Author: ggross01

Today was my last day of my intensive Outpatient treatment program and I am feeling amazing, I have a whole new way of looking at the world and I am feeling very confident. I wanted to share a memory and some of my thoughts about it. I don’t remember much from the days of my early drug use, I tried cannabis for the first time around the age of 16 and was quickly a fan, it quickly sparked into a problem, I was spending way too much money on it and I was consuming more and more due to tolerance and what I now know is increased needing to numb. My cannabis usage eventually led me to be kicked out of my house by my parents during my senior year in High School (Something I would never recommend doing as now I know that drug usage usually points to an underlying mental condition). But I have a memory of after the first time I got caught with cannabis in my parents house. We went to see a counselor, one time, one session, and the only thing I remember from the conversation is this exchange:

“What is your drug of choice?”

“Marijuana”

Then I remember her saying something along the lines of “Well in my opinion it’s better than alcohol”

The story I keep telling myself in my head is that we never went back because my parents (being hardcore christian conservatives), disagreed with that statement. And refused to go back and see her after that.

So at one point my parents at least recognized that there may be an underlying mental issue, or they were willing to look at it through that lens.

So why did we never go back?

Is it because they disagreed with her?

If they did, why not find another therapist?

What if my whole history of substance abuse and severe depression could have been cut short by 8 years had they had an open mind and continued to seek treatment for me?

These questions make me feel angry, betrayed, like my parents didn’t care about me, among other minor emotions like embarrassment, and some guilt for bringing up the questions in the first place

It’s important, I think, to note that I do not blame my parents for anything that has happened in my life. In DBT there is this idea of “radical acceptance” which basically boils down to “what has happened has happened and it is out of your control, and it is okay to accept it, not label it as good or bad, and move on.”

So every time these questions and thoughts arrive in my head, I try to stay mindful of them, accept and acknowledge that they are there, and instead of attaching a feeling to them, I gently and without shame (“I’m an idiot for thinking this” used to be my go to here, but these feelings are valid and they are valid questions, so there is no need to tell myself that I am stupid for thinking these things) check the facts:

1.) All I have is the one faint memory

2.) I haven’t asked my parents, so I have no way of knowing their thought process.

This let me be aware of my emotional reaction to the situation, validate it, and use my reason mind to decide that until I have more information on this subject, I need to let these emotions flow through me without acting on them.

Tomorrow, in order to address these feelings I intend to find a non-shameful way to communicate these concerns to my parents, because I know they love me and that they did the best they could in the situation they were in, and that’s all anyone can ask for.

DBT to me, is an intuitive and very “zen” approach and analyzing and regulating emotions. It is a very “yin & yang” way of at looking at emotions, and preaches that there are two minds, the “reason mind” and the “emotion mind”. And that joining these two minds together one can see life through the “wise mind.” There are many aspects of DBT but it focuses on 4 major areas:

Distress Tolerance (What to do when in severe emotional outbreaks)

Interpersonal Effectiveness (How to communicate effectively, non-judgmentally, and assertively)

Mindfulness (Awareness of ones thoughts and feelings, and general sensations in the body, often with meditation)

Emotional Regulation (recognizing, and acknowledging emotions and deciding whether or not to act on them)

My goal is to, at the end of each day, analyze a situation I was in throughout the day and evaluate how well I did and what DBT exercises I used to deal with the situation.