you're falling into the all or nothing, black and white trap once again. This probably applies to your psychologists, whom you're painting in black, as well as your lost love, which is still all white.
Your DBT psychologists may have focused on anger management, but in my understanding the mindfulness practice and "emotional literacy" part does in fact address despair and loneliness. When I read up on DBT, the mindfulness instructions seemed virtually identical to what is being taught in Buddhist meditation courses. One fundamental Buddhist teaching is the interaction of desire, aversion, and delusion as the root cause of suffering. Your (and my, I'm in no better place) loneliness is just a facet of desire for love and affection, your despair an aspect of aversion, of not being able to get rid of loneliness and feelings of emptiness.
Even though they didn't free me of my personality issues, meditation lessons helped me. One place you could try, IMHO somewhat sectarian, but very good quality teaching, is dhamma.org. They offer 10 day entry level courses in your country (and almost kicked me out because of my crappy personality
). For a more regular and social practice, shop around for a local temple, could be in Theravadin, Zen or Tibetan traditions.
Tibetan schools like visualising the teaching. Basically a life of suffering is spinning around the senseless chase of delusion (the pig), greed (the bird or rooster), and hatred (the snake).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_poisons