DBT Groups: A personal story of growth through connection.

Content Warning: Themes of mental health struggles and crisis are discussed.

Hello!

I graduated with my BA in Psychology in May!

My name is Caeli.

I am a 24-year-old doctoral student in clinical psychology, finding success in my classes and coping with the stress that comes with such an intense level of education. I also work here at The Center for Restored & Connected Families, taking your calls! My life isn't perfect by any means, but I am not overwhelmed to the point where I feel like I won't make it, and that feels like a huge success.

I am also a 2020 high school graduate.

If you had asked me 6 years ago what I would be doing at this point, I would've given a very depressing and morbid answer. I was attempting to complete my first semester of online community college in the fall of 2020. The previous few months left me with hours of silence to sit in my room and contemplate my life up until that point. I was a proud introvert, art-minded child and teenager, so spending hours alone in my rooms was not immediately problematic.

What was problematic is that I had never addressed some traumatic events from years before this, and those feelings of Fear and Anger felt the silence of 2020 was the perfect time to show themselves.

When we were told to avoid socialization at any cost, my feelings became my friends. Regret and I had conversations for hours after the rest of the house was dark. Anxiety and I went on five-mile runs, and Anger attended when I felt too tired to go any further. I adopted some unhealthy coping mechanisms, but Shame was there to hold me back from sharing with anyone else besides the approved list of guests of the other negative emotions I communicated with.

The fall semester rolled around, and I began online college classes for filmmaking. I had one film class, and the rest were general education credits. Within a week, my statistics class was on page 57 of the textbook, and I was still having trouble understanding the table of contents. I dropped that class pretty fast. As my Emotions continued to isolate me from the few in-person connections in my family, three out of my remaining 5 classes were also dropped. My Emotions were right. I was a failure.

All this time, I'd been seeing a therapist whom I'd had fooled pretty well. If this psychologist thing doesn't work, I may consider an acting career.

All the while, my Emotions were my only comfort. No one understood me, no one cared, and they never would. I was doomed to be full of regret and hate for the rest of my life. But some part of me still hoped this wasn't true. Because if it was, then that meant life wasn't worth living, and I wasn't quite ready to accept that to be true.

I found myself extremely distraught one night after everyone else had gone to bed. I ended up texting VOICE to 20121, the Boys Town National Hotline. The person on the other end urged me to wake up someone in my house and tell them how I was feeling.

Maybe later, I responded.

No, do it now. You may not want to later. Do it now.

But I feel bad waking them up, I protested.

They love you. They would want you to.

I knew this person was right, so, with all the Hope left inside of me, I woke up my mom and sobbed on her bed for what felt like hours. Eventually, I had the words to explain the basics to her of what had been going on. The rest was a blur of many, many, snotty tissues.

We had a session with my therapist, who recommended the Tri-City Intensive Outpatient Program in Vista, CA. My poor, frazzled mother had me over there the next day.

As we sat at a COVID-appropriate distance in a large room, the intake therapist, Jason, explained DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy. He asked me a lot of questions, and I cried until my mask got soggy and snotty. I was probably not a very fun person to talk to. Sorry, Jason.

Jason Farmer gave me his business card that day and told me to call anytime. I'd start getting Zoom links to my email for the three group therapy sessions I'd have each week. And I'd also have a personal therapist from Tri-City. For some reason, Hope clung to that business card for dear life. I taped it to the back of my journal.

The group met for three hours three times a week, split into three sessions each day. The first session was a process group. The first time I logged in, I had no idea what to expect. I'm sure Jason explained it to me, but I wasn't that committed to being there, so I honestly wasn't listening too closely.

As faces populated the screen, a bubbly therapist named Candace welcomed everyone back, and of course, made my presence known as the newest addition to the group. We had a safety check-in, and, while Shame wanted me to lie, I felt a sense that I could be honest with these people. I admitted that, no, I had not been safe since my last interaction with the clinic. To my surprise, all I got were sympathetic looks from fellow humans down in the trenches.

The second hour was a lesson from the DBT manual taught by a different therapist. I don't remember who it was that day, but I do remember being astonished by what they were teaching. For the first time in my life, someone told me that two opposing things can be true at the same time. This is the meaning of dialectics.

Let's back up a little. I had been struggling for years trying to forgive a person from my past, yet I couldn't get past the hurt they'd inflicted. I felt like forgiving meant letting them off the hook for what they'd done. That day in the group, I was told that I could forgive and still hold them accountable. Why had Shame, Anger, Fear, and all my other Emotions never told me this? I wasn't healed in that moment, but a strong seed was planted. Hope was growing.

The third hour was a homework group with Aaron. Each lesson comes with different worksheets, and in the homework group, they usually demonstrate how to apply the worksheet to a situation in your life. We were tasked with making a gratitude list, and Depression was much too proud to admit to being grateful for anything. Aaron was a large man with experience in the military, as he told me in his introduction. But he was also kind and encouraging, and dealt very graciously with my stubbornness that day. We will come back to this later.

For days on end, I would truthfully answer no to Candace's safety check, and she would never make me share more than that. I think it was a month in when I finally decided that I wanted to share what brought me there. Not just my recent poor coping mechanisms, but the pent-up hurt from years before. It was one thing for Candace to validate my feelings, but what was more powerful were the unfiltered affirmations of the group members. Phone numbers were exchanged in the Zoom chat, and beautiful friendships began. The details are for another time, but many of us began to meet up in person outside of the group (in a pandemic-conscious way).

The first day I said yes, that I'd been safe since the last meeting, to all of Candace's safety questions, there were texts of celebration sent my way. While the newfound connections were a large part of my growth, the other part can be attributed to the DBT Distress Tolerance skills. When I'd experienced distressing emotions before, the only option I knew was to give in to them and do whatever they'd ask. I was being instructed on precise ways that I could "ride the wave" instead of drowning when the wave came. A world of possibilities was opened to me.

Did you know your body has something called a "dive reflex?" I didn't either. It is an innate method of self-conservation that your body uses when your face is immersed in cold water. Your heart rate slows down to conserve oxygen, effectively forcing you to calm down. This is helpful when you fall into a frozen lake, but it is also helpful when you are at any level of anxiety. Don't believe me? Watch it happen in this video.

These are the kinds of little tools that I learned in DBT, and Distress Tolerance is only one out of four modules!

Let's revisit my stubborn lack of gratitude that Aaron so gently dealt with back on my first day in the group. I was in the group for about four months. On my last day, it just so happened that I'd made it all the way back to the exact lesson that I started with. I laughed to myself as I filled out the gratitude chart. It wasn't that I'd suddenly come into ownership of many new things to be grateful for, but that in just a few short (but intense) months, my mindset had shifted enough to want to express gratitude for my life and the things and people in it.

It has been six years since I graduated from my DBT group, but I still use the skills I learned there. I wasn't healed from past events, but was given enough healthy coping skills to enter into my hurt without self-destructing.

I like to think of it in this analogy: I was bleeding from a wound for a long time. When I'd tried therapy before to address the wound, looking at it was so stressful that I'd just injure myself more. DBT group and skills gave me enough of a bandage to stop the bleeding. Once that happened, I could see where the real issue was and work on that in my own personal therapy.

I took a break from school after that and did a variety of other things. Almost two years later, I decided to return to school and study psychology. Look at me now! The self-declared failure is in the second semester of her doctorate. My emotions no longer dictate what I do, but they inform me about myself and how I can proceed mindfully. I can use my emotions as a therapist-in-training to help me be curious about what the client is bringing to the room and how I am reacting to them.

If you've gained anything from reading this, I hope it is that you know you are not alone and people want to help you. Sometimes the bravest thing to do is ask.

Working at The Center for Restored & Connected Families, I was so excited to hear that we are starting DBT groups because of my own story. While my story involved more intensive support, our once-weekly DBT skills groups are designed to equip you before reaching crisis. You'll meet with our therapists and peers for 1-2 hours weekly while continuing individual therapy to practice skills and process emotions. If higher care is needed, we'll provide appropriate referrals. I would be honored to help you sign up and experience some of the same growth I did.

Caeli