Radical Acceptance!

A few months back, I took a Family Connections Course to help me understand my daughter who suffers from depression, anxiety and traits of borderline personality disorder. It helped me parent her and make my life easier instead of fighting with her all the time.

During my course, one of the skills I learned was Radical Acceptance. It helped me understand that my daughter wasn't able to go to school right now, and that that was okay. There's plenty of time later for that as we work towards getting her the help she needs.

Using all my skills has helped us but I still relapsed in depression myself.

So I'm sitting here today thinking what can I do to help myself?

How can I use Radical Acceptance to help myself accept my depression? Personally, relapsing was very hard for me to take. I was so proud of myself for recovering from Major Depression the first time and not taking anti-depressants anymore. Having depression right now is hard. It reminds me of my first depression. Makes me panic when I start thinking how bad it was the first time around.

I don't know. Maybe, it's just time for me to accept that depression doesn't make me weak. If it makes me anything, shouldn't it be stronger?

Food for thought as I try to figure out what I can do to help myself recover once again using some of the DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) skills I learned.

DBT I think was the style of therapy used on account of the (borderline) personality disorder possibility. It may not be appropriate for the depression you yourself are going through. CBT I would suggest is better for your own mental health. SImilar yes, but not the same. CBT recognizes that depression and anxiety stem mostly from negative core beliefs we have. The aim is to learn to recognize them, meet them head on and relearn new thoughts/behavior.

A good start is to consider the 10 cognitive distortions. Question how legitimate they are and adjust your behaviour accordingly.

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&sourc...9n-ELzqSA3UeKQ

Good luck. You are off to a good start.

Hello ExhaustedMom: Thank you for sharing your experience. I don't know if depression can make a person stronger. (In my case my struggles with depression & anxiety, among other things, have chipped away at me to the point where sometimes it seems there's not a lot left.) I participated in a partial hospital program years ago. And one thing I recall them saying is: "Don't should on yourself." In other words, don't burden yourself with unnecessary expectations. In line with that, I simply strive to accept where I'm at... with lovingkindness & compassion. I suppose that is perhaps one aspect of radical acceptance.

Justafriend306: Yes, I use CBT as well. I have an app on my phone (Pocket CBT) that I like very much. But love the chart you gave me a link to. Especially the example. Thank you.
I use some of my DBT Skills as a parent to deal with my daughter but it just made me think that I should use it for myself as well. Especially the acceptance part. Acceptance of being depressed. Acceptance of not knowing how to deal with my daughter sometimes when I'm exhausted and not having "my s**t"(excuse my language) together all the time. But I agree with you. CBT is better to change those negative thoughts we have.

Skeezyks: I know what you mean. I often feel like I got nothing left to give. So parenting sometimes seems very difficult and I break down. I like to think of it this way. A person who suffers from depression is strong for learning how to cope with depression. Getting up every single day, going to work, being a mother, a friend, etc.. is difficult when I feel like I'm falling apart. But I still make it through. It builds resilience!

I love what you said about lovingkindness & compassion. I tend to be very hard on myself. I would never say the things I tell myself to a friend. I will start treating myself that way as well! Thank you!

Hello exhausted, just to offer another viewpoint, I am in a DBT program right now for my depression and I am finding it to be very effective. And yes "Radical Acceptance" is a DBT based skill.

However I don't think you need to accept your depression, instead there are other DBT skills to help you manage it. "Radical Acceptance" is a sort of technique for when other management skills aren't working, I think it was appropriate for the case with your daughter to help you in accepting her situation but for yourself there are other skills in DBT that might help, especially since "Radical Acceptance" was effective for you.

If you are interested see if you can find some DBT based therapists or a group DBT program or do some research on DBT Mindfulness and Emotion Regularion... These are two of the four areas that DBT focuses on. The Mindfulness helped me a lot almost immediately and I've been growing into the other skills with some practice.

CBT might also be an effective option for you as justafriend said.

Thanks Dexter.

You're quite right! I guess you could say I'm shooting myself in the foot! Mindfullness can be effective and I've used it before. Unfortunately, when I feel overwhelmed, I tend to turn to other things to not have to focus on the internal stuff like watching tv and eating at the same time. Guilty as charged!

I use several of the DBT Skills but mainly in dealing with my daughter to help me cope. But sometimes, it's still overwhelming.

Let's just say the thing that works the most is sending her to her dads so I can recharge my batteries. Thankfully, after 8 months of living with me full time, she started going to her dads again. CBT and DBT skills help me cope on a day to day basis but sometimes I do get overwhelmed and it gets very hard to use those skills. It's like I just don't care anymore. I'm too exhausted to help myself.