Dear Samantha,

It sounds to me like you have a lot to deal with before you are truly ready for a relationship with someone else. You need to work on your relationship with yourself first, and it sound like some work with a counselor for you would be very useful now. You need to work through your anxiety issues and be comfortable with yourself before you can truly be in a healthy relationship with someone else, no matter how much you like him. You need to figure out what you want in life, and you need to learn how to deal with stress in a healthy way, without hurting yourself or scaring the people around you. A professional can help you with all of these things, so you can come into a relationship at your best. Right now it sounds like there is just too much uncertainty in your life and of course that is stressful. Best of luck.

So happy of you Samantha! 🙂

I am sure you are on cloud9 and sleeping in peace, while have sweet dreams. Makes me so happy that you and your love spoke today. Have a beautiful weekend. <3

Sending lots of love, positivity and light your way.

All the best! 🙂

M.

Dear samantha:

For the sake of your mental health and for the possibility of having and developing a healthy, loving relationship these behaviors, so characteristic of the diagnosis I mentioned, need to stop. No matter how you feel, you need to not threaten suicide to your boyfriend and you need to not hit yourself and you need to not do other things that will cause him unnecessary alarm and distress (throw things around, hit him, scream and yell, go into a long eerie silence as if you exited reality, or whatever demonstration of despair you exhibit in addition to those you listed).

These behaviors need to stop. But how? Regulating emotions is it, as in the book you have. So I hope you do the exercises there and work on it in your therapy; I think you need a good therapist’s help in this regard. A book can help you only this far.

Those behaviors, those desperate measures are motivated by extreme despair, aren’t they? By your belief that you can’t handle your despair and that your boyfriend should help you because you are about to … disintegrate…isn’t it so?

The thing is, those feelings of despair in themselves are not dangerous. You survived them so far. Enduring them without behaving destructively is key. Then there is more to therapy, but first endure/ regulate emotions without destructive behaviors.

Please do post anytime. You can share about an exercise from the DBT book you have and your experience with it…?

anita

Dear samantha:

Distraction is one such skill to regulate emotions, a positive or at least a none harmful distraction, that is.

Assertiveness is another skill,to express your needs, your feelings authentically on an ongoing basis instead of repressing them until … they explode out of you.

Radical Acceptance is another skill, accepting what is without judgment, Good or Bad. Seeing the bare minimum of what is, just what it is (a Buddhist principle, peeling off all inaccurate projections).

Mindfulness is another skill, necessary. It is the paying attention to what is going on inside you and outside of you.

You are reading the right book and DBT with mindfulness is the correct therapy for you, I strongly believe!

Please do post again anytime.

anita

Dear samantha:

keeping at it is the way to go! Healing for you is possible and available. It takes time and work, and courage and self discipline, patience and gentleness with yourself. And help from a good psychotherapist … and support otherwise. So do post here any time. When you feel good and when you feel badly. When you feel badly and you feel that you are losing control, post. I will answer you ASAP the moment I am aware of a post by you!

anita