Personality Disorders Community Check-in: August 22nd–August 28th

@QuietMagic

Hello Quiet, it warms my heart to see you back as a forum supporter, very excited to see what you have in store for the community. 

As for plans for this week, I'm just looking forward to catching up with some work I've been neglecting. How about you? I hope you're doing well.

Thank you. 

@Xe

Hi, good to see you! Catching up on work sounds great. I'm doing good--I had more free time than usual last week so I started reading a few books, but I'm expecting things to be busy again this week (which is fine).

I don't have anything special planned for now with the forum beyond the basics (make sure all posts get replies, do weekly check-ins, keep the forums non-stigmatizing, try not to burn myself out this time around). But if anybody wants something special, I'll be happy to try my best. 😊

The idea keeps floating around in my mind of doing a series of posts similar to "DBTuesday" on ACT. But the couple times that I've tried reading about it, I keep getting pulled into interesting tangents (e.g. "self-as-context" got me looking into Buddhism, "experiential avoidance" got me reading about exposure therapy). Nobody's begging me to stay focused and create a post series on ACT, so I'm just allowing myself to get pulled in a bunch of different directions and enjoying the ride, lol.

Weekly check-ins?  Count me in!  

@QuietMagic welcome back and I'm thankful to have someone to help get the PD community talkin' again :)  Platy 

@cyanPlatypus6370

Hey! I remember you 😊

Thanks, yup giving people an excuse to talk is the plan. 😀 How are things going?

@QuietMagic

hi Magic. 

Week has been not good. Only ok thing has been work and next week that’s set to change. Realised as some point if you live in today as it’s all you can manage. The future you can’t tolerate comes making that living in today not a remaining option anymore.

self awareness is something I was exploring, but it’s a complicated one. Quickly learn emotional intelligence has self awareness as a core building block. Been kinda off putting to learn about after this discovery. It’s like an unachievable desire .

@LabeledBPD

Sorry that your week has been bad. 😔 That makes sense what you're saying that just getting through each day (instead of focusing on the future) works until there's something creeping into the present that makes it difficult to stay there.

Also makes sense that the idea of emotional intelligence would feel demoralizing/unachievable if it's supposed to be grounded on self-awareness and then self-awareness is really complicated/difficult.

Sometimes if something feels impossible, I'll give up on it (even if it's supposed to be necessary/important), live life in a way that feels natural/doable to me, have my own experiences, undergo certain changes as a result of those experiences... and then months/years later I'll come back to that impossible thing and realize that I've accidentally done it--just in a different way that happened spontaneously and didn't require making myself do something that felt impossible or trying to control something that's uncontrollable.