ABC PLEASE

ABC PLEASE

Use this guide to help you develop emotional resilience and decrease suffering from difficult emotions.

A - Accumulate Positive Emotions:

- Short Term: Be mindful of pleasant events such as listening to music, watching tv, drawing knitting, etc.

-Long Term: Avoid avoiding, identify values, take steps toward goals.

B - Build Mastery:

-Plan on doing something to build a sense of accomplishment.

-Plan for success rather than failure.

-Look for a challenge and gradually increase difficulty over time.

C - Cope Ahead:

-Describe possibly triggering situations.

-Plan coping or problem solving strategies.

-Practice coping effectively.

-Practice relaxation after coping practice.

P - Treat Physical Illness:

-Take care of your body.

-See a doctor when necessary

-Take prescribed medications as directed.

L - List Resources and Barriers:

-List tools and practices that will help with vulnerabilities.

-List issues and situations that will hinder healthy practices.

E - Balanced Eating:

-Don’t eat too much or too little.

-Eat regularly and mindfully throughout the day.

-Stay away from food that makes you feel overly emotional.

A - Avoid Mood-Altering Substances: Stay off drugs and alcohol.

S - Balanced Sleep:

-Try to get 8-9 hours of sleep daily.

-Keep a consistent bedtime and wake time.

E - Regular Exercise:

-Do some sort of exercise daily.

-Aim for 20-30 minutes of physical activity.

-Build flexibility and love your body.

*More DBT guides here*

𝐈 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥...𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐲.

Trigger warning: su1cidal thoughts

I want to love myself. I want to love my life. I want to enjoy things. I want to be able to let go of what doesn’t serve me. I want to be happy, or at the very least be content. But currently the best I can do is hold onto enough mindfulness to follow my crisis plan when I’m holding a pill bottle in my hand.

As my therapist always says, therapy and treatment can only work if you’re alive, and the skills are there to help you stay that way.

Better buried in self-loathing and shame than in the ground, I guess.

I was healthy, working out, yoga daily, skincare routine, balanced diet, all for 3 months but I still wasn’t happy so now I’m depressed again and not sticking to any of those things that I know are good for me. It’s so hard living like everything is a phase and nothing fills the void.

I dunno if any of these pieces are actually me or if they’re just the personalities of the people around me or in a tv show or movie.

Not knowing who you truly are is one of the quiet killers of bpd. I always feel so broken and empty.

This post is to elaborate more on my experience in the DBT group and some of the reading and tools I found most helpful to me.

The DBT group I was able to take part in was a remote group that met once a week for 16 weeks via Webex. I was very lucky to get a spot and that my Medicaid covered any cost. It was run by two social workers as part of NYU Langone's Psychiatric Center at Sunset Terrace.

The weeks were broken down based on the 4 Modules (core skill groups) of DBT: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotional Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.

Mindfulness: This is the base of any DBT practice, and what I always had trouble with in the past. Mindfulness is a kind of self-awareness that you can use to break down your experiences and give yourself a kind of reality check. Being mindful is being present and aware of your emotions, your body, and your thought process.

There are 3 states of mind with which we experience and react to the world: Emotion Mind (acting based on emotions alone), Reasonable Mind (acting based on facts alone), and Wise Mind (a combination of the first 2 and the goal of mindfulness).

Distress Tolerence: This module focuses on short term solutions for big emotions. The skills involved in this module are called Distraction skills because their goal is to just get you through the wave of emotion, resist any harmful urges, and survive your distress long enough to talk to someone or get to other skills.

There are quite a few skills in this module I found helpful, and I'll go into more detail on them in another post. The skill I think can do the most in the moment is called ACCEPTS, an acronym used to remember what you can do to distract yourself when feelings get too intense.

Emotion Regulation: This 3rd module focuses on learning to identify your emotions, understand where they come from and what they are trying to tell you, and processing them in a healthy way.

The purpose of all emotions is evolutionary survival. Emotions spur us into action to meet our needs (when you get hangry, you know you need to eat), and communicate danger to ourselves and others. Body language and voice tone can also often communicate emotions before words do.

*Use a feeling wheel to identify your emotions and dig deeper. If you can't process them right away, use a distress tolerance skill until you are able to sit with them.

*The best skill for emotion regulation is ABC PLEASE, an acronym used to help you recognize vulnerability factors in your life and minimize them.

Interpersonal Effectiveness: This last module focuses on skills that help us communicate with others. There are skills like GIVE, which can be used to maintain good relationships with others, and FAST, which can be used to help maintain your self-respect when making a request of someone.

*There are others that I will make graphics for, stay tuned!

Attending the group and learning the skills was only part of what I found helpful on my journey toward stability. I found a book, Mindfulness for Borderline Personality Disorder, that helped break mindfulness down in great detail and very easy to follow language. The book is written specifically for BPD-havers so it's really an excellent resource. The other tool I found helpful is something my therapist suggested I get, The Game of Real Life, which is a game that you can play to learn DBT skills in an interactive and fun way. It comes with a little book that breaks every skill and practice down, Skill cards which I find to be a great go-to for recalling a skill in a moment you need it (after all, it's a whole lot of acronyms to remember), and Conflict cards that give you examples of situations you might experience, and you have to pick a skill card to practice (can be done alone but better with someone you trust to really dive into the communication and regulation skills). I've actually been carrying a few of the skill cards in my purse wherever I go, just in case I need a quick reference in a moment of distress.

I have so much more to share with anyone who's interested. I'll keep posting, making graphics, and if anyone has a specific question about any of the modules, I'll do my best to answer or help you find the information online. DBT groups are super hard to find, in extremely high demand so it's hard to get in, and usually grossly expensive due to this country's horrible healthcare system. I consider myself extremely privileged to have been able to find a great hospital when I needed it and a great group that my insurance covered. I'm here for anyone who isn't as lucky. Let's make DBT accessible and break the stigma of the BPD diagnosis!

*More DBT guides here*

it's hilarious being self aware. i'm watching a clown performance, for real.