Madly Ever After

This is a work, DBT, stress, and anxiety post. I’ve had to leave out a huge amount of detail so please don’t read into this any more than I’ve written.

Had a long talk with a work mate today.

A very long talk which I can’t talk to about people inside of work.

For the purposes of this post I’ll call him H.

One of the things I do is listen without judgement although I do provide occasional nudges in the direction I think someone wants to be guided but will never tell someone what to do.

H wanted to unload his stress and anxieties, we’ve had this talk a few times in the past but this went a lot deeper. So we sat and talked and shared stories. I think I’m the only person in there that knows he tried to OD due to the stress and panic he’s feeling.

So we talked, and talked. And the subject of rumination and catastrophizing came up. Throughout my life I thought this was normal behaviour and group DBT helped me start to break the cycle. H is locked in that loop at the moment. I’ve tried to show him a starter way out of the loop and provided the details of the therapy I’ve had. I even took him through a simple Tarot for mindfulness exercise to show how it helped break the rumination loop for me.

He’s told me that the conversations we’ve had in the past always made him feel better and thanked me for being someone who listens.

I’m not qualified to do this and I make it clear that I’m just listening and asking what he thinks is the best approach.

I see he is frustrated and angry by people trying to control his life (aren’t we all) and currently sees no escape from it but does want to fix things. A highly controlling and demanding family doesn’t help though.

Maybe he’ll get a deck and use it to help himself or maybe he’ll pursue the DBT course. I dunno but will support either option.

His card pull was The Chariot from Wild Unknown (@the_wild_unknown #thewildunknown). His thoughts on it are his alone but it certainly changed the tone of the conversation to positivity.

I think I’ve done good. At least by listening and hearing everything someone wanted to say.