[gelfling]

*trigger* suicide mentioned

Okay, maybe i just dont get it.

t wants to work on dbt 1/2 session and possibly other things the rest of session - but it seems like we do all dbt - but...

last week i got a call from a former employer wanting to have me come back to work - lots of churning emotions brought up from this - tried to kill myself twice while working for them - so called t and set up 2nd appt last week......

he was totally focussed on the job call and did not discuss the emotions at all. he even seemed to side step them when i brought them up. his main answer to me was that i needed an employment situation that was like a normal family with normal attachements and that that environment was more important for me than others because of what i have been through...........which is good to consider, but doesnt help with the emotions. he spent alot of time giving me examples from his profession and how difficult it can be to find that sort of situation.

i guess im just really confused. dbt is supposed to help me get in touch with my emotions/feelings , but he doesnt want to discuss my emotions? so - where does this leave things. I am so confused

[Kiya]

Hmmmmmmm.... from what I can tell of dbt, it isn't really to get in touch with your emotions as much as it is to bring them up in that moment and then release them. Wait, I might be confusing this with emdr.
Anyway, i quit a job where i couldn't be safe. I was cutting and eventually cutting on the job... and then cutting about 5 feet from my boss, with customers in the store. It was like family - and just as disfunctional. I had to get out of there. You're trying suicide there needs to be looked at; was it in conjunction of the job? Were you sooooooooo unhappy in your job that you needed out? Or were they not related? Did your work know you attempted? is that your concern? Can you say more?
Kiya

[gelfling]

Kiya - the first time i attempted was a month out of hospital after an inappropriate situation with my doctor on top of the depression and working in this very high stress position - i was released from the hospital 18 hours after admission and my employer never knew anything about it. the second time was completely related to my job - they had been screwing around with my hours, salary - i'd been living on my savings because of it - and they made it impossible for me to work anywhere else to make up the difference, then my boss took me in with one of my clients and reduced me to the level of being her secretary and belittling me thru the process - i cried all the way home and overdosed - started vomiting, my fiance called my pdoc, drove me to the hospital where i overdosed with 60 or 70 additional pills and ended up spending another week in the hospital. when i got back to work they threatened to fire me because i had not called them to let them know i would not be at work. they ended up letting me go anyway because financially the business was doing poorly and last hired first laid off..........

I don't think i want to continue to work there - but jobs are scarce - and if i worked part time i dont think i would work with the boss who treated me so poorly - i could use the money - but wanted to discuss with t to see if he felt it would be good or not - but it triggers lots of complex emotions - emotions i never dealt with after the last time i attempted.

and the more i see t and we dont work on the emotions, the more they seem to cause me problems - i am on the fence right now - i am either going to stuff them and dive back into my life and my career putting my emotional head in the sand until it kills me - or i am going to deal with this stuff for once and work on how to handle them

but you know when you feel an emotional storm coming? get that dark sense that you are going to lose control, lose your mind? I feel that constantly right now....

[pachyderm]

Originally Posted by gelfling

and the more i see t and we dont work on the emotions, the more they seem to cause me problems - i am on the fence right now - i am either going to stuff them and dive back into my life and my career putting my emotional head in the sand until it kills me - or i am going to deal with this stuff for once and work on how to handle them

Can you confront the T with this situation, with your urgent need to bring your emotions out into the daylight and work with them?

[WikidPissah]

Originally Posted by gelfling

i am either going to stuff them and dive back into my life and my career putting my emotional head in the sand until it kills me - or i am going to deal with this stuff for once and work on how to handle them

unfortunately, putting your head in the sand will only work for a limited amount of time...it will implode eventually. If only this emotional stuff was that easy to be rid of...

Originally Posted by gelfling

but you know when you feel an emotional storm coming? get that dark sense that you are going to lose control, lose your mind? I feel that constantly right now....

YES. You really need to pay attention to this. You instinctively know what's coming.

I tried DBT several times. I'm not going to trash it, because it does wonders for a lot of people. It never came close to working for me. Maybe it was just over my head, or maybe bad T's, IDK, but the few DBT T's I had were very similar to what you're mentioning. I couldn't bring up what I was feeling emotionally, it was always "use your skills"...and I would be "wtf? what skills, I got no skills". The goal of DBT is to make you deal on your own, but when you are in a ton of emotional turmoil you just can't do that, and you can't grasp the "skills" either.

[Perna]

Originally Posted by gelfling

last week i got a call from a former employer wanting to have me come back to work - lots of churning emotions brought up from this - tried to kill myself twice while working for them

I am very confused. Are you working now? I guess not. I would not, in any event, work for this former employer no matter what! If you can't deal with the emotions on your own, now, that the phone call generated, then you probably cannot deal with working with emotions that could come up from actually being there now/again?

It sounds like your T does not practice the kind of therapy you want. I would either change T's or work within DBT, a behavior therapy. It does not sound like the former job is capable of being a "family" sort of place (my last job was, even though it was "difficult" for me, it was great for me too because it dovetailed and supported my therapy and my therapy supported it, etc.).

If you are upset by your emotions and want to work with them, I would change to a T who practices that kind of therapy. But I still would not work at that place, no matter what. If I were in your place, with your experiences, I think I would go back to school or otherwise change professions even.

[zooropa]

one of the dialectics in DBT, as I see it from my POV as a client, is that at the beginning you are not necessarily focusing on your emotions but on behavior instead but through doing that you learn how to feel and identify your emotions. It can seem invalidating but it works.
Of course it doesn't work for everyone and IMO the key to that is the T. I also really believe that for DBT to work as it's intended you need to be in the full DBT program. You need to be going to weekly skills training group and also have weekly individual therapy with a T trained in DBT. I'm not sure how doing DBT in half measures works, although there is some literature out there supporting it.
I can just say that for me it was the entirety of the therapy that worked and I doubt "DBT-lite" would have been as effective.

[gelfling]

Originally Posted by Perna

I am very confused. Are you working now? I guess not. I would not, in any event, work for this former employer no matter what!

No Perna, I am working - only part time - jobs are scarce where I live and would have to move to find full time employment - which may come to that. Working at the former place would be very temporary - called relief work, they only want me cause people know me and I know their very tedious computer system.

[gelfling]

Originally Posted by zooropa

I can just say that for me it was the entirety of the therapy that worked and I doubt "DBT-lite" would have been as effective.

I agree, zoo - and i'm on a waiting list with no timeline to enter into the only DBT therapy group within a 2 hour drive of my house.

[gelfling]

Thanks, everyone for your help and insight - i really appreciate it - with the depression i dont trust my feelings about things, always worried i am blowing things out of proportion

i'm on vacation this week, so have no appt set to see t and resolve some of this....was supposed to be traveling but plans fell apart so i am home and am fighting some bad feelings. t gets squirrely when i am like this, so i am afraid to call and see about setting something up for this week.

[zooropa]

Originally Posted by gelfling

Thanks, everyone for your help and insight - i really appreciate it - with the depression i dont trust my feelings about things, always worried i am blowing things out of proportion

i'm on vacation this week, so have no appt set to see t and resolve some of this....was supposed to be traveling but plans fell apart so i am home and am fighting some bad feelings. t gets squirrely when i am like this, so i am afraid to call and see about setting something up for this week.

I was going to suggest you trying to see if you can see T this week, since your plans changed and you aren't traveling. What do you mean by "t gets squirrely"?

I definitely know what it's like to have feelings and thoughts you want/need to resolve w/T, and having to just sit on them and wait for that opportunity is really, really difficult.

I also really relate to not trusting your own thoughts and feelings. That is a HUGE thing for me. And I do think it's getting a little better, through time and therapy, so maybe that gives you a little hope?

[gelfling]

Thanks Zooropa - I think I am gonna call t in the morning.

Last time i called him when i was like this he referred me to a day program and in so many words told me if i didnt go he wouldnt work with me anymore...i went to the day program but it has taken almost 2 months finally starting to be able to open up a bit to him. i dont know if i am expecting too much from me or from therapy or from him......