Karyn Hall at the Emotionally Sensitive Person blog has another great post on the levels of emotional validation…
Self-Validation: What Do You Do?
By KARYN HALL, PHD
Validation is like relationship glue. Validating someone brings you closer. Validating yourself is like glue for fragmented parts of your identity. Validating yourself will help you accept and better understand yourself, which leads to a stronger identity and better skills at managing intense emotions.
Being out of control of your emotions is a painful experience and damaging to relationships. Knowing how to self-validate is important to learning to manage your emotions effectively. Self-validation means you can accept your internal experience as understandable and acceptable. But learning to self-validate is not so easy. How do you apply the six levels of validation to self-validation? Notice that mindfulness and self-validation go hand in hand.
It’s often said that one of the best ways to tackle prejudice against those with mental health problems is for people to speak openly about their mental health.
Talking about mental health destigmatises it
Clare Allan
Tuesday 4 June 2013
In my experience, speaking out helps people with mental health problems to reveal themselves as individuals rather than categories
It’s often said that one of the best ways to tackle prejudice against those with mental health problems is for people to speak openly about their mental health. I think this is true and it works because while prejudice sees people as types, or even not quite as people, when an individual talks about their own experience, you can hardly fail to recognise a fellow human being.
But there are very good reasons for people choosing not to speak out. And chief among these is the discrimination they know they will encounter when they do so. It’s a catch-22.
For me the process of coming out has been to some extent an inevitable consequence of what I do for a living. It would have been odd not to have written a novel set in the mental health system, as that’s where I’d been for 10 years when I wrote it, and for much of that time the parameters of my world had extended very little beyond the psychiatric.
It’s not a question of autobiography, but more that the themes I wanted to explore – What constitutes normality? How does language cope with extremes of experience? – were ones for which this context offered a fertile environment.
Behaviors associated with mental illness can be picked up on by a healthy person playing an online strategy game with someone they’ve never met.
Mental Illness May Be Detected in Online Gaming Partner
By Traci Pedersen Associate News Editor
Behaviors associated with mental illness can be picked up on by a healthy person playing an online strategy game with someone they’ve never met.
A team of researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute found that healthy people and those with borderline personality disorder displayed different patterns of behavior while playing the game. In fact, when healthy players played people with borderline personality disorder, they simply gave up trying to predict their partner’s next move.
For the study, scientists used a multiround social interaction game — the investor-trustee game — to study the level of strategic thinking in 195 pairs of subjects.
In each pair, one player played the investor and the other the trustee. The investor decided how much money to give the trustee, and the trustee then decided how much to return to the investor. Profit required the cooperation of both players.
“This classic tit-for-tat game allows us to probe people’s responses to the social gestures of others,” said Read Montague, Ph.D., director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.
“It further allows us to see how people form models of one another. These insights are important for understanding a range of mental illnesses, as the ability to infer other people’s intentions is an essential component of healthy cognition.”
Bon (me) is funding the creation of an online learning course for people to learn Emotional Agility. What I have learned over the past 8 years of this blog and last 7 years of operating the ATSTP online support list is that these skills, enumerated in When Hope is Not Enough and my other publications, are teachable. The skills can be transmitted to other non-BPD people, as well as parents, partners, children and friends of BPD and Emotionally Sensitive People (ESPs) supporters.
Why are you asking for money?
I am asking for money via Fund Anything because I need to hire a consultant to develop the technology to deliver the online course. The online course will consist of three things:
The online course that will instruct people on how to use the tools in their lives.
A workbook that will guide people through the online course.
A self-help book that will reinforce the skills learned from the online course.
I don’t like to be a “beggar” for money. Yet, I need the funds to hire a consultant to develop the software to deliver the training content in the most effective way. I’ve looked around the Internet to find this software and it doesn’t really exist in the form I’d like to be most effective in transmitting the skills.
If you can give $5 or $10 or more, I’d really appreciate it. If you give at a certain level, you can have the materials and access to the online course for free.
Mentalization lets kids consider situations from many points of view
Thinking About Thinking May Help At-Risk Children
Mentalization lets kids consider situations from many points of view
Published on May 18, 2013 by Kristi Pikiewicz, PhD in Meaningful You
Imagine that you have arrived at a museum to view an Ancient Grecian statue. Your experience, including your thoughts, emotions, and physiological reactions, would be dictated by two factors: the nature and quality of the artwork itself, and the space within which it is presented. The statue may be beautiful or frightening, sturdy or fragile, well-preserved or in a state of disrepair. These are immutable properties that cannot be easily changed, but your reaction to the piece will also be informed by how it is presented. The size and layout of the gallery determines whether or not you may move around the statue to see it from all angles, appraise it from afar or up close, or even gain enough distance to see multiple statues at once and compare them.
This metaphor may tell us something important about the social and emotional development of children. Each child carries models of relationships unconsciously — templates about how people will treat and react to him or her — borne out of early experiences with caregivers in infancy. These models are like the statue: old and difficult to change. The gallery represents the internal space in which those models exist: that is, the child’s ability to think about and reflect on the mental states of the self and others. Attachment theorists such as Mary Main and Peter Fonagy have long proposed that the development of such a reflective capacity, also known as mentalization, ought to be protective for children whose early models are problematic. (Children may develop troublesome models for a variety of reasons, stemming from parental, environmental, and genetic sources.) A child with high mentalization would have the space to consider his models from all sides, compare and contrast them, and choose how near or far to “stand” from them. On the other hand, without the ability to mentalize a child may feel trapped with distorted or fractured models, repeatedly entering into new relationships with expectations of painfulness and chaos. Continue reading How mentalization skills can help children at risk →
I was saddened today to hear about the loss of the son of a person I respect and have been inspired by. Eric Dietz, the 29 year old son of Lisa Dietz, died in January from drowning. Lisa was the operator of dbtselfhelp.com which is now down. Unbeknownst to Lisa, I have been inspired by her site and have quoted it several times on my site and in my publications. I am very sorry for her loss. I can only imagine the pain this untimely death must have caused.
Obituary: Trying to save a life, Eric Dietz lost his own
Article by: MARY LYNN SMITH , Star Tribune Updated: January 24, 2013 – 11:04 PM
Eric Dietz didn’t let anything stop him.
“He was very adventurous,” said his mother, Lisa Dietz of Golden Valley.
On Jan. 6, a day when the surf was extraordinarily rough along Kehena Beach in Lower Puna on Hawaii’s Big Island, Dietz, who grew up in the Twin Cities, is presumed to have drowned while trying to help another swimmer get to shore, his mother said. He was 29.
Hawaiian officials said a search for Dietz’s body was suspended after three days. Currents in that area are extremely strong, said police Capt. Mitch Kanehailua. The beach, which is off the beaten path, is popular with nearby residents who generally know that the area has dangerous currents with a surf that is rough most of the year, he said.
On the day Dietz was reported missing, a surf advisory had been posted, Kanehailua said. Amid a pounding surf, a body boarder got to Dietz, but it appeared that he had already died, Kanehailua said. And then a wave separated the two, he said.
Dietz’s mother said she last talked to her son two days before he died. “He was the happiest I’ve ever known him to be,” she said. “I think Hawaii gave him life. It gave him the freedom to be himself.”
Dietz had been in Hawaii, where his father lives, since March, was living in a commune with other artists, his mother said. “He was an incredible musician,” she said.
Growing up in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Dietz graduated from Southwest High School in 2001 and attended Augsburg College and then the University of Minnesota, where he studied mathematics, music and computers, said his sister, Amelia Cohoes of Minneapolis. “He was an involved, loving man,” she said.
May is Borderline Personality Disorder Month, a time to recognize the symptoms of borderline personality disorder and the possibilities for treatment.
According to the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder, borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness that centers on the inability to manage emotions effectively. The disorder occurs in the context of relationships: sometimes all relationships are affected, sometimes only one or several.
The symptoms include: fear of abandonment, impulsivity, anger, bodily self-harm, suicide, feelings of emptiness and chaotic relationships. While some persons with BPD are high functioning in certain settings, their private lives may be in turmoil. Others are unable to work and require financial support.
Officially recognized in 1980 by the psychiatric community, BPD is more than two decades behind in research, treatment options and family psycho-education compared to other major psychiatric disorders. BPD has historically met with widespread misunderstanding and blatant stigma. However, evidenced-based treatments have emerged over the past two decades bringing hope to those diagnosed with the disorder and their loved ones. Continue reading May is Borderline Personality Disorder Month →
Independence is earned by demonstration of responsible behavior. In other words, if your teen is responsible by consistent demonstration of getting his homework finished on time, coming home before curfew, going to sleep and rising on time—then he should be rewarded with increments of extra freedom and independence.
Tips For Teaching Teens Compassion, Empathy (link)
Dr. Fran Walfish Answers Your Questions
Q: Dear Dr. Fran, my wife and I are worried about our 16-year-old daughter. At times she can be cold, callous, and mean to us. Compassion does not seem to be part of her personality. Can this be taught? Please help us! -Jason E.
A: Dear Jason: empathy and compassion are learned best by experience. If the child is treated with warmth, empathy, and compassion, she has a high likelihood of becoming an empathic adolescent and adult.
Of course, this empathic relating must begin at birth when the new mom responds to each of her infant’s cries/needs. This warm maternal response should carry through into the early and middle childhood years.
You may ask: “What if this warm responsiveness did not occur in the child’s early life?” Can it be taught to a teen? The answer and final outcome depends on a number of complicated things.
• Number one, and most importantly, the teen must personally want to become a compassionate, empathic person. Without that desire, the change will not happen. To change requires a tremendous amount of motivation and hard work.
• If, indeed, the teen is motivated to change, he or she usually does best if they have a mentor. The mentor can be a parent, teacher, relative, minister, counselor, or therapist. It must be someone the teen looks up to, admires/respects, and can trust.
This opens the pathway for communication. You can tell the teen to treat the other person the way they want to be treated. But, without the idealized respect and trust it will fall on deaf ears.
• Independence is earned by demonstration of responsible behavior. In other words, if your teen is responsible by consistent demonstration of getting his homework finished on time, coming home before curfew, going to sleep and rising on time—then he should be rewarded with increments of extra freedom and independence.
These added freedoms need to be comfortable with both parents. Maybe, you let him stay out one hour later with his friends on Saturday night. Or, perhaps you allow him to go to a rock concert with his buddies.
• Parents can help their teens by building in the expectation of reasonable failure. In other words, to be successful one must first experience rejection, failure, and disappointment. Learning to deal with inevitable letdowns only makes success, when achieved, that much sweeter.
Personality development begins much younger in the toddler and early childhood years. By adolescence, personality is virtually set and gelled.
• A key way parents affect teenage personality development is how they relate to their kids.
If a parent is harshly critical the teen will likely emerge with a harsh Superego. That’s a fancy psychological way of saying the teen is strongly self-critical. After years of being the target or object of the parent’s criticisms, the teen takes in (Introjects) the parent’s harsh critic and becomes a self-critic.
If during the infancy, toddler and early-childhood years, the parent does not consistently warmly read the child’s cues and needs accurately or the parent inconsistently responds to the baby, then the child grows up to be uncertain of where she stands in the mind of the mother (significant other). The child emerges with fear of abandonment and a black -and-white style of relating. She either loves or hates you. There is no gray in between. The personality is called Borderline Personality Disorder. There are many, many ways in which parents affect the type of personality organization their teen will develop. Continue reading Tips For Teaching Teens Compassion, Empathy →
When you hear the word “psychiatric hospital,”what do you think of? Do you think of a place for insane people who pose a danger to themselves and everyone around them?
Removing stigma of ‘mental illness’
By Kevin Doerzman, kevin.doerzman@iowastatedaily.com | Posted: Thursday, April 18, 2013
12:00 am
When you hear the word “psychiatric hospital,”what do you think of? Do you think of a place for
insane people who pose a danger to themselves and everyone around them? I’ve been to one, and it’s
anything but that. It’s a place to get the necessary help in time of crisis. When I share that with people
I’ve become comfortable with, they get the same solemn expression on they face and the same hollow
tone in their voice. It’s come to my attention in psychology classes that often a stigma is attached to
those who have been diagnosed and treated for mental illnesses — for example, mood disorders such
as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and
a whole slue of other mental illnesses.
The term “mental illness”has negative connotation in itself. It almost sounds like someone doesn’t
have the mental capacity or intelligence to be able to function properly in a social world. When the
American Psychiatric Association first published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, many of the terms used in the book were negative or derogatory. For example,
contemporary versions of the manual have IQ scales that determine mental retardation. Before the
second edition, more pejorative terms such as “morons,” “imbeciles,” and “idiots” were used to
identify mental retardation. Yet most diagnosed with a type of mental retardation are capable of taking
care of themselves and being economically independent.
Mental illnesses can also cause issues in the workplace. According to the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development, those diagnosed with a mental illness are two to three times more
likely to be unemployed. In popular belief, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and
others are thought to be more dangerous than they really are. With proper behavioral therapy and
medication, those diagnosed with mood disorders can function to the same level as those not
diagnosed. The dangers of mental illness are sometimes blown far out of proportion. Someone can be
tacked with a mood disorder or some other mental illness only because they show minor symptoms.
It’s normal for everyone to be sad, nervous, or angry every once in awhile. It doesn’t necessarily mean
they’re suicidal or psychotic.
My mother has always been unstable and scary. Could she have borderline personality disorder?
Dear Cary,
I’ve been reading your column for years and it’s helped me a lot. Thank you for that.
A recent suggestion that a daughter-in-law who throws outrageous tantrums at the end of visits might have a borderline personality disorder really struck a chord with me. The videos you linked to were so similar to my mother. For example, at least twice a year she’ll unleash a barrage of furious and hostile emails and phone calls to me and accuse me of gloating while she cries, being abusive, lambasting her and making her as miserable as I possibly can, never saying anything supportive, being secretive and a user (because I didn’t tell her that my husband and I had separated until we knew for sure we were headed for divorce) … I could go on and on. None of it matches my view of myself at all, though I do tend to close myself off and not react when she screams at me. I used to get really wrapped up in the hurtful things she says, but I’m used to it enough that it mostly gives me a week or two of feeling depressed and like I’m a horrible person, and then I just shrug and carry on.
The latest episode was provoked because I couldn’t give her a ride to a doctor’s appointment with only two days notice due to work commitments. She had said that if I couldn’t, it was no big deal. But I’ve learned that these kinds of events are precarious, and I steeled myself for the inevitable.
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