{"author":"Kiera Van Gelder","author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder","total_quotes":16,"quotes":[{"text":"All the skills from DBT glom together, a mass of acronyms without any meaning. I pull out the DBT books and paw through the pages. Something has to help. Then I find these words: 'The lives of suicidal, borderline individuals are unbearable as they currently being lived.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":329,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"I'm so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":119751,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"In some ways, com­ing to terms with my­self and work­ing to­ward re­cov­ery has been like say­ing “I love you” to some­one but keep­ing a loaded gun hid­den in your back pocket, just in case that per­son pisses you off enough.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["automutilation","borderline-personality-disorder","recovering-from-bpd","recovery","self-harm","suicide"],"id":143781,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"An inner ease spreads inside me. Such is the power of acceptance and understanding from other people, the power of validation.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":145287,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"Accepting a psychiatric diagnosis is like a religious conversion. It's an adjustment in cosmology, with all its accompanying high priests, sacred texts, and stories of religion. And I am, for better or worse, an instant convert.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":182259,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to—if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of 'normal' or 'healthy' because pain and loneliness are all you remember?","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":216082,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"DBT's catchphrase of developing a life worth living means you're not just surviving; rather, you have good reasons for living. I'm also getting better at keeping another dialectic in mind: On the one hand, the disorder decimates all relationships and social functions, so you're basically wandering in the wasteland of your own failure, and yet you have to keep walking through it, gathering the small bits of life that can eventually go into creating a life worth living. To be in the desolate badlands while envisioning the lush tropics without being totally triggered again isn't easy, especially when life seems so effortless for everyone else.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["balance","borderline","bpd","dbt","dialectical-behavioral-therapy","failure","life","life-lessons","mistakes","survival","surviving"],"id":238944,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"I’m not interested in Bob Marley telling me to ‘lively up’ myself. The only music that satisfies me is Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor’s voice crying through industrial rhytms. In the August evenings, I lie on my bed with earphones, letting his laments roll through me like unrepentant thunderstorms. I envy the courage that carries his voice into the world. He doesn’t berate himself for pain and anger; he howls. And this delights me, even though I feel ashamed when my own rage comes to the surface. My anger doesn’t signify courage; it’s just more confirmation that I’m bad.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline","depression","shame"],"id":307874,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn't acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process because of three key biological vulnerabilities (1993a): First, we're highly sensitive to emotional stimuli (meaning we experience social dynamics, the environment, and our own inner states with an acuteness similar to having exposed nerve endings). Second, we respond more intensely and much more quickly, than other people. And third, we don't 'come down' from our emotions for a long time. One the nerves have been touched, the sensations keep peaking. Shock waves of emotion that might pass through others in minutes keep cresting in us for hours, sometimes days.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":343428,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"},{"text":"We need this help from the outside because we don't know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour.","author":"Kiera Van Gelder","tags":["borderline-personality-disorder","mental-illness"],"id":349605,"author_id":"Kiera+Van+Gelder"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":16,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}