Feeling Nostalgic - My Favourite Childhood Poem

"Mrs. Malone" by Eleanor Farjeon (1881 - 1965)

Mrs Malone lived hard by a wood
All on her lonesome as nobody should.
With her crust on a plate and her pot on the coal
And none but herself to converse with, poor soul.
In a shawl and a hood she got sticks out o'doors,
On a bit of old sacking she slept on the floor,
And nobody, nobody asked how she fared
Or knew how she managed for nobody cared.
Why make a pother about an old crone?
What for should they bother with Mrs. Malone?

One Monday in winter with snow on the ground
So thick that a footstep fell without sound,
She heard a faint frostbitten peck on the pane
And went to the window to listen again.
There sat a cock-sparrow bedraggled and weak,
With half-open eyelid and ice on his beak.
She threw up the sash and she took the bird in
And mumbled and fumbled it under her chin.
"Ye're all of a smother, ye're fair overblown!
I've room fer another," said Mrs. Malone.

Come Tuesday while eating her dry morning slice
With the sparrow a-picking ("Ain't company nice!")
She heard on her doorpost a curious scratch,
And there was a cat with its claw on the latch.
It was hungry and thirsty and thin as a lath,
It mewed and it meowed on the slithery path.
She threw the door open and warmed up some pap,
And huddled and cuddled it in her old lap.
"There, there, little brother, ye poor skin-an'-bone,
There's room fer another," said Mrs. Malone.

Come Wednesday while all of them crouched on the mat
With a crumb for the sparrow and a sip for the cat,
There was wailing and whining outside in the wood,
And there sat a vixen with six of her brood.
She was haggard and ragged and worn to a shred,
And her half-dozen babies were only half-fed,
But Mrs. Malone, crying "My! ain't they sweet!"
Happed them and lapped them and gave them to eat.
"You warm yerself, mother, ye're cold as a stone!
There's room fer another," said Mrs. Malone.

Come Thursday a donkey stepped in off the road
With sores on his withers from bearing a load.
Come Friday when icicles pierced the white air
Down from the mountainside lumbered a bear.
For each she had something, if little, to give -
"Lord knows, the poor critters must all of 'em live."
She gave them her sacking, her hood and her shawl,
Her loaf and her teapot - she gave them her all.
"What with one thing and t'other me fambily's grown,
And there's room fer another," said Mrs. Malone.

Come Saturday evening when time was to sup
Mrs. Malone had forgot to sit up.
The cat said "Meow", and the sparrow said "Peep"
The vixen, "She's sleeping," The bear, "Let her sleep."
On the back of the donkey they bore her away,
Through trees and up mountains beyond night and day,
Till come Sunday morning they brought her in state
Through the last cloudbank as far as the Gate.
"Who is it," asked Peter, "you have with you there?"
And donkey and sparrow, cat, vixen and bear

Exclaimed, "Do you tell us up here she's unknown?
It's our mother, God bless us! It's Mrs. Malone
Whose havings were few and whose holding was small
And whose heart was so big it had room for us all."
Then Mrs. Malone of a sudden awoke,
She rubbed her two eyeballs and anxiously spoke:
"Where am I , to goodness, and what do I see?
My dears, let's turn back, this ain't no place her me!"
But Peter said, "Mother, go in to the Throne.
There's room for another one, Mrs. Malone."

DBT Describing Emotions - SADNESS

I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing. - Duncan Sheik 

Sadness Words
Sadness     Alienation     Displeasure     Gloom     Despair     Discontentment     Insecurity     Loneliness     Grief     Pity     Sorrow     Unhappiness     Misery     Anguish     Defeat     Depression     Agony     Dismay   Distraught     Glumness     Disappointment     Hurt     Disconnected     Melancholy     Homesickness     Rejection     Suffering     Alone     Neglect     Crushed     Dejection     Woe

Prompting Events for Feeling Sadness

• Losing something or someone that is irretrievable
• Things are not the way you expected or wanted and hoped for
• The death of someone you love, thinking about deaths of people you love
• Losing a relationship; thinking about losses
• Being separated from someone you care for or value; thinking about how much you miss someone.
• Being rejected or excluded
• Being disapproved of or disliked, not being valued by people you care about
• Things turning out badly
• Getting what you don't want
• Things being worse than you expected
• Not getting what you have worked for
• Not getting what you want and believe you need in life; thinking about what you have not gotten that you wanted or needed
• Discovering that you are powerless or helpless
• Being with someone else who is sad, hurt or in pain
• Reading or hearing about other people's problems or troubles in the world
• Being alone or isolated or an outsider

Interpretations of Events that Prompt Feeling of Sadness

• Believing that a separation from someone will last for a long time or will never end
• Believing that you will not get what you want or need in your life
• Seeing things or your life as hopeless
• Believing that you are worthless or not valuable

Biological Changes and Experiences of Sadness

• Feeling tired, run-down, or low in energy
• Feeling lethargic, listless; wanting to stay in bed all day
• Feeling as if nothing is pleasurable anymore
• Feeling a pain or hollowness in your chest or gut
• Feeling empty
• Feeling as if you can't stop crying, or feeling that if you ever start crying, you will never be able to stop
• Difficulty swallowing
• Breathlessness
• Dizziness

Expressions and Actions of Sadness

• Avoiding things
• Acting helpless
• Moping, brooding, or acting moody
• Making slow, shuffling movements
• Withdrawing from social contact
• Avoiding activities that used to bring pleasure
• Sitting or laying around; being inactive
• Staying in bed all day
• Giving up and no longer trying to improve
• Saying sad things
• Talking to someone about sadness
• Talking little or not at all
• Using a quiet, slow or monotonous voice
• Eyes drooping
• Frowning, not smiling
• Posture slumping
• Sobbing, crying, whimpering

Aftereffects of Sadness

• Not being able to remember happy things
• Feeling irritable, touchy or grouchy
• Yearning and searching for the thing lost
• Having a negative outlook; thinking only about the negative side of things
• Blaming or criticizing yourself
• Remembering or imagining other times you were sad and other losses
• Hopeless attitude
• Fainting spells
• Nightmares
• Insomnia
• Appetite disturbances, indigestion
• Depersonalization, dissociative experiences, numbness or shock

Typical Secondary Emotions of Sadness

• Anger, shame, fear

DBT Describing Emotions - LOVE

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love Words
Love     Compassion     Longing     Adoration     Desire     Lust     Affection     Enchantment     Passion     Arousal     Fondness     Sentimentality     Attraction     Infatuation     Sympathy     Caring     Kindness     Tenderness     Charmed     Liking     Warm

Prompting Events for Feeling Love

• A person offers or gives you something you want, need or desire
• A person does things you want or need the person to do
• A person does things you particularly value or admire
• Feeling physically attracted to someone
• You spend alot of time with a person
• You share a special experience together with a person
• You have exceptionally good communication with a person
• Being with someone you have fun with

Interpretations of Events That Prompt Feelings of Love

• Believing that a person loves, needs or appreciates you.
• Thinking a person is physically attractive
• Judging a person's personality as wonderful, pleasing or attractive
• Believing that person can be counted on, or will always be there for you

Biological Changes and Experiences of Love

    When you are with or thinking about someone:

• Feeling excited and full of energy
• Fast heartbeat
• Feeling self-confident
• Feeling invulnerable
• Feeling happy, joyful or exuberant
• Feeling warm, trusting and secure
• Feeling relaxed and calm
• Wanting the best for a person
• Wanting to give things to a person
• Wanting to see and spend time with a person
• Wanting to spend your life with a person
• Wanting physical closeness or sex
• Wanting emotional closeness

Expressions and Actions of Love

• Saying "I love you."
• Expressing positive feelings to a person
• Eye contact, mutual gaze
• Touching, petting, hugging, holding, cuddling
• Sexual activity
• Smiling
• Sharing time and experiences with someone
• Doing things that the other person wants or needs

Aftereffects of Love

• Only being able to see a person's positive side
• Feeling forgetful or distracted; daydreaming
• Feeling openness and trust
• Feeling "alive", capable
• Remembering other times and people you have loved
• Remembering other people who have loved you
• Remembering and imagining other positive events
• Believing in yourself, believing you are wonderful, capable, competent

Typical Secondary Emotions of Love

• Exhilarating feeling of joy
• Ecstasy
• Contentment
• When the loved one is not available or doesn't respond, feelings of sadness, grief, anger, hatred or shame

DBT Describing Emotions - JEALOUSY

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” ― William Shakespeare, Othello

Jealousy Words

Jealous     Cautious     Clinging     Defensive     Fear of losing someone/something     Self-protective     Mistrustful     Rivalrous     Suspicious     Wary

Prompting Events for Feeling Jealous

• Someone is threatening to take away important things in your life
• A desired relationship is threatened or in danger of being lost
• You find your lover is having an affair
• Someone goes out with the person you like
• Someone ignores you while talking to a friend of yours
• A potential competitor pay attention to someone you love
• Someone is more attractive, outgoing or self-confident than you
• A person you are romantically involved with looks at someone else
• apparently flirtatious behaviour of your partner towards someone else
• Your boy/girlfriend tells you that s/he desires more time alone
• Not being treated with priority

Interpretations of Events That Prompt Feelings of Jealousy

• My partner does not care for me anymore
• I am nothing to him/her
• He/she is going to leave me
• He/she is behaving inappropriately
• I don't measure up to my peers
• I deserve more than what I am receiving
• I was cheated
• No one cares about me
• My rival is possessive and competitive
• My rival is insecure
• My rival is envious

Biological Changes and Experiences of Jealousy

• Breathlessness
• Feelings of rejection
• Fast heartbeat
• Need to be in control
• Choking sensation, lump in throat
• Becoming mistrustful
• Muscles tensing
• Feeling helpless
• Clenching teeth
• Wanting to grasp or keep hold of what you have
• Feeling suspicious and mistrustful of others
• Having injured pride
• Wanting to push away or eliminate your rival

Expressions and Actions of Jealousy

• Violent behaviour towards the person threatening you
• Threatening violence towards the person threatening you
• Attempting to control the freedom of the person you are afraid of losing
• Verbal accusations of disloyalty or unfaithfulness
• Spying on the person
• Interrogating the person, demanding accounting of time or activities
• Collecting evidence of wrong doings
• Clinging, enhanced dependency
• Increased or excessive demonstrations of love
• Increased demands of sexual activity

Aftereffect of Jealousy

• Narrowing of attention
• Being hyper-vigilant to threats to your relationships
• Becoming isolated or withdrawn
• Changing the interpretation of previous events to suggest that jealousy is reasonable
• Seeing the worst in others

Typical Secondary Emotions of Jealousy

• Feelings of hatred
• Becoming anxious of others
• Feelings of shame or guilt

DBT Describing Emotions - HAPPINESS

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ― Abraham Lincoln

Happiness Words

Happiness     Joy     Enjoyment     Relief     Amusement     Enthrallment     Hope     Satisfaction     Bliss     Cheerfulness     Euphoria     Joviality     Triumph     Contentment     Excitement     Jubilation     Zaniness     Delight     Eagerness     Gaiety     Pleasure     Zeal     Ecstasy     Gladness     Pride     Elation     Optimism     Jolliness     Thrill     Zest     Rapture     Exhilaration     Enthusiasm     Glee

Prompting Events for Feeling Happiness

• Receiving a wonderful surprise
• Reality exceeding your expectations
• Getting what you want
• Getting something you have worked hard for or worried about
• Things turning out better than you thought they would
• Being successful at a task
• Achieving a desirable outcome
• Receiving esteem, respect or praise
• Receiving love, liking or affection
• Being accepted by others
• Belonging somewhere or with someone or a group
• Being with or in contact with people who love or like you
• Having very pleasurable sensations
• Doing things that create or bring to mind pleasurable sensations

Interpretations of Events That Prompt Feelings of Happiness

• Interpreting joyful events just as they are, without adding or subtracting

Biological Changes and Experiences of Happiness

• Feeling excited
• Feeling physically energetic, active
• Feeling like giggling or laughing
• Feeling your face flush
• Feeling at peace
• Feeling open or expansive
• Feeling calm all the way through

Expressions and Actions of Happiness

• Smiling
• Having a bright, glowing face
• Being bouncy or bubbly
• Communicating your good feelings
• Sharing the feeling
• Silliness
• Hugging people
• Jumping up and down
• saying positive things
• Using an enthusiastic or excited voice
• Being talkative or talking a lot

Aftereffects of Happiness

• Being Courteous or friendly to others
• Doing nice things for other people
• Having a positive outlook; seeing the bright side
• Having a high threshold for worry or annoyance
• Remembering and imagining other times you have felt joy
• Expecting to feel joyful in the future

Typical Secondary Emotions of Happiness

• Feelings of love, passion
• When the joy is not shared, feelings of melancholy, loneliness, shame or guilt; feeling embarrassed or silly

DBT Describing Emotions - FEAR

“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.” ― Jim Morrison

Fear Words

Fear     Horror     Shock     Anxiety     Hysteria     Tenseness     Apprehension     Jumpiness     Terror      Dread     Nervousness     Uneasiness     Edginess      Overwhelmed     Worry     Fright     Panic

Prompting Events for Feeling Fear

• Having your life, your health or your well being threatened
• Eating in a similar or the same situation where you have been threatened or gotten hurt in the past or where painful things have happened
• Flashbacks
• Silence
• Being in situations where you have seen others threatened or hurt
• Being in a new or unfamiliar situation
• Being alone (e.g. walking alone, being home alone, living alone)
• Being in the dark
• Being in crowds
• Leaving your home
• Having to perform in front of others (e.g. school, work)
• Pursuing your dreams

Interpretations of Events That Prompt Feelings of Fear

• Believing that you might die, or that you are going to die
• Believing that you might be hurt or harmed or that you might lose something valuable
• Believing that someone might reject you, criticize, dislike or disapprove of you
• Believing you will embarrass yourself
• Believing that failure is possible, expecting to fail
• Believing that you will not get help you want or believe you need
• Believing  that you might lose help and assistance you already have
• Believing that you might lose someone or something you want
• Losing a sense of control, believing that you are helpless
• Losing a sense of mastery or competence

Biological Changes and Experiences of Fear

• Breathlessness
• Feeling nervous, jittery or jumpy
• Clenching teeth
• Wanting to run away or avoid things
• Feeling nauseous
• Wanting to scream or call out
• Getting cold
• Feeling your hairs standing on end
• Feeling of heaviness or fluttering (butterflies) in stomach
• Choking sensation, lump in throat
• Getting clammy
• Fast heartbeat
• Muscles testing, cramping

Expressions and Actions of Fear

• Fleeing, running away
• Talking yourself out of doing what you fear
• Running or walking hurriedly
• Freezing or trying not to move
• Hiding from or avoiding what you fear
• Engaging in nervous fearful talk
• Shaking, quivering or trembling
• Leaving or crying for help
• Shaky or trembling voice
• Talking less or becoming speechless
• Sweating or perspiring
• Screaming or yelling
• Breathing fast
• Darting eyes or quickly looking around
• Crying or whimpering
• Diarrhea, vomiting
• Frozen stare
• Hair erect

Aftereffects of Fear

• Narrowing of attention
• Being hyper-vigilant to threat
• Losing your ability to focus or becoming disoriented
• Being dazed
• Losing control
• Imagining the possibility of more loss or failure
• Isolation
• Remembering and ruminating about other threatening times, other times when things did not go well
• Depersonalization, dissociative experiences
• Numbness or shock

Typical Secondary Emotions of Fear

• Intense anger, shame or other negative emotions

DBT Describing Emotions - ENVY

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.  ~Harold Coffin

Envy Words

Envy     Disgruntled     "Green-eyed"     Bitterness     Displeased     Longing     Covetous     Dissatisfied     Pettiness     Craving     Down-hearted     Resentment     Discontented     Greed

Prompting Events for Feeling Envy

• Someone has something that you really want or need but don't or can't have
• Someone gets positive recognition for something and you don't
• Being around people who have more than you have.
• Someone you are competing with is more successful than you in an area important to you.
• Others get something you really want and you don't get it.
• Being reminded that you don't have things you want when others do
• You are not part of the "in" crowd
• Someone appears to have everything
• You are alone while other are having fun
• Someone else gets credit for what you've done

Interpretations of Events That Prompt Feelings of Envy

• Thinking you deserve what others have
• Thinking others have more than you
• Thinking about how unfair it is that you have such a bad lot in life compared to others
• Thinking you have been treated unfairly by life
• Thinking you are inferior, a failure, or mediocre in comparison to others who you want to be like
• Thinking you were unlucky
• Comparing yourself to others who have more than you.
• Comparing yourself to people who have characteristics that you wish you had
• Thinking you are unappreciated

Biological Changes and Experiences of Envy

• Muscles tightening
• Teeth clamping together, mouth tightening
• Feeling your face flush or get hot
• Feeling rigidity in your body
• Pain in the pit of the stomach
• Jitteriness, nervousness
• Feeling nervous tension, anxiety or discomfort
• Hating the other person
• Wanting the person or people you envy to lose what they have, to have bad luck or to be hurt
• Feeling pleasure when other experience failure or lose what they have
• Feeling unhappy if the other person experiences some good luck
• Wanting to hurt the person or people you envy
• Having an urge to get even
• Feeling motivated to improve yourself

Expressions and Actions of Envy

• Doing everything you can to get what the other person has
• Working a lot harder than you were to get what you want
• Trying to improve yourself and your situation
• Taking away or ruining what the other person has
• Attacking or criticizing the other person
• Doing something to get even
• Doing something to make the other person fail or lose what he or she has
• Saying mean things about the other people or making people look bad to others.
• Trying to show the other person up, to look better than the other person
• Avoiding persons who have what you want.

Aftereffects of Envy

• Narrowing of attention
• Attending only to what other have that you don't
• Remembering and ruminating about all the other times that others have had more than you.
• Ruminating about what you don't have and not being able to think of anything else.
• Making resolutions to change
• Discounting what you have, not appreciating things you have or that other do for you.

Typical Secondary Emotions of Envy

• Shame about feeling envy, anguish
• Feeling degraded or humiliated in front of others
• Frustration, anger or hostility

DBT Describing Emotions - DISGUST

“I had forgotten. Disgust shadows desire.  Another life is never safely envied.”  ― Robert Wells

DISGUST WORDS:

Disgust     Dislike     Repugnance     Sickened     Abhorrence     Derision     Repelled     Spite     Anitpathy   Disdain     Repulsion     Vile     Aversion     Distaste     Resentment     Condescension     Hate     Revolted     Contempt     Loathing     Scorn

Prompting Events for Feeling Disgust

• Seeing or smelling waste products of a human or animal body
• Having a person or an animal that is dirty or unclean come close to you
• Tasting something or being forced to incorporate or swallow something you really don't want.
• Being near, seeing or touching something that reviles you, e.g. "slimy" animals or crawling insects
• Seeing or being near a dead body.
• Touching items worn or owned by a stranger, dead person or disliked person
• Seeing blood or getting an injection or blood drawn
• Observing or hearing about a person who behaves without dignity or who strips another person of his or her dignity
• Observing or hearing about a person acting with extreme hypocricy, fawning.
• Observing or hearing about betrayal, child abuse, racism or other types of cruelty.
• Being forced to watch something the deeply violates your own "wise mind" values.
• Being confronted with someone who is deeply violating your own wise mind values.
• Being forced to engage in or watch unwanted sexual contact.

Interpretation of Events That Prompt Feelings of Disgust

• Believing that you are swallowing something toxic.
• Believing that your skin is contaminated.
• Believing that your own body or body parts are ugly.
• Believing that an object has negative or unwholesome sensory, (e.g. smell, feel, taste) characteristics
• Disapproving of or feeling morally superior to someone, disrespecting someone or their beliefs.
• Extreme disapproval of self or one's own feelings, thoughts or behaviours.
• Believing that a person is disrespecting authority or the ethical norms of the grup, or is disloyal to or not honouring of others in the community.
• Judging that a person is deeply immoral or has sinned and/or violated the natural order of things.
• Judging someone's body as extremely ugly
• Believing that by being around a person you will become contaminated, e.g. by "poisonous ideas".
• Believing others are evil or the "scum" of the earth.

Biological Changes and Experiences of Disgust

• Feelings of nausea
• Intense urge to get rid of something
• Sick feeling
• Wanting to destroy something
• Urge to vomit, or vomiting
• Urge to run away, or push away
• Gagging, choking
• Feeling contaminated, dirty, unclean
• Aversion to drinking or eating
• Feeling mentally polluted
• Urge to take a shower
• Fainting
• Having a lump in your throat

Expressions and Actions of Disgust

• Vomiting, spitting out
• Closing your eyes, looking away
• Washing, scrubbing, taking a bath
• Cleaning your body surface
• Changing your clothes
• Cleaning your apartment
• Avoiding eating or drinking
• Pushing or kicking away, running away
• Treating with disdain or disrespect, disregarding
• Going first, stepping over, crowding another person out
• Physically attacking the cause of your disgust.
• Using obscenities or cursing
• Clenching your hands or fists
• Frowning, or not smiling
• Mean or unpleasant facial expression
• Speaking with a sarcastic voice/tone
• Nose and top lip tightened up
• Lip curled on one side, smirking

Aftereffects of Disgust

• Narrowing of attention
• Closing down senses
• Feeling ugly
• Feeling dirty
• Becoming hypersensitive to dirt
• Ruminating about the situation making you feel disgusted and not being able to think of anything else
• Depersonalization, dissociation experience, numbness

Typical Secondary Emotions of Disgust

• Intense shame or fear

DBT Describing Emotions - ANGER

"The strongest person is not the good wrestler. Rather, the strong person is the one who controls himself when he is angry." - Prophet Muhammad

ANGER WORDS

Anger   Aggravation     Agitation     Annoyance     Bitterness     Exasperation     Ferocity     Frustration     Fury     Grouchiness     Grumpiness     Hostility     Indignation     Irritation     Outrage     Rage     Vengefulness     Wrath

Prompting Events for Feeling Anger

• Having an important goal blocked or prevented.
• Having an important or pleasurable activity interrupted, postponed or stopped. 
• You or someone you care about being attacked or hurt physically or emotionally by others
• You or someone you care about being threatened with physical or emotional pain by someone or something
• You or someone you care about being insulted
• Losing power
• Losing status
• Losing respect
• Not having things turn out the way you expected
• Experiencing physical pain
• Experiencing emotional pain
• Not obtaining something you want (that another person has)

Interpretations of Events That Prompts Feelings of Anger

• Believing that you have been treated unfairly
• Believing that important goals are being blocked or that pleasurable activities are being interrupted, postponed or stopped
• Believing that other are attacking or trying to hurt you or someone that you care about
• Believing someone is insulting or disrespecting you or trying to control you.
• Believing that things "should" be different than they are
• Rigidly thinking "I'm right."
• Judging that the situation is illegitimate, wrong or unfair.
• Ruminating about the event that set off the anger in the first place or in the past.
• Blaming

Biological Changes and Experiences of Anger

• Muscles tightening
• Feeling extremely emotional
• Teeth clamping together, mouth tightening
• Frowning, or not smiling
• Making aggressive or threatening gestures
• Having a mean or unpleasant facial expression
• Walking heavily, stomping, slamming doors
• Brooding or withdrawing from others
• Walking out.
• Gritting or showing your teeth in an unfriendly manner
• Using a loud voice, yelling or screaming
• Sarcastic or caustic voice tone
• Acting quarrelsome or sarcastic
• Crying
• Using Obscenities or swearing
• Grinning
• Criticizing or complaining
• A red or flushed face
• Talking about how lousy thing are

Expressions and Actions of Anger

• Physically attacking the cause of your anger
• Verbally attacking the cause of your anger
• Pounding/throwing things
• Walking out
• Using loud voice
• Grinning
• Red Face
• Crying
• Talking about how lousy things are
• Using obscenities or swearing
• Sarcastic voice tone

Aftereffects of Anger

• Narrowing of attention
• Remembering and ruminating about situations that have made you angry in the past.
• Attending only to the situation making you angry
• Ruminating about the situation making you angry and not being able to think of anything else
• Imagining future situation that will make you angry
• The personalization, dissociative experience, numbness

Typical Secondary Emotions of Anger

• Intense shame or fear

DBT Emotion Regulation - Understanding the Emotion

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use  them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”  ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Functions of Emotions: What Emotions Do For You

There is a reason why humans (and other mammals) have emotions. The purpose of regulating emotions is NOT to get rid of them. We Need Them!

Emotions Motivate and Organize Action:

• Emotions motivate our behaviour. Emotions prepare us for action. The action urge connected to specific emotions is often "hard-wired".
• Emotions save time in getting us to act in important situations. Emotions can be especially important when we don't have time to think things through.
• Strong emotions help us overcome obstacles - in our minds and environment.

Emotions Communicate to and Influence Others:

• Facial expressions are connected to emotions. Facial expressions communicate faster than words.
• Our posture, gestures, words and voice tone can also be hard-wired. Like it or not, they also communicate our emotions to others.
• When it is important to us to communicate to others, or send them a message, it can be very hard for us to change our emotions.
• Whether we intend it or not, the communication of emotions influences others.

Emotions Communicate to Ourselves:

• Emotional reactions can give us important information about a situation. Emotions can be signals or alarms that something is happening.
• Gut feelings can be like intuition; a response to something important about the situation.
• The can be helpful if our emotions get us to check out the facts.
• Sometimes we treat emotions as if they are facts about the world: The stronger the emotion, the stronger our belief that the emotion is based on absolute fact. "If I feel unsure, I am incompetent."
• If we assume that our emotions represent facts about the world, we may use them to validate our thoughts or our actions. This can be trouble if our emotions get us to ignore the facts.

EMOTIONS DO NOT VALIDATE OUR EXPERIENCE OF THINGS

Factors Reducing Emotion Regulation

• Biology - Biological factors may make emotion regulation harder
• Lack of Skill - You don't know what to do to regulate your emotions
• Reinforcement of Emotional Behaviour - Your environment reinforces you when you are highly emotional.
• Moodiness - Your current mood (apathy, irritation, boredom) not your skills controls what you do.
• The Emotional "Sea Of Dyscontrol" - With overwhelming emotions, you fall into the "sea of dyscontrol" where you feel like you are drowning under hurricane strength waves of emotions.
• Emotional Myths - Emotion myths get in the way of your ability to regulate emotions. Myths that emotions are bad or weak lead to avoiding emotions. Myths that extreme emotions are necessary or are part of who you are.

DBT Emotion Regulation Skills

"We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but a balance and order and rhythm and harmony." - Thomas Merton

Emotion Dis-regulation

• The inability, even when one's best efforts are applied, to change or regulate emotional cues, experiences, actions, verbal responses and/or non-verbal expressions under normative conditions.

Overview of Emotion Regulation Skills

1.  UNDERSTAND and NAME THE EMOTIONS YOU EXPERIENCE

• What good are emotions?
• Model for Describing Emotions
• Ways to Decrease Emotions.  

2.  DECREASE EMOTIONAL SENSITIVITY; Reducing unwanted emotions

• Changing emotional responses to situations
• Reducing vulnerability to negative emotions (ABC PLEASE skill to be described later)

3.  DECREASE EMOTIONAL INTENSITY: Stop or reduce the intensity of unwanted emotions once they start

• Mindfulness of current emotions
• Managing extreme emotions

Rearing Its Ugly Head

My BPD is rearing its ugly head this evening. My daughter desperately need DBT but there is a very long waiting list for the funded program. I, myself, am in a private program but it is very expensive. I can only do it because of my husband's insurance. But after talking with my husband about the company's EAP, he said my daughter, because she is not living with me, is not covered under insurance. If she came back to live with me, she would be covered under insurance.

I'm feeling somewhat smug about that - mainly towards all those involved in her "well-being" - child services, my ex-husband, my daughter's therapist, etc. I want her to get the help that she needs but she is not going to be able to get it by living with her dad.

Let's see just how much they all are invested in her well-being and how much they are invested in being right and saving face.

Of course, now I feel kinda guilty because I'm feeling smug at my daughter's expense. I desperately want her to get the help that she needs but it doesn't look like that is going to happen any time soon if she stays where she is.

How To....Radical Acceptance

So the last post was about Radical Acceptance - what it is and what it is not.
But how do we do it? That is the million dollar question.

There are 4 skills to help you with radically accepting the situation, as it is, in the current moment.

OBSERVING YOUR BREATH
This is a practice intended to help you tolerate the current moment. It is a way of taking hold of your mind and centreing yourself and gaining access to solving the problem or improving the moment.

Observing you breath serves 2 important purposes.

1. Focusing on your breathing assists with physiological relaxing. When nervous, many people hold their breath or breathe shallowly, which creates additional tension and increases carbon dioxide in the blood (triggering adrenalin bursts). By observing your breath, you release the effort to control it. When you stop controlling your breath, your body takes over and your breathing naturally becomes deeper and fuller and more relaxed.
2. The breath is used as a point of focus because it is always available and provides a basic connection to the present moment. This activity occupies your mind and there is less room for worrisome thoughts.

HALF-SMILING

This is the practice of accepting and tolerating reality with your body. It is the adoption of acceptance with one area of the body: our facial muscles (lips).

Facial expressions communicate with the brain which in turn, influences our emotions. Since emotions influence our facial muscles unconsciously, by consciously controlling our facial muscles, we acn affect our emotions or how we feel. (Research Based!!)

To do it, you relax your face, neck and shoulder muscles and then slightly up-turn your lips. Half-smile is best achieved with a relaxed face.

NOTE: Many people struggle with this skill as they feel it invalidates their feelings. Many will say they wore a "happy face" for years and that half smiling triggers them to feel like they are FAKING IT...As if everything is OK when it is NOT.

However, the reason individuals practice half smiling exercises is to help them tolerate and accept reality and reduce their suffering. It is about self-care and control, not to prove their 'happiness' to other people.

Half-Smiling is done for oneself.

TURNING THE MIND

Turning the mind from the topic causing it distress is to 'turn toward acceptance'; and is a choice because you have to CHOOSE to turn your mind. However, acceptance any only last a moment or 2 so people have to continuously turn their mind, over and over and over again. When we 'turn the mind' in a certain direction or away from a specific situation, change occurs. The goal is to decrease the intensity of an emotion and increase the feeling of power in make the choice.

Example: Quitting Smoking - When a person who smokes decides to stops smoking, they DO NOT make this decision once. The individual needs to make the decision over and over again. This is due to the fact that although the individual decided to quit smoking, they will inevitably experience the urge to smoke again, which makes sense. In order to avoid giving in to these urges, the individual needs to 'turn their mind' to their choice to not smoke and needs to do this over and over again. It will becomes easier. The person must also accept that they will have these thought and urges AND know that they have a choice as to whether to act on them or not.

WILLINGNESS VS WILLFULNESS

In order to 'turn the mind', individual need to be WILLING.

WILLINGNESS is accepting 'what is' and then responding in an effective way. It is doing what works in the current moment or situation.

WILLFULNESS is imposing one's will on reality - trying to fix everything or refusing to do what is needed. Willfulness is asking 'why?' vs accepting 'it happened and it is what it is'. Willfulness is the opposite of doing what works to move forward.

Willingness and willfulness do not apply to specific things or situation. they reflect instead the underlying attitude one has toward life.

Example: Life is like hitting baseballs from a pitching machine. A person's job is just to do their best to hit each ball as it comes. Refusing to accept that a ball is coming does not make it stop coming. Willpower  defiance, crying or whimpering does not make the machine stop pitching the balls; they keep coming over and over again. So...a person can CHOOSE to stand in the way of the ball and get hit, stand there doing nothing and let the ball go by as a strike, OR swing at the ball.

DBT Skills - Distress Tolerance - Radical Acceptance

Distress tolerance skills constitute a natural progression from mindfulness skills. The skills increase your ability to accept, in a non-judgmental way both oneself and the current situation.
Essentially, distress tolerance is the ability to:

• "perceive the environment without putting demands on it to be different"
• "experience the emotional state without attempting to change it"
• "observe thoughts and actions without attempting to stop or control the outcomes".

The stance here is a non-judgmental (acceptance); which does NOT mean that it one of approval.

ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY DOES NOT EQUAL APPROVING OF REALITY

Believing that something is wrong with us generates a deep and persistent suffering. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments, conflict in our relationships, addictions, perfectionism, loneliness, isolation and overwork (to name a few). These patterns keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled.

Accepting reality helps individuals accept and tolerate themselves, others, the world and 'reality' as it is, 'just in this moment'.

Applying RADICAL ACCEPTANCE / accepting reality involves developing the capacity to tolerate pain skillfully in order to adopt and attitude of acceptance.

Radical is meant to imply that the acceptance has to come from deep within (when you are actually fighting it).

Radical Acceptance empowers genuine change: healing fear, shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships.

Radical Acceptance is letting go of fighting reality.

Acceptance is a way to turn suffering into pain that can be tolerated. Pain is a part of living, whether it is physical or emotional. Refusing to accept pain creates suffering. Suffering comes when people resist reality as it is (at that moment, not forever). Refusal to 'accept reality' and the pain that goes along with it interferes with reducing pain. Through the practice of radical acceptance, we can shift suffering to 'just pain'. 

DBT Skills - Distress Tolerance Pros and Cons

Crisis Survival Skill #4

Pros and Cons

This is where we learn to identify the beneficial and harmful effects of choosing to tolerate the distress.

How To Use The PROS AND CONS Skill

When using the pros and cons skill, individuals are making 2 separate lists. One list is about the pros and cons of tolerating distress; the other list is about the pros and cons of NOT tolerating distress.
By not tolerating the distress means choosing avoiding, using alcohol or drugs, binge eating or engaging in some other impulsive self-defeating or self-destructive behaviour.

People use pros an cons all the time to help make decisions. For example, each day, you do a pros and cons list to get out of bed. We do not necessarily thing "the pros of getting up today are..." and the cons of getting up today are..." but we do this on a subconscious level.
The key is to strengthen this skill and practice it before a crisis happens so that we can consciously use pros and cons when we are feeling distressed.
The goal of practicing pros and cons is to help make decisions from a wise mind perspective.
This skill help us to look at a situation from every perspective and identify all possible outcomes. The eventual goal is to see that accepting reality and tolerating distress leads to a better future than fighting reality and refusing to tolerate distress.

WHEN COMPLETING PROS AND CONS LISTS...

• focus on both the short-term and long-term pros and cons
• thing of the positive consequences of tolerating the distress. Imagine how good you will feel when you can tolerate distress without 'making the situation worse' i.e. acting impulsively (which is an example of a pro)
• think of the negative consequences of not tolerating the distress. Remember past times when you may have acted impulsively to escape the moment and the situation is now the same or worse and you have no better coping methods.
• Fill our the chart completely and make it easily accessible
• in the midst of a crisis, focus on the pros of not giving into the urges. This will help get through the moment and make you feel stronger in the long run.

Note: if doing it once is not enough then re-do or reuse the list if the need arises even if it is 2 minutes later.

Note: Remember to practice self-soothing when not in distress to make it easier to use when in distress. If you start feeling and thinking you do not deserve to self-soothe, then observe those thoughts, put them aside and practice the skill again.

Venting

I know I'm scheduled to update my DBT distress tolerance skills but I had a meeting today with Child Protective Services and I feel the need to vent. I honestly don't get their purpose - or at least not in my particular situation.

It would take me forever to detail everything so I won't. A lot of things happened to get to this point but let's just say that my 15 year old daughter is living at her dad's house ever since she was released from a mental health unit in the hospital. Ever since she was released from hospital, she has gone downhill. My ex is an extremely bitter man and isn't happy unless he is miserable. He blames all his miserableness on me. Everything that has ever gone wrong in his life is my fault. And he has never been able to keep his mouth shut, even around the kids - especially around the kids. And now my daughter is with this cesspool of shit 24/7.  He even openly admits that mental illness is an excuse and doesn't really exist. He has no knowledge of her self-soothing skills and therefore can't help her with them.

So on to this meeting I had today. CPS keeps insisting that they are not considering removing the girl from her dad's house. So I delved into my DBT skills and used the radical acceptance one. I told the caseworker that even though I don't like the situation, I accept it as it is. I continue to ask my questions that I prepared. The answers weren't really what I wanted to hear but they were what I expected, more or less. What really has me confused or pissed or a combination of the 2, is that my ex can say anything that he wants to our daughter without repercussions but I'm not allowed to have any communication with her.  tells her out-right lies about me and there are ZERO consequences. When I clarify the "lies" to her, I get blamed for harassing her. And of course, he shares that with CPS. Caseworker suggests I write her a letter. I said that I had contemplated that but dismissed it for fear of getting shit on for it in one way or another. She says that the letter should be OK depending on what it says. So to get a letter to her, I have to bring it to the CPS office and get them to read it first to approve it. They said then that they will forward it to her.

I saw my daughter last week at another CPS meeting. She looked horrible - she was so pasty pale, almost gray. Her face was broke out the worst I've ever seen it. She has packed on about 50 pounds. She isn't singing anymore, she isn't playing guitar anymore, she didn't register for her music exam, she isn't performing, auditioning, acting, nothing. She isn't even going to school if she doesn't feel like it. And she never comes out of her room.

AND CPS thinks that she is doing just fine.

So enough venting for now. I feel better now. Thanks for listening.
Oh and if you have any suggestions on how to deal with this situation, please let me know. I'm thinking of writing regularly to my MLA and the minister of human services until something actually happens. I also have a lawyer working on this for me too. And I have a reporter waiting to receive my situation summary.

That's all for now...........