My experience as a dialectical behavioral therapist mostly helps coping with this traumatic injury and numerous setbacks. Two particular DBT skills that help are mindfulness and distress tolerance. Distress tolerance is trying to navigate through a crisis without making it worse.. You accept the facts of reality as they are without placing judgments on them. It prevents us from being stuck in bitterness. And acknowledge life can be worth living even with pain.
This is much more difficult to practice. I probably fail more frequently than I succeed at this. There are countless times I am stuck in the past, longing for my pre-injury life back. There are things I wish I had done (or not done) or taken more chances. My biggest regret was deciding to go golfing that late afternoon on October 23, 2018. What if I walked the dog instead? Or sat on the deck and read a book?
I was stuck in misery the first several months post injury. I was in the early stages of grieving. This isn’t happening to me! My life is over. I couldn’t accept being paralyzed. I still look at my life in two parts. The pre-injury Howard and the post injury Howard. The post injury Howard has a difficult time letting go of the pre-injury one. I have to practice turning the mind over and over. Turning the mind is when I have to choose over and over to radically accept my paralysis and this life without judgment. Fighting this reality just leads to more suffering. My choices are to change how I feel about the situation; accept the situation; or stay miserable. I choose to change how I feel about the situation.
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