Week 2 – End of Week Update

This week in IOP we’ve been in the emotion regulation module, and we’ve been learning about and discussing how we engage with our emotions and strategies for regulating our emotion. One of the things we did was learn about what it means to be a “highly sensitive person”, and we did a questionnaire to see if we were highly sensitive. I’ve known for a while now that I am highly sensitive, but I’ve always seen it as a curse – rejection and abandonment feel like the end of the world, making a mistake feels like I destroyed whatever I’m working on, loneliness feels like a sharp knife to my soul, pain in the people I care about makes me desperate to fix everything for them, which often ends up with me feeling resentment later on. If something I eat tastes bad or has a texture I don’t like, I will gag and feel nauseous and am liable to throw up; loud noises bother me; I can’t focus well in environments that are noisy; weird textures on my skin give me the heebie-jeebies. I get overwhelmed by too many people and often need time alone to relax, and if people are watching me do something, even things that I’ve done a million times and I’m very competent at, I am liable to mess up because I get hyper-aware of people’s eyes on me. When I put it like that, it really does seem like a curse, right? But when I mentioned that in group, my group leader brought up some ways that being highly sensitive can be a blessing, and some of them I’ve never linked with being highly sensitive. People who are highly sensitive are aware of the subtleties in our environment and tend to be detail-oriented; we are often conscientious and responsible, which makes us attractive to employers; and highly sensitive people, because we are sensitive to the feelings of others, are able to be highly empathetic. We also have a rich inner life – something that I never connected to being highly sensitive – which for me means that if you set me somewhere with absolutely nothing to do outwardly, I’d probably still have a great time because I can just turn inward and think about all the many questions and topics that occupy my interest and passions. I’m very rarely bored because of this. Additionally, people that are highly sensitive are often deeply moved by the arts or music – something that, as my group leader said, most of us would never be willing to give up – and, on the flip side of being sensitive to egregious tastes and textures, we also notice and enjoy delicate scents and tastes. The point of all this isn’t to say that being a highly sensitive person is always wonderful, but to realize that like most things in life, there are many sides to it and it’s not all good or all bad. There are both lovely things about being a highly sensitive person, and things that are highly unpleasant. I doubt I will ever get to a point that I feel that being highly sensitive is a gift, but I’d like to one day at least one day feel okay about it, and accept and acknowledge that I am this way and that it has given me as many things to be thankful for as it has given me things that I wish weren’t true of myself. 

This idea is the basis of DBT – a concept known as dialectics. The idea of dialectics is that there are many aspects to any one thing, and that there is a middle path that we can take, rather than seeing things as all great or all terrible, all painful or all wonderful. Dialectics is essentially the idea that the world is not black and white, but a full spectrum lies in between, and that the things that we face in our lives are usually somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, not on either end. Related to this, I’ve noticed that even in the way I speak to myself, whether I am self-invalidating or self-compassionate, I am also usually black and white. If I make a mistake, the first thing I think is usually along the lines of “Damn, I’m so terrible” or “I’m a horrible person” or “Why did I even try?” Then I might catch myself and say “No, it’s fine, you’re doing fine,” or “You’re not a horrible person, you’re a good person.” But really, there’s a middle path that I can take, which I would like to work on and become better at doing: “You’re not a horrible person, but you did make a mistake. How can we work on making sure that we don’t make that mistake again?” or, “That’s a common way to react, but it also wasn’t in line with my values. What would I like to happen next time?” It’s not all good or all bad, I’m not always terrible, but I’m also not always good. I can take my mistakes and learn from them without condemning myself, and I can still validate myself while admitting that I could’ve done better. I’ve always been the kind of person that prefers neat little boxes, everything organized and tidy and separated, but that’s really not how the world works, and I want to come to accept that and lean into that. I want to learn to reject the instinct I have to keep everything neat and tidy and clear, and embrace complexity and all the shades in between black and white. 

Something else I really enjoyed from our curriculum in program this week is the idea of breaking your goals into small steps, which I’ve heard many times before, but have never really applied to my mental health goals. I’ve always had such a broad view of my mental health and what I want to work on, and there have been many times where I’ve gone into session with psychologist and not known where to start. Even worse, not having mileposts along the way can make it hard to notice progress. If there’s a thousand miles from point A to point B, and you’ve driven 50 miles, that’s still a significant amount of distance, but if you only take a broad view of things, you’d think you made no progress at all. I think that’s been one of my struggles over the last few years. I’ve made progress, but it’s been hard to tell in what areas I’ve made progress and how much progress I’ve made because I’ve not had any markers along the way to notice and appreciate. I think as I continue in program and beyond, I’d like to work with my providers to figure out more actionable milestones for me to aim for so that I can actually feel like I’m making some progress. While it’s important to take a broad perspective to know where you’re headed and make sure that you’re still heading in the right direction, it’s also important to have smaller goals along the way so that you don’t get lost in the weeds.