Therapy - Compassion Focused and Acceptance and Commitment

Hello - I'm new here and currently undiagnosed. I’ve been through two rounds of therapy over the last few years, and they were truly life-changing for me.

The first time around, I was in crisis with PMDD, overwhelm, and skill regression / mask cracking (with peri). The therapy gave me the opportunity to say all the things I’d never dared speak before — the trauma and the knowing that I wasn’t “normal” but couldn’t hide it. At that point, I very much believed I was a deeply flawed human, not neurodivergent. I also started to learn DBT skills to help me feel emotions but stay out of the crisis zone.

The second time around, it was all about acceptance and compassion. It was really hard. I was so angry and was fighting hard against every struggle in my life — a very tiring and upsetting place to be. I learned that the struggle against the pain was the source of the majority of my distress. And over time, I learned to accept many difficult things and lessen my suffering significantly — lots of this happened over months after the therapy ended.

I read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach during the second round of therapy and hated all of it at first pass — it was confronting, and it was easier for me to think it was a load of rubbish and that it didn’t apply to me. But it turned out to be one of the most useful books I’ve ever read. You could maybe look that book up while you think about it and see what you think or where any resistance pops up for you.

My therapy wasn’t intentionally structured around acceptance or self-compassion, but that’s where it went organically — I was dysregulated to my core, and this is what I needed to do to feel and function better. My experience was very positive, and I was lucky to have found the right person at the right time. It’s ongoing work, and sometimes it can take me a while to realise that I’m struggling again, but the tools are there now when I need them.

Hello - I'm new here and currently undiagnosed. I’ve been through two rounds of therapy over the last few years, and they were truly life-changing for me.

The first time around, I was in crisis with PMDD, overwhelm, and skill regression / mask cracking (with peri). The therapy gave me the opportunity to say all the things I’d never dared speak before — the trauma and the knowing that I wasn’t “normal” but couldn’t hide it. At that point, I very much believed I was a deeply flawed human, not neurodivergent. I also started to learn DBT skills to help me feel emotions but stay out of the crisis zone.

The second time around, it was all about acceptance and compassion. It was really hard. I was so angry and was fighting hard against every struggle in my life — a very tiring and upsetting place to be. I learned that the struggle against the pain was the source of the majority of my distress. And over time, I learned to accept many difficult things and lessen my suffering significantly — lots of this happened over months after the therapy ended.

I read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach during the second round of therapy and hated all of it at first pass — it was confronting, and it was easier for me to think it was a load of rubbish and that it didn’t apply to me. But it turned out to be one of the most useful books I’ve ever read. You could maybe look that book up while you think about it and see what you think or where any resistance pops up for you.

My therapy wasn’t intentionally structured around acceptance or self-compassion, but that’s where it went organically — I was dysregulated to my core, and this is what I needed to do to feel and function better. My experience was very positive, and I was lucky to have found the right person at the right time. It’s ongoing work, and sometimes it can take me a while to realise that I’m struggling again, but the tools are there now when I need them.

Hi thank you for sharing your views. I'll see if I can get hold of a copy of that book too