Hi, as someone with depression, BPD, OCD and PTSD, I can highly recommend the following:
- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) - teaches 4 core skill areas: distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness
- art therapy
(if you do look into this, make sure you get one who has the proper accreditation with ANZACATA).
I started art therapy last May with a lovely lady who does art therapy / psychotherapy. I had been doing just talk therapy for the past 30+ years and while talk therapy helped me articulate how I was feeling, I didn't know what to do with the insights I'd learnt. Things still felt 'stuck' in my body. Art therapy was the only thing that really helped me in clearing out the backlog of bullshit that had been compacted. And, in a more practical sense, art therapy has also helped in my ability to recall past sessions with more clarity. I can remember the picture I drew, remember the colours I chose, the detail, how I felt during it and what I learnt. If I were to remember JUST the thoughts I had, it would have been very foggy and the initial epiphany would most certainly have been lost / irretrievable.
Talk therapy sits solely within the left side of the brain. Art therapy combines both sides - you create something and experience something, and then talking about it with the art therapist afterwards about what you did helps marrying the left and right sides of the brain, so you get bilateral healing. Art therapy is naturally trauma-informed because of this. It helps to bridge the gaps and give you a language to express things that sometimes don't have accurate words.
I admit I was skeptical at first, but in the 11 months that I've been doing art therapy, I've made more progress and 'cleared out' more trauma than the 30+ years of talk therapy ever did.
This has just been my lived experience, and you may not find that art therapy resonates with you, but it's just an idea. 🙂 I hope that things get better. ❤️
