The Dialectical part of DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) recognises that life is not all black or white, darkness or light, it can be both at the same time. For those of us who experience rapidly seesawing emotions acknowledging the reality of competing truths, can be difficult to negotiate, particularly when our emotions are informing our thinking that the 'truth' is either all black or all white. The sweet spot lies between accepting competing realities and fighting against one or other truth to the point of exhaustion.
In DBT, the decision sweet spot is called Wise Mind, a balance between being all rational or all emotion. This helps us to balance our purely rational, impassive, view of life with our instinctive, emotion driven knee jerk reaction to our life experience in making decisions which are ultimately helpful.
I understand Dialectics as the balance beam along which my view of life in all its light and shade can lead to me accepting the ups and downs of my life. It is an essential part of the Radical Acceptance which helps me to accept my past, build on my present and move forward into the future.
Dictionary definition: 'Dialectical thinking refers to the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable reconciliation of seemingly contradictory information and postures.'
In applying it to my recovery and use of DBT skills, it is an extension of Wise Mind and moves us from the wilfulness of persisting with long discredited ways of coping with the contradictions of life to an acceptance of life as it is. It helps me to stop being a captive to my instinctive, emotional responses to life, which can be out of kilter with the reality I am experiencing.
Looking back on 2019, following the General Election, just before Christmas which rounded off an awful year, all seemed dark. Then I looked for other perspectives. I am grateful for the blogs of @sarah.styles.bessey who often reflects on the difficult experiences of life. She sums up for me the practical application of thinking dialectically about what we are going through:
'This was the year I learned all over again to reconcile that many things can be true at the same time:
...we miss who we used to be and we love the person we are becoming;...
love and grief;
hope and lament;
there are miracles and there are not;
there are funerals and there are baptisms;
this world is devastatingly broken, filled with weeping and suffering and this world is so freaking beautiful and good you could cry at the sight of a baby’s thigh or catch your breath at the sight of pine trees against a rose coloured sky or turn up the music to sing in the car with the windows down.
All of it: true.'
Life is not all darkness, nor is it all happiness and light. The difference between joy and happiness is that happiness is mostly dependent on what is happening to me. Nobody can be happy all the time.
Joy goes deeper and can exist at the same time as some of the most difficult of times. We can be grieving a major loss, or be struggling with the most difficult of circumstances, but in the midst of those times I can also experience the joy of a good cup of coffee, shared laughter, the warmth of my dog cuddling next to me.
Research shows that feelings last approximately 90 seconds and are fleeting - if we do not constantly fuel them with underlying triggering thoughts. This means that the most negative of emotions is survivable and passing. It also means that there is an opportunity to enjoy moments of positive emotions and allow them the same space to breathe as we give our negative feelings. When your life has been dominated by believing that your darkest moments far outweigh the times that were good, reflect and give space to those moments of light and hope which have sustained you. If we can give the times of light more weight than our negative feelings allow, we will be able to recognise that our lives are both light and shade and our challenge is to keep our focus on balancing these truths about life.
