Month: June 2016

Day 4:  Identify Yourself:

Not everyone has a strong sense of identify.  Do your opinions, thoughts, viewpoints, and even values shift depending on whose company you’re in?  The development of your personality may have been stunted due to an invalidating home environment you had as a child and thus preventing you from forming a full personality of your own. They may have been your mind’s way of adapting to your environment and protecting you, but as an adult, the patterns begin to no longer serve you.

Figuring out who you are takes time, love, and self-compassion – especially if you’re getting a late start.

Make a note in your journal each time you notice something that you believe to be a truth (coming from your heart) about who you are.  Keep a log and review it from time to time.  Continue to explore the unique, wonderful being that you are.

How does working on identity issues help us to Stop Sabotaging?

When we don’t know who we are, there is a tendency to change course with every wind that blows.  If we are not grounded in our own values and goals, we can easily become emotionally dys-regulated and unbalanced. Developing a clear picture of who we are, what we stand for (and what we don’t stand for) can help guide us in making decisions that lead us toward our goals rather than destroy our progress by sabotaging.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 3:  One Thing At A Time:

Studies, such as one conducted at Stanford University (Gorlick, 2009) show that multi-taskers are actually less effective than those who focus on one project at a time.

When we do more than one thing at once, we are missing out on those moments in life. We are not paying attention.

Practice One Mindfulness by doing one thing at a time.

We are less likely to be overwhelmed when we are able to give our full attention to one task at a time.  Feeling overwhelmed leads to emotional vulnerability, which can lead to sabotaging.  By slowing ourselves down and being mindful, we reduce our vulnerability to overwhelm.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 2:  Mindfulness and Self-Esteem Activity:

When we practice mindfulness, we come into the present moment.  We become in touch with what we think, how we feel, and what is actually happening right now.  We don’t get dragged back into past and old wounds.  We don’t project into an imaginary future that doesn’t even exist.

In practicing mindfulness, we also allow ourselves to put time and space – a pause – between any thoughts or urges we have and taking any action.  Instead of jumping from a thought to an action, we pause-in-between to allow ourselves the opportunity to slow down and think things through from a place of wisdom, rather than emotional reaction.  Just slowing down in this mindful way can help prevent us from self-sabotaging.

Focusing on our self-esteem and building it up reminds us that we are worthy of so much more than we may have believed up until now.  When we begin to believe that we are worthy, precious, and valuable, we are less apt to engage in destructive behaviors that hurt ourselves and sabotage the progress that we work so hard to achieve.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

Day 1:  Self-Care Challenge:

Begin investing in taking care of you:  body, mind, and spirit.

DBT acknowledges that we must take care of all parts of ourselves in order to feel whole, integrated, and balanced, as illustrated in the PLEASE skills in the Emotion Regulation module.

By practicing these skills we reduce our emotional vulnerability:

1. Treat Physical Illness:
2. Balance Eating:  Do your best to eat regularly and healthfully and to stay hydrated.  Taking care by eating regularly helps us be less vulnerable to certain types of mood swings.
3. Avoid Mood-Altering Drugs:
4. Balance Sleep:
5. Get Exercise:

When we take care of our physical needs and health, we become less susceptible to the erratic, often dys-regulated emotions than we can be vulnerable to when we are not.  If we are feeling more balanced due to this self-care, we may experience less impulsive urges, reducing our possibilities of self-sabotage.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso

“Research shows that Dialectical Behavior Therapy strengthens a person’s ability to handle distress without losing control or acting destructively” (McKay, Wood, and Brantley, 2007).

Sabotaging is a deliberate act of damaging, destroying, or obstructing something.

The key to the door you are seeking is within you.  You just have to believe it and be willing to use it.  It takes courage and strength, and with time, you can learn to Stop Sabotaging.

One of the greatest causes of human suffering is believing that we cannot tolerate being alone.  For many people with BPD, feeling alone creates an incredible amount of distress and sorrow.  Even the mere prospect of being alone can cause us to feel triggered.

All thoughts and feelings are not facts.  There are many instances where, by habit, a lack of knowing, or even fear, our thoughts are not in alignment with reality.  When we can tap into our “Wise Mind,” (Lineman, 1998) we can more rationally evaluate the truthfulness of a thought or feeling and then respond and behave in reaction to this interpretation, rather than our initial, impulsive reaction.

Source(s):

Stop Sabotaging: A 31 Day DBT Challenge to Change Your Life

by Debbie Corso