Busy day

[crowdog66]

A busy day -- and I haven't even started working yet.

First, a trip down to Pack & Post this morning to pick up our scanner, which arrived from California yesterday... all 70 pounds of it. Woof. Try walking home and up three flights of stairs with THAT, even with two people carrying it. The box was big, bulky, and not very well balanced, which added to the strain. But in the end it was sitting in the middle of our studio. Tonight we hook it up and plug it in and make sure the damned thing works.

Then off to meet with my psych nurse at the Adult Outpatient wing of the Health Sciences Centre, to go over the first module of the DBT program, the Core Mindfulness skills (since I'm coming into the weekly program after the group has already finished the first module of four). These are skills that most people absorb growing up, but which people with Borderline Personality Disorder don't, usually because of an emotionally invalidating environment full of statements like "You're not angry!" or "We don't want to see you if you're not happy!" or "Shut up or I'll REALLY give you something to cry about!" or... well, you get the idea. People with BPD end up not being able to feel or accurately identify their emotional states, which leads to profound disregulation -- so much so that there's a real push in psychiatric circles to rename it Emotion Regulation Disorder, a much more accurate term.

This was immediately followed by the weekly DBT session, which I will be attending for the next eight months to a year. Today we dealt with the first phase of the Emotional Regulation module. I walked out of it with a surprising and heartening emotion: hope. If I work hard at this, maybe I can meet my goals of reducing suicidal impulses and parasuicidal/self-injuring behavior, as well as learning to cope with my health issues in a more positive and proactive way.

Afterwards I rode the bus a bit further than usual and got off at the downtown locus of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. I'm not a great playgoer -- my goal was to tour their outdoor merchant area and maybe pick up a new summer dress. Instead I came away with a large brocade-print tote bag, a beer glass that has flashing lights imbedded in it (perfect for Keycon next year), and a bowl made out of an old vinyl Decca record of The Who's album "Tommy". That and a meal of delicious basmati rice with chicken curry from the on-site India Palace wagon rounded out my afternoon downtown.

I still haven't gotten started on today's workload (laying Star Wars: Republic flats for Chris Chuckry) but I'm glad I took a little bit of time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

ETA: Another good link explaining what BPD is.

FURTHER ETA: Oh my God, cute little baby kittens over on the Kittypix LJ! Squeeeeeeee!

Comments

[brienne.livejournal.com]

That link on Core Mindfulness is very interesting; thanks for posting it.

I like the name Emotion Regulation Disorder better, too. Borderline Personality Disorder tends to confuse people and/or make them think that I'm going to snap and murder them with a chainsaw or something.

[crowdog66.livejournal.com]

Yeah... the term "borderline" (as in on the borderline between neurotic and psychotic) was slapped onto the syndrome in haste, and we've been repenting at leisure ever since.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is one of the few approaches to BPD that seems to have any deep or lasting effect. It certainly changed my life a couple of years ago when I first took it, though apparently having to go through it three or four times over a number of years is not that unusual. I highly recommend it as a treatment option. :-)

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Hey, sometimes yah *gotta* stop and smell the roses before you undertake the next round of work, just to recharge your batteries.

[crowdog66.livejournal.com]

Very true... but personally, I tend to put my head down and work for hours and days on end. It's a habit I'm going to have to break myself of eventually.

I want to get back to DegSep so badly right now, but the time just isn't there. Hopefully in the next week or so my schedule will free up a bit!

[matrixrefugee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we could use you about now: Perse and the Merv are at loggerheads over Perse's leaving (and one of the players involved is completely locked up as to how to resolve that), Ref's gotten extremely depressed, and ever since Midsummer's Eve, I've been wondering what would happen if my gang of crazies were to encounter the Sidhe.

Flood: "This is what *always* happens when the head of any organization steps away from it for a moment or ten: All bloody hell breaks loose in their absence."

MR: "Shuttit, Flood. Hey, Smitty, what's the secret to that 'unable-to-speak' tactic? We could use it on Flood."

tM: ::Listening, smirking over the exchange... wants in on that secret...::

[nightdog-barks.livejournal.com]

Sounds fascinating, and you sound good ...

:-)

[crowdog66.livejournal.com]

Thanks... I'm up and down, but working on being more "up" than "down". :-) And as always, reading your journal entries cheers me up. Particularly the posts about bread. They just give me a nice warm glow inside because your own pleasure in the task is so evident.

[codeweasel.livejournal.com]

Interesting! You learn something everyday.

I always thought that Borderline personality disorder was one of those "Disorders" they used as an excuse to lock up women who had a mind of their own back in the '60's.

[crowdog66.livejournal.com]

Gods... don't I wish that was the case! ;-)

But you're right, in part -- it's a diagnosis that's thrown around a bit too lightly in some parts, and given its severity I wouldn't be surprised if it was used to silence or discredit people in the past.

[codeweasel.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that psychiatry in the earlier part of the 20th century was less about helping people than removing the so called "Imoral People" from society. Do you relize that lesbienisim was not removed as a disorder untill 1989? I am so glad I live now rather than then. I can barely handle society now.