Acknowledge vs Acceptance

Thank you so much to all those that love me through my honest lens. This is my reality. And it isn’t pretty. It is messy and chaotic and beautiful at the same time. I am slowly learning to love and embrace my truth. I don’t ask that you say it to the world like I do, but you should acknowledge the truth within yourself. Don’t judge it, just acknowledge. You will feel better for it.

I need to come back to my basic DBT skills so I can stop hurting over things that I cannot change. I am Acknowledging that I cannot change the present moment. I am not Accepting it. So I am NOT going to judge myself for posting what I did about motherhood. That would defeat the entire purpose of learning and growing into having a more Wise and conscious Mind. I can only observe what I felt and why. And then, JUST LET IT BE.

So What exactly is Dialectical Behavioral Therapy? Here is one of the modules called Nonjudgmental Stance. I sincerely needed this refresher. If you are interested in learning more about DBT, click on the link just below, you can see all the DBT Modules and Skills. I went through actual class and therapy to learn this. And it takes practice. A LOT of Practice. But every time I practice one of my skills, I always find more peace. Even if it is just for a moment.

DBT training *Courtesy of DBT Self Help

Nonjudgmental stance is the last of the “What” skills in the Mindfulness Module of DBT.

First was Observe, in which we paid attention to ourselves, our environment, and others around us. When observing, the trick was to just notice things like, “I notice I’m thinking about the future,” or “I notice my pulse is faster when I’m talking to my mother.”

Next was Describe, in which we would put words on the things we observed. Some people described very simple things like washing the dishes or going for a walk, but found that by describing, they felt like they were better able to pay attention to the present moment.

Next was Participate, where we allowed ourselves to be completely immersed in the moment, focusing in a way that made us forget everything else.

Nonjudgmental Stance, I think, really pulls it all together. We are very conditioned to placing judgments on our observations. To use the examples above, I may notice that I’m thinking about the future, but it’s likely my next thought will be something like, “I’m not doing DBT correctly since I’m thinking about the future. Therefore I am bad or wrong or incompetent.” This is a judgment of the observation and it is not at all helpful.

The point of taking a nonjudgmental stance is to give ourselves an opportunity to observe the same old things that we always observe in our minds or in our environment or about other people, but open ourselves to thinking about it in a different way. So if I withhold my judgment about what my thought means, but simply observe it, note it and let the thought move away, I have an opportunity to treat myself more gently. Even if I still have the judgmental thought, I can observe that I had the thought, then let it go. That’s the beauty of nonjudgmental stance; all the negative garbage we’re so accustomed to telling ourselves is suddenly cut off and a gentleness takes over so that healing becomes possible.

I was recently reading the book “Writing as a Way of Healing,” by Louise DeSalvo and in it she said, “In the end, isn’t healing just another way of seeing?” When I thought about it, one reason that statement is true is because I’m backing off from taking a judgmental stance and opening myself to another way of thinking (which is where many of the other DBT skills come in – offering suggestions for alternative ways to behave/react/think about any given situation).

If you look at the second example of an observation above, “I notice my pulse is faster when I’m talking to my mother,” we can see how the nonjudgmental stance can change a potentially volatile situation into a healing moment in which I can learn something about myself. My temptation is to think, “my pulse is faster because she’s a witch and I can’t stand listening to her and now she’s yelling at me because she hates me” and so I react and yell back. This has happened to me many times.

But sometimes, in the midst of the moment, I notice my pulse and let’s say I resist making a judgment about WHY my pulse is fast or what my mother is doing. Instead I notice that the pitch in my mother’s voice is higher and I resist making the judgment about WHY her voice is higher or what it means to me. Or, if I can’t resist the judgment, I just observe it and let it go. Then I notice that my face is becoming red and that I feel the impulse to react and I force myself to simply observe and withhold judgment. And slowly, I find I’m regaining my composure, freeing myself from the prison of emotional pain. I feel less need to react. As my feelings of anger dissipate, I begin to hear the pain in her voice and I don’t judge that pain. Instead, I let her have her pain and I just listen. I don’t take it on, I merely observe. And somehow, the entire situation feels different. “Healing is just a different way of seeing.”

I am especially aware of the impact of a nonjudgmental stance when I use it on the more complex observations and descriptions of EMOTIONS! Nevertheless, I think it’s good to practice with more benign things like taking a nonjudgmental stance about my walk in the park.

I can practice by not making a judgment about the guy who just walked past me and pulled his dog in closer to him quickly and sidestepped my path. I might be tempted to think he was avoiding me because he thinks I’m ugly, dangerous or any number of things. But if I notice myself doing so and consciously make a decision not to judge my observations, I am able to practice this skill and gain some competence with it. In this way, later on, when that argument with my mother happens, I will have practiced observing and describing without judging. In so doing, I’m in a position to gain even more actual healing.

I am working on being more Mindful. I lose myself in the moment just like everyone else. I feel sad and hopeless. But every single day, I wake up and heal a little bit more. This blog is helping me heal. Your response is helping me heal. Thank you again for your support and love!

xoxo,

Kristin

 

Going Home

The last few days have been really rough. Just regular life stuff, but really hard nonetheless. Birthdays have never been my thing. I keep thinking that it is not the right time to write this part of the story, but maybe it is the BEST time. Because it will help give me some perspective. To not let the regular life stuff trip me up and question my purpose here.

 

Okay, so now we all know about July 22nd. Where do I begin with the aftermath? I guess for starters you should know that I never should have survived (which seems to be a running theme in all these stories and my life). In my mind the phone ringing and the text messages finally stopped and peace enveloped and embraced me. I absolutely know some things I experienced are never meant to be shared, even with my closest family. Want to know why? Because even though I can see them, there are no words on this planet to describe what I saw. I do however remember the feelings. The first and foremost was a complete sense of calm and peace, of just feeling right with the world. I felt the warmth and welcoming. Complete acceptance, no judgments. Just that feeling that you are finally where you are supposed to be. Home. I felt my Heavenly Father’s embrace. His love. His complete understanding. It fills my heart right now just thinking about it. I wanted those feelings to last forever, anyone who experienced them would. But of course they were fleeting, because the very next thing I knew I felt a very strong hand push me back. Of everything I experienced during that time, it is the clearest of all because it was so jarring. It was definitely a hand that pushed me back, propelling me forward.

I woke up in a cold shower. My roommate had found me and was trying to get me to come back. It has to be like what a baby feels like when it is born. All warm and safe, then suddenly ripped from the quiet and peaceful enclosure to be thrust in to a world of bright lights, loud noises, and unfamiliar surroundings. Things progressed quickly from there.

That day changed me. Wouldn’t you be changed? Since that experience time has changed as well. Days feel like weeks. Weeks feel like months. It has been very confusing at times. Here is an example. I ordered a package that said would take a week to arrive. I wake up in the morning, and I get upset when I check my mailbox. Why hasn’t the package gotten here yet? It is taking forever. Then I look back through my emails. I had just ordered it the day before, actually just the night before. Of course it isn’t here yet. But things like that happen almost every single day. It’s weird to say the least. But I know there is a reason for it. Can you imagine experiencing all the things I have in my life? And you as a reader know only a tiny fraction of them. How long would it take for you to recover from those awful, painful, traumatic events? Months, Years? It took me a week. Because those 7 days felt like 7 months. And every month that has passed since that time has felt like a year. Think I’m crazy? Ask the people I live with. They know.

It was an immediate transformation. I talked to my Dad a lot after that day. My Grandfather had died earlier that year and he was still grieving the loss. We all were. My dad and I needed each other. We would talk every single day after The Event. It was interesting because he would start to say the same things as I felt. “Wow Kristin, you have come so far in just the last few weeks, I can’t even believe how much you have changed!” “But Dad, it has only been two days. It’s the 24th.” “You have got to be kidding me. It feels like a lifetime ago.” And in my mind it was. But that wasn’t the case for everyone in my life.

I have never, ever in my life seen my husband lose himself the way he did on That Day. In fact, I think I have only seen him cry twice in 11 years. He never loses his composure. But he did that day. And in the months following, when I had nothing else to hold on to, when he was a thousand miles away even though we were sitting in the same room. I would remember his words on my voicemail. Him pleading and crying for me to stay. “Please Kristin, do NOT do this, we NEED you!”

But he has no idea how much he truly needs me. He probably still doesn’t. But I do. I’ve seen it.