Both....And....Life's Balancing Act

In the wee small hours of the morning, when I have tossed and turned all night, with anxious thoughts, all is darkness. Although the opposite point of view - the rose tinted glasses view that life is a bowl of cherries, seems less problematic, it is no less damaging, if it causes us to be unable to engage with life as it is.

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.

Where do I go from Here?

This year: my mother died, my Dad was critically ill for a long period, as siblings we had to travel back and forward throughout the time he was in hospital, there were times we were told he might not make it, but he has and now needs ongoing care. I continue to struggle to find a place of security financially, my benefits review has resulted in another 1/3 cut to my income (still waiting for final outcome, but could become another battle right down to a Tribunal), I was taken ill and spent a week in hospital and am still undergoing tests to find out what exactly is going on, I've had disappointment after disappointment when seemingly earning from my voluntary work has ended due to....I know not what? Stigma? Risk aversion? Fear that I'm overqualified? Too old? Too honest? Making use of my 'Lived Experience' is fine when I do work for free, but apply for a 'proper' job and suddenly all the skills and abilities, which have prompted well intentioned people to encourage me to apply for jobs, seems to count for nothing. I've been battling a particularly persistent viral cold/'flu and know I am physically exhausted. Finally, when there was some hope that the wider society attitudes towards people in need, poverty, illness, relationship breakdown, homelessness, hunger (in the UK, in 2019!) were changing. Bang. An uncaring, self-centred government has been returned with the power to pursue a kamikaze direction which will continue to drag us all down with them. I now hope that all the prevailing wealth of evidence I've read is wrong for the sake of all those who are already suffering from this national preoccupation.

Today, I know I have reached the end of my resources. It's understandable. It's human. It's okay to be not okay about all of this. Tomorrow I have a choice. Where do I go from here? The song from Evita has been running through my mind today and I recall that from this point in her story, such a low point, she begins her climb to superstardom. I totally have reservations about her path and indeed the trajectory she finally followed, but I look at it as a lesson in picking yourself up and starting again.

So, what is my own answer to the question, where do I go from here?

1) Accept that this is painful. Allow myself to grieve. Name the feelings. Disappointment, hopelessness, sadness, fear. Don't judge myself when I cry. Life is hard.

2) Life needs purpose and meaning. I have written before about where I anchor myself when looking at finding meaning in both good and hard times in life. Because I have invested my belief in someone who is bigger than me and my feelings, I use my prayer times to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Within this space I find hope and perspective, both personal and for the wider world.

3) Engaging in life means that we need to be able to engage with other people. People often hurt other people, either from intent or carelessness. However, there are acts of human kindness and there are good things in the world around us, when we take a step back. I can be encouraged at the willingness of the younger generations to carefully consider what is going on around them and, rather than shrug at the enormity of the work need to bring change, they have been prepared to act. We are made for relationship.

One of the greatest sadnesses for me during the political upheavals has been the breakdown of our society into camps/tribes who cannot articulate or even engage with opinions which differ from their/our own. Relationship means we need to listen to others, sometimes we need to hear things that may be painful for us to hear. One of my personal values is honesty and integrity. If I have wronged someone it is my job to repair that wrong. If I can learn about myself, myself in relation to others, or the world around me, then no experience will be wasted. That doesn't mean that it's easy to say, 'lesson learned', often I need to work through pain and cry tears and wait until I am in a place that is distant enough for me to make some sense of what has happened. And sometimes, there is no sense to be made; it is what it is. Life is not logical.

4) I have a choice to make. I can choose to revert to my favoured coping mechanism and retreat from engaging with life. At this point in my recovery, however, I am no longer satisfied by this as a way of managing the worst of times. It does not help me to remain paralysed by fear or anticipation that nothing can change. If I can't change the environment around me, then I need to accept that it is my task to adapt to that environment. So I can't indulge myself in pursuing the unknowable, 'Wny?' or 'Why me?' or 'Why not them?'. I have wasted too much time in the past feeling aggrieved by real injustices, but asking 'Why me?' when no one can give me an answer. Anger in response to injustice is not wasted if it drives us to challenge the general causes of those injustices.

So, where do I go from here? What now? I do what I can do, when I can do it. I accept what I cannot change (on my own) and build on what is certain in my life. Simple everyday successes can be essential building blocks to climb our way back up. Getting up, feeding myself, looking after my hygiene, making sure I am doing all I can to stay physically well is a good start. Do what is effective for you having acknowledged where you are emotionally and physically.

Most of all, look for glimpses of hope. The small green shoots of new life.