No. I am answering your question. Do you question this answer?

Thanks for the recommendation. I agree. And so does OP’s brother or his caretakers, because OP’s brother was being taken to the hospital when OP posted.

I’d respond saying that, as with anything, the test is in the pudding and the devil’s in the details.

I think DBT can help to the extent that it leads to variation, selection, and retention of behaviors, including mental behaviors. I really like that DBT is evidence-based. I also like that it has acceptance and mindfulness components to it.

What can you do if you try DBT and you don’t see it moving your life toward where you’d like to?

One approach is to change the way you do DBT. Maybe there’s DBT therapists who focus less on following DBT rigidly, and more on using it in a pragmatic way. Maybe they use as an underlying framework something like Process-Based Therapy.

As with many things in life, it’s a matter of testing until it clicks.

As to DBT techniques or procedures, I don’t know them. I only know the DBT principles.

Because answering questions is something I am unable to do. In fact, I simply wouldn’t believe it if someone told me I had just answered a question.

I also messed up my back quite young. It was in my early twenties. It sucks.

The priority should be getting checked out. It’s likely at some point he’ll be doing physical therapy. The exercises by Williams and the ones by McKenzie have helped me greatly. Much later I started doing calisthenics, including Gold Medal Bodies.

As for you, there are some things that help people in general, levers that improve wellbeing. One of them is mindfulness. There are many ways of practicing it. You can do it with the Healthy Minds app.

Another one is defusion exercises. They can help with your triggers. You can find the exercises online. I tend to like ones from Steven C. Hayes.

There’s also acceptance exercises you could do, which can help with coming to terms with the current reality while being aware of who you want to be. I suggest the same source (Hayes).

Finally, you can do values exercises to know what you want out of this tough situation. Values clarification can make people more resilient.

As I always say, Hayes is not the only option. It’s just the one I like.

I wish the best for you. Let me know if you have questions :)

It’s a meme of sorts. Some time ago, someone sent that message again and again to lots of people.

Why not?

I question your answer.

Unfortunately, no, I can’t. Although someday maybe I will be able to!

This kid should read Mitch Prinstein’s work. Bottom line: high-status people have worse lives, while likeable people have better lives.

Thanks for taking the time for that. This post made me realize I should calibrate my screen!

Sorry for the late response. I hope you have had time to process things and to learn a bit more about who you’d like to be now that you have a new path before you.

Why do those exercises resonate with me? Because they seem effective for me. Sometimes I stop suffering altogether and can face difficult situations more flexibly. Sometimes the exercises punch me in the gut… and then I can face difficult situations more flexibly.

I also know about Coherence Therapy, and I think the experiential exercises are exploiting the same mechanisms. In effect, you’re transforming schemas deeply, instead of simply trying to change by building new ones (while the old ones are still powerfully guiding your behavior). If you’re curious, we can talk about Coherence Therapy’s mechanisms and how ACT can exploit them.

The take-away is that experiential exercises like the object one are taking advantage of your memory, your sensory apparatus, and your meaning-making capacity to make it easier for you to accept tough situations and choose who you’d like to be.

As to exercises for guilt, I’d suggest something strange.

First, I’d suggest the objects exercise or similar defusion exercises. That way, you can think flexibly beyond “I’m guilty”. Then, I’d suggest acceptance exercises like the wider view or the acceptance through perspective. That way, it becomes easier to experience that guilt without it tripping you up. I’d do self exercises like the acceptance through perspective. That way, you can build a sense of self that is greater than “I’m a guilty person”. Finally, I’d do values exercises such as values writing, drawing on sweetness, or flipping the pain. That way, you learn from your guilt and orient your life towards what you value.

So, if you notice, I’m suggesting the same exercises as before, but I’m directing them towards the guilt itself.

You can think of ACT as a toolset. A very effective one. And you can use its tools in different contexts. It’s just a matter of doing precisely that.

I hope ACT and mindfulness can help!

As always, feel free to ask :)

Dropout uses Vimeo?

To easily notice what you notice, a red circle would help here

Some recommendations that have changed my life and many others’:

• Learn to WOOP, by Gabrielle Oettingen. If that fails,
• Learn about the Procrastination Equation and CSI-Approach, by Piers Steel. If that fails,
• Read and internalize A Liberated Mind by Steven C. Hayes. I’d recommend this even if the above don’t fail.

Please let me know if you have questions :)

Amazing

The invention of the transistor never happened in the Fallout universe.

This makes so much sense. There are computers but they use vacuum tubes!

What is the in-game explanation for how intelligent robots are? Like, Fallout’s robots aren’t brilliant, but they seem more capable than any mass-market robot today!

Holy crap. You made me involuntarily lift my hand to cover my mouth as I said “Oh my god”. I’m glad everything was sorted

Writing can help sometimes. Totally. But it’s important to compare writing with the alternatives.

Writing is painfully slow and requires loads of work. An example of this is the knowledge management literature: trying to encode an expert’s knowledge at some point becomes too expensive. That’s why working alongside masters of a discipline is so special: they know things that are hard to put into writing.

Writing is also prone to mistakes. Businesses have learned this the hard way in the last half-a-century. Some tech businesses insisted that it was a matter of learning to write well. “Use this method of writing requirements”. “Use this framework for writing specifications”. But miscommunication still happened. Faced with this problem, Kent Beck and Jeff Patton found that what works most efficiently is for people to use narrative to talk about the problems at hand. In this context, documentation is useful to the extent that it helps in conversation.

There’s also the fact that writing is a very context-poor method of communication. When talking, you’ve got much more to pick up on: the speed of the words, the spacing between the words, the pitch, the eyes, the mouth, the eyebrows, the head tilt, the hand positions, the foot positions, the general stance, etc. Additionally, when talking you can go back and forth, identifying and correcting misunderstandings much faster than with text.

On top of that is the fact that OP is talking about a romantic context. This changes things a bit. This is the purview of psychology. Psychology also has a similar history to business: they both went from believing it’s a matter of teaching people to find the most precise technical language to believing it’s a matter of having conversations. But the conversations in business are not the same as in romance.

Romance requires you to care about someone else’s vulnerability and for you to open up to them. And this is the most powerful way of reassuring both of you and being securely attached. This is the insight of emotion-focused therapy.

So that’s how I see writing.

It can contribute to shared meaning, but it requires plenty of work and yet it consistently leads to misunderstandings. These misunderstandings can be dealt with faster with conversation. If the context of the conversation is romantic, the most important thing someone can do is open up to their partners and care for their partners’ vulnerability.

Of course, what I like about your comment is that it recognizes the limitations of text. And, of course, if used well, it can help.

Crucial Conversations and Sue Johnson’s book/workbook on conversations. Can’t recommend those enough. They’ve changed my life