Personality Disorders Forum Activities Survey

Writing another post sharing my own personal brainstorming/ideas/thoughts in response to the forum activity survey results.

Overall, there seems to be the greatest level of interest in adding back Thoughtful Thursday and DB Tuesday. When I think about what these are designed to offer, as well as the feedback in the written comments, I think there are two major things that people want:

1. Sharing deep/vulnerable thoughts, feelings, and experiences
2. Receiving tools, ideas, information, etc. for coping
   

I started thinking about DB Tuesday in particular and how we would go about implementing that if we decided to do it. Some thoughts that crossed my mind:

• Should have reliable/trustworthy information: Nobody on the PD forum team is qualified to formally teach/practice DBT. Even if someone were a licensed, practicing psychotherapist in real life (which to be clear I don't think any of us are 😊), listener guidelines and forum rules prohibit claiming to be an expert and offering to give professional/medical advice. So anything we share needs to be based on reliable external resources.
• Should be sustainable over the long-term: I reviewed the old DB Tuesday forum that was last active in March and it looks like there were only 6 weekly discussion threads before it fizzled out. Ideally whatever we create should last for a long time and be something that could remain active over a span of months/years.
• Should be comprehensive enough to be helpful as a substitute for DBT: As a listener, I've chatted with multiple members who have said they are interested in DBT but don't have access to it for various reasons (i.e. can't find a good therapist, not comfortable going to therapy, can't go to therapy because family would find out and horrible things would happen, etc.) This reminds me of something in the 7 Cups culture guide saying that one of the primary needs that 7 Cups is trying to fulfill is to provide free mental healthcare to people who don't have access to it. Ideally, DB Tuesday would help tap into that need.
  

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The idea that comes to mind for me is to adapt a comprehensive DBT self-help resource into a long-term series of forum discussion posts.

• This DBT self-help resource would be something that provides a systematic, complete, detailed presentation of basically everything there is to know about DBT. So it satisfies the criteria of comprehensiveness and reliable/trustworthy information.
  
• If we split this content into threads based on concepts/topics, there should be enough to create dozens of threads over a span of months. Whenever we reach the end of the topics, we could simply move the threads into an archived sub-forum, loop back around to the beginning, and start over again. So, it satisfies the criterion of long-term sustainability.
  

Brainstorming details/benefits of this:

• As far as what self-help resource to use as a starting point, I did a web search and easily/accidentally managed to find several websites that provide a free, electronic copy of the 1st edition of The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook. The consensus I've seen is that this is an amazing workbook, but I'm really worried about legal/ethical issues related to copyright/plagiarism (so I'm also not linking to those sites in this post 😊). I believe a safer alternative would be to use the content on https://dialecticalbehaviortherapy.com. The forum team could condense, rewrite, paraphrase, etc. as needed while attributing/linking to the original source.
  
• Each thread could include 1-3 discussion questions at the end that encourage reflection, critical thinking, and connecting back to everyday life and personal experiences. This would allow this series of threads to potentially address both of the major needs identified in the community survey: (1) tools/coping skills, (2) expression/sharing/reflection.
  
• Based on some of the known topics that fall within the scope of DBT (e.g. emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness), I believe the discussion questions associated with this discussion series would probably cover most if not all of the topics that people expressed an interest in reflecting upon in their written responses to the survey.
• I believe these reflection/discussion questions would possibly be much more targeted, relevant, and thought-provoking than what might otherwise come out of trying to do a more general Thoughtful Thursday. My suggestion would be to do this DBT thread 2x/week instead of having DB Tuesday 1x/week and Thoughtful Thursday 1x/week.
  
• The group discussion/sharing/reflection aspect of all of this would probably make it a richer and more satisfying/helpful experience for members than trying to independently go through the original self-help resource on their own. The guided/paced/scheduled/structured nature of it might also encourage people to work through the material who otherwise wouldn't have the motivation to do it on their own. (I know I personally don't have the patience or work ethic to slog through either 40 modules or 300 pages of DBT on my own lol.)
  

Tagging other community leaders for feedback, ideas, critiques, or resources. Including group leaders since there might be insights you have from the DBT group discussions that have already taken place.

@azuladragon34 @insightfulSalamander4097 @Xe @Lou73 @FirstLight4762 @StarlitSky4762 @Jish07541 @sereneButton43 @NewPenguin @Tamy4210 @Dancia @sophiasanae

@QuietMagic

It's great to see these discussion threads starting up again. How exciting! I'm looking forward to interacting more with members and listeners on the forums with these discussions 😀 Thanks everyone for the feedback!