DBT….easy as 1, 2, 3!
Eating disordered thoughts can quickly become a chaotic and emotional whirlwind in the brain. They fly hard and fast and it’s so easy to become overwhelmed and completely swept away. I’ve also written about this in the past as a Hamster Attack - that hamster wheel spinning, and spinning, and driving you further into frantic and obsessed thinking around food and eating. Now imagine throwing your arms in the air and yelling at the tornado to STOP!
How did that go for you? Yeah, I don’t have much luck controlling the storm either. But it hasn’t stopped me from looking for mental stop signs that I can throw out and try to curb the damage. Right now I’m in a place where I’ve really begun to notice when my thoughts start racing. Before it was just a near constant state of being and I had no idea what a quiet mind really felt like. These days, as I’m trying to rest, I can see it for what it is now: my thoughts feel like a crowd of 6 year olds in bumper cars, sugared to the hilt with pizza and ice cream, and let loose in my head. My first response is exasperation, frustration, impatience….and then I yell out loud, “Stop it! Stop right now! Slow down! Keep your hands inside before you poke someone’s fucking eye out!”
Of course, noticing the racing thoughts doesn’t really do much towards slowing them down or ending them, it’s just an important first step before you can do any slowing or stopping. I feel ready to tackle some strategies for slowing down my mind and overwhelming emotions, and to do that I am looking towards Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT uses a number of strategies and exercises to address four key components: distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. What it does is essentially ease you away from destructive coping mechanisms, bingeing in my case, and give you a new set of power tools to use.
I’ve picked up a DBT workbook that I’ll be working through on a weekly basis with PhD Smiley and you’re invited along to see what happens. Anyone else out there have experience with DBT? How did it go for you?
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My therapist liked DBT training and we thought about it for my issues, but going to the weekly classes would have entailed more time off than I was comfortable taking from my job. And it would have meant not seeing her as often as I usually do, because you usually see a DBT trained personal therapist while you are in the program.
One thing we did agree about was mindfullness. I’ve read 2 books on mindfulness. One is a book on mindfulness and anxiety that I got as part of a anxiety research project. I’m bad, I dropped out. Even though the book didn’t “speak” to me, I should have stayed in to be part of the group that didn’t respond to treatment.
The other book she ended up recommending was The Mindful Way through Depression” or something like that. This book was a godsend. It was like a cartoon light-bulb went off over my head. Everything the first book said and didn’t make sense, now suddenly made sense. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. Maybe because it was about depression, which is my problem, versus anxiety, which isn’t as much of a problem for me.
They talk alot in the beginning chapters about the whole racing thoughts issue and it really helped me. I tend to “spin myself up”, which is I get set on 1 thought or issue and just keep getting more and more upset about it until I either end up totally fried or I end up talking to someone and “getting it out of my head” But they talk about mediation, which I had figured wasn’t in the cards for me. Do you remember the Amex ad with Ellen in it where she is in some sort of temple and is trying to meditate. She’s all “ommm” and then her mind starts to wander to different things around her. That’s totally me. I laughed out loud when I saw that commercial and realized I wasn’t alone, even if it was an ad!
The mindfulness book helped me understand that the wandering mind is normal. It’s how you gently and non-judgementally bring your thoughts back to whatever you are trying to focus on that counts.
It also helped me with realizing that thoughts are fleeting and that by letting the emotions spin me up, I was giving more power to the thoughts than they really had. Thoughts are fleeting. It’s the emotions we invest in them that having the lasting power. Sometimes when I find myself overwhelmed with the emotions and the thoughts, I remind myself that the thoughts are fleeting. Then I tell myself what my therapist has been repeating to me for 4 years “Turn down the noise” which is to remind me to breath and step back and concentrate on what I’m feeling and try to screen out the extras and get to the core of whatever is bothering me. And that can include just focusing on whatever I’m grumping about, especially when it’s something I have no control over.
So, that’s my novel on mindfulness! :-) Hope it is helpful!
So glad to see you back! I hope that means you’re feeling a bit better. I am a “PhD Smiley” myself, and really like the way that DBT works for lots of different people. I hope you find the strategies helpful for you.
Aeron, you had so many great things to say and I was definitely with you on many of them, particularly mindfulness, something I’ve been working on for a while. I especially like the idea of “turning down the noise.” It’s exhausting having my mental radio cranked up to 10 so much of the time!
Hi, Sarah! Welcome back to you, too!
I have never done DBT, but my last therapist had suggested I look into it. After she decided to not return after maternity leave (EDed into abandonment), I just dropped the whole idea.
I’d be interested to how it goes for you…If you like it or not.
I’m smiling at Aeron’s description of mindfulness-few can be so eloquent about what they’re going through and why mindfulness works-thanks for enlightening me with your point of view :) May I “borrow” (AKA steal) some of your awesome analogies when trying to explain it to people?
There are a number of different treatment programs and approaches to support people suffering from eating disorders who decide to get help. I’ve found that Silver Hill Hospital has a number of treatment options, including dialectical behavioral therapy.