Struggling with Comparison - Part II

Using DBT to help us separate our judgements from our observations mental noting.” Mental noting is a principle in Dialectal Behavioral Therapy (DBT) that helps us separate our judgements from our observations. This can be tricky, because our judgments are often implied and automatic.  My thought “I do not jump like Sylvia” can be neutral, or it could imply judgement. Mental noting helps us dissect our thoughts more clearly: I do not jump like Sylvia, and that makes me sad, because I think that makes me a bad dancer. OR I do not jump like Sylvia, and that makes me curious, because I want to learn how to jump higher.  But once we have separated our judgements from our observations, and processed the negative beliefs that arise, we might still be left with the question of ‘why.’ If the answer is not that I am irreparably broken, why is my experience different? Using grief techniques to understand our experience Worden, the grief psychologist I mentioned earlier, asks us to pay attention to the question, “Why is my experience different?”with some non-judgmental curiosity. He asks us to consider how our circumstances of loss are different from someone else’s using his mediators of mourning. In my own therapeutic work, I have found that these mediators can apply to a variety of losses, so I have changed some of his original language to be more accommodating:

1.    – Who/what was lost?

Nature of the Attachment – What was the strength and security of the relationship? Circumstances of the loss – What was the expectancy and clarity of what was lost, as well as your proximity to the event? Historical antecedents What have you lost before and how did you and those around you respond? What is your mental health history? Personality mediators What is your age, gender, attachment style, etc.? What do you believe, value, and do? Social mediators What support is available to you, and how satisfied are you with it? What is your social role and what expectations do you carry? Conconcurrent stressors and life-change events What else is going on in your life right now? Each of these mediators helps provide a reasonable explanation as to why the experiences we grieve can be so vastly different. These mediators provide a more nuanced way to compare our experiences. Even when going through the same life transition, losing the same parent, or living the same moment, our experience and way of responding are going to be different. And that’s okay! Using the 7 mediators can help shift our belief systems from thoughts like I am incapable/incompetent/damaged/worthless/etc. to thoughts like I am learning/growing/healing/etc. Notice again how the curious path invites words with movement, and shame invites words that are definitive and stuck. Use comparison to invite curiosity, but feel permission to lift the weight of shame off of your shoulders so that you are free to move towards your goals.  Summary Throughout this blog post, we learned about:

• The helpful and unhelpful implementations of comparison,
• Shame’s impact on creativity and growth,
• Dialectal Behavioral Therapy’s skill of mental noting, and
• Worden’s 7 mediators of mourning.

Links for more information are sprinkled throughout this blog post. But if any of this really resonated with you, I would encourage you to reach out to someone on our staff team to discuss these things with and to offer support as you practice new skills of all kinds.