You can be angry and notice their positive changes
If I told you that I thought thanksgiving was going to go well, I would be lying….
It was an interesting phenomenon. I planned out a proper cope ahead plan and did some trauma processing earlier that week. I assumed the worst. An argument was going to break out. The feeling of being overwhelmed in my body was going to happen. Someone was going to call me and complain about another person at the gathering. It was going to be exhausting to be around others and it was going to take me three days to recover.
Then it didn’t…. None of that happened.
Imagine my shock when I went to three thanksgivings on the same day and didn’t feel overwhelm or have any conflict. It had to be a coincidence, right?
I then went home to see my best friend on Sunday. I haven’t seen her in like two years. When I got there, I expected the worse unfortunately. Sometimes during our convos, I read things as “this is the worst thing ever” and all I heard was “no one has changed”. Imagine me being surprised when the visit went well! It’s nothing about my best friend being “a bad person” or anything like that and everything about sometimes texts can read as dramatic.
When I was driving home on that Sunday, I felt strange. I felt relief but I noticed a thought and I felt uncomfortable with that thought. The thought was:
you were the problem all along. no one else is to blame for the bad things that happened except you. you did this to yourself and everyone else.
Introspection
I have the insight to know now that when those judgmental thoughts arise, that usually means there is something to accept here. What I needed to accept in the moment was people can still have been shitty and awful previously and they can change when I am changing too.
In DBT, we always try to explain things from a grey perspective. Some things are black and white but most things are grey. My judgmental thoughts wanted to push me into the black and white thinking. It’s easier to blame myself instead of realizing that others can have blame and get better. It goes against my core belief. The situations where I trusted others saying they changed and they didn’t have had an effect on me.
By recognizing people’s wrong doings, that doesn’t discredit my wrong doings. I was known for my “Debbie Downer” behaviors and there were probably many instances where I made things worse for myself and others.
I can recognize my shortcomings and know that other people have hurt me dearly and intensely. I am not saying my best friend hurt me. In my trauma therapy this week, I came to a realization that some of the stuff with my best friend during high school (times I had conflict with them) was actually a representation of feeling abandoned by my sister when she moved out.
Even in that instance, I recognize my sister did what was best for her and I can be happy about that without discrediting the loneliness that I experienced and the anger, sadness, and fear that came with that.
People are doing their best and can do better
I love this DBT assumption! It’s a perfect dialectic that summarizes so many aspects of the human experiences. We are all trying our best and can do better. I can still feel anger about what happened with my father even when I notice my dad isn’t making backhand compliments about me anymore. I can be happy about his progress and notice the inner child part that is hurt and angry and scared.
If you are noticing some resistance during this portion, I might gently encourage half-smile, willing hands, and turning the mind to help you gain some level of reality acceptance. I fully believe in this dialectic and I think it can be help for you too!
TLDR
We can still have our emotions and feel them even when others have wronged us. In this situation, I can still feel anger and sadness about the things that happened to me while noticing that those people are starting to get better. The grey shades exist and are present here. I gently encourage reality acceptance around the idea that “we are doing our best and can do better”.