changing our mind

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE

A DIFFERENT WAY OF THINKING?
 

“Our life is shaped by our mind. What we think, we become.” Buddha

At BPD Community, we encourage you to: develop new ways of thinking and responding; leave behind unhelpful thinking patterns; and develop more helpful thinking patterns. In this way you can change your behaviour to become more supportive of your loved ones. In doing this, we become empowered and have more control in our lives.

We all have default ways of thinking and doing things. This is our brain's way of dealing with the massive amounts of information we receive.

Think about when first learn to drive a car. We are careful, thoughtful, it can take a long time before we are able to get to the stage of unlocking the car to let our minds go into autopilot. Sometimes experienced drivers get into the car and before they know it they are home having driven quite some distance to get there and without any proper memory of the drive. Nonetheless, we tend to be ready to change from automatic pilot if there is a danger on the road we need to address. This is just the same with our everyday conversations and communications.

In our everyday life we have developed default ways of thinking and responding to get us through. And some of these thinking patterns are unhelpful. For example, judgemental thinking and behaviour is the most unhelpful way of thinking and responding to others. When we are judgemental we are telling the other person that they are not good enough. Judgemental thinking is pejorative, it is a way of telling someone they don’t fit in, we are rejecting them. And it makes our lives unhappy too.

We live in a highly judgemental world where being judgemental is commonplace. Many of us can cope with it, but we are unlikely to want to be around anyone who is predisposed to be judgemental towards us. When we are judgemental towards people with BPD, it is very cruel. They feel it keenly and it hurts. Being judgemental is something we will want to change.

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TECHNIQUE NO 1

14 Day Challenge

Validation is the key to opening a relationship and building trust.

If you accept the 14 day challenge to validate someone 3 times a day for 2 weeks, then you can see the difference it makes to your communication with others.

But this fortnight is just a start. To create the default thinking patterns that allow you to automatically validate takes much longer. Consider how long it took you to be able to drive without consciously thinking? Then of course, there’s driving….and driving. Some of us never quite master all the driving skills, for example parallel parking. Once we have the basics under our belt, then mastering the skill takes more conscious effort.

Validation is one of those skills that is a real challenge for us, on many levels, it requires three steps of conscious effort to master it:
1) a reminder of the importance to validate
2) careful listening and observation to identify the emotion of concern
3) consideration of the needs of the other person and if they want to hear us.

One day when I was first learning this, my loved one with BPD had put up with me telling her what she should do to help get her life back on track, of course at the time I didn’t recognise this was being judgemental. Eventually, she could take no more and her frustration became anger. I was trying to listen, trying to validate and I said, ‘you are angry’, this only served to escalate the situation more, she denied being angry – that wasn’t what she was feeling. I tried to point out to her that was how she was behaving. And she screamed back at me, ‘I am not angry, I am hurt.’

Now feeling hurt is not an emotion, but when we 'feel' hurt there are a complexity of emotions occurring and in this case, anger was dictating the dominant behaviour. My efforts to be validating had failed. It would have been helpful if I had listened and observed well before my loved one got angry, I would have noticed her becoming more frustrated and impatient with my attempts to fix her. I was too focussed on what I wanted to say, not on what she wanted. 

This is your challenge to try to make a conscious effort to validate others for the next fortnight. Try it on anyone: the shop assistant might be happy, the tram passenger might be frustrated, your work mate might feel exasperated, your cousin might be excited. What have you got to lose? You do have everything to gain.

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TECHNIQUE NO. 2

Get rid of the word ‘should’ from your vocabulary.

Have you ever noticed someone who has been overweight and you have thought to yourself, ‘they should go on a diet’? Have you ever said to that person, unasked: ‘Why don’t you try the new fasting diet?’ That is judgemental thinking and judgemental behaviour. The person might be overweight but when we make the observation that they are overweight, it can be an assessment that is unkind because it is judgemental. The overweight person will automatically feel judged because being overweight is looked on unfavourably. When we offer unasked for advice in this context, our thinking has driven our behaviour and we behave judgementally.

When we are judgemental we:

1. Think someone should be different
2. Communicate that thought to them
3. Offer unwanted advice

Our loved ones with BPD can behave in ways that can be frustrating and sometimes just scary. They may abuse drugs for example. If we said, ‘you shouldn’t be smoking marijuana’ they would probably know already that we think marijuana is not good for them. So, when you say that, you are telling them what they know already and you are reinforcing to them that you do not approve of them. Those words are heard as a put down. Remember that adage, if you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all. It's better to say nothing than to be judgemental.

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TECHNIQUE NO 3

The 5 out of 10 rule - a handy practice.

There are probably times when your loved one with BPD is too upset to talk; there are probably times when you are too upset to talk. When anyone is upset on a scale of 5 out of 10, then it will require effort to calm back down. It is unhelpful to continue to talk with someone either you or they are upset 5 out 10. Try this:

1. Foreshadow that you want to talk with your loved one about something important to you and set a time to do that.
2. When the time comes, do a check that you are both ok to discuss this.
3. Explain how if either you or they become upset to a level of 5 out of 10, that either of you can take a break to settle down.
4. Explain that either one can call time out under these circumstances, for themselves (not the other person).
5. It is the responsibility of the person calling time out that they say when and where they can meet again to continue to discuss the situation, and it needs to be as soon as possible and it needs to be agreed to by both parties.
6. Ask if they can work with this. If they can't let it go, remember only you can control your behaviour.

TECHNIQUE NO 4

Avoid the FOG!

When it is foggy we can’t see clearly, our view is clouded and if it’s really bad we can’t find a way through and can easily get lost.

FOG in the world of BPD is Fear, sense of Obligation, Guilt. If these emotions are high, then it obscures our ability to see clearly.

In the world of BPD these three emotions reign high for families and friends of someone with BPD. We understand the importance of emotional regulation for ourselves as well as for our loved ones. These three emotions have a special place for us and it is our responsibility to manage them for ourselves.

The key to regulation is to recognise your emotional needs and accept that they are yours to manage. Clue: avoid thinking about ‘should’ and instead work on observing, in the present – ie be mindful.

FEAR:

1. You might feel scared that you cannot control the situation. Your loved one may be self harming, for example, or engaging in other at risk behaviour. If your loved one is an adult you need to negotiate your sense of responsibility with your loved ones autonomy as an adult.
2. You might feel rejected within your family, you might be anxious that the behaviour of your loved one will isolate you because others don’t understand. This fear of rejection is common.

OBLIGATION:

This sense of obligation is strong for parents especially. You have a lifelong responsibility for your children, in some ways, but they have a right to their own autonomy. This emotion drives unhelpful thinking, where we confuse being supportive with enabling. When we enable our loved ones, we disempower them. This is an important consideration in boundary setting.

GUILT:

People who love someone with BPD feel guilty. They know that they are not always responding in helpful ways and the hurt and pain of their loved one can be hard to watch. Parents especially are ridden with guilt, reliving what they did raising their child/children. Blaming ourselves and feeling guilty does not help us. As soon as blame raises its ugly head, we know that judgement is at hand. We need to draw a line in the sand, nothing can change what we did, all we can do is focus on the present and plan for the future. We overcome guilt by working on being the best person we can.