Observe and Describe: On Not Filling in the Blank

My awareness of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is entirely vicarious, via people I love who have benefited from it in life saving ways. Although I don't match many of the criteria very strongly for Borderline Personality Disorder, either by the older checklist or the newer one, I have found even a passing familiarity with the skills training in DBT to be helpful.

In particular, since I am very quick to judge, to be reactive, to categorize as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, welcome or unwelcome, as well as to take action impulsively as an automatic response to those judgments, I find it helpful to practice simply observing and then simply describing. Here is an excellent outline of these two skills, with a greater level of detail than I will go into in this post.  (At least, I think it's excellent-- if anyone who has actually done DBT disagrees, please comment accordingly).

Oooooh, look! A conceptual model!

When my partner at the time, about 10 years ago, first explained these mindfulness skills, they were a revelation. It had never even occurred to me that I didn't have to judge what was happening around me or categorize my thoughts and feelings as "good" or "bad". Not having any other real mindfulness training, such as meditation, I hadn't ever cultivated much of a sense of equanimity or spaciousness in my thought life, and much of the time, if someone asked me what I was feeling, I would just be flummoxed. 

Much of the energy I got from drinking and drugging arose from a quieting of my judging and reactive, chattering mind and a liberation of my ability to be with what was happening and participate un-self-consciously. Music, either listening or playing, often served that purpose, as did the blissful oxytocin rush of sexual and romantic connection with someone. Of course it gradually becomes problematic if one's only access to ease, comfort, peace, the flow of events as they are and a fundamental acceptance of what is happening is via a ripoff chemical like ethanol or even oxytocin. Especially since the action of both chemicals on me is such that, once I have some in my blood, there is never enough. The mental obsession for the first drink or the first infatuation combined with the craving for more once I did drink or crush guaranteed that my solution was eventually going to be catastrophic. 

At any rate, it occurred to me somewhere along this literal trip I am on in my rental car, driving across this weird country, that another set of skills that are useful in getting off the victim vertex of the drama triangle would be observing and describing. Cultivating this kind of non-categorizing mindfulness helps in not taking the behavior, decisions and choices of others personally. 

Forming a relationship with myself that was trustworthy, practicing meditation and discussing what I am feeling and thinking with others sound like helpful ways to start moving on from the central mantra of the victim, which is "I'm blameless." I posted some perspectives on that yesterday. It seems the practice of the skills of observing and describing arises naturally out of that self relationship, meditation and the vulnerability of discussion with other people. 

As we headed toward steps 8 and 9, my first AA sponsor wrote this on a piece of paper and handed it to me:

"I AM __________________."

And he said, "Make a list of everything that pops into your head to fill in that blank."

So I made a pretty long list, lots of different ways to fill in that blank, some "good," some "bad," some functional roles, some aspects I thought of as core identity items, etc. You could try it right now if you wanted, before you read on. 

He and I were sitting on a bench outside a meeting room, where the smokers normally congregated, but it was long after a meeting. He asked me to read him the list I had written down. Then he took the piece of paper and said "Okay, so how do you feel about this?" and he lit it on fire and dropped it into the ashtray. I couldn't help laughing, since he was always pulling inscrutable stunts like this that seemed to me to have absolutely nothing to do with AA, sobriety or the Big Book. As I watched the paper burn and turn into ashes I told him I felt sad about it, like my self was ephemeral, transient, everything I valued or thought about myself was meaningless. He smiled that Zen smile of his that always made me want to smack him and said "Now you're getting the idea. This is basically what steps 6 and 7 are about, and really, all the step work. Letting go completely of all the stories. Putting it all down and then setting fire to it and saying goodbye to the ashes." I thought about that for a second and said, "Damn, I am not entirely sure I want to do that." He replied, "No worries, you don't have to. But here's something you can practice until next week when we get together again. Practice not filling in the blank. Practice just staying with 'I am,' without putting anything after that."

Again, I honestly had no idea what the fuck this had to do with not taking the first drink, and it is only occasionally and after a little more than 13 years (13 years, 2 months and 22 days and a few hours and change, to be exact) that I have more of a clue what he was trying to tell me. It's funny that he had me practicing "until next week," when of course something so fundamental is a life practice, one way of looking at the core of spiritual growth. 

But then I look back at that defensive, warding, wounding, isolating key phrase of the victim in Karpman's schema: "I am blameless." 

What a self-destructive way to fill in the blank.