What is RADICAL About Acceptance?

One of the hardest things to do is to stand still. 'Traffic Lights' and 'Statues' are two childhood games based on the skills needed to do just that, physically. How much harder though is the emotional or psychological need to stop thinking and worrying about things that have either already happened or may never happen?

After years of constant striving to escape my internal struggles, I have found myself living through a hiatus lasting more than two years to date. During this time I have had to learn to be patient, to wait, without any assurance of 'having a plan'. Who said I had to always have a five year plan anyway? Acceptance has become a necessary skill.

I have had to accept a diagnosis that seemed to tell me there was something fundamentally wrong with who I am. I don't think this is what is intended by the professionals who work within the restraints of diagnosing emotionally sensitive people. I think this is because the condition I suffer from is too complex for simple labels. I have a good understanding of what it means to live with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder), but it seems to be exceptionally difficult to make it understandable to those around me. What I have had to learn to do is to accept regardless of the label placed on it, I struggle with symptoms which mean that I am unable to sustain the levels of achievement I have aspired to all my life. Despite outward appearances to the contrary.

Seen simply I have achieved a lot. Three completed degree courses with the accompanying professional status conferred by them. Trained, qualified and experienced Teacher and Probation Officer. A former successful competitive swimmer. Since the age of 13 until the age of 45 I have had a job. I have even managed to work for considerable numbers of years in challenging careers. On the surface, I have been exceptionally successful within those professional spheres - until my emotional and psychological instability (undiagnosed for over forty years) would cause me to come to a sudden halt. What is not so obvious is the cycles of breakdown and recovery during which I have managed to achieve these things.

I am now learning, in my current period of recovery, to accept, that even though I am capable of achieving a reasonable level of responsibility and income from any job I take on, I need to consider sustainability, given my diagnosis. In other words I need to accept that I am limited not in terms of ability, but in terms of sustainability, if I keep trying to achieve to the extent of my abilities. Instead of stretching myself to my limits, I need to accept that I have to work well within them, if I am to be able to maintain any level of stability in my working life.

Above all, I need to accept that I struggle with things in life that most other people don't have to even consider. It has taken me some time to realise this.

I am an exceptionally determined person, I have needed to be. For a long time when I was introduced to the Radical Acceptance skills in DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) I believed that to accept the limits of my BPD was to stop fighting it - to give up - to surrender. Given what I have battled all my life, this felt like admitting defeat. However, my way of fighting clearly had not worked over a lifetime of trying. In using acceptance I have been able to stop putting my energy into trying to achieve things that were impossible for me to achieve.

Acceptance means admitting that there are things in life that I am powerless to change or affect. It may seem crystal clear in the cold light of day, that there is nothing I can do to change the past and there is nothing I can do to affect the outcome of the future. However, in my behaviour and what I call 'paralysis of thought', I spent most of my life trying to relive and undo the past, or trying to predict and control the future, in the process, spending any emotional assets I possessed so I was unable to enjoy the present.

What is so radical about this acceptance? I don't know what the clinical explanation of radical acceptance is, but I do know that this level of acceptance of reality is radical in terms of its impact on my mind and feelings. As with all the DBT skills I need to keep coming back again and again to remind myself to stop fighting in the old ways and to become more familiar with using my new skills.

I have been familiar with the story of Don Quixote and the idea of 'tilting at windmills' for a long time. It is only recently that I have realised most of my energies were taken up with battling against things that only I perceived as injustices as well as real, but unwinnable battles against wrongs done to me and others. In learning DBT skills I have been able to refresh my understanding of the Serenity Prayer. It reminds me to accept my limits and learn that life doesn't always have to involve strife to make me feel 'alive'. I can learn to give up battles against unbeatable foes, so that I can begin to enjoy winning the war against my emotions. I used to believe that it was good to struggle, because it showed I was still living - still 'kicking'.

'Kicking against the pricks' is a saying which comes from the fact that in Roman times some harnesses for horses contained sharp pointed pieces called goads or pricks, which were designed to keep the horses in line. When horses kicked against them too much they could cause themselves injury.

Wisdom, for me is knowing when battling, struggling and kicking against the difficulties of life is going cause me too much pain and injury. Acceptance is learning what is wise for me to put my energies into, so that life is less about struggle and more about meaning and purpose. If I can accept that it's ok sometimes to feel pain, it's ok sometimes to be sad, it's ok to be me and it's ok for the moment, not to do anything other than enjoy what can be enjoyed in the here and now, then I am somewhere along the road to living a radically different life to the one I lived before.

The Pain of the Unfrozen Heart

TRIGGER WARNING: IN THIS BLOG I DISCUSS VERY PERSONALLY THE IMPACT OF DISSOCIATION AND OTHER WAYS OF MANAGING SEXUAL ASSAULT - MAY TRIGGER SOME, BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR OWN HEARTS.

Franz Kafka once said 'Literature is the axe which shatters the ice around the heart.' Colourful, but I'm not sure he got it right. I think it would be more accurate to say 'Time and therapy are the axes that shatter the ice around the frozen heart.' This has become painfully clear to me as I make progress through the recovery process.

I can tell you almost to the moment, when my heart finally was broken, nearly fifteen years ago now. I was exhausted from all the pain and distress, from the constant battling of emotions I had no control over, from the pain of broken relationships, feared and realised rejection after rejection and the constant internal commentary which was boosted by those experiences and feelings, confirming to me that I was worthless and unloved and unlovable. I didn't think of myself as resilient up to that point, but looking back I realise that I had crashed and burned so many times, that it was almost an automatic response for me to move to a new area, and begin again - new home, new job and, most drainingly, new relationships and friendships. In the moment my heart froze I suddenly felt all the accumulated effort and pain as a burden I could no longer sustain. In that moment, my mind decided that I needed to stop feeling, rather than constantly keep feeling the pain of my life so keenly.

It has been easier in some ways. I was, once again, the victim of sexual assault, but instead of being capable of reacting in any way that any onlookers would deem 'appropriate', I walked out of the situation and continued as if nothing had happened. Why not? It was just another example of how worthless I was, a confirmation, from a stranger this time, that the abuse I had suffered at the hands of those close to me, was indeed down to me - after all I was the common factor in it all.

There are those, particularly in the media, who tell us how victims SHOULD behave. How would they know? If you have never had your spirit broken, been convinced that there is no one out there to hear your screams or cries for help, how could you know what it is like? Being a victim of sexual assault once, makes you more vulnerable to such abuse in the future, (although it is not always inevitable). That seems to be so hard for many people to understand, I mean isn't it a case of once bitten? Let me ask you, if you have constantly been told that what is happening to you is as a result of you and your behaviour. If you are told that something about you meant you 'deserved' it. If one of the voices telling you these things is your own thoughts. If you have become accustomed to abuse as an expression of 'love' and been told that you are 'special' because of it. Is it any wonder that as an adult when you encounter the same behaviour towards you, you don't fight back, you don't 'just walk away'. Survival means that often survivors divorce what is happening to them from their conscious experience. I was passive - a victim - because this was the way I had managed to survive numerous abuses from my childhood onwards.

Having, stopped, short, never to feel again, my heart was incapable of feeling anything, either good or bad. Now, having begun the process of healing I am learning to recognise the tingles and pangs of the ice cracking. Sometimes, it's ok, I realise I can survive feeling again, but at other times even the good feelings are problematic. The other day I mentioned that I was worried I was being 'hyper' to a friend who is familiar with my cycles of mood - 'No,' she said, 'That's happiness'. My immediate impulse was to panic, in case I couldn't handle it, but I sat with it for a moment and realised it didn't have to spiral till my behaviour was out of control, prior to the inevitable crash to the emotional floor. Instead, I allowed the feeling of contentment and enjoyment of the afternoon to run its course and it was ok, in the end I enjoyed the whole day.

I'm off on a break for a week soon. As I contemplate dropping my dog off at the kennels I have encountered a pain from separation anxiety of sorts. Last night, I shed tears. Initially, again my immediate response was panic, what if this is the start of a depressive episode? Then, I allowed myself to sit with the feeling. I tried to use wise mind. After all, we spend every day with one another and she is good company. It's ok to miss her.

The fact this relationship with my dog is having such an impact on me emtionally worries me. I realise that this is part of my natural fear of fondness or love. My dog has been a big part of helping me to heal. I can tell her 'I love you' and I feel that is natural. It is a huge step for me to transfer that ability to humans. As a survivor of abuse the emotion that I am most confused about is 'love'. It is a huge task to separate the sexual from this emotion and to be able to recognise the different nuances of love that are part of the full range of human relationships. For me there is a yearning just to be held, by someone safe, without it leading anywhere. So many times, people touched in ways that were damaging without asking permission, or without a bond of trust to enable me to feel that I had any say over what would happen next. It scares me that my unfrozen heart could respond to another human being and it not lead to an abusive relationship. I wouldn't know how to handle it.

The other reason I fear my love for my dog is that, along with the love emotion, I have always, before my heart froze, feared the ending of any relationship. I have always anticipated the loss long before it arrived. When I realised how fond I was becoming of my dog, I started to fear how I would cope when she dies. This is the benefit of not connecting with any other creature, death doesn't have to hurt so much. Except that's so not the way it works, is it? Even if I don't acknowledge it, I am connected to others around me and losing them even temporarily will be FELT by me, that's part of being human.

In the past, often, rather than wait and see, or trust the relationship I would behave in a way which would hasten the ending I feared so much. That way I believed the pain was somewhat controlled by me. I believed that it was just me fulfilling what I always 'knew' would happen.

In the here and now I am learning new ways to be in relationships. Rather than impulsively rushing in where angels fear to tread, I am learning to be 'careful' with my heart - it is after all heavily scarred and rather fragile. I have managed to focus on friendship at the moment - anything more intimate is beyond me right now. I noticed the other day that there is a lot of change in a number of friendships. This has meant changes in routines - a friend who may have been available to go for lunch is no longer available. Forgetting this the other day, I phoned her at work. We had a quick conversation and I put the phone down. My old familiar panic feelings, followed by shame and then embarrassment flooded over me. In the past that would have meant me backlashing by cutting myself off from her and self harming for being so stupid. Instead, I spoke to myself (out loud) and used wise mind to query if the interaction really meant an end to the friendship. I also used a mindfulness breathing exercise to calm myself and focus on the positives of the friendship, which include a face value honesty that I have always appreciated. When she phoned later in the day, I picked up the phone and we agreed to meet as normal later in the week. For those not familiar with BPD this may seem something very small, but not making this exchange an all or nothing matter, and thereby saving the friendship is a massive step forward for me.

I guess that the pain I am feeling now is not unlike when you are in the process of trying to warm your hands after a good game of snowballing. You know you need the blood to flow again for your hands to function, but you also know that as the blood does so you will feel a world of pain - for a time. As the emotional blood flows back into my heart - I know that it is painful at the moment and will continue to be so, as I risk my heart with others. That pain will remain for a time, but one day my heart will be able to function as it was designed to, maybe with one or two little twinges from the scars it bears, but it will be fully, finally, unfrozen.

I can see clearly now the Rain has Gone...

'Black and White Thinking' and 'a pervading sense of emptiness' are two symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I like to avoid thinking about these two symptoms, simply because they are the hardest for me to manage.

Black and White thinking reduces any person or situation to a basic choice between one extreme and another. So, when I am in a relationship, you may encounter me saying 'I love you',and 'I hate you' with the same level of conviction because at the moment in time I am saying each statement it is what I believe with every fibre of my being. It's hardly a surprise then that those who are closest to people with BPD tend to feel confused a lot of the time. Most people I have ended relationships with have felt as if they have been tossed around in a tornado and then, spat out. One minute they were my universe and were my everything, the next the most despicable creature on earth and capable of inflicting incredible pain simply by being there. It is equally problematic being the person who experiences this see-sawing from the inside, shifting endlessly from one extreme view to another. There is no opportunity to feel settled in life or in relationships. Constant fear and expectation of rejection and abandonment, inevitably become self fulfilling prophecies, reinforcing the belief that I am impossible to be loved or to love another human being.

Black and White thinking also pervades my assumptions and views of everyday life. So, I believe that there can be no neutral or middle ground between liking and hating me. My way of managing almost every situation was to 'learn' the rules. It is my assumption that everyone else in the world is living by a set of rules that I know nothing of, if something goes wrong, I assume it's because I've broken a rule. So, if someone removes something from me, for example, if a medical professional is late for an appointment or cancels at short notice, my default thought was always 'they hate me'. It would never occur to me that they may have been delayed due to everyday hurdles such as traffic, or they may cancel simply because as humans they may get sick or have training etc. Nothing to do with me. So, inevitably any situation regardless of the setting or people involved becomes a catastrophe to me and another indication that my whole life is a failure.

While the see-sawing thinking described joins with the emotional see-sawing of BPD to create frequent emotional 'storms', these are not the most damaging of the underlying symptoms of BPD.

When you have been told that you were an 'accident' of birth, a 'mistake'. When your parents tell you that your emotional response to pain is not the right way to react. When you are never praised by your parents no matter how successful you are at school or at sport. When your parents essentially focus all their emotion on their own relationship and only connect with you as a child through physical, emotional or sexual abuse, then your ability to identify your place in the world and universe becomes severely impaired.

This loss of identity and feeling of dislocation is one that pervades many explanations of distress from BPD sufferers. When I first came to the notice of Mental Health services, I repeated over and over again 'I am not made for this world', while the sense of isolation and disconnection resulted in an almost unbearable, physical sensation in my chest. I felt as if someone were reaching into my chest and was squeezing my heart to the point that my breathing was compromised, often prompting panic attacks. The trigger for these feelings, reactions and episodes?

Sometimes, something as small as a colleague or client, questioning something such as, 'when did you last make a brew for everyone?' This kind of office jokery could result in a rumination that might last three or four hours and limit my ability to associate with my colleagues for up to a week. I could be so dysregulated that I was often unable to focus on my work, after such comments. Such a level of sensitivity is highly debilitating not only in working life, but more importantly in my social life.

By the time I was diagnosed with BPD in 2010, I had misread so many situations and ruined so many relationships and friendships due to my black and white thinking that it was easier for me to isolate myself and try to survive entirely on my own. This fed the belief that I was unlovable and reinforced the sense of isolation and emptiness caused by my sense of personal invalidation. I had learned the hard way that no matter how intense the feelings in intimate relationships, no matter how close the friendships, no one person could cope with my need for validation. My intimate relationships quickly burnt out - the longest relationship I have ever had lasted three years. Eventually, rather than put myself through the pain of total engagement and almost obsessive love for one person, I learned to not even notice if anyone was interested in developing a relationship with me. I have lived in a self imposed 'purdah' for a long time now - it feels safer.

As I have worked my way through the DBT programme I have learned to accept friendships at face value. I am pleased that some new friends I have made since 2010 have not got fed up of my constant 'mind reading' and extreme mood swings and doubts about their motives. I have learned to question my assumptions about situations.

I try to help my friends understand that BPD is not just about being 'sensitive' but that some reactions to life which are second nature to them, such as the process above, have to be learned and practised by me. I am not able naturally, automatically to question my initial emotional response, but first I must manage the extreme rise in emotions such as embarrassment or panic, by self soothing, then I have to work through the rational responses to the situation one by one until I have assured myself that the thought which triggered the negative emotion is not'reasonable', using 'wise mind'.

In this way I am learning to manage those moments when emotions have clouded my thinking, but I also must learn to love myself and accept myself in order to stop the flow of negative thoughts and emotions. If I can feel fulfilled in my life, if I can find meaning and hope, a purpose, acceptance of myself as I am, then I can learn to manage and confront the invalidation which is at the heart of my lack of self. If I can treat myself with kindness and not hold to extreme views of the universe that remain entrenched. Then I can begin to see the nuances and grey areas in human relationships and in situations that I am involved in. I know that the clouds and the rain are clearing - some days, due to lack of emotion regulation, (usually my sleep patterns are disrupted) I may find myself slipping back - but more and more I am seeing clearly the positive in my life. I just need to see me as a positive too.

You mean, I have to keep going with all this Mindfulness business?

When I finished my main DBT skills group it took me some time to realise that all the benefits I had gained wouldn't magically remain without some effort on my part. It's a shocker, but no treatment for long term mental health problems will help without considerable effort from me. It's not as if I wasn't warned - we had 'homework' every week and we had one to one sessions every week to help us make the skills relevant to our real lives. So why did I think that magically, the symptoms I had suffered for over thirty years would just disappear, without some significant effort on my side?

And yet, I have found myself surprised when my negative soundtrack reawakens inside my head and I lose the balance of 'wise mind' as 'emotion mind' rears its ugly head. With a start I realise, hey 'you haven't been using your mindfulness to keep on track.' Now if I weren't being mindful, that statement would be accompanied by a hefty dose of judgement. However, just because I have lapsed a bit, doesn't mean I haven't made progress or that I should even consider giving up. Life is full of ups and downs, trial and error, failure and success. The most important thing is that I have NOTICED that I'm slipping back. Falling down is not the end of the story, I can get up again and get back on the DBT horse. It would be a waste of all the effort, all the learning to live with difficult emotions, all the pleasure I have learned to find again in life, if I just give up on the things which have helped me recover so far.

So, yes, I do have to keep going with all the DBT skills. They do help me, I know this because it is obvious when I'm not using them to manage my BPD symptoms. Full recovery will take time and effort, and practice, practice, practice. After all, I had over 30 years to hone those unhelpful emotional and cognitive habits.

Sometimes Self Soothe Doesn't work...

This caught my eye on @HealingfromBPD Pinterest board. Can't help think that there are days when using my DBT skills seems harder than others.... or is that because the people/relationship I'm dealing with is being more difficult? Am realising that when I feel like smacking someone - self soothe won't cut it and maybe I need to learn more about 'surfing the urge' or 'opposite action'. Note to self: I can't control the bad behaviour of others, I can do something about my reaction to them...gosh, was that 'wise mind' in action??