At the end of week five of NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer training, we learned the concept behind Dialectical Behavior Therapy or DBT. To begin seeing the world in less black and white terms and to learn to hold and accept uncomfortable and opposing feelings, we made dialectical statements describing two roses in opposing terms. My two roses here are both colorful and monochromatic.
We spent most of the class learning about these major mental illnesses:
- Schizophrenia
- Major Depressive Disorder
- Bipolar Disorder
- Schizoaffective Disorder
- Borderline Personality Disorder
Before our DBT exercise, we did an exercise in relapse prevention. Over the course we are filling in a chart to help us prevent relapses. The three areas I’m focusing on are education/employment, relationship with others, and relationship with self. We spent one week identifying events in our three areas of focus, the following week we determined which thoughts we have connected to those events, and yesterday we listed associated feelings.
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