Archive for June 2010
Dialectical dilemmas for parents of adolescents
Alec Miller and Jill Rathus published a book called Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Suicidal Adolescents. In this book are some of the handouts used in adolescent DBT skills groups. They list three dialectical dilemmas that parents may face with their teenagers, which include the following:
Being too loose vs. being too strict
Making light of problem behaviors vs. Making too much of typical behaviors
Holding on too tight vs. Forcing independence too soon
Moving to an extreme end of a spectrum can = BEING STUCK, which can easily generate hopelessness and frustation. Dialectics is about finding how two things can both sometimes be true at the same time, and that finding different perspectives can help us move out of extreme polarities. Can you see how being too extreme on either end of these dilemmas could cause problems? Think of your own adolescence. The “Middle Path” proposed by Miller and Rathus is about finding the middle ground of two extremes.
Posted in 
Tags: 
Decrease emotional sensitivity
One of the skills for reducing painful emotions includes doing activities that generate positive emotions. The overall purpose is that having people, activities, and things your life that you feel good about creates a buffer from intense negative emotions. In other words, one extremely painful life event may be mitigated well if you have positive life experiences and supportive relationships. Thus negative emotions, while intense, may not have the same impact.
One of the things I do when I am having a hard time is to recall/ remind myself of positive life events and try to find audiences that can value and appreciate my efforts. In my groups, if people say they have no positive life events, I suggest they make something up just to participate in the sharing, the telling, and the rehearsing of something pleasant or something going well. And especially if they have nothing in their lives that they like or enjoy, the goal would be to start working on creating that.
So perhaps for this week, find something that you feel good about, something perhaps you are proud of, something that you value, or even an event that you look forward to attending. If you are missing someone or something that is gone, perhaps you could remember or honor their memory by recalling an aspect of the relationship that was especially meaningful to you. If you have an attentive audience, make sure that you pay attention to how it feels to be discussing these aspects of your life with the person who is listening.
Eugene Gendlin: Focusing
Here is another way of thinking about mindfulness:
“You don’t want to fall into your problems, sink in them, become them. Conversely, you don’t want to run away from them, ignore them, or repress them. Those approaches are usually not fruitful.
There is a third way, a much more useful one. It is the inner act of distancing oneself from what is troubling you but still keeping it before you. You don’t go into the problems. You stand back just a little way- far enough so that the problems no longer feel overwhelming, but close enough so that you can still feel them.
Stand back a few feet from your problems. You can walk up and touch them if you like, sense them there, as though with your fingertips. And you can pull back whenever they begin to get too threatening.”
by Eugene Gendlin, in Focusing, page 72.
More on mindfulness: Quotes
Here is a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, in The Miracle of Mindfulness, page 49:
“We are life, and life is limitless. Perhaps one can say that we are only alive when we live the life of the world, and so live the sufferings and joys of others. The suffering of others is our own suffering, and the happiness of others is our own happiness. If our lives have no limits…our self also has no limits. The impermanent character of the universe, the successses and failures of life can no longer manipulate us. Having seen the reality of interdependence and entered deeply into its reality, nothing can oppress you any longer.”
The following is by Bhante Henepola Gunarantana, from the book Mindfulness in Plain English(p. 139).
“We can’t examine our own depression without accepting it fully. The same is true for irritation and agitation, frustration, and all those other uncomfortable emotional states. You can’t examine someting fully if you are busy rejecting its existence. Whatever experience we may be having, mindfulness just accepts it.”
Looking with your eyes open
Looking at a painful situation with open eyes isn’t easy. Radically accepting something includes accepting pain, loss, death, or even one’s own intense emotional response. Times when I’ve had the most difficulty accepting is when I didn’t want something to be true and I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that was. Looking at the facts clearly not only helped me move through the situation, but it also gave me realistic information my environment. Seeing that other people are not willing or capable of giving me what I want is somehow freeing. It isn’t always about me. It is not about being flawed, or being bad, or being incapable. Those are just ways in which my mind has tried to interpret reality. It has not worked. Accepting anger, rage, disgust, and pain is part of being alive and grieving. We want the universe to stop for us but it doesn’t. And that’s a hard thing to let go of.