Many, if not most, therapeutic errors are assessment errors; that is, they are therapeutic responses based on faulty understanding and assessment of the problem at hand.
You can feel like a mental patient, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like one.
Radical acceptance rests on letting go of the illusion of control and a willingness to notice and accept things as they are right now, without judging.
People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.
Acceptance is the only way out of hell.
The bottom line is that if you are in hell, the only way out is to go through a period of sustained misery. Misery is, of course, much better than hell, but it is painful nonetheless. By refusing to accept the misery that it takes to climb out of hell, you end up falling back into hell repeatedly, only to have to start over and over again.
The desire to commit suicide, however, has at its base a belief that life cannot or will not improve. Although that may be the case in some instances, it is not true in all instances. Death, however, rules out hope in all instances. We do not have any data indicating that people who are dead lead better lives.
It is hard to be happy without a life worth living. This is a fundamental tenet of DBT. Of course, all lives are worth living in reality. No life is not worth living. But what is important is that you experience your life as worth living – one that is satisfying, and one that brings happiness.
There’s never a good time for Mindfulness, and there’s never a bad time. Mindfulness is one of those things you simply do, because if you practice being aware – completely open to the universe, just exactly as it is – you will transform your life in time.
Responding to a suicide attempt by insisting that it must stop, and devoting the full resources of therapy to preventing it, is a communication with compassion and care at its very core.
Acceptance can transform but if you accept in order to transform, it is not acceptance. It is like loving. Love seeks no reward but when given freely comes back a hundredfold. He who loses his life finds it. He who accepts, changes.
Wisdom and freedom require the ability to allow the natural flow of emotions to come and go, experiencing emotions but not being controlled by emotions. Always having to prevent or suppress emotions is a form of being controlled by emotions.
When we are free, we can look in the face of our cravings and desires and say “I don’t have to satisfy you.
Acceptance is the freedom from needing your cravings satisfied.