What are the choices? ? Building a Life worth living
March 7, 2011; Retrieved 2/14/2012
Recently, I’ve been struggling to see the choices in the situation. I know that the suggestion that we have choices at all can feel very invalidating, even insulting. But I keep looking for choices, because the reality of having choices is utterly liberating.
I looked through an old folder tonight for some diary cards. I have fallen hard off the DBT wagon, so hard that I’m being dragged along the ground behind the wretched wagon, and the skills diary card is my first step back on. In the folder, I found this:
There are five choices:
1. Change the trigger (= solve the problem)
2. Change your feelings (= your response)
3. Use radical acceptance
4. Keep suffering
5. Make things worse (= engage in target behaviour)
I’m not sure where I saw this and scribbled it down from. But I’m so very glad I did. I can see I have made progress; I rarely choose number 5 any more. But I am choosing number 4 all too often. These wise words will be written on my phone and stuck on my mirror. I couldn’t see any choices, and now I have five. Well, three, hopefully!
March 7, 2011; Retrieved 2/14/2012
Recently, I’ve been struggling to see the choices in the situation. I know that the suggestion that we have choices at all can feel very invalidating, even insulting. But I keep looking for choices, because the reality of having choices is utterly liberating.
I looked through an old folder tonight for some diary cards. I have fallen hard off the DBT wagon, so hard that I’m being dragged along the ground behind the wretched wagon, and the skills diary card is my first step back on. In the folder, I found this:
There are five choices:
1. Change the trigger (= solve the problem)
2. Change your feelings (= your response)
3. Use radical acceptance
4. Keep suffering
5. Make things worse (= engage in target behaviour)
I’m not sure where I saw this and scribbled it down from. But I’m so very glad I did. I can see I have made progress; I rarely choose number 5 any more. But I am choosing number 4 all too often. These wise words will be written on my phone and stuck on my mirror. I couldn’t see any choices, and now I have five. Well, three, hopefully!