Hey look, a break from the breakup! Today I'm practicing acceptance around being invalidated. I go through acceptance step by step, do a lot of deep breathing, and have a remarkable amount of indigestion as I go. A kinda nifty outcome: practicing acceptance about my parents' validation skill level allowed me to see what boundaries I could put in place with them!

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 5 – Taking Hold of Your Mind: “How” Skills

• Non-judgementally

Distress Tolerance Handout 5 – Pros and Cons

Distress Tolerance Handout 11 – Radical Acceptance

Distress Tolerance Handout 11B – Practicing Radical Acceptance Step by Step

Distress Tolerance Handout 14 – Half-Smiling and Willing Hands

• Willing Hands

Distress Tolerance Handout 14A – Practicing Half-Smiling and Willing Hands

• Willing Hands

Emotion Regulation Handout 6 – Ways to Describe Emotions

• Anger
• Shame

Emotion Regulation Handout 10 – Opposite Action

Emotion Regulation Handout 11 – Figuring Out Opposite Actions

• Anger
• Shame

Emotion Regulation Handout 14 – Overview: Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind – Building a Life Worth Living

• Cope Ahead of Time With Emotional Situations

Emotion Regulation Handout 19 – Build Mastery and Cope Ahead

• Cope Ahead of Time With Emotional Situations

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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 recorded what you're about to hear on October 14th. Though I am recording this intro on December 16th, 2021. And at that time, back in October, I had been back living with my parents for two months, and really struggling with their lack of skills around validation.

So today's topic is going to be radical acceptance around that. And if you're thinking, “wait, you already did acceptance,” you're not wrong. Well spotted. I did an episode around acceptance right after my breakup. It was episode 3, and that focused on accepting the end of my relationship and having to move back home.

This episode is going to be a different flavor of acceptance. I focus more on something that I'm judging and I'm angry about, rather than something that I'm sad about. So fewer tears, but way more indigestion. And that's the joy of therapizing shit: there's never a shortage of shit to therapize. And if you can say that 10 times fast, you are more skillful than I am at talking.

Accepting my break-up was one shit. Parental invalidation is another shit, hence today's episode. Something to note: there's going to be some not super long but long-ish pauses, multiple seconds, when I'm doing some slow breathing.

I left those in at their full length so you can hear how slow slow breathing is for me. I also purposely left the pauses in there when I'm sitting with an emotion or a sensation, because I think it's important to show that acceptance isn't fast or immediate.

There's a lot of just sitting with the feeling and letting sensations roll through my body and observing my thoughts so it can take a bit of time to do.

Also, this is my last recording with my shitty, old microphone. What you're about to hear back in October is the last time I recorded it with just my cell phone headset. I'll still record with it periodically when I'm using skills on the fly when I'm not at home, but it'll be much less frequent.

So hopefully you will have a better listening experience moving forward. I did want to note that this recording has a lot of – I don't know what I was doing – it has a lot of rustling in it.

And I'm so sorry, because that's not the listening experience I wanted to leave you with. I just hope you can tolerate it OK, and still get something out of the episode. So without further ado, let's dive right on in, shall we?

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

OK. And today I am going to be talking about the homework that I need to do for my individual DBT therapy, which is practicing radical acceptance step by step. I'm going to be taking very heavily from Distress Tolerance Handout 11B – B as in boy. You can find a digital copy of the Distress Tolerance manual on my website https://therapize.joygerhard.com.

There's a PDF version there, and there's also a link to a where you can buy it online. I've linked it to a black-owned bookstore, so if you want to support a black-owned bookstore, that's awesome.

If you want to know more about what acceptance is, I'm going to direct you to a previous episode on acceptance. I don't actually remember what the number is, but a few episodes ago, the title of it is “Acceptance.” So you'll be able to track that down.

So I am going to be practicing Radical Acceptance, and again this is Distress Tolerance Handout 11B. What I am going to be practicing acceptance around is my parents ineffectiveness in validating. And where they are now in their skill level and where they have been in the past.

So, one of the things that I've talked about previously about what acceptance is, is we only need to accept the facts, not our assumptions, our beliefs, our predictions, our judgments, evaluations. Really all it is, is stuff that you can see and observe and describe.

So, if somebody is telling me that they hate me, what there is to accept is that they said they hate me. Because I can't observe or describe what's in somebody else's brain, all I can observe and describe is the words that are coming out of their mouth. That's part of the challenge in doing this is figuring out what I'm actually need to accept.

So, I'm actually going to be doing some reverse engineering and looking at where I have judgments. Because judgments are the opposite of acceptance. When you accept something, you are basically acknowledging that whatever happened – whatever thing I'm accepting – is caused, that it came from somewhere, that there was a chain of events that led up to that.

And when you accept something, you're basically saying: there's a reason for it to be this way, and it couldn't possibly have been any other way, so I will stop resisting that it was the way that it was.

So, I am looking for places where I'm resisting. And I am very much resisting my parents' current skill level. When I asked them a few weeks ago, on a scale of zero to 10, where they thought their skill level was, my dad said 1.5 and my mom said 3.

And it was actually kind of encouraging because they're aware of the skill – that it exists – and they are aware of their lack of skill at it. And I do think that those are probably the numbers I would have given them myself.

So, I've actually been practicing a lot about accepting where things have been in the past, understanding the causes. They were both raised and spent the majority of their lives in a church or like an evangelical environment.

Which, say what you will positive or negative, there is a lot of judgment. In the evangelical circles, there is a lot of judgment – beliefs around how people should behave. This is good and this is bad behavior.

So, I understand both where they came from, and the environments that they were steeped in and have been steeped in for most of their lives, and that they are now just starting to learn different ways of being.

So, I kind of feel like I have a handle on accepting the past. It's the present that's challenging because I'm having the thought that if you know you suck at something, and you know that it's an important skill to have, why the hell wouldn't you really, really, really focus on learning the skill? And that's a judgement.

Because I'm saying they should be learning the skill, they should be valuing it, and they should be practicing it and be highly motivated to do the work.

So because I'm using the word “should,” that's a judgment. I'm basing it on from my own experience. Part of the reason I learned how to validate myself and also how to practice non-judgmentalness was because my life depended.

Trigger warning: very, very briefly, no details of suicidal ideation. I would not have survived. The amount of shame that I was experiencing over my trauma, my sexual assaults... Trigger warning for sexual assaults, too. I need to be better at... I need to be more effective – there we go – around giving trigger warnings.

The emotions that I was experiencing, the body sensation, the urges that I was experiencing, and then the behaviors that I was doing as a result of the trauma that I had from sexual assault and rapes... I had so much despair and shame that suicidal ideation was kind of a constant feature for a long time.

And if I didn't practice validation and non-judgment towards myself, I would not be alive still. I would not be here anymore. So, I was highly, highly, highly motivated. My life depended on it.

And I am applying that experience to my parents and wanting them to experience the same degree of motivation. Now, their situation is different, and I acknowledge their situation is different and I still judge it.

Because I have the thought, “Well, you have three daughters who all have told you that you are not great at validation, and that you are actively causing harm with your invalidation. Why is that not motivation enough?”

So, I'm judging them for not taking the actions that I expect them to, given the things that I expect them to be motivated by. And given that I'm not inside their interior headspace, I actually don't know what would motivate them. And the degree to which they do feel an urgency. This is me on the outside looking in and making judgments.

So given that I the future is not fact-based, what I need to accept here is that they are not currently taking actions consistent with what I want them to be doing. I don't actually know what actions they're taking. I just know they're not doing it the way that I wanted them to or want them to.

And what the actions they are taking are not eliciting changes and improvement in their validation skill at a rate that I want them to be improving. So that's where I'm going to start: that they are not taking the actions that I want them to be taking, and that there are not demonstrating an increase in their validation effectiveness at a rate that I want them to be.

So, the first step in practicing radical acceptance on Distress – I have such a hard time with that word – Distress Tolerance Handout 11B.

“The first step is to observe that I'm questioning or fighting reality. It shouldn't be this way.”

I am totally doing that I am judging them for... they should be trying harder. They should be learning faster. They should be more motivated. They should see the urgency of this and be acting accordingly, acting in the way that I want them to be. So, all of those are judgments. OK, next step.

“Remind myself that the unpleasant reality is just as it is and cannot be changed. This is what happened.”

So, again, we can't change the past or the present. The minute you try to change the present, the presence is now in the past, and what you're changing is the future. So, I'm going to remind myself that the unpleasant reality – that they are not currently as skilled at validation as they want them to be, and they are not taking the steps I want them to be taking towards being more effective at validating – that is what is currently so.

And I can't change that. They can't change that. Nobody can change what is currently so. First off, before I keep going with step three, I want to start with where I currently am emotion wise, because I want to then talk about where I am when I'm done with this. I would say I'm at a frustration level right now of 6 maybe.

I am experiencing, the emotion I'm feeling is annoyance, frustration, anger. In my body, I have this really intense knot in my stomach. I feel kind of this tightness in the back of my throat. My hips are sore, but that's independent of any of this. I am feeling almost nauseous, I think.

The knot my stomach kind of has this feeling of nausea, even though I've eaten recently. So yeah, I'm feeling angry. And if you want to know more about what anger feels like, you can see a description of anger words, and - I'm looking for it here – on Emotion Regulation Handout 6.

There are ways to describe anger, prompting events for feeling anger, interpretations of events that then prompt anger, biological changes and experiences of anger (so, what it feels like in your body), expressions and actions of anger (so, urges or what you do, the behaviors that you do as a result),

and then echoes and aftereffects of anger (kind of how it lingers in your system.) And again, that's on regular Emotion Regulation Handout 6. And then there is... Emotion Regulation Handout 11 has opposite actions for anger.

But yes, I am experiencing anger. That is the word, yeah, annoyance, I think, frustration, exasperation, bitterness, resentment. Resentment isn't listed as one of the emotion words, but I think that's appropriate here.

Yeah, and if you see on Emotion Regulation Handout 6 for anger, the “what it feels like,” there's muscles tightening. And I think that's definitely like what I'm feeling in my gut is this, just like tightening of my muscles.

I'm also noticing there a lot of tension around my jaw, and I'm scowling. I just realized I'm scowling, yeah. So, anger. So now getting back to Distress Tolerance Handout 11B.

The next step, after “reminding myself that the unpleasant reality is just as it is and cannot be changed.” I don't like the word “just” – just makes it sound like it's insignificant. So I'm getting rid of the word “just” – “the unpleasant reality is as it is and cannot be changed.”

The next Step 3 is one I used to really, really struggle with. I've gotten better at it, but...

“Remind yourself that there are causes for this reality. Acknowledge that some sort of history led up to this very moment. Consider how people's lives have been shaped by a series of factors. Notice that, given these causal factors and how history led up to this moment, that this reality had to occur just this way. This is how things happened.”

OK, so I struggle with this one because I have the thought that, given all of the conversations that my sisters have had with my parents, that they would hear those things and be highly motivated to take action.

And I'm having the thought right now that – or the judgement that – their action should look like what I would do when I'm highly motivated. And not everybody's like me. Oh, OK. So I'm sitting here with willing hands. My palms are open and kind of out to the side, like I'm carrying dishes to a table.

I am experiencing a lot of anger right now, just kind of waves rolling through my body of muscle tightness. It's mostly going from my stomach up into my chest. And into my throat. I do kind of feel sick to stomach.

I am struggling here. That there are cause for this reality. There are cause for this reality that they are not taking the actions that I want them to take, and they are not improving in their validation skill, at the rate that I want them to improve. There's a reason for that.

I can guess at what the reason is. I am not certain of the reason. I’m having a lot of anger and desperately wanting it to be a different way. So I'm going to go back again to Step 3.

“Remind myself that there are causes for this reality, some sort of history led up to this very moment. Consider how my parents lives have been shaped by a series of factors. And given these causal factors and how history has led up to this moment, this reality had to occurred just the way it is.”

Their motivation... No, I can't observe their motivation. Them not them not taking the actions I expect them or I want them to take had to occur just the way it is. The actions that they are currently taking had to occur just the way it is.

And my thoughts around my expectations for their actions that they're not taking also had to occur just the way my thoughts are occurring. God, this sucks. Something I wanna note right now is that a lot of times skill usage doesn't feel great. A lot of emotions come up. My goal here in being skillful is to not make things worse.

And that's where I'm going to start, actually. I'm aware that my judgment and my lack of acceptance makes things worse. It makes things worse for myself – just like, alone in my room, I feel bad. I'm having unpleasant emotions in my room by myself, not even interacting with my parents.

And my judgments and my lack of acceptance also makes things worse for my relationship with my parents. And it's also preventing me from being able to set boundaries. Because all of my energy is around: you need to show up a different way; you have to behave this way; you need to get better at this. And really being attached to them changing their behavior.

So, I'm not accepting where they currently are, which means I don't know what boundaries to set. When I accept that this is where they're at, then I can ask the question, “OK, well, given that this is where they're at, what boundaries do I need to put in place that I am not miserable and that they are not continually invalidating me.

And in n the conversations that I've had with them, they acknowledge the importance of validation, and they do not want to be invalidating. So, setting a boundary to prevent their... excuse me, I just burped. Yeah, my stomach is so upset right now. It went from zero to 60 in terms of gut upset as I've been doing this. So, I'm going to do some breathing.

I'm breathing in and out really slowly.

So, I just did some box breathing, in for five, hold for five, out for five, hold for five. And I'm also doing willing hands. So again, basically like I'm holding platters out to the side. What that does is it's opening up my chest, the breathing is slowing down my heart rate a little bit.

And taking deep, slow breaths forces movement into my chest, so it's actually forcing my diaphragm to move, forcing my ribs to expand, which is kind of doing like an internal massage of my rib cage and my belly.

So that tightness that I was experiencing – and still am – from that anger, these actions of the deep breathing and the willing hands are designed to counteract that tightness and get those muscles to relax. So, yes, clearly, anger is coming up and I've stored a lot of this anger in my body.

There are causes for this reality. There are causes for my parents’ behavior, there are causes for my behavior. There are causes for my parents, the thoughts that they have. There are causes for the emotions that I have.

I'm going to do a little kind of deep massage on myself for a second here. And through this whole process, I'm still doing the willing hands, I'm open to the side. If you want to know what the skill of willing hands is, it's described on Distress Tolerance Handout 14.

And then if you want to practice it, examples of how to practice it is Distress Tolerance Handout 14A. OK, so getting back to... Oh, I lost it, Radical Acceptance. Way to practice it.

Handout 11B OK. So doing some validation of myself, it makes sense that I would struggle to accept this. It makes sense that I do not want to accept it. Yeah, all of that makes sense. Given the last year and a half that I've had - and again, this is not an excuse.

This is not me excusing my judgment, it's looking at how we came to be here, it doesn't mean I have to like where I currently am or that I want to stay here. It's just, “Well, here's how I got here. Let's see if I can then address the factors that led me here.”

In the same way that like if you're in the middle of nowhere or if you're lost, the first thing you want to do on your phone is turn on the location functions so that Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever you're using can tell you where you currently are. You can't actually get directions to go anywhere if you don't turn on your current location.

I'm looking at my current location and seeing how it makes sense. I have experienced a huge amount of invalidation over the last year and a half, which I think is one of the key vulnerability factors, and why I'm so attached to my parents getting better or getting more effective at their skill of validation.

Because, the last year and a half has been so invalidating. And I've gone so long without having a therapist and had to switch therapists six times – I’m on my sixth therapists in the last year and a half.

Being in the hospital had two different stays in psych wards for a week at a time in the last six months. Dear God. The break-up with my partner, having to leave my business, there's a there's a lot. And judgment for my business partner, too, over where I was at.

Yeah, I have just had a lot of invalidation. So, it makes sense that I would be really attached to other people doing it for me. So I'm having the thought that my parents really need to step up their game, and that I will not be able to tolerate... I’m having the thought that I will not be able to tolerate their invalidation.

Which may be true, or rather, it's a choice. I can choose not to tolerate their invalidation and put boundaries in place. And I'm having the thought that I don't know how to do that and that I will be ineffective at it and it won’t work and things will be awful.

That's a thought that I'm having. It is not a fact, because that's fortune telling. I don't know how the future will go. More deep breathing.

“There are causes for this reality.”

I'm going to really sit with this one. I'm looking at the notes that I have for the first time I did this in my original DBT group back in 2016. And I have the big word “no” underline multiple times, and “I hate this one” written right next to that.

Part of the reason I really resist this step is because: if you accept that everything is caused, and that given everything that happened up to this point, the reality, this current moment had to occur just this way. It's basically saying that given all the dominoes that fell before, it is inevitable that the current domino fell.

What it is not doing is saying, “well, given that this current domino fell, here's how all the future dominoes will fall.” You actually can change that. You can pull out some dominoes. You can add different dominoes. You have control over how future dominoes will fall.

All of this step is saying, “given every domino that fell before” – and this is an example that really only works if you played with dominoes or watched domino videos or I know people are using playing cards now – “given everything that came before it, the current domino had to fall.

And when I accept that fully, it actually takes away judgment. And judgments do something for me. If you go to... let's see, Non-Judgment is a How skill for mindfulness and getting into wise mind. If you want to know more about practicing Non-Judgment, it's on mindfulness handout 6.

I have written down at the bottom, these are my own notes here: judgment is a survival skill that has gone off the rails. And a way to interact with judgments in an effective way – so not judging your judgments – is to ask the question: what is this judgment trying to do for me?

Often times I know, for me, it's trying to protect me. Like I can look at the all of this going on. Because I am not skilled at setting boundaries, and because I have the thought that my parents won't honor the boundaries (I'm fortune telling), and that thought comes from somewhere because they have not honored my boundaries in the past, I have the thought that boundaries won't be effective.

Which is, again fortune telling. It's not the truth. It’s the thought I'm having. And given that I'm having that thought – that boundaries won't be effective – then it's vital that my parents figure out how to do this skill so that the responsibility is not on me to protect myself from invalidation.

So, this judgment, “you really need to be better at this. You suck at this. You should be better at this. You should be learning this faster,” all of those things are me trying to protect myself so that I will not be invalidated.

Another thing that judgments do is that oftentimes it gets us out of responsibility. Like if I'm judging them and saying, “they should be this way, they should do this thing,” I no longer have to look at what I need to be doing. I'm not taking responsibility for setting my own boundaries.

This can get really tricky here, especially... I'm trying to think of the right way, the effective way to say this. I know that they can get really sticky in areas of abuse, and just any harmful behavior, behavior that hurts when somebody else does it to you.

Being non-judgmental about it doesn't mean you like it, or that you're OK with it, or that you want it, or that you will allow it to continue. What non-judgment does, what being non-judgmental does, it allows us to see what is what it what the truth is, what the facts are about the current moment.

It actually gives us access to other tools. And it totally makes sense that we judge. We never learn these other tools. We don't learn how to set boundaries. And it makes sense, also, that oftentimes when we're kids, like setting boundaries with our parents, how do you do that?

How do you do that when you don't necessarily have any privacy or any power? And so, it makes sense that we learn judgment as children. And we carry that skill because that's what we had access to when we were kids. And we carry it into our adulthood.

So, judgment leads to non-acceptance, and non-acceptance leads to judgment. It’s like the kind of this cyclical thing. What results is suffering, as distinct from pain. Suffering is pain without acceptance.

I don't know about you, but I think most of us know the difference between pain and suffering. You know, you stub your toe, it can hurt. It can really, really, really, really bad for actually quite a bit. You know, it's not instantaneous, short-lived pain. It can last, especially if you crack a toenail, or break a toenail, or split a toenail. Or, you know, there's blood involved. It can hurt.

And we don't have necessarily an emotional, like, “I refuse to acknowledge that I stubbed my toe.” Usually we're like, “OK, that hurt. I'm going to sit down, I'm going to hold my toe tightly. I'm going to rock back and forth.” All of the things we do are self-soothing because we accept it.

We actually just did stub our toe, and that it's really painful. So, we take actions consistent with that rather than judge it or resist it. Now, we may judge ourselves, and then think we're stupid. Then that's when we get into suffering. Now there's like this self-judgement, and this guilt, and this shame. “I'm stupid, I'm bad.”

And all of those things, what they do is they turn off parts of our brain that give us access to actually behaving... taking action that will achieve our goals. Most of it, like that judgment it is effective in the short term like it does protect us.

And it doesn't allow us to achieve our goals long-term. So, like in the moment, me judging my parents does protect me, and it actually doesn't do anything to change the situation. They get defensive when I judge them out loud.

I am miserable, and I don't do the things that I can do to protect myself. Again, I understand this is very different when you're a child, and also when you're dependent on other people really. When you have a caregiver when you’re at any age, really.

It can be really hard. It can be really tricky, especially if your caregiver is somebody who doesn't have these skills, or is I'm willing to learn them? Yeah, I acknowledge this is not cut and dry. So I'm getting back to:

“Practice accepting with my whole self, using accepting self-talk.”

I want to accept that my parents are at their current level of skill around validation. I want to accept that they are not taking the actions that I want them to take in the way that I want them to take them.

I want to accept that they are not improving in their skill of validation at the rate I want them to. I want to accept these things. So I'm just going to sit with it for a minute. And breathe through it.

I'm sitting with my hands open and to the side, kind of opening up my chest, rotating my forearms out, breathing into my chest because that's where a lot of the tension is.

And it mentions “accepting with your whole self, mind, body, and spirit.” So I'm going to do some... I have some judgments. I'm thinking this is going to be silly, but I'm going to practice... I want to accept this with my chest.

I want to accept it with my belly. And want to accept it with my shoulders. And as I'm doing this and saying the different body parts, I'm kind of breathing and focusing on my breath, basically, using imagery to send my breath into that body part, picturing that my breath is expanding that body part and then as I'm exhaling, it's rising and falling.

So when I inhale my shoulders go up. When I exhale, my shoulders go down. I’m practicing accepting this with my legs. When I inhale, my legs tighten, and when I exhale, my legs relax. I'm practicing accepting this with my arms.

I’m tensing them when I inhale, and letting go of them when I exhale. I’m practicing accepting this with my mind. So I'm imagining my brain expanding and contracting as I breathe. I’m practicing accepting this with my spirit. Don’t know what my spirit looks like, I imagine that it is a blue light, like kind of a ball of blue light.

I’m practicing accepting it with my spirit. And I'm expanding that blue light as I breathe in, and it's getting smaller as I breathe out. So the next step is:

“Practice opposite action.”

There's Opposite Action in Emotion Regulation Handout 10. Basically the quote from my original DBT instructor is: “We're not going to think our way into a new way of behaving; we're going to behave our way into a new way of thinking. We're not going to feel our way into a new way of behaving. We're going to behave our way into a new way of feeling.”

We're starting with the behavior, and so opposite action basically is like our way of... “OK, given that this is how I'm what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling, I'm going to behave opposite to what those thoughts and feelings would have me do.” So,

“List all the behaviors you would if you did accept the facts.”

So, I'm back on Distress Tolerance Handout 11B here. What behaviors would I do if I did accept the facts? Boundaries. Yes, I keep coming back to this. Clearly this is the next step, and there's the next step to have the conversation with my parents.

Given that I don't want to be invalidated... god, my gut is so unhappy right now. I keep burping. I'm sorry. Given that I don't want to be invalidated and they have said that they don't want to invalidate me, I can look for ways to have batteries in place.

When I was in my original DBT group, when we were practicing non-judgment, the very first thing... when practicing any new skill is just to observe when you're doing that thing. We would practice observing our judgments. And I'm pretty sure I actually talked about this in a previous episode. I'm looking at my episode list. Give me just a second.

You know, I don't have an episode on non-judgment, but I'm sure I've talked about it before. So some examples of ways that people observed their judgment is just, anytime you notice using the words: good, bad, should, shouldn't...

Hold on, let me look up more examples here. These are examples that I've written down myself, so they're not going to be in the DBT manual. “Should,” “shouldn't,” “fair or unfair,” is a judgment.

“Right or wrong,” “always, never,” “all or nothing.” Noticing when you're doing that, and then somebody who was sitting at a desk all day would just do hash marks on a Post-it note. Somebody else put a bunch of tiny little beads in their pocket, and as they notice their judgments, they would move it from one pocket into the other.

So they'd start with all of the beads in their right pocket, and throughout the day they would move a bead into their left. The reason why this is effective is because, oftentimes, all of the stuff runs automatically. It's all in the background. We're not even aware of when we're doing it.

The observation basically pulls it into our consciousness, our awareness, because you can't unlearn something, you can't change your behavior if you're not even aware that you're doing it. So, in practicing opposite action. Hold on. Nope. I got sidetracked. Please hold. “Act as if you'd already accepted the facts.” I was talking about boundaries.

Oh yes, I remember where I was. In my DBT skills group we made a game of it. I don't remember who came up with this, but I have adopted this as part of my life when I noticed I'm judging, I just – in my head at least – say, “judgment, judgment, judgment.” Judgment three times quickly.

And with people who know about this – I have a friend who was in the DBT group with me, my sisters know about it – we'll call it out in conversation. “Judgment, judgment, judgment.” And this is the thing we have talked about, so they know what I'm doing when I do it.

So, I'm having the thought, “if I accepted that this is where our parents are at and given that they do not want to be invalidating and I don't want them to be invalidating,” I can talk to them and say, “hey, when you invalidate me, how would you feel about me just going invalidation, invalidation, invalidation,” and walking away?

And the reason I want to add – I've been thinking about this, so I'm not coming up with it on the spot, I've actually been contemplating a little bit – the reason for the walking away is I'm anticipating defensiveness. I'm expecting that either they will get defensive, they will ask questions, or they will be confused.

Or try to explain themselves, I guess that's defensiveness. And I kind of want to create a buffer. I don't want to sit with their emotions of how they feel when they know that they're doing or saying something that's invalidating. So I want to remove myself.

And the reason I'd want to talk to them about this before I do it is so that a) they understand what's happening, and we’re all in agreement. I remove myself, they get to sit and think for a minute, and then we can come back and have a conversation later when I'm not feeling invalidated.

Because invalidation can be a trigger for me – or if not a trigger of trauma, certainly my emotional regulation kind of goes out the window. I have the thought that I should be able to tolerate invalidation, that I should be so strong within myself that it doesn't matter if anyone else says or does anything that's invalidating to me.

That is not currently where I am at. And especially given all the vulnerability factors that I've had over the last year and a half, I need some help. And given that they don't have this skill, I think the kindest thing I can do for all of us – because they don't want to hurt me, I don't want them to hurt me – is to stop it when it happens.

The thought I'm having here is I have the concern that I will not notice when it happens. Which means something I need to practice is paying attention to it. Because oftentimes, I'm not aware of it right in the moment.

I can talk to my parents about what to do when it happens, and I notice it later. I think I'll still want to call it out and just be like, “invalidate, invalidation, validation,” and walk away. And then come back later and say, “hey, it wasn't that exact moment. It was from 5 minutes earlier, I realized that that's what was happening.”

It can be something we play around with and figure out what works. When I talk about practicing opposite action, if I accept that this is where their skill level is, then I have access to problem solving.

If you accept that your toddler can't drive themselves to preschool, then you have access to finding a carpool, driving them yourself. Whereas if you're annoyed and pissed this whole time that your toddler can't drive themselves... I'm imagining that no one who can't drive their toddler won't give them the car keys.

Just say, “you're on your own kid.” It’s more the suffering that I think is the issue there. You know, a grumbling of like, “I have to do this for 16 years, drive my kid everywhere.” There's something about acceptance, again, that doesn't mean I like it.

I don't like that this is where my folks are at. That kid example is a horrible example. I need to stop coming up with examples... Horrible is a judgment. I need to stop coming up with examples on the fly, especially for experiences that aren't mine.

Oh lordy, because I do not have a toddler. So, if I actually accepted that this is where my parents are at, then this is the boundary I would put into place. So that is a thing that I can do and I'm going to do it and then report back about it. So, next step here is:

“Cope ahead with events that seem unacceptable. Imagine in your mind's eye believing what you don't want to accept. Rehearse in your mind what you would do if you accepted what seems unacceptable.”

So Cope Ahead is, I think, a Distress Tolerance skill. Give me just a second. I'm going to find it for you. OK, so I found it. It's an Emotion Regulation skill – Cope Ahead – in the DBT handbook.

It's first mentioned on Emotion Regulation Handout 14: Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind – ABC PLEASE. And the C – cause Marshall Linehan loves her acronyms – the C is Cope Ahead, which is:

“Rehearsing a plan ahead of time so that you're prepared to cope skillfully with emotional situations.”

And then it gets into detail on Emotion Regulation Handout 19. So:

“Cope Ahead is describe the situation that's likely to prompt the problem behavior...”

I think there's going to be, well, the main one is invalidation, yes. And there's kind of two forms of it: the invalidation that I noticed in the moment and then invalidation that I notice later. Ah yes, ok. The situation, what I'm expecting to happen in those moments is that, the minute I notice it, I will have judgments about my folks and I'll have judgments about myself.

But right before I notice it, I will have annoyance, probably. Usually what I experience when I'm invalidated is anger, especially because I've worked so hard to validate my own experiences. So, I have the emotion of anger when other people invalidate me.

It's kind of like, if I spent 17 hours building a house of cards and then somebody came along and, like, blew on it. It's like, “dude, I have spent years, at this point, learning this skill.” And it's still pretty fragile. There are times when it can feel really fragile, especially when there's other vulnerability factors at play. I haven't slept or I haven't eaten recently or I've forgotten to take my meds or a pandemic.

So, I know that there are going to be times when invalidation is more threatening than other times. I want to prepare for having the judgment that I should not be feeling invalidated, and having the judgment that my parents should not be invalidating me. I am expecting there to be anger and shame, anger at my parents and shame aimed at myself.

“What coping or problem solving skills would I want to use in this situation?”

First off, mindfulness. Really, it is opposite action. It's given that shame has me want to hide. And if you want to know more about what shame is like and what it what it feels, it’s Emotional Regulation Handout 6.

Handout 6 covers all the emotions, so you'll have to go through and find shame. And then if you want to know opposite action to shame, typically it's actually doing the thing you're ashamed of.

“Making public your personal characteristics or your behavior. Repeat the behavior that sets off shame over and over again without hiding.”

Opposite action for an emotion is Emotion Regulation Handout 11, and again you're going to have to flip through to find shame because that handout is all the emotions. But yes, so if I'm feeling shame, the opposite action is to say, “I'm feeling shame because I am feeling invalidated. I'm having the thought that I'm invalidated. Invalidation, invalidation, invalidation.”

So basically, saying the thing before I do the action. Because the action I'm worried about, I'm embarrassed about doing, is saying, “I'm feeling invalidated.” Doing it is opposite action. Saying I'm feeling invalidated (invalidation, invalidation, invalidation) is opposite action.

I don't even know that I necessarily have to say that I am experiencing shame around it. It's just doing the thing, and consistently doing that. And you know what I might do, actually, now that I think about it? I might try practicing it in a situation where there is no invalidation happening. I actually might set my parents up to know that that's going to happen.

That I'm going to practice it just in the middle of a random conversation where everything's fine, just saying, “invalidation, invalidation, invalidation,” and then walking away. I think that might be helpful. Because then I'm practicing it when the stakes are lower.

There's more details on how to cope ahead, and I won't get into a huge amount here because we will deal with that when we get to this in greater detail in a later episode. But doing imaginal exposure to it, like actually picturing...

I’m picturing a moment with my dad, actually, right now. I was really upset after the Texas law passed about the abortion ban, and was kind of venting a little bit about it at dinner. Then a couple hours later, I'm walking past his office, and he mentioned, “The Supreme Court ruling about this doesn't mean...”

There was something about it that it didn't mean one of the things that I had said, that the Supreme Court had declined to hear it or something. And I was annoyed that he said that. And I went into my room and it was like probably a couple hours later that I realized, what he was doing, he was trying to comfort me. He's like, “it's not as bad as you think it is.”

What he was not doing was acknowledging the parts of it that are bad, and my concern and my fear, and everything else. So, I had that experience, in that moment, of invalidation. So, picturing doing this... He can say that, say what he has to say, and I can interrupt him.

Or I can wait until he's finished, and say, “invalidation, invalidation, invalidation.” And I can picture myself turning around, and walking down the hall to my room and sitting on my bed. And pulling out some embroidery or doing another task for a minute. Or depending on how strong the emotions are, I can sit with them and label them. I am feeling anger.

I'm having judgmental thoughts. And then, once I've had some time to cool down and actually be able to identify, “when you said this, this is what it communicated to me,” then I can go and knock on his door and say, “hey, do you have a couple of seconds to recap or to do a post mortem?”

And tell him, “when you said this, that was invalidating. What I wanted to hear, what I wanted from you, what would have been validating...” I'm annoyed there. That's another boundary. I may not actually... I don't know about this because I don't want to teach them.

I have been living at home for 10 years or so, and I really don't want to teach them. I want them to go to therapy. Given that they're not going to therapy, I think boundaries are the way to keep my sanity rather than to spend the time and effort teaching them. So I can go knock on his door and say, “hey, that thing you said was invalidating,” and leave it at that.

I think it's useful to point out the thing that they said that was invalidating. Because if it takes me a while to acknowledge it, they're going to need to know exactly what was. Because there will be a time delay between when we talk about it or when the invalidation happens and when I call it out.

And then the last step of Coping Ahead – again, this is Emotional Regulation Handout 19 – is:

“Practice relaxation after rehearsing.”

So, sit here and breathe a little bit, and open up my hands, do the willing hands bit. Picture the warm sun late in the afternoon on my face. And the orange light, the way it feels warm on any exposed skin.

So I was noticing, in imagining that situation with my dad, there was tension coming up in my body. I was feeling anxiety and anger. So that's the Cope Ahead step of Radical Acceptance. Getting back to that Distress Tolerance Handout 11B.

I was coping ahead with events that seem unacceptable. Well, invalidation seems unacceptable. So that's why I was imagining a situation – in this case, it was a past situation. But imagine believing what I don't want to accept, that this is not a skill that my parents have right now.

And they are not learning this at the rate that I want them to. And, in the future if they invalidate me, that is what happened. So I'm like kind of doing some imaginal exposure to this is what happened, this is what he said. The next step is to:

“Attend to body sensations as you think about what you need to accept.”

I've been doing that as we've been going, noticing the tension in my body. It's mostly in my gut, and there's been all manner of rumbling and I've been burping, and there are times when it feels like I'm going to be sick, and a lot of that. The next step is:

“Allow disappointment, sadness, or grief to arise within you.

Oh, grief. In addition to the anger, there is some sadness. Probably, the more I do this the more sadness will come up. Because I think the anger is trying to protect me from the sadness. I'm sad that I'm not able to get the validation that I want, or I haven't been able to get the validation that I want for my parents around things that are really important to me.

They haven't had that skill and they do not currently have that skill. I don't know what the future is going to be like. I'm also wanting to practice my boundaries, because I'm expecting that there will be future invalidation and I don't know when it will happen.

“Acknowledge that life can be worth living even when there is pain.”

That's the next step. Life can be worth living even when there is pain. I struggle with this one. I have chronic pain and chronic mental health stuff, so this one is hard for me. I'm choosing to look at moments recently that were, you know... I would have missed that if I weren't alive.

Like I went to a pumpkin patch with toddler and dear, dear friends. We waddled around in the mud and looked at pumpkins and had pumpkin cider doughnuts? Apple cider doughnuts, there we go. I got to do the stairs, run the stairs the other day.

And it was sunny out. It was cold, but it was sunny. I smelled like sunscreen and sweat, and that was worth living for. So that's kind of my way of approaching that thing of acknowledge that life is worth living, even when there is pain.

Even in the midst of those things, I have pain, both physical and mental. So it's not like glee and joy and rapture 100% of the time. There’s moments of that, and there are moments of sadness and anger and anxiety. And then there are moments of glee and joy and rapture.

And then the last step here is:

“Do the Pros and Cons if you find yourself resisting practicing acceptance.”

I don’t want to get into the details of Pros and Cons too much here, because this is actually a fantastic skill. Basically, you're doing the Pros and Cons for doing a behavior that's ineffective.

So what do you get out of it if you do it? What’s the positive if you do it? What's the negative if you do it? And then the pros and cons for resisting that behavior that's ineffective. If you want to look it up yourself, you can find it on Distress Tolerance Handout 5.

One of the things I love about it is: it acknowledges what you get out of doing in an effective behavior. That's the pros for acting on it and the cons for resisting it. These ineffective behaviors, they do do something for us. My judgments of my parents does something for me.

We wouldn't do things if they didn't do something for us. It's just a matter of it usually is sacrificing long-term goals in favor of short term relief. So, that set of focusing on what we get out of acting on the ineffective behavior or the cons of resisting it, that validates. Like, “see, we do this for a reason.”

And then the pros of resisting the ineffective behavior and the cons of acting on the ineffective behavior basically look at the consequences. Like if I continue to judge my parents and refuse to accept that this is where they're at around their validation skill and it is not where I want them to be, I get something out of it, but it also has a cost.

I have judgment with my parents and that's hard to live with. I'm not putting boundaries in place because I'm so busy judging them. I'm not doing the thing that would be effective in the long-term. Because judgments not going to have them change the behavior. If it did, it would have been changed already.

Yeah, we'll get into Pros and Cons in much more detail, and it'll be probably around some of my self-harm behaviors. Because I think that's a good example to share. But I can also do an example of more interpersonal.

So after doing all that, looking at kind of where I am emotionally right now, I think I'm down to like a... still feeling some anxiety, mostly like some residual anger. I would say two or three out of 10 for both of those. Which is a decrease.

I think just the idea of having some hope that it can be a different way in the future because I can take different steps than what I've taken before is encouraging.

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

All right. Well, that's it for now. I know this episode was quite long because acceptance is a really involved skill, and can be really challenging. But I wanted to take the time to do it because it feels pretty foundational to me.

Something I did want to mention, I said in the episode that “pain without acceptance leads to suffering.” That is not an original thought, that is from Marshall Linehan, the author of DBT, and it's on Distress Tolerance Handout 11. The way she puts it is: “rejecting reality turns pain into suffering.”

I also wanted to mention that acceptance is not a one-and-done thing. I need to keep accepting over and over again. And the more I practice it on a given situation, the more effective I get at it. Usually, when I first sit down to actually go through acceptance step-by-step, like what I did on today's episode, it takes about an hour or so for me to sit with it and get through all the steps.

And then, the next time I have thoughts that remind me of that shit – whatever shit I'm trying to accept – or the next time that shit happens again, I can accept it a little bit faster. And the next time after that is a little bit faster.

And eventually, I can get to a point where I can accept shit pretty immediately with a simple thought reminding me to accept what is so. I get more skillful overtime. And that’s not linear.

Acceptance can be really impacted by emotion vulnerability factors. I've mentioned those before when I talked about the emotion wheel in Episode 4, and it's linked in the description of this episode if you want to take a look at that graphic.

But emotion vulnerability factors include health, stress, self-esteem, skill level, and how many fulfilling things you're doing. So on days when I've forgotten my meds or I don't sleep well or I'm maxed out on people, I can struggle to accept shit.

Like for my break up, there are days when I accept it fully without question, and there are days when I judge it and resist it and don't want to acknowledge that it happened. And on those days, it's important not to judge my ineffectiveness. Being ineffective doesn't make me stupid or lazy. Doesn't mean I'm going backwards.

I can acknowledge that some emotion vulnerabilities are at play and I'm not as effective at accepting a thing as I want to be. And acknowledging all of that also takes practice because self-judgment is pretty ingrained.

Anywho, this has gone on long enough. So I'm just going to send you to my outro, and, per usual, end this really abr-

Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky

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

Intro and outro music is Swan Lake Opus 20 by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anatole Fistoulari, released on LP by Richmond High Fidelity / London Records in nineteen fifty-two.