Family and friends group - 2020
The Family & Friends Group began the year's training meeting face to face in South Melbourne, and ended it meeting on zoom.
We been operating continuously since 2015. Over continuous improvement focus for the group has meant continually updating what we do, the Carer's Committee works tirelessly to manage, develop and implement our Family & Friends Group. Our model of support is peer led, informed by ongoing monitoring and evaluation. It exists to support family members, encourage learning about BPD and all it encompasses, focuses on developing the techniques that work to improve relationships, especially with our loved one with BPD. In our Family and Friends Group people learn how to support their loved ones, not enable them.
I … left (the) meeting feeling stronger emotionally with so much information and advice, from the conversations,
that I had with some of the people in the group. It’s a very nice group of people!” (L, mother of an adult daughter with BPD) 2017.
Nov 17, 2020 - Non violent Communication
We can play the 'making life wonderful' game or we can play the 'who's right game' according to Dr Marshall Rosenberg. In our next F&F Group we will learn more about how to make life wonderful. To make life wonderful we can relearn natural giving and receiving with grace as we explore the validation concept more deeply. When we play the 'who's right' game, we have winners and losers, the losers are punished and the winners get rewards: it is based on moralistic judgement. Being judgemental is violent thinking, it places barriers between us and creates us and them thinking.
Living with our COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of fear and this makes it easier to be judgemental, it is timely to revisit non violent communication.
"The Family and Friends group was the first support group I attended.
I was very nervous about sharing, but soon felt relieved and comfortable being there.
I feel safe participating without any concerns about being judged." ('S', mother of a son in mid 20s with BPD) 2018.
Oct 20, 2020 - Validation and Emotions
This short informative cartoon helps improve our understanding of emotions. It introduces us the the primary emotions of shame, fear, sadness, anger, disgust, happiness, and surprise or curiosity and explores they underlie secondary emotions. It is emotions that often directly affect our behaviour especially when we we don't regulate them. We are recommended these skills to work on: 1) Learn to attend to emotions, 2) practice curiosity and patience with emotions, 3) talk about and show our 'real' emotions, 4) learn to accept having different emotions, and, 5) learn how to change emotions with emotions.
Our next Family & Friends Group will be revisiting validation, what it means and how we do it. Why don't you join us?
"Since joining the BPD Carers Group I am delighted to say that there has not been a single argument between my daughter and myself.
Thank you BPD Carers Group." (F, Father of an adult daughter) 2018.
sept 15, 2020 - Validation - a way to empathy
Empathy is making connection with other people. To practise empathy requires four components according to Brene Brown: 1) taking on board the perspective of the other person - even if it's not your truth; 2) being non judgemental; 3) recognising the emotion in another; and 4) communicating that recognition to the other person. In reality that's a lot easier said than done. It requires us to listen, without judgement. We need to accept the other person's perspective. And we need to validate the other's emotions. When we do this we can build a relationship.
Our next Family & Friends Group will be revisiting validation, what it means and how we do it. Why don't you join us?
"The Family & Friend's Group's knowledge, support and practical tools gave me the
help I desperately needed to better manage my son’s bpd symptoms." ('A', father of 30 yr old son with BPD) 2019.
august 18, 2020 - positive psychology, gratitude and mindfulness
If we understand how things work, we can make changes more easily. There are skills, techniques we can apply and create the change that we want to happen. The video opposite explains a bit about how Positive Psychology works, so we can improve our understanding.
In this session we build on our previous two sessions to harness mindfulness to ease our anxiety and grief. Always in our work we are reminded of the importance to attend to our own well being so we can be the best support we can be.
July 21, 2020 - Some tips on taking on control
If we think and act thoughtlessly we are not being mindful. It is so easy to develop a pattern of negative and irrational thoughts, this is called cognitive distortion. There are five examples of cognitive distortion:
- Emotional Reasoning - believing based on feelings
- Disqualifying the Positive - ignoring the positive aspects of a situation and focussing on the negative
- Mind Reading - making assumptions about others and behaviours
- Catastrophying - focussing on worst possible explanation
- All or Nothing Thinking - seeing things in extremes
June 16, 2020 - if i can name it, i can feel it
Being emotionally mindful is not always easy, we know only too well. This training session there are a few key points that we can learn. We will learn to sit with our emotions and use them to our advantage and to support others too.
Being emotionally intelligent has three parts:
1. Emotional Awareness - being able to perceive emotions, ours and others, without judgement or without changing them.
2. Emotional Application - being able to use our emotions to benefit ourselves and others.
3. Emotional Management - being able to regulate our emotions.
Mindfulness helps us strengthen our emotional intelligence:
1. It improves our ability to comprehend our own emotions.
2. It helps us learn how to recognize the emotions of other people around us.
3. It strengthens our ability to govern and control our emotions.
To start us on this aspect of our journey, we need to broaden our language skills to name the wide variety of emotions we can feel. The more we can accurately describe our emotions, the more we can be in touch with them.
For more info on emotional intelligence, click on the emotional wheel opposite.
May 12, 2020 - let's get radical
Zoom is fantastic! And our May F&F Group will be taking our understanding of acceptance to a whole new 'radical' level. Radical Acceptance involves your mind, body and spirit in complete acceptance of reality. It means differentiating facts from interpretation so we can see reality.
This 7 minute video is best watched with a pen and paper in hand so you can take notes. It encompasses the key DBT elements of radical acceptance as described by Marsha Linehan. It includes towards the end some very handy hints on how to begin to practice radical acceptance.
april 21, 2020 - acceptance in times of covid-19
Hasn't the anxiety amongst us all risen to such a high level that you can almost feel it in the air? The uncertainty of our personal situations, our community, our country and the world even, it is all wobbly. Many of us are feeling financial, physical and social stresses unlike before. Living in close proximity with others we love creates for many added burdens. Now more than ever, to ease our anxiety and to face the uncertainty ahead, we need 'acceptance'.
Acceptance in human psychology is a our assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing things without attempting to change or protest them. The concept we use is derived from the Buddhist principle of radical acceptance. It is about learning to accept what we cannot change. But Marsha Linehan explains it so much better. It is central to the therapy she developed Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).
Our virtual F&F Group has a focus on support and learning the techniques that will help us get through these hard times. All those who love someone with BPD are welcome to join us. We will be meeting as usual at 6.30pm for our first virtual Family & Friend's Group. If you would like to join us, all you need is access to a smart phone, a laptop or a computer or an ipad...anything like that which has internet access. RSVP to barb@bpdcommunity.com.au and she'll send you the link to join.
March 17, 2020 - Meeting emotional needs
This meeting was cancelled due to COVID-19
We meet now in the SANE boardroom in Sth Melbourne.
In the March meeting we would have been discussing the importance of meeting our own emotional needs. The video clip opposite is based on Schema Therapy which is known to work as a treatment for people with BPD and we can learn from Schema these three healthy ways to meet our own emotional needs. What does this have to do with Boundaries you may ask...ah, well we often complicate boundary setting when we use it to meet our emotional needs, we confuse our values and our emotional needs. Understanding what our emotional needs are might be a challenge for those of us who did not have them met in our own childhood - after all we have spent a lifetime ignoring them. In our previous session on this topic, last March, we considered Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, see the link for that below.
February 18, 2020 - 10 Laws in setting limits
If you are unhappy in a relationship you can bet that you have a problem with 'boundaries'. Perhaps your boundaries are not respected by your loved one, perhaps you are not respecting their boundaries or perhaps you or your loved one does not have sound boundaries. To explore what this might mean for us, we need to understand what limit setting or boundaries are about - and the short answer is that our boundaries are our values in practice. In the February group we will learn about the 10 Laws of Boundaries: Sowing and Reaping, Power, Respect, Motivation, Evaluation, Proactivity, Envy, Activity and Exposure. The link opposite helps explain what these mean.
When we broaden our understanding of the concept of boundaries, it helps us understand ourselves and others better. When we understand, it is easier to change how we do things.
January 21, 2020 - Boundaries for 2020
Hands up if you think you understand boundaries! I bet almost everyone puts their hands up but you know, there might be more to this boundaries idea than is commonly understood. Sometimes we complain because other people don't respect our boundaries - wait a second...don't the boundaries belong to us? So aren't they there for us to obey, not others? Boundaries are to respect our values, they are not rules of behaviour for others to obey. And herein lies our challenge. How do we stick by our boundaries and what difference does that make for us.
At our next family and friends group we will revisit what boundaries mean and why they work and how they help us. Come along, the more the merrier.
December 17, 2019 - Understanding BPD
There are different ways to define BPD depending on which theory you like. Whatever the definition, it is understanding BPD that counts and while all theories have valuable insights, understanding can be elusive. It can be that in facing reality our emotions might block our understanding. It is Fear, a sense of Obligation, and Guilt (FOG) that can inhibit how we see things, it blurs our vision and we must beware of the FOG.
With knowledge comes understanding, those who love someone with BPD learn to understand themselves better as they learn to understand what BPD means to the ones they love. At our December meeting we will learn more about what BPD is and learn more about how we can better support our loved ones.