Isabella Raine

CW: mentions of mental illness and eating disorders

One year ago, I was completely lost. 

I had just moved back to the United States after an attempt to live in Canada, lost my best friends, and all direction in my life. 

I had to start over financially, socially, mentally and to find a new path. I had put so much emphasis on fleeing my life and moving to Canada that when it imploded, I didn’t know what to do. 

I felt like I had completely failed and I felt alone. 

I knew I needed something I had never tried before and it needed to be big, so I got myself put onto the waiting list for a local DBT program. I didn’t know much about it, just that it helped with my struggles–- my struggles having been depression, binge eating, suicidal ideation and behavior, PTSD, and anxiety. The more I poked around, the more I saw people call it life-changing.

But the waiting list was six months… 

I debated telling them I wasn’t interested just because I didn’t think it was worth waiting that long, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to really try to do what I could on my own in the meantime with the hope that when I started DBT, it would do something magical. 

In those six months of waiting, I got back on my PTSD medication and I got a job I loved. This enabled me to start actually sleeping for the first time in six years, find purpose in daily life and make new friends. 

Fast forward to now, it’s been over six months of DBT and life is infinitely different than it was at the beginning of the year when I started. 

The whole program is a little over a year long. The idea is to go through the book twice during the course of this program, and that I’ll have studied and practiced each skill at least once, hopefully most of them twice. This being sufficient to really soak in each skill in the book. So far I’ve almost gone through the book one full time. I’ve made it back to the lessons I started in the beginning, but Ive missed several classes, so I havent really gone through every lesson or skill.

If I were to try summing up what DBT is about, I would say it’s about creating a life you wanna live, building and maintaining friendships, and using skills to self-regulate your emotions while going through life non-judgementally, thinking dialectally and making effective choices. 

With six months of DBT under my belt, I have a wonderful social life filled with old friends and new, and it is now as fulfilling as it was in high school. I have recovered significantly from binge and comfort eating, I have accumulated tons of positives, created a life I’m excited to live, and all in all I’m happy. My struggles are far and few between and moments that would’ve torn me apart a year ago are but blips in my day now. My emotional regulation has gone from unmanageable to self-regulating better than ever. That’s not to say I don’t reach out to those around me when I need it, but I’m able to self-regulate as needed. 

Six months in, I was doing really well and my target behaviors were almost nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe I would just stop my involvement in the program, but right around that time, I started having some really low moments. Whether they were larger relapses in binging, or outbursts that felt like they came from nowhere. It reminded me I need to see the program through and that I still have lots to learn and do. That and the fact that I plan on making big changes to my life soon, including moving, which has historically not been easy for me, so I know I need to continue through the end and finish by graduating when my therapist sees fit. 

Part of me is really frustrated with myself because my therapist shared recently that some people do graduate in 6 months, but that because of my target behaviors resurfacing in several large moments, she thinks another 6 months is what I need. 
I know it’s not a race and it doesn't mean anyone is better than anyone else for graduating sooner, but I feel like I was doing SO well and then I just crashed in a few low moments. To me, they’re just small blips that happened, but I understand that I need more time with the program and that it will be good to have it through the transition of moving in October.

Since then, I’ve been trying to go the extra mile in group therapy/skills class so I can absorb as much as I can and really take advantage of this opportunity to learn skills I wish everyone else had, too. 
Part of DBT has just been realizing that as a society, we are not taught many of the skills we need to be effective in life and hoping that one day they implement teaching these skills in schools.