"I feel more at peace, and better able to handle problems"

I was diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (a.k.a. BPD) back in 2023.  Inclusion Thurrock were amazing in offering me a range of therapies to help me better understand my diagnosis and learn to deal with it in daily living.

I chose to attend their Emotion Regulation Course, which is a course set up over Zoom and features the group therapy aspects of DBT (a therapy designed to help those with a BPD diagnosis).

The Group Leaders were so welcoming and supportive, and guided us all through the various "LifeHacks" of living with our diagnosis, which included easy mnemonics to help memorise the strategies to put in place during life's difficulties.

I'm naturally a very shy person, so the idea of joining in on a group course like this was beyond scary.  However, everyone was very welcoming and you were able to talk as little or as much as you felt comfortable with.  The longer I was on the course, the more comfortable I began to feel with joining in.

This isn't a standard group therapy, where you all have a turn speaking about your personal struggles (although it is okay to share these when relevant to that day's learning to garner more help and better understanding), it isn't designed as a pouring out of all your thoughts and emotions as some may picture in a one-to-one session.  The group is set up to teach you skills to cope with the world around you, and therefore most of the speaking is done by the Group Leaders when they're teaching you the various strategies, but group members are encouraged to join in as and when.

I found the four modules; Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotional Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness very useful in helping me to cope with the thoughts and feelings internally, as well as coping and reacting to the world around me.

I highly encourage anyone struggling with either a BPD diagnosis or someone who struggles with understanding and processing their emotions to give this course a chance.  I've gone from suffering huge bouts of depression, followed by days of increased energy, to feeling emotionally balanced on a near permanent basis.  I feel more at peace, and better able to handle it when life does throw problems my way.