this is where I spent my summer of 2019
for a month I lived in a psychiatric
facility in New Canaan Connecticut
silver Hill Hospital was a great place
for me it's 44 acres of countryside
there are expert clinicians and there's
even a pool the reasons for which I was
there were admittedly less great I was
admitted on the 30th of June only a week
after the end of the academic year
because I had attempted to take my own
life I could no longer see myself in the
world nor did I think I had any
semblance of a future and I didn't
really want one either I had been
diagnosed with severe depression and
anxiety and been going to therapy for
the last four years I also have
borderline personality disorder and been
on medication for the last three years
time therapy medication none of that had
prevented me from trying to end it all
so how come I'm standing in front of you
now on the stage what has changed from
then till now that has made me actively
choose to keep on living well I learnt
DBT DBT stands for dialectical
behavioral therapy this is a therapy
that is primarily meant for people with
borderline personality disorder who as a
result are chronically suicidal
ordinarily I wouldn't let myself be won
over so easily by a simple three-letter
acronym but as many of you know I am a
strong headed person and so I thought
well I've been in therapy for years and
I've been on over three different
medications if you really think that a
month of whatever DBT is is gonna make
me want to get up in the morning then
have at me so I threw myself into it and
this meant learning behavioral skills
that would help me to regulate my
emotions
this meant practicing mindfulness so
that I could become more aware of my
current mental state role playing
different scenarios so that I could
better navigate areas of conflict and
receiving coaching as to how I could
keep myself safe in a moment of personal
crisis and this manifested itself in
classroom like settings where I would
learn the principles of dialectics how
to seemingly opposite things can coexist
like for example how self-acceptance and
change can go hand in hand then like any
good student I would perform homework
tasks where I would put the skills that
I had learned to use using my own
personal scenarios from past and present
and that's that's my book
up there and it's I promise it's covered
from page to page with all the exercises
that I've done so there are four main
modules to DBT and I learnt these each a
week at a time now I don't want to
regurgitate Marshall and I hands
techniques at you nor do I have a month
of your time to even attempt to do it
properly what I would like to do however
is to go through one of these in
particular and show you my take on it
with of course a focus on how it has
gotten me to where I am today
and how it continues to support my
vision of a future it was through
interpersonal effectiveness that I
learned about self-respect it seems odd
how can something about relationships
with other people be correlated with a
self
well that's because building
relationships and relationship skills
aren't just about pleasing other people
sometimes it's good to be selfish it can
be healthy to ask for what we want and
need from others to set boundaries to
build healthy relationships and
ultimately and destructive ones there
are three main things that I took away
from the teaching surrounding
interpersonal effectiveness
number one you can't find answers in
other people yes
relationships are important and it's
good to have someone that you can trust
and rely on but this relationship this
person it can't be the be and end all
your problems can't be solved through
someone else most times it requires
tough and thorough introspection and
even then you might not find all the
answers you may never get a reason why
and you may never get the closure that
you so desperately wanted from someone
and that has to be something that you're
prepared for oftentimes searching for
the answers yourself can be far more
valuable than anything else anyone could
have ever given you because it's real
it's truthful and it's yours I would
often get frustrated when I would go to
my therapist and present a problem and
instead of giving me the solution she
would push me to solve the problem for
myself I wanted the easy fix
from a trained professional but from
someone who had far less experience with
a matter at hand than I did I didn't
believe in myself enough to have the
resolve to come to my own conclusion and
to back that
luckily therapists know how to set
boundaries and they also know that to be
in charge of your own life you have to
be in charge of the decisions that you
make other people they don't know this
so well and so we run the risk of making
decisions based on other people's code
of conduct and then once they leave we
no longer have any sense of ourself as
an individual what we believe in what we
stand for our moral compass etc this is
why it is so important to set good
boundaries you have to be comfortable
with whatever you yourself find and you
have to push yourself for it number two
you can't control what another person
does or set
however you can control how you react to
it we all operate independently we all
go around acting in ways that are
particular to us we have different
conditions and motivations that inform
our actions therefore it's unsurprising
that we may be on the receiving end of
some behavior that makes us
uncomfortable but that doesn't mean we
have to tolerate it one of the most
important lessons I've learned from four
years of therapy is not everything is on
you the tension that people put out
there the hurtful words those are their
words that is their tension you don't
need to carry that around with you my
maternal grandmother was emotionally and
physically abusive and for the longest
time I believed what she said about me
and I carried it with me and I let it
define me it was only once I rejected
what she put on me that I began to feel
much more secure in myself I knew that I
was not the person she thought me to be
I'm my own individual with my own future
that is not dictated by what other
people do or say it can be hard to
differentiate between what you can and
can't control most of us are empathetic
by nature and we want to step in to
reduce the burdens of others this
shouldn't be done to your detriment
though remember you can't carry the
world the weight of the world on your
shoulders number three at the end of the
day the only person you have to please
is yourself and for this last point I'd
like to use the analogy of a race some
of you may have heard the saying and the
race of life it doesn't matter who comes
first what matters most is being able to
finish your race and I find this to be
an essential part of the mindset needed
to move forward in life when we focus on
others we don't run our bests we're too
worried about our placement in
comparison to the other runners
we need to focus on ourselves and to
take our race into our own hands your
race is your race you have to be happy
with how you're doing and that's how you
get to the finish line one of the first
things the nurse asked me when I entered
the hospital was why I was there and at
first I was surprised she knew why I was
there but what she meant was why I was
there to get better and I said that I
was there for my family because at that
point I didn't care whether I lived or
died I cared if I hurt my family though
she said this was good enough for now
but she hoped that by the end of it I'd
be getting better for myself and I
didn't quite understand how important
this distinction was and I would later
come to understand that it really does
matter one of the things that my mom
asked me when she found out that I was
suicidal
was give me six more years to finish off
high school and four more for college I
think that she believed that by then I
would have found something worth living
for she's in the crowd that's why I'm
doing it for those first two years
living for someone else was incredibly
draining but now that I want to do it
for myself I don't see it as so much of
a burden anymore because I want to keep
moving forward in life I want to keep
pushing myself and I want to make it to
that finish line setting boundaries is
so important so that you always have
something for yourself claiming your
life as your own is something that we
all need to do what all three of these
points boil down to is learning how to
live with yourself after all how can you
be happy in the world if you're not even
happy in your own skin so who is the you
that you need to learn to live with
well it's the you that you find after
that tough and thorough introspection
it's the you that you find after you
reject the words that others project
onto you and it's the you that you find
after you decide that you're not going
to judge whoever you find yourself to be
so where does that leave me well in the
summer of 2020 I'll be returning once
again to the US this time I'll be on 440
acres ten times the size of silver Hill
there will be hopefully expert
professors and there's even a pool I'll
be going to college
which is something that I never thought
I'd live to do and I'm happy that I will
be able to do it none of us have 20/20
vision when it comes to predicting our
future and thankfully this was not the
goal at the transitional living program
it wasn't to create a step by step model
of my future so that I could have my end
goal perfectly in sight it wasn't to
create five ten twenty year plans so
that my life would be successful
fruitful and abundant it was to create a
life worth living however this would be
a life composed of many days worth
living through I was to be given the
tools to move step by step in the right
direction and keep putting one foot in
front of the other and that is what I
have done and now this is the knowledge
that I passed down to you and I hope
that it enables you to find a way to
envision your future not with an idea of
what it will look like in 30 years but
more of an idea of how you'll be able to
wake up tomorrow morning
and I do hope you all find a way to wake
up tomorrow morning thank you
you