Venting I feel like my DBT group is making me feel worse.

[Namelesa]

I feel lonely there with how i am so much different to everyone else there. Most of them are middle aged mothers when I am a young adult who acts mentally like a child. I am honestly pathetic compared to others with much more responsibilities than me. It feels more isolating that i aren't allowed to say about being suicidal in it. Honestly I don't even know what i get extra from being in a group instead of just it being one to one. Well whatever, this is the only thing they currently given me cus my country is so bad at giving mental help.

Also that i find some of the skills being taught to me just reinforce my want to die more. Like with "wise mind" i find that its both logical and emotionally right for me to die. Or that they say my values are supposed to be for myself but i hardly know what I want for myself aside from to not suffer at all and i would say death best brings that to me. Most of what i want in terms of living is to please others. I literally don't know how i am supposed to live for myself alone. Maybe I just so far gone with my suicidal beliefs and thinking I can't get out of this...

Still going to continue the group as somethings have been helpful and i can't die so don't really have any choice. i just wanted to vent the negatives of it.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Group therapy is hard if you feel alienated from the other members. But don't beat yourself up for not being at the same life stage as the other members. But yes it's hard when group therapy makes you feel worse about yourself (been there). You should be seeing an individual therapist so you could discuss your feelings arising from group therapy.

The skills definitely seem to fall short when suicide seems sound and is a settled desire rather than some impulsive urge for which they are more suited.

 

[-Link-]

DBT can alienate a patient when it's administered without enough regard to the nature and severity of their suicidality. For someone in unbearable emotional pain, for instance, teaching them acronyms and framing their suicidality as a behavioural issue (that cannot even be talked about, no less) can be... less than ideal.

Hopefully its Mindfulness and Distress-Tolerance components will offer a little more to you. These wouldn't be so much about erasing your suffering and suicidality, but more about seeing your thoughts and feelings as they are (without needing to act on them) and about giving yourself small breaks from your suffering which, fleeting they might be, go towards helping your nervous system recognize (relearn) that not all moments are unbearable.

As to values and "what you want for yourself", if you hit a brick wall with this, that's a shortcoming on the part of the mental healthcare system -- not a failure on your part. If they've thrown you into DBT without adequately preparing you for it, then it's liable to sometimes make you feel like you're the problem. In reality, when someone is all-consumed by pain and suffering, asking them to identify values and goals can be asking the impossible of them. And then when the patient isn't able to do this, it can reinforce their feelings of shame and hopelessness.

So, it sounds like your practitioners have sort of 'skipped a few steps' with you and that their program falls short of DBT's ideal implementation. This isn't uncommon when mental health resources are so limited. But, so much credit to you for keeping with it despite this. You say you're "pathetic compared to others with much more responsibilities," but I'm kinda thinking a lot of those people would actually crumble in your position. I hope you can see how much strength it takes for you to be doing this.

 

[GlassMoon]

I can relate to what you said about values. I learned about them in ACT therapy, but it was covered only very briefly. I think they can act as a compass, like when you value honesty, that you'd work on staying truthful even though it might hurt you or others on the short term. But when emptiness, or in my case, pain, dominates the inner world I didn't know how to apply those against CTB ideation.

Sorry to hear your other group members are too different from you. Makes sense that this makes it difficult to get a deeper connection with them.

I hope you at least gain something out of it about how to deal with strong emotions and inner turmoil