It’s time to move into the next DBT module, but first I want to tie a couple of things together.

1. Emotions ARE – emotions aren’t good or bad, right
   or wrong; they are information about how we feel.
2. Some emotions are secondary – anger is always a result of some other primary emotion such as fear, disappointment, hurt, sadness, grief.
3. One instructor told us, Anger is like a flashing sign saying, “Someone has crossed my boundary.”
4. We are the only ones that can control our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions; no one can control ours and we can’t control others.
5. Using the Nonjudgmentally piece of Mindfulness, we can learn more about anger – how we express it, how it affects us, and what we can do to work on it.

At Timberline we worked through some information from a book called Mindfulness for Teen Anger: A Workbook to Overcome Anger and Aggression Using MBSR and DBT Skills by Mark C. Purcell MEd, PsyD and Jason R Murphy MA.  (Long name, but I want to give credit!)  Basically, we looked at anger patterns and styles of how we express anger.  It’s another piece to understanding ourselves, how we function, what we can do to improve life, and learn ways to move on.  I’ve posted – under Lists – their Anger Style Assessment and a summary of the styles from the information we were given.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

“People don’t usually have problems with what you feel, they have problems with what you do. So many anger-management strategies fail because all the attention is on making you change what you do: arguing, fighting, out-of-control behaviors. If people knew all the thoughts and feelings you were experiencing underneath your actions, they would probably be more understanding, but no one (including you sometimes) has all that knowledge.”

This couldn’t be more true!  I know for myself, I get frustrated by things I do when I’m angry. I have to remind myself that anger is natural and normal in situations of sadness, fear, hurt, etc.  AND I need to work on how I act and react. That’s part of the Nonjudgmental mindfulness too – emotion is normal; anyone would feel that way if they were in this situation.

Feel free to look over the anger
styles and take the assessment.
Tomorrow I plan to do the same
exercise about shame.

I’ve been struggling for a couple of days to write this post, and I finally figured out why.  Self-care is the next topic in the progression of information AND my self-care has tanked since New Year’s.  It’s becoming more and more obvious how much I’ve let slip in my self-care.  There’s relief in just putting it out there. Just saying it.  Now the hard part – getting back up and getting back on the path of recovery.  Without “shoulding.”  Without shame.  Just baby steps.

Discussion on self-care happened in some form at every appointment at ACCFS and at Timberline and in most of our groups.  Self-care encompasses all those areas in the PIES check-in and also includes relationships and career goals.  I’ve posted an assessment we did for ourselves while in the step-down program – click here. It’s also one of the “lists.”

Now maybe you’re thinking this is hogwash because we shouldn’t be focused on ourselves. I’d like to share a few tidbits I’ve picked up over the last dozen years.  (It’s pretty easy to write these; much harder to be mindful of them when you need to be!)

• Consider this picture…

• I once heard the following in an radio interview – “just when you think you’ve got all you can
  handle, God allows one more thing to come along because it draws you to him.”
• In Early Childhood classes the parent instructor shared the acronym HALTS with us. Kids are much more prone to tantrums when they’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Sick or Sad.  This sure applies to us as adults too!  For the S we added Stressed.
• I’m sure you’ve all sat through the safety speech on an airplane – secure your own oxygen mask before helping others.
• Jesus took time away even when there were multitudes that needed his help. Amazingly, after just three years of ministry, he was able to declare, “it is finished!”  He knew there were others that would pick up the work – fallible, bumbling men, but others nonetheless – and he trusted mankind to take the reins at that point.  (Do we ever get finished?)
• If I’ve had a busy weekend, I like to take part of Mon as my “day of rest.”

Now, lest you think I’m advocating thinking only of self, we also had groups on community and being “other-focused.”  The Bible has a lot to say about that too!

I’m also posting two more songs – The Pit and Turn Me Back to You

Last time I wrote about putting a plan together for changes in the new year and included thinking about what do if it didn’t go “as planned.”  This is about one suggestion to help with that plan – a daily check-in. We did this at Timberline every morning and evening.  It helped us with mindfulness and being aware of how we were doing at the moment. It helped us make the most of the time we had there.  It also helped to treat the whole person – emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually –  which is one of the goals at Timberline.

No one had just sessions for the reason they were there, but also groups like art therapy, movement therapy, family dynamics, etc. We met with therapists, psychiatrist, doctors, dietitians, and had the opportunity to go to church. There were many ways, besides our morning and evening groups, that they checked in with us to monitor how we were doing or had us check-in with ourselves. One that speaks to the whole person came from the Native American Medicine Wheel…

The one we used changed Mental to Intellectual and rearranged the sections, such that it was a PIES check-in – physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. In each section of the circle we completed a sentence. “Physically I feel…” and so on. I thought it was interesting how closely this mirrors the greatest commandment. Here’s Mark 12:

²⁸…and asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? ²⁹And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: ³⁰And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

At the bottom of our check-in sheet was the statement, “Today I need…” Once we had
assessed how we felt in each section, we could decide our need – prayer, sleep, quiet,
interaction, learning, etc.