DBT - A love story

When I was 19, I started DBT.

In case there is any confusion as to what that is short for, a quick Google search says the following:

"Dialectical behavior therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapy that began with efforts to treat borderline personality disorder. There is evidence that DBT can be useful in treating mood disorders, suicidal ideation, and for change in behavioral patterns such as self-harm, and substance abuse."

Within DBT, there is a module called "Self Compassion."

I did two rounds of DBT, each six months in duration. My therapists (I had two, an individual one and the DBT group leader) made me do it a second time because I was no good at DBT.

This was because of the "Self Compassion" module.

I didn't understand how self compassion needed to be taught to anyone. I was honestly baffled. I mean, wasn't I alive? Didn't I get up every morning, take care of myself? Why should I feel compassion towards myself, when I was all I had, and everyone should just inherently know that too?

For a year, I struggled to understand.

I watched the others in the group: I watched as Ruth cried every session, because she had had electric convulsive therapy five times and her brain was fried, marriage on the rocks. I watched Jenn shake in her seat when she wasn't staring straight ahead, withdrawing from heroin. I watched as an older gentleman, Rick, stood up and told us about the war.

As I watched these individuals cry, shake, and talk, I imagined them at home. I imagined them trying to get out of bed and take care of themselves.

I imagined a life in which they loved themselves, but I couldn't.

And eventually, it dawned on me that people need help realizing that they are worth their own time.

As we colored in pictures one day, expressing "how we felt" about ourselves, Ruth held up a perfectly colored in picture. She cried and expressed her fear that her husband disliked her and wanted to leave her.

As I held up my disgrace of a colored in picture, I realized that these people needed help. And that maybe I did, too. In understanding. In moving towards self-love.

And it dawned on me that maybe I had somewhere to go.

Up.