The power of feeling opposing emotions.
When I first started as a clinician, I went training on Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT). Going into it I knew that it was a branch of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) but I did not know for the life of me what dialectical meant and how it would be remotely useful in the counselling world. The week of training went by and while l could fudge my way through it, I was by no means an expert on the word. Two weeks after the training, I was met with my first "DBT kid" (the self-harming, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, troubles at home-type that DBT was developed for) and the words flew out of my mouth like I was Marsha Linehan (the mastermind behind DBT). And this is how I described it:
"Two opposing things can exist at the same time and that's ok."
So why is this such an important concept? Because life is not perfect; it is not black and white and things can get muddy. If we can sort through the muddiness while recognizing that it is muddy, we can develop acceptance to our situation instead of battling our way through it trying to come to best solution or answer.
A simple example is "I hate you and love you"... you know, when someone drives you absolutely mad yet you couldn't imagine your life without them, or:
"I'm doing the very best I am and I'm going to have to try harder".
or
"I love being a parent so much, I wouldn't change it for the world and I don't feel like "me" anymore, I hate it".
Another reason viewing life as a dialectical? Because it's validating. How many time do we think something and then get hard on ourselves because we know some people that are going through something so much worse, and then we judge ourselves because we shouldn't be feeling that way.
Lately mine has been around being a mom and working full-time. It seems that's all my life is right now, go to work, come home, clean, care for a house, try to be as attentive to my child as I can be and being absolutely exhausted, all. the. time.
So to help me sort through the confusion of feeling grateful, regretful, resentful, being mindful, overachieving employee, high self-expectations yet little to no motivation, it looks like this:
"I love that I can be a mom and have a career that I absolutely love and and its really, really hard".
Seeing my situation this way tells me "it's amazing and yup, it totally sucks at the same time", but because I accept this and can see it a bit more clearly, I can take action to maybe make things easier on myself... vacay day when the kiddo is at daycare? House cleaner?
Don't get me wrong, the DBT manual weighs the same as a baby horse so this is the ultra-condescend explanation of what a dialect is, but useful nonetheless.
~ love the dichotomic mother
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