Would you ever plant a garden in the spring, and just abandon it till the end of the summer? Even if you planted the right seeds, what kind of outcome would you expect if you did absolutely nothing to maintain the garden? Well, the same concept applies to your emotions. Now that your emotional garden has been planted, we need to fertilize it! In the final lesson of your garden of emotions, you will learn the ABC’s of maintaining emotional stability (Linehan, 2015):

When it comes to the game of life, do you have trouble shooting? Or have you learned to shoot your troubles? Now I am not a violent person, but please work with my analogy: If we are going to protect our garden of emotions, we may have to shoot some predators! And life is full of them: work, deadlines, appointments, bills, illness…you get the point.

Did you ever notice that reacting to your emotions can actually make them worse? For example, let’s suppose that you are really ticked off. And when you get ticked off, you clench your fists and raise your voice. Have you noticed that the more you clench your fists and raise your voice, the angrier you get? Now let’s suppose you are feeling really sad, and you just want to sleep, isolate—and crawl in your bed and never come out.

Sometimes when we have really intense emotions, it’s because we are reacting to either incomplete or inaccurate information. In other words, maybe some of the information is missing, or maybe some of the information is not completely correct.

Have you ever heard a myth? Myths are often used to explain why certain things are the way they are, and they tend to get told over and over again. Myths often combine some things that are true with other things that are not true.

One of the best ways to nurture your emotions (believe it or not) is to take care of your body.

Think of the last time you were sick. Or the last time you missed a meal. Or the last time you ate way too much. Or the last time you were hung over. Or the last time you didn’t sleep the whole night. Were you a happy camper? Were you at the top of your game? Or is it fair to say you were more cranky, more depressed, or less “with it?”

In a previous blog post, we learned how to use the Balanced Mind to bring balance to our Thinking Mind. In this post, we will learn how to use the Balanced Mind to bring balance to our Feeling Mind.

I would like to introduce a thinking skill that is very simple to learn and use.

I call this skill Dialectical Synonyms, or DS for short.

In the previous blog post, we learned that certain thoughts can sometimes provoke certain emotions which in turn can sometimes provoke certain actions. That’s why it’s so important to figure out what’s in our TEA! We also learned a variety of automatic negative thoughts or ANT’s. And then we learned how to stomp those ANT’s with three simple questions: Is it logical? Is there evidence? Does it matter?

Have you ever looked at yourself in one of those funny mirrors? Whose image did you see? It was you, of course. After all, it wasn’t George Washington or Michael Jordan staring back in the mirror—it was you! But it wasn’t exactly you. You were either taller or shorter or fatter or skinnier (or all of the above) than you really are in real life. In other words, the image you were seeing was indeed you—but a distorted version of you.

Psychologists have long noticed that thoughts, emotions, and actions all influence each other. Since the 1960’s, psychologists have especially focused on how certain thoughts can inspire certain emotions which in turn can instigate certain actions. More recent research, however, has shown that this relationship is not so simple or linear.

We’ve already learned about the three minds: The Thinking Mind, the Feeling Mind, and the Balanced Mind. Do you remember how both our thoughts and our feelings can get off balance when we are not using our Balanced Mind? Do you also remember that the purpose of the Balanced Mind is to notice, evaluate, regulate, and ultimately balance what we are thinking and feeling?

A sequence we have seen repeatedly throughout these blogs is this: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. As we have already learned, awareness and acceptance alone can often transform our lives from unbearable to bearable, from unmanageable to manageable. Obviously, however, sometimes life requires additional action beyond awareness and acceptance. But here’s the good news: First, awareness and acceptance are already forms of action. Secondly, awareness and acceptance are precisely the foundation we need in order to respond to life with specific, concrete behaviors. Otherwise, we are just back to our old ineffective habits and impulsive reactions that only make matters worse.

Not everything that happens to us in life is something we signed up for. There are some things in the past we desperately wish never happened to us. There are other things in the present we desperately wish we could change. In fact, there are even people we desperately wish we could change. 

In the previous blog series, we learned all about mindfulness. In particular, we learned that applied mindfulness involves a three-step sequence: Awareness, Acceptance, Action. First we need to become more aware of what’s happening in the moment. Then we need to become more accepting of what’s happening in the moment. And then, once we are both more aware and more accepting, we are in a much better position to finally take action:

So far in this blog series, we have further developed the themes of awareness, acceptance, and action. We have learned that we cannot accept difficult facts or make difficult changes until we first overcome our blind spots (denial and pre-contemplation). By definition, we cannot see our blind spots on our own…we need help from others to kindly, gently point them out. We have also learned other roadblocks for acceptance (anger, bargaining, depression), and have further learned that no action is lasting until we have found ways to maintain that change.