One thing I like about dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is the way it prepares the client for the end of the therapeutic relationship.
In her memoir, the founder of DBT, Marsha Linehan, writes DBT is different than psychodynamic therapy because she tells highly suicidal people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) what to do.
Having figured out enough on my own to have built the life I always wanted, I resent being told what to do. I require transparency and supporting evidence if you want to convince me of anything, especially when it comes to analyzing my behavior. No one has been analyzing my behavior and overthinking my every action as long as I have.
From the beginning, when I was overwhelmed with emotion, misunderstanding, intense anxiety and hypersensitivity, I needed to be told what to do and shown how to do it.
I needed to learn how to prepare for a panic attack the way ocean-front homeowners know to board up the windows before hurricanes hit.
Mom never saw me coming.
She never expected me to need her more than she needed me.
My earliest memories are of crying out from my bed to be picked up, carried to a rocking chair and held with my yellow blanket.
“Your first words were ‘rock-rock’ and ‘gah-gah,’” Mom often said.
Not the A sound like in Lady Gaga, like the beginning of the word “gag.”
I always wondered if she was mad at me for not saying “mom” sooner, somehow feeling slighted.
I learned about DBT years after I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology because Marsha Linehan was still developing her theory and skills training when I needed it most.
Unlike feeling wowed by fitting in with the case studies of people with borderline personality disorder in the book “I Hate You – Don’t Leave Me” in the late 1990s, I was annoyed.
All I had was a label. Tell me again how emotionally volatile I am!
Having a diagnosis of “borderline personality disorder” is a label like, “fragile,” “explosive” or “needs sunlight.”
You can use the term as a description, like labeling an apple “orange,” but if you’re wrong, the pie won’t taste the same.
Let a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder lead your research, not excuse your behavior.
There be momsters.