You won't like me when I'm angry! Listen as I jump back and forth between me hulking out in the past and me providing commentary in the present. I give a short introduction to Emotion Mind, and practice non-judgement and radical acceptance. And somehow, I end on a positive note!

Helpful resources from this episode:

DBT references

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – online pdf version

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets – buy the manual from a Black-owned book store!

DBT handouts used in this episode

Mindfulness Handout 3 – Wise Mind: States of Mind

• Emotion Mind

Mindfulness Handout 5 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: "How Skills"

• Non-judgementally

Distress Tolerance Handout 11 – Radical Acceptance

Emotion Regulation Handout 5 – Model for Describing Emotions (alternate version: E Wheel)

Emotion Regulation Handout 6 – Ways to Describe Emotions

• Anger

---------

More resources are available at https://therapize.joygerhard.com/

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Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

You've got shit. I've got shit. We've all got shit. So let's therapize that shit, with your host, me, Joy Gerhard.

Please note: I am not a therapist. I cannot and do not diagnose anyone, or prescribe anything. This is just me – someone who struggles with my emotions and with intrusive thoughts – sharing what skills I've used and how I've used them. Also, a trigger warning: in this podcast, I talk about sensitive topics including: mental illness, suicidal ideation, self-harm, rape, childhood sexual assault, trauma, and more. I also swear here and there, so listener discretion is advised.

Welcome, welcome. So I'm just having a bang up time, being very effective right now. I just recorded the entire intro to this and then realized that I hadn't plugged in my microphone. So I was just getting it from my computer’s built-in microphone and it sounds like shit, so I'm going to re-record this.

I know this is technically labeled “an unrehearsed podcast” and this is actually my third time going through this, because the first time I did it I was so tongue tied it was just a mess. Anyway. So we're going to try again.

Before we get into the bulk of today's episode, I have some exciting news. I just activated my Patreon. So I have a Patreon page that you can go check out. It's linked in the description.

And right now I have 4 tiers. I'm still working on putting together the kind of the bonuses or benefits that each tier gets, but right now everybody gets a podcast shout out. So the four different tiers that I have right now are: the Metaphor Mixers (which is a $3 a month tier), the Emotion Combo Platters (which is $5.00 a month), the Dialectic Groupies (which is $10 a month), and the Wise Mind Wizards (which is $20.00 a month).

And to honor my very first Patreon patron, I guess, my sister Ruth is my first Emotion Combo Platter patron. So thank you to Ruth, who's been super supportive through this entire thing. And you're going to be hearing more about her and from her in the future.

So getting back to our episode. And today I'm going to do something a little bit different, which is, I know, what I say at the beginning of almost every episode as I'm, you know, figuring out my format. And really therapy skills... it's tough to plan these because you're really listening in on what skills I'm using at any given time.

And that varies widely based on the day and the hour and the minute. So I want to talk today about anger and Emotion Mind. What I have done is: I'm recording this part that you're hearing right now on November 30th. It is going to be posted and backdated for September 11th, 2021, which is the day that I recorded the bulk of this.

I recorded myself in extreme Emotion Mind very, very angry, as I was going out for a walk after a bunch of shit had gone wrong. I was really frustrated and I figured it would be a good opportunity to record what I sounded like in that place. And there are things I say that are like, “damn, good on you, Joy. You were super effective and very, you know, skilled in that moment.”

And then there are other things where I'm like, “dude, you just threw all your skills out the window, didn't you?” But I thought it would be a good representation because the ego, my inner ego definitely wanted to only show you the skillful parts. But I thought that was dishonest. So I'm going to show you the parts that are also unskillful and do a little bit of commentary.

I'm going to be like Madden, except without a little marker on a screen because this is a podcast. I don't know how John Madden would have done on podcasts. No idea, but anyway... So I'll be kind of bouncing back and forth between that recording of me walking outside at night and here the studio, AKA my bedroom.

And before I get into it, I want to talk ever so briefly about what Emotion Mind is. I think I've mentioned on some other episode Wise Mind. I don't know if I've mentioned Thinking Mind yet.

But really kind of the overview here – and you can find this information in the DBT manual that I've linked to in the description – it's Mindfulness Handout 3. And it is talking about kind of our states of awareness, and that there are two main states.

Well, there's three actually. There's Thinking Mind or Computing Mind, and then there's Emotion Mind, and then there's Wise Mind.

And my first DBT instructor – Bob Gettle at Maple Leaf DBT (Hey, Bob) – he described Wise Mind as being a circle that encapsulates both the entirety of Thinking and Emotion Mind. A lot of people like to draw it as Wise Mind is the intersection, like the Venn diagram, of Thinking and Emotion Mind.

I'm not wild about that because Wise Mind... Why would you voluntarily choose not to include some information that your body is communicating to you? It's basically like discarding... “Hey, I'm not going to pay attention to those thoughts,” and, “Hey, I'm not going to pay attention to those feelings.” When, really, Wise Mind listens to everything. It's using all my thinking and all my emotions, honoring both of those.

So, I'm not going to get into hugely Wise Mind and Thinking Mind on this episode, but I do want to talk about Emotion Mind, because that is what you were about to hear in great detail. So a brief overview of how I can tell I'm in Emotion Mind.

Well, the alien in the corner will tell very easily because there's a lot of expression. In this case, because we're talking about anger, I was scowling. I was walking very quickly. I was crying angry tears, not sad tears. Just very kind of violent body posture.

And what that feels like... Emotion Mind is extreme, almost manic. It's very reactive. When I'm in extreme Emotion Mind, I feel very much out of control. There's a desperation or sense of urgency, like “I need to solve something now. I need to deal with it now.”

And it's very all or nothing or black and white. There's no nuance or shades of gray when I'm in extreme Emotion Mind. Marsha Linehan, in the DBT manual, describes Emotion Mind as “hot, very mood dependent, and emotion focused.” She says, “When in Emotion Mind you're ruled by your moods, feelings and urges to do or say things. Facts, reason and logic are not important.”

I notice that I'm in a motion mind also when I'm assigning blame, over-generalizing (is that a word? Yes, ok.) I'm making generalizations a lot, and catastrophizing, and mind reading. So, you're going to hear some of that in the recording I'm about to play for you.

And just to kind of set you up for what preceded this: I just painted the guest room that I was moving back into. And my dad was out doing something. So my mom and I were hanging a shelf that goes the entire length of one wall above my head. So that was a challenge.

And it was kind of the culmination of a bunch of other things going very annoyingly wrong. And so that is what you're about to hear. Lucky you.

OK, so I'm out walking on the street after sundown, after putting something together in my new room in my parents house. The room that I thought I'd moved out of for good, and am now back in again. And I just sliced the fuck out of my hand while hanging a shelf with my dad's tools that are all built for men.

Because, for whatever reason, tool companies think that building something for women means turning it pink. As opposed to, gee, I don't know, making it 25% smaller. So yeah, I'm fucking furious. Trying very hard not to scream. I want to destroy every fucking thing, light the world on fire.

Before leaving, I was throwing things. I wanted to cause significant damage to everything. I'm having the thought: I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life. But the point of any of this is I'm having the thought that there's no hope.

That this will just be how things go until I fucking die. I am having – experiencing – a lot of severe anger at my former partner. I'm angry at him. I'm having the thought that he wasn't honest about his own limitations.

I understand it’s possible he didn't know his own limitations. And I'm still having the thought that he should have, which is a judgment. I’m having the fact that nothing that I do matters. I’m having the thought that I did all this fucking work.

I didn't do it for him, and there was a part of all the work that was for the health of our relationship, is necessary for our relationship to thrive. And it still didn't work. I'm having the thought that all of this fucking therapy doesn't do jack shit. Which I know is not true. I know how much better my life is as a result of it. And I'm still fucking angry.

Bells

And welcome back. I don't know whether I should sound angry right now so it's less jarring to go back and forth between really angry Joy and present-day, calm Joy. As a side note, I'm actually feeling very uncomfortable right now sharing with the world what I sound like when I'm angry, and the sorts of thoughts that I have when I'm angry.

It feels very vulnerable. I'm having the concern that people will judge me for that. And well, I guess I really can't control that. So, we'll see how it goes. At any rate, I wanted to point out a couple things. First off, I'm just getting going. I am about to get much, much angrier in this recording.

I noticed something about what I was doing and I'm actually... it's quite skillful. It's the Mindfulness to Thoughts. So I'm identifying thoughts as thoughts. So let me read to you what I said without doing that. So I could have said, instead – and I'm not going to use an angry inflection or anything, I'm just going to list what thoughts I was having.

So, without using the Mindfulness of Thoughts skill. “I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with my life. What is the point of any of this? There's no hope. This will be how things go until I fucking die.

“I'm angry at my former partner. He wasn't honest about his own limitations, and he should have been. Nothing that I do matters. I did all this fucking work and it still didn't work. All this fucking therapy doesn't do jack shit.”

So that's intense. I'm making a lot of declarative statements when I say it that way. And that's actually not what you heard in the recording. What you heard was: I put the phrase “I'm having the thought that,” or, “I'm having the experience or the feeling of” in front of it.

And it's kind of hard to put into words what difference that makes. Actually, it's not! Ah-ha! I have a visualization for you! So I spent actually a bit of time this evening designing the emotion wheel to share on the website.

The emotion wheel is great. It's Emotion Regulation Handout 5, for those of you who are following along. Or rather, it's an alternative to Emotion Regulation Handout 5. Whatever Marsha created is very complicated.

I love a good diagram, and this is not an intuitive diagram to follow along with. So my first DBT instructor created this instead. It's just a re-visualization of what Marsha put in the book. What you'll notice, if you wanna go take a look at it... I'm actually just gonna describe it here for you, too. So things that get the emotion wheel to start spinning.

The wheel is made-up of three things: your experience (which is like your body physical sensations, what it feels like in your body), the expression (so how I communicate my feelings to others, what I say and or do, facial expressions, or body language), and the echoes (which are how my emotion influences my attention, mood, thinking, and behavior as the day goes on.)

To reiterate again, the wheel is: your experience (whatever the emotion feels like in your body), expression (so how somebody on the outside will see you emoting), and then echoes (so how it changes your behavior over time).

And what gets that emotion wheel starting is one of two things: an event or an interpretation. So an example of just the event starting it: if you're walking down the hall and (this has actually happened) and somebody jumps out and startles me, I will have an emotion. I will have an experience in my body. My heart will start racing, I'll get butterflies in my stomach. My hands will get clammy.

An expression of that would be: I will scream and gasp and you know, clutch my heart and maybe whack the person for jumping out at me.

And then an example of echoes there would be, maybe for the next rest of the day, every time I walk down the hall, I'm checking to make sure nobody's behind any doors. And I'm super cautious about it. So that's an event. Like, I didn't have to have a thought about what that event was, or an interpretation in order to feel scared.

The event itself elicited an emotion. The alternative is an interpretation eliciting the emotion. So an example of this is, I don't know. Let's say your friend is late. And lateness in and of itself is not the thing that triggers the emotion, but the thought: “They don't care about me. I don't matter to them. They don't respect my time.” Those can trigger the emotions. They can trigger anger or sadness or... well, anger or sadness of the two that I can think of right now. So there you go.

But the problem is, oftentimes for us, the event and the interpretation gets super glued to each other. The interpretation happens so immediately after the event that we actually don't distinguish between the two. So your friend texts and says they're running late, and you have the thought, “they don't care about me.”

What identifying that thought as a thought does is: it forces a pry bar, a little crowbar in between the event and the interpretation, and it gives a little bit of space. And what it does for me is allows me to, it allows me to see that here's what actually happened.

And here are the thoughts I have about what actually happened. And thoughts are not facts. It is a fact that I had those thoughts. Those thoughts do not necessarily point to facts, which is why again, I can have the thought, “I'm a pink elephant” and it doesn't turn me into a pink elephant. Not all of our thoughts are going to be winners.

You'll notice in the clip I just played, by putting, “I’m having the thought that” actually doesn't treat any of those things as facts. All I'm doing is basically, like bird watching. “Oh, there's an eagle. Oh, there's a sparrow. Oh, there's a crow.” It's just like, “Here are the thoughts I'm having.”

None of them mean that they are facts. Having those thoughts doesn't mean any of them are facts. So it creates that little crowbar tiny bit of space between the event and our interpretations of it.

One of the reasons that is so important is because my interpretations can run the show, and they can be absolutely wrong. A lot of the times they can be wrong. Our interpretations usually are... They're protective in nature.

They're trying to actually, you know, prevent me from getting hurt or scared or rejected, or a whole host of other things. Prevent me from feeling pain. And that's all great. But interpretations tend to not be all that imaginative.

They don't leave room for creativity. We'll put it that way. Interpretations are usually judgments. I love... my DBT instructor says that “judgments are aggressive certainty.” And when stated as fact... So saying something like, “Nothing I do matters. I did all this fucking work and it still didn't work. All this fucking therapy didn't do jack shit. There's no hope. This will be how things go until I fucking die.”

Like there is not a lot of nuance in any of that. There's no room or possibility of it being any other way. And here's how I know this doesn't work. Looking at this list of the things I thought, they're hard to argue with. The process of like when somebody argues with me about these things, it occurs to me as being extremely invalidating.

What I would want to say to myself is, “Of course you're having those thoughts. Of course you're having the thought that there is no hope. You can't see hope right now. Of course you're having the thought that nothing you do matters. You were trying really, really, really hard. Like you were working really hard.

“And it didn't have the outcome that you wanted. And you're really, really sad about it. And so, it makes sense that you would have the thought that nothing you do matters.” Here's an important thing to note, is that these emotion wheels, like these interpretations, they don't spring out of nowhere.

That is vitally important. Our beliefs are not formed in a vacuum. So much of what we believe comes from our environment and socialization and our families or whoever's around us, wherever we're being raised, our lack of family, school systems, media. All of these things can contribute to our predispositions about what we think.

And they make sense. They're all caused by something. And so arguing with them, I know I will dig in harder. I'm like, “this is the hill I'm going to die on. I'm going to die on the hill that nothing I do matters, if somebody tries to convince me that what I do does matter.”

Yeah, treating these, identifying these thoughts as thoughts, gives a little bit of room to get curious, to observe, to just kind of let them go without getting attached and choosing to die on that hill. And it may sound like a really silly distinction. I also appreciate that it may sound weird that really I am prefacing almost everything I'm saying with, “I'm having the thought.”

And I don't do that all the time. I practiced really intentionally doing it when I'm in extreme Emotion Mind, because it's one of the things that helps me get out of extreme Emotion Mind. And there's certainly times when I'm hungry, I'll just say, “I'm hungry,” rather than, “I'm having the thought that I'm hungry.”

But I will try to make an effort, an intentional effort to say, “I'm having the thought” before judgments that I'm making. Really any of those cognitive biases, like catastrophizing or fortune telling or mind reading or any of those things. I try to put, “I'm having the thought” in front of those to point out to myself that that is a thought. That is not fact. I actually can't read that person's mind. I actually don't know what the future is.

And it makes sense that I'm having that thought. I'm actually a little bit proud – is that the right word? – of myself in this extreme Emotion Mind moment. I'm proud that I actually identify thoughts as thoughts, and let's get back to it.

I’m angry at my parents. I'm angry at them that they don't know how to validate. I'm angry at them that they don't know how to sit with uncomfortable emotions? And that there are not working on it at the speed that I want them.

I have all this rage and nothing to do with it. And I’m having the thought that it is completely overwhelming and that it will never get better. And I have a fucking rock in my shoe. I fucking hate these shoes.

I'm having a thought that, if I still have bad days even doing all this work, then what's the point of doing all this work. This is not where I wanted my life to be right now. I wanted to be building a life with my former partner. Building a business together, building a home together, building a future together.

I'm so fucking angry at him. And I have all of the old urges that I had last time I was single, when I would get lonely, feel ignored, feel invisible. And I had to go and delete all my exes' information out of my phone after blocking them so I wouldn't text them.

I have an agreement with one of my best friends to not download a dating app for the next 6 months. Not that it would matter, because we're still in the fucking middle of a fucking pandemic. I'm so fucking tired.

Bells

Oh past Joy makes my heart hurt. So a couple things I want to point out here. There's a couple of statements that I made that I put “I'm having the thought that” in front of. Without that phrase they read as follows: “It's completely overwhelming and it will never get better. If I still have bad days even doing after doing all of this work, then what's the point of doing all of this work.”

Which isn't what I actually said. What I said was, “I'm having the thought that it's completely overwhelming and it will never get better. And I'm having the thought that if I still have bad days even doing all of this work, then what's the point of doing all of this work.”

And I did another thing that I was just like, “holy shit, that was skillful.” “I'm angry at my parents who don't know how to how to validate or sit with uncomfortable emotions, and they're not working at it at the speed I want them to.”

That is interesting. Instead of saying, “they're working at it too slowly or they're not working at it at all or whatever.” The truth of it is... like what's too slow? You know, how do we define that? It's all relative. What is true is that they are not doing it at the speed that I want them to be. doing it at. And that is actually accurate.

So, that was a little tiny moment of checking the facts rather than using a judgment. I also wanted to point out: “still in the middle of a fucking pandemic.” So, one of the things that gets our little emotion wheel started, the ease at which it starts spinning comes down to emotion vulnerability. I think I definitely have days where I am unflappable.

The car can not start, and nobody answers my phone calls, and I stub my toe, and all of these things. And I'm just like, “yeah, life, huh?” And then there are other days where I can't find my car keys, and it is the end of the world.

And that's actually an example. Back with my former partner, I couldn't find my sunglasses when we were about to go to the beach and I had a meltdown, like fully stopped everything was throwing things around trying to find my sunglasses, tearing stuff apart. From his perspective, I went from being totally fine to falling apart.

What he didn’t see were all of the emotion vulnerabilities, things that were running in the background that I wasn't aware of, and certainly hadn't communicated to him. So it looked like this all-of-a-sudden sort of thing. But there's a lot of different things that can make our emotion wheels start spinning with just a tiny little bit of pressure. Hardly any pressure at all and we're off to the races.

Some of those things include: health (if you're in pain, or you're sick), stress, self esteem, preparation for life's difficulties (so I would say skills, not just therapy skills, but just like knowing how to cook or having skills so that if something goes wrong in a given area, you can think on the fly and problem solve and do that sort of stuff).

Also, another thing that will influence the speed at which the wheel starts spinning is doing things every day that give you joy and a sense of satisfaction. I think this is one of the things that contributes to my burnout, at least, is if I'm only ever doing things at work that I don't enjoy, or that I don't find satisfying, can very quickly lead to just kind of abject despair, I guess.

The presence or absence of these things will influence the rate at which the emotion wheel starts spinning and perpetually spins. And certainly the pandemic is a factor that I think has all of us be more vulnerable than we would be normally. Even on our best days during the pandemic, we're still in the middle of a pandemic.

And of course, the day that you're hearing this recording from was immediately following a breakup, and a move, and losing a therapist, and a psych hospitalization, and then I sliced my hand while installing that shelf. And that was kind of like, “OK, I'm done. Let's burn everything to the ground. Set the room on fire. Do it now.”

So emotion vulnerability is a good thing to acknowledge. Sometimes they’re things that we can like actually go change. Like if I notice that I haven't eaten, like, “let's pause everything for a second, let me go get some food.”

And then there's other things that we can't necessarily change. Like we can't really change the fact that we're in a pandemic, I mean, there's things we can do to shorten it, collectively, as a team. But there's also not a lot of stuff we can do right this second that will radically change it immediately. So, yeah, emotion vulnerability. Let's get back to our recording here.

You know, I went from being with a pair of parents who are extraordinarily invalidating to moving in with a partner who is also invalidating to moving back with my parents who are invalidating. And they get to reap all the benefits of all of my skills.

And they fucking suck at all of it. They suck at validation. They suck at listening. They suck at mindfulness. They suck at emotional regulation.

Bells

Ooh, some judgments! Look at all the judgments. And for those who are keeping score at home: “they fucking suck at all of it: validation, listening, mindfulness, and emotion regulation.”

So “fucking suck” or “just regular suck” is a judgment. And, as I mentioned earlier, a judgment is aggressive certainty. Typically, judgments are trying to do something for us. They're trying to protect us.

I'm going to say something else about that if I can remember what it is. Please hold. Ah, yes, OK. So judgments – and for those reading along, this is from the mindfulness handout 5.

The problem with judgments is they're not based on fact. They're based on our interpretations of facts. Getting back to my favorite analogy of the alien in the room. Alien standing in the corner of the room – who doesn't know anything about humans or our emotions or anything – doesn't know what “suck at” is.

Really what the closest thing we get is: somebody is not skillful at that thing. They're not able to perform the way they want to perform. Or they're not able to perform the way I want them to perform. So we say – I say – they suck at it.

Another problem with judgments is that they're immutable. They don't tend to allow for nuance or change. They prevent an understanding of others and ourselves. Saying somebody sucks at something doesn't get into their experience.

Saying somebody doesn't have a skill, like, “Oh, well if they don't have a skill, there is something to be done about that. Like, we can learn a skill. I can teach them a skill. I can find somebody to teach them a skill.” There's a gap that can be addressed. Whereas sucking at something doesn't really leave much room for creativity or problem solving.

Some examples of judgments are: saying something is good or bad, should or shouldn't is a judgement, fair or unfair, right or wrong, black or white, all or nothing, always or never, name calling. And we judge – well, I judge – myself, I judge others, and I also judge reality.

Earlier in our flashback, I said something to the tune of, “This is not the life I wanted.” Which is the non-judgmental way of saying, “this isn't what was supposed to happen. This shouldn't have happened this way.”

I mean there is no should. It all makes sense. Everything makes sense. All behavior is caused. So the fact is: the way my life has been happening the last few months is not going the way that I wanted it to go. And that is just a fact.

Again, judgments is a survival skill. It's actually something that's trying to protect us. It's trying to help us avoid feelings of anxiety or getting out of responsibility, and they can keep us safe.

Typically, if you can identify, if I can identify what the judgment is trying to do for me, I can actually get that objective a different way other than judging. Cause judging usually causes shame or guilt, either in myself or in the person that I'm judging, and that's not an experience I want to leave people, theoretically. Sometimes I don't care.

Yeah, judgments are trying to do something for us. They're trying to do something for me. So really, when I say, “They fucking suck at it. My parents suck at validation. They suck at listening. They suck at mindfulness. They suck at emotion regulation.” The non-judgmental way of saying that is, “They are not skillful. They are not skillful at those things to the degree that I would like them to be skillful.”

They actually are skillful at those things compared to somebody who has none of those skills. They do have more skills than somebody who has none of them. Like a kindergartener is skillful because a baby fresh out of the womb doesn't know how to stack up blocks or identify colors. So, there are skills that a kindergartener has compared to a newborn.

And then you know there are skills that a fifth grader has compared to a first grader. Skillfulness is all relative. It's all comparative. So when I say that they suck at it, what I'm really saying is, “They're not at the skill level that I want them to be at.” So that would have been the non-judgmental way of saying that.

What are my judgments trying to do for me? I think they're trying to protect me. They're trying to protect me from invalidation. They're trying to protect me from emotional dysregulation, like being around other people who can't control their emotions or regulate their emotions. Yeah, it's protective.

It's protective to have those judgments. And it's also not effective for the type of relationship that I want to have with my parents because I really don't want a relationship where I'm judging them all the time. And I can guarantee you that they also don't want that. All right, getting back to it.

I don't have any energy to keep teaching them how to do this shit. Which is why it has felt so imperative that I get a therapist. And I found one that I really, really liked. I found two that I really, really liked, and reached out to one of them who never got back to me.

It's just like anything any, all the small upsets feel like the end of the world. I'm having the thought that a small upset is the end of the world. I don't have the wherewithal, the energy to do all the work.

I'm really fucking angry at the fact that my parents will applaud my listening, my validating, my insight, my wisdom all of this shit. Which is 100% due to therapy and they refuse to go to therapy. It's like, “What needs to happen for you to think that this matters.”

And I understand it's not a fair comparison. I had to learn this stuff because if I didn't, I would die, literally. Like self-invalidation and self-judgment mixed with depression and PTSD is a recipe for suicide.

And I've been riding that knife’s edge – no pun intended – for years. And had to learn this stuff and was incredibly motivated to learn this stuff.

Bells

Back to the future. OK, so what I noticed about that I just heard is there's a lot of vulnerability factors. What I said about feeling so desperate about getting a therapist. Not having a therapist is a vulnerability factor for me. And so, of course, it makes sense that I'm not feeling resourced in that moment. I don't have any spoons, if you like that analogy.

Just don't have a lot of extra emotional energy to take the time to support somebody else, considering that I, at that moment, did not feel supported.

So that's another vulnerability factor there. I do notice that I actually corrected myself in the middle of a thing. I said, “all these small upsets feel like the end of the world,” and then rephrased it immediately, and said, “I'm having the thought that all these upsets are the end of the world.”

I mean, that's another great example, actually, of using a phrase, “that's the end of the world.” I mean the end of the world isn't the end of the world until the end of the world, right?

I can have the thought that it's the end of the world, and relate to something as though it's the end of the world. But given the fact that time continues past that point, it clearly is not the end of the world, even though it feels like it.

So that's another example of having the thought doesn't make it fact. And I just, just noticing how tired I sound, which is another vulnerability factor. I was just really, really worn out, and of course that doesn't lead to Wise Mind. It has me stuck in a Emotion Mind.

So, something happens next that's interesting. So, I mentioned that I'm angry at my parents who will applaud me for being effective at listening, and validating, and having insight. And they'll actually acknowledge that these are things that I got from therapy.

And then that they’re not interested in going to therapy. And I say in the moment that I understand it's not a fair comparison. And explain the different, I think, pressures between my parents and myself. Like my life depended on it, so I learned these skills. My parents lives do not depend on them learning these skills.

And what I do here... I judge them really, really harshly, actually. I'm invalidating their experience. I'm basically saying that given everything that came before, given their entire life experience, that the next domino to fall should not be the one that falls, given every domino that came before it. Which is really hubris. It's me saying that I know better their internal experience than they know their experience, and that they should be behaving differently.

But all behavior is caused right? Like it all comes from something. Behaviors don't pop out of thin air. Emotions don't pop out of thin air. There's always something that causes behavior, and that causes emotion. And just because I don't see it – see all of the causes, see all of the dominoes that came before - doesn't mean that it's not caused.

And what I was doing in that moment was saying that I that they should be behaving the way that I behaved, that my behavior was “correct” – which is a judgment – and that their behavior is quote “wrong” – which is another judgment.

There's something about noticing that that's what I was doing... And it makes sense, right? I want to validate my judgment. There's a reason I'm judging. Because those behaviors – their invalidation and their lack of emotional regulation – those things impact me.

In that moment from our flashback, I wasn't all that resourced up. I was exhausted, emotionally wrung out, grieving tremendously, had all of this upheaval and change, none of which I wanted. So I wasn't able to support myself, like do any of my own self-care.

And so it became imperative. They need to do it. They need to get their shit together so that I don't have to get my shit together. I don't like that. Cause I noticed like when I am taking care of myself, it matters less how they show up.

Or at least I'm able to have better, more effective boundaries and to communicate my boundaries more effectively, so that they're not impacting me to the same degree.

Clearly in this moment, this flashback moment, I didn't have a lot of resources. I was experiencing a tremendous amount of emotion vulnerability. And judging the hell out of them because I wanted them to show up – given that I didn't have a therapist yet at this point.

And that's a huge vulnerability factor right there. I didn't have somebody who could help me validate my own experience, who could listen, all of that stuff. And so I was putting all of this pressure on my parents. Which led to me being just super judgmental about where their skill level was at.

So I'm going to hop back in. I did want to note there's a sound glitch here, so this is how this sentence starts. “I would have thought that having a daughter who doesn't want to come to you...

“... when they're struggling, when they're scared, when they're frustrated, when they're hurt, because you don't know how to listen – I would have thought that that would have been inspirational enough, motivational enough. And I'm having a thought that it means I don't matter.

Because they're not showing up the way I want them to. And that's, right there, an example of non-judgment. The other way of saying it – the judgmental way saying it – is, “clearly I don't matter to them. Because they're not showing up because they fucking mess up showing up routinely, because they don't know how to validate. They're shit at communication.”

And instead, the non-judgmental way is, “I’m having the thought that I don't matter to them, because they're not showing up the way I want them to.” I know I matter to them. And to be honest, I actually don't know the reasoning behind why they are not choosing to do the work.

There's a gazillion reasons why somebody would choose not to do the work. And I honestly don't know what it is. I don't even know if they know what it is. What I do know is that them not doing the work at the rate at which I want them to so that they can show up the way that I want them to – that is having an impact on me. Like it, it hurts to be invalidated.

Bells

All right. No, we're not going to start with, “umm,” Joy. All right, so I'm judging again, like in the past, in this recording, I was judging, I was saying that, given the factors that I could see, and not acknowledging the ones that they couldn't, that my parents should behave a given way.

And that's, I mean, it is hubris. It's me again saying I know better your entire lived experience and all the dominoes that came before. And so, I'm saying this other domino should have fallen because I know better.

And that's not accurate, given that I am not God or any other higher power, so it's really invalidating of their experience. And it has an impact on me, which we'll get to in a second.

I do say, “I'm having the thought that I don't matter,” and I acknowledge that, you know, that I do matter. Like I matter a tremendous amount to my parents. They let me move back home when I was asked to leave my previous apartment. They're letting me stay here while I look for a job, while I kind of get my feedback underneath me.

Yeah, I matter tremendously to them. And it makes sense that I'm having that thought, that judgment, because validation is something that is very important to me. It's very important that my parents know how to validate. It's very painful when they don't validate or when they invalidate.

And so it may... I mean, it makes sense that I would be judging them. And it's ineffective. Judging them doesn't make them learn it any faster. I do acknowledge that I don't know why they're not doing the work. This is something interesting towards the end here. I was like, “go Joy! That's really dialectic!”

I'm holding both things at the same time, that there's a reason that they're not doing the work. I don't know what it is. And them not doing the work at the rate that I want them to – so they can show up the way I want them to show up – has an impact on me. Both of those things are true at the same time.

Their skill level makes sense. And the impact it has on me makes sense. Because it hurts to be invalidated. Both of those things are true at the same time. So that's a fantastic - go, Joy! – a fantastic example of what a dialectic is. Because I've mentioned this before that DBT stands for Dialectic Behavioral Therapy.

And it's holding both of those things. It's not: either they're jerks and I'm right; or they're right and I'm the jerk. Neither of those things are true. It's just: they have their experience; I have my experience. And our experience is actually impact the others. My judging them impacts my parents.

I have been made very aware that it impacts my parents. So my judgments of them are impacting them, and their invalidation of me is impacting me. And it makes sense that I'm judging, and it makes sense that they don't have the skill of validation.

So yeah, it all makes sense and there's an impact. Let's get back to our recording.

And what is there to do here? Well, I can't change them. What there is to do is to radically accept where they're at. Fuck you car. With there is to do is to accept their skill level and to act accordingly. And this is where I get into trouble.

Because I expect to be able to say, “hey, don't do this thing, do this other thing instead,” and have them then do that thing. And instead, what I keep hearing over and over again is, “You know, it's a lot to learn. We have these patterns. And what about grace? Because we're not going to be perfect.”

I don't even know how to communicate how frustrating that is, what about it is frustrating. Like I understand you're not gonna be perfect, but what it feels like – the thought that I'm having around it – is that they're using that as an excuse not to try.

That's been the case over and over again. I will be incredibly clear with the request that I'm making, and have them repeat it back to me so that they understand the request that I'm making, and then continue to ignore my request.

It's infuriating. I mean, again, I've had to learn how to unlearn shit and do it rapidly, because if I didn't, I was going to end up dead. And it's just really frustrating having them not put in even a fraction of the amount of effort. And it's not even like I need them to save me. I am seeing a therapist and I'm seeing a psychiatrist and I go to group.

I just need them not to make things worse when I'm at home. And that seems like an impossible ask.

So, I start off this last bit acknowledging that what there is to do is to radically accept where my folks are at. Radical acceptance – I've talked about a little bit – is a distress tolerance skill. You can find it in the Distress Tolerance Handout #11 and #11B. It's acknowledging of what the facts are.

Typically, it also means acknowledging how it makes sense, given everything that came before it. Acknowledging that it makes sense doesn't mean I'm OK with it. I think that's an important distinction to mention here. I actually came back from this walk and realized: OK, given that this is where their skill level is at, I am going to choose to change the way I interact with them.

Not as a punishment. But in the same way that like a Major League Baseball player is not gonna throw a 90 mile an hour fastball at a six year-old. He's going to throw a change-up instead – which I think is still too fast. He’s going to lob the ball, just lob it.

It's not because he's judging the six year-old. It's just an acknowledgement of, “hey, this is where your skill level's at. So I'm not going to throw you a fastball which could kill you.” And given that my parents don't have the skill of validation at the current time – at the time in that recording – it’s not going to be effective for me to seek out validation from them. Because they don't know how to do it.

And that was kind of a big deal, like a big shift for me. It's like I can acknowledge where they're at without judgment. I mean, I'm frustrated because I do want to relate to them on a deeper level. And there are things that I cannot relate to them around because they don't know how to validate. And invalidation is so painful for me.

So, it's a bummer. It’s a real bummer. And I think that's another thing my judgment has been trying to do... I keep going back to this six year-old, this poor six year-old. It's the six year-old who runs up and just like, “Mom, you seem really tired this morning. How about I drive you to work?” I'm like, “Oh, it's really sweet that you want to help. And that is not going to actually be helpful.”

And these judgments are kind of like that. These judgments are trying to protect me from invalidation. Also those judgments are trying to have me have a better relationship with my parents. And they're not actually having the intended effect. Go figure. Me judging the crap out of my parents is not having the desired effect. Whoda thunk it? Oh, Lord. OK, getting back to our recording here.

It's really fucking infuriating. And I have a thought that when I speak, it doesn't matter. I have thought that it doesn't matter what I say. They're not going to hear it. They're not going to understand it. They're not going to remember it. They're not going to take it into consideration and make adjustments when it's a request.

I'm fucking angry. Fucking angry. What does that feel like in my body? It's tightness in the back of my throat, as distinct from anxiety, which is kind of like going in the front of my throat, kind of down there, like my collar mode.

Whereas anger, it's more like the back of my mouth. I notice myself scowling, so my brows are furrowed. I have a lot of urges to throw things, to destroy things, the urge to yell. I have the urge to blame other people. I have the urge to give up. I'm having the thought that it's not going to ever get better.

Bells

Oh, past joy. You're such a bowl of sunshine. So I wanna acknowledge something here at the end, because that's the end of that recording. I was really angry. Not as angry towards the end there as I was at the beginning. I had stopped crying by that point.

And just really present to how much my relationship with my folks is not going the way that I wanted it to be going. And that was really frustrating. And one of the inciting events for anger, as it turns out – going back to our favorite Emotion Regulation Handout 6 – is having an important goal blocked.

Or not having things turn out as expected. Those are prompting events for anger. And so I wasn't having the relationship with my parents that I wanted to. I was not having my life turn out the way that I wanted to. So I do want to validate that, that it makes sense that I was really, really angry.

And the degree to which I was angry also makes sense because of all of these vulnerability factors. I think that was OK that I was experiencing anger. I chose to leave the house so that I wouldn't blow up at my mom, who had not done anything wrong. She had been very kind in helping me hang the shelf.

And I had all this anger. Kind of letting it go through my body eventually got to that point that I mentioned earlier, realizing I need to change my behavior. Have different boundaries around what I choose to talk to my parents about, and to not continue to have the expectation that they'll be able to show up as skillfully as I want them to around validation.

Which is a totally different conversation or thought process than: they suck, they don't care about me, there's no hope. I mean, you heard me articulate those sentiments throughout that recording. And the distinction of “those are thoughts that I'm having rather than the fact” was really helpful in getting me unstuck and not dying on that hill. And being able to get creative.

Like if I can accept that this is where their skill level is, then how would I behave? How would a professional baseball player behave if he accepted that that six year-old is a six year-old, rather than trying to force that six year-old to become a major-league-level catcher or batter.

And t's still not the way I want it to go. That's an important thing to note. This whole process was not this magic... everything's fine, my parents suddenly leveled up, and all is well. And what it did do is shift the degree of rage that I was experiencing.

Shifting that was what ultimately had me see that, “Oh, there's a thing I can do. I can have a boundary. I can choose not to have those conversations.” It allowed me to get creative. When I'm in Emotion Mind, I can't get creative. Like I don't have access to the thinking part of my brain. I'm just stuck in the limbic system where all I want to do is turn into a caveman and throw feces.

So that was graphic. Anyway, on that very fecal note – the best kind of note – I’m going to end this podcast episode. I will put up the emotion wheel diagram on the website and on social media so you guys can take a look. Because it's not actually included in the DBT manual that I've linked to on the website.

If you have any questions, if anything doesn't make sense, if you're hearing contradictions, or things that seem to be at odds with one another, feel free to, you know, shoot me a question. You can e-mail me at therapize@joygerhard.com.

There's a link to it on the website which is linked in the description of this episode. You could also contact me on any of the social media that is linked on the website. Yeah, I'm gonna end this now, just abruptly.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

This has been Let's Therapize That Shit!!! with your host, me, Joy Gerhard. If you like what you heard, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends about it. We'll see you next time.