Validation and Self-Compassion

 No one gets through life without experiencing emotional pain, whether it's the pain of losing someone you love, the pain of public speaking, the discomfort of being ill, or the disappointment of not achieving cherished goals. Despite the absolute certainty that we will experience pain, most of us do whatever we can to avoid difficult emotions like sadness, hurt and grief, though the difficult emotion for some may be joy or happiness. We numb ourselves with food, alcohol, shopping, work, the computer, sex, drugs, excessive exercise and walk through the world half asleep. Avoiding pain may sound like a great idea--who wants to suffer when you could be pursuing happiness?  The problem is that numbing yourself to difficult feelings limits your ability to get information about your world,  to be emotionally intimate with those you love, and to experience peace. Avoiding also is tiring and limits the energy you have to enjoy life.

 In his book  The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, Christopher Germer, Ph.D. lists five steps in accepting uncomfortable feelings:  Aversion, Curiosity, Tolerance, Allowing and Friendship.  Aversion, the first stage, is when we try to deny the difficult feeling, resist feeling it, or ruminate about how to get rid of it.  Germer proposes a new way of relating to feelings, one that is more accepting and compassionate. He sees accepting feelings as a path to peace and freedom from anxiety and depression.

Those who have avoided feelings for long periods of  time may have a generalized fear of emotions, having forgotten what they were originally avoiding. Or perhaps they believe themselves to be unlovable, permanently flawed, or broken and cannot bear to look at themselves or have anyone else know their internal experience for fear their secret will be revealed. By continuing to avoid they never learn that they are simply human, like the rest of us.

Acceptance is fabulous. The bigger question for many is how to accept?  How do you accept anything about yourself when you can't list a single positive characteristic and on a very basic level you loathe who you are?

I think the answer is validation. Once a person is mindful of their emotions, validation gives the road map to acceptance. When you validate you acknowledge that whatever feelings and thoughts you have are the feelings and thoughts you have.  In addition, the levels of validation (Linehan 1993) give concrete ways to practice validation whether you love yourself or not.  Being present, Accurate Reflection,  Articulating the Unsaid, Validation in Terms of Past Experience or Biology, Normalizing, and Radical Genuineness are guidelines to looking at your internal experience in an effective way, without judgments. Being Present would mean not running from the feeling and accurate reflection is labeling and observing what you are experiencing.  Articulating the unsaid is making a guess about what you are experiencing when you aren't certain and checking the facts of that guess.  Validation in Terms of Past Experience or Biology takes into account that your temperament, current physical status, and the experiences you've had all contribute to your view of the world, sometimes in defining ways.  Finally, radical genuineness with yourself means knowing that others have had similar experiences and that your experience is understandable to other human beings.

The Power of Validation

The Power of Validation is published!  While written as a parenting book focused on young children, the book teaches the steps of validation and can be used by anyone who wants to improve their relationships, by families of those with borderline personality disorder, and by anyone who wants to learn to validate him or herself.

When Family Members Don't Like Their Loved One with BPD

One of the most difficult feelings to acknowledge is not liking your loved one who has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  If you have experienced these feelings, please know that you are not alone and it is a very difficult situation with many possible causes. How to manage these feelings is an important, complex question with many different possible causes and options.

First consider what has led to these feelings? Maybe you can pinpoint the one thing that if it didn’t exist you wouldn’t feel the way you do? Knowing the source of your feelings helps to clarify the options.  That is the first step.  I’ve listed some possibilities below:


1.   Can you remember what your daughter was like before her symptoms became more dominant?  Can you separate her personality from her disorder? Because the disorder is so difficult and overwhelming, sometimes BPD becomes all we see even though if we look more carefully we can see the person separate from the disorder.  Maybe take some time and list the symptoms of BPD and then list the behaviors that your daughter displays that fit the symptoms.  Then write down the her  personality characteristics that are not symptoms of BPD.

If what you don’t like is the disorder, maybe try to increase opportunities to interact with her when her symptoms are less prominent.  This may not be easy to do, but sometimes the disorder is so demanding that when someone is doing better families breath a sigh of relief that they can pay attention to other people and other needs.  Thus they don’t get to experience the person who has BPD when s/he is doing well.

While absolutely normal and understandable, interacting only when the person with BPD is experiencing difficulty sometimes leads to increased symptoms on the part of the person with BPD (not conscious) because they feel abandoned when they are doing better.  The connection with parents can become about discord. Feeling attached through anger is better than no attachment for the person with BPD.  This can be very wearing on parents and other family members.  If this is the case, then it is possible (though a lot of work) to change this pattern.

2.  Is it is a question of her behavior or choices being contradictory to your values?  If so, then is her behavior reflective of her values or her disorder? Do you understand the reasons she is behaving the way she does?  Understanding the reasons someone behaves the way they do sometimes helps us accept though not approve or support.  Is it possible to dislike the behavior but love the person?  And if her choices do reflect different values, can you find acceptance that she believes differently than you?

3.  Is it her behavior toward you that is the final straw?  As a behaviorist, I believe that all behavior has a purpose, even when it is part of a disorder.  Can you identify what purpose her behavior toward you might have? What does her behavior toward you accomplish for her (such as increased contact with you as noted in number 1)?   After the reason for the behavior is known, then changes in the results of the behavior can change  the behavior.

4.  Are you experiencing chronic stress or compassion burnout?  Not liking someone we used to like, someone we’ve given a lot of time and energy to, is a common symptom of both of these situations.  It may be that you need to set more limits, give yourself more breaks, and do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself.  Finding support that works for you, validating yourself and your own needs would also be helpful.  You might also evaluate whether you are giving too much and need to reconsider your limits.

5.  Could this be about sadness for you?  Are you feeling discouraged?  Are you feeling hopeless, perhaps like a failure?  Or afraid?  When you see your daughter is it painful for you because of your own feelings? It may be that seeing her brings up painful feelings for you and that could make you not want to be around her.  In this situation, taking a look at your feelings and how to resolve them or accept them might help.

6.  Are you constantly on edge, waiting for the next crisis? Are you attempting to control what you can’t control?  This can also lead to exhaustion and resentment.  Sometimes having a crisis plan, so that it is concrete and clear what you can do and what you can’t do could be helpful.

7.  One option is of course  that you don’t like her. It may be that completely accepting that fact will help you. What you think and feel is valid and self-validation would mean not judging yourself for your thoughts and feelings. Then, remember that validation is not a communication of love or liking, just as it is not agreeing.  It is acceptance and recognition that the other person has thoughts and feelings and has a right to her thoughts and feelings, whether it is someone you love or someone you don’t want to spend a single minute with.  I would say that every person in the world has a right to their thoughts and feelings. Maybe separating validation from love or liking would help. When you validate her thoughts and feelings you are not communicating that you like or love her.

Plus, validation of her thoughts and feelings could make your interactions easier which could lead to your feelings changing.  Or not.

Finally, you might consider talking with a therapist who is knowledgeable about BPD to help sort out your thoughts and feelings.

Thanksgiving

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and I've a lot to be thankful for. I am so very grateful to my Mother who gave me the tools to pursue my dreams. I am grateful for my immediate family who support my long hours of writing and to an editor who took a chance and accepted a proposal.  I am grateful to a colleague who introduced me to another editor who is now considering four books. I am grateful to those who believed in me and gave me the opportunity to share information on a national conference call.  I am grateful for my health and that I have such wonderful people who love me.  I blessed in that I work with the most fabulous, giving people you could imagine and I get to do work I love.

I am grateful for the opportunity to give back. Peace for me lies in helping others to develop their careers, in writing books that may help someone somewhere, and in offering what I can to assist others in need.  I want to give more.  With like-minded people, I'm starting a non-profit.

I am blessed to be able to do that.  Thank you. How wonderful to have a special day to say thank you.

Understanding Anger

Many times people describe another person as an "angry" person or someone who has an "anger problem" and shake their heads. Emotionally abusive spouses, the controlling boss, the critical parent--all may be described as angry people. Bullies are angry people, whether they are twelve or forty-five. Maybe it's hard to understand why someone would be angry most of the time. After all, being chronically angry has many negative consequences for both the person who lives in anger and those around that person. Why would anyone continue a behavior that seems so negative?

Anger is a complicated emotion but we're beginning to understand it better than ever before.  There are different types of anger.

First consider Stephanie. That's a made-up name of course and doesn't refer to any real person. Stephanie is focused on self-esteem. Focusing on self-esteem is a trap, as we know from Dr. Neff's bookSelf Compassion (2011).  She looks for achievements to feel good about herself and assesses herself in terms of whether she is better than others in various ways, such as being smarter, more fit, wealthier, and the like. Because she sees her value as measured through these comparisons, there will be times when she realizes others are smarter, wealthier, or in better shape than she is. There are many ways of responding, and her way is to be angry when that happens. Loss of her value as a person hurts and anger is one response to feeling hurt. In some situations where someone isn't clear about who they are, the anger may be intense because they feel so worthless. Some people routinely compare themselves to others who they judge as being superior to them and the result is also anger.  Believing that you are worthless is one root of chronic anger.

Jake is an abusive spouse. When his wife Wendy returned home late from a meeting, he raged at her, demanding to know where she had been. He "knew" she was cheating on him.  Wendy apologized over and over and reassured him she loved him. To avoid his anger she told her boss she couldn't stay late any more. She made many changes in her life to avoid Jake's anger. Anger for Jake is a way of controlling his fears of abandonment.

Allison is a pretty  twelve-year-old girl who goes to a private school. She's the Queen Bee with a group of three or four followers. She puts others down and believes she is superior to other students and deserves to be adored. When she wasn't chosen as homecoming queen she was enraged. She stayed angry for months and tormented the girl who was chosen as queen. She believed she deserved it, she wanted it and she saw herself as the prettiest girl at the school. She stayed angry for months and tormented the girl who was chosen as queen.

Wesley continues to form relationships that seem promising. He has a certain closeness that he is comfortable with. He is fine until he talks about marriage and then he finds a reason to be angry with the one he cares about. He has the same pattern in business. He works well with someone until he thinks about having a business partner. Then he destroys the relationship by finding fault with the other person.

Anger is often a secondary emotion, triggered by fear. Think about your child running onto the road in front of your house. Fear comes first, then anger. Sometimes the change from fear to anger happens so quickly and automatically people aren't even aware it occurred.

Steven Stosny, in his book Treating Attachment Abuse (1995) talks about anger as an emotional salve to cover up core hurts. He identifies core hurts, some of which are feeling ignored, unimportant, accused, guilty, untrustworthy, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable. The healthy person has the power to self-validate and cope with these difficult emotions.

If someone doesn't have the ability to soothe through self-validation, then they may use anger to invalidate the person who has hurt them. By assuring oneself and others that the hurt was not legitimate, that the other person was in the wrong, the person establishes their superiority. Thus they avoid feeling the difficult emotion.

For example, Allison believes that the girl who won the contest did not deserve it and thus does avoids dealing with the feeling of rejection or legitimate loss. She attacks the girl who did win to prove her point.  Allison is exhibiting a narcissistic anger--she does not feel insecure, she feels entitled.

Jake is attempting to avoid terrifying feelings of abandonment. He does not have to see himself as wrong or selfish, or mean because he is sure his wife was the one at fault.

Stephanie feels powerless and inadequate. When someone feels powerless, anger can be empowering. What a different feeling that is! Empowering can also mean control.  For fearful people, feeling in control may be soothing and they can often get that feeling through anger.

Anger can create distance when someone is afraid of getting too close.  If someone has grown up with distant parents, they may crave closeness but at the same time be afraid of it. Anger can be protective in those situations. That's Walter's pattern.

Anger can also be a safe way to engage with someone. I fight with you, therefore we are connected.

Stosny also points out the chemical rush that comes with anger. When a person gets angry, the brain secretes norepinephrine. norepinephrine works much like a pain reducer. When provoked the brain also produces the hormone epinephrine, which causes a surge of energy throughout our body. The chemical reactions may be comforting as well. Some report feeling an almost addictive like response to the adrenaline-like rush they experience when angry.

Treating anger problems requires careful assessment to find the reasons for its occurrence.

A Few Thoughts About Self Compassion

Dr. Kristin Neff's book on self compassion was published in April 2011. We've followed her website for some time and used her work in the work we do. Our expectations for her book were high. She didn't disappoint.

Human minds seem to naturally be judging, judging, and judging some more. Many people tend to build themselves up by putting others down. The idea seems to be that if someone see themselves as better than someone else then they feel better about themselves. Bullies do this to an extreme and gather allies to join them to  further prove their superiority over another human being. Given that in this country we seem fixated on being above average as a way of having self-esteem, that means finding someone or lots of someones you see as beneath you. The judging doesn't stop with others but usually includes harsh judgments of themselves as well.

Dr. Neff explains clearly how that is a set-up for problems and why it doesn't work. She offers self compassion as an alternative to self esteem.  She points out that if people see conflicts as being between two groups of people, such as between women and men or between different nationalities,  they tend to be more accepting of the differences than if they think of the conflicts as being between human beings. That leads to one of her main pathways to self compassion--accepting that what we experience are is part of the human condition. We all experience loss, disappointment, failure, shame and regret.

To truly experience self compassion is to not judge. Self compassion means to understand and accept. Is she saying nothing should be judged as wrong? No. Dr. Neff describes discriminate wisdom as the ability to separate the action from the person. Stealing is wrong. Understanding that the person who stole was hungry helps you have compassion.

Teaching a nonjudgmental stance is part of DBT. Perhaps teaching self compassion as what to do instead of judging adds an important component.

Self compassion also adds to the understanding of invalidation, perhaps helping stop the behavior. Understanding that every human being makes mistakes and is fallible and that there are multiple reasons for the missteps and less than desirable decisions encourages the logic and truth of stopping invalidating statements.

Perhaps most important of all, Dr. Neff cites research that shows people practicing self compassion are less likely to be depressed or anxious and have a more stable sense of security. That's a significant result.

Vegetarian

I didn't intend to become a vegetarian.  Really, I didn't.  But something happened last March and I just couldn't eat meat anymore. Not only did I not want it, I couldn't tolerate the thought of meat in my mouth. Probably just a passing thing I thought, but here I am six months later and I can't stand the thought of eating flesh. That's the way I think of meat now and I can't switch it back. Meat is flesh right?  That's the truth.

The problem is that I'm having difficulty getting enough protein. I've always loved carbs and taking meat out of my diet only makes the problem worse. Carbs taste so good.  Eating is not about what tastes good I tell myself. Because of the problem with protein I made a decision to eat meat again. Making firm decisions about my own behavior has worked before, like deciding I would go to the gym.  This time it didn't work.

That solution is not working.  Now I'm focused on alternative protein sources.  How can I increase my protein without eating meat? Greek yogurt is great. But I need more.

Enter spicy black bean burgers.  These patties are flavorful and taste like a treat.  Wrapped iwth veggies in a low-carb whole wheat tortilla and what a treat.  My meat-loving friends eat them too. I never knew these "burgers" could taste so wonderful.  So if I found one fabulous option, there should be another, right?  Protein packed chocolate pudding with no sugar and 9 carbs, 190 calories and 30 grams of protein. 30!! Seriously, this stuff is so good.

There's got to be more.  I'm searching.