Hi @Determined, I super know that you try your best to help and support your darling. You are doing your super best, and that is all you can ever do. Your darling is superly duperly lucky to have you.  I am super glad that you are here to provide input from a carer's perspective. I imagine there is a pretty good chance that some of what you say may be tricky for me and others with BPD or other emotion dysregulation issues to hear, and vice versa. That's ok - I have the SANE helpline number on speed-dial (and...I just made whoever is moderating today shudder). 

Hi @Neelix, it is super nice to see you here. Reading and pondering is warmly welcomed. Please feel free to ask what any words mean. If there's a word that you don't understand, chances are there are who-knows-how-many other people reading along who don't understand it either. There are no silly questions here.  DBT is heavily grounded in Buddhist philosophy and to be honest, some of that philosophy isn't a good fit for my own spiritual beliefs. Thus I tend to take the bits that work and leave the bits that don't. 

@Faith-and-Hope I kind-of get what you are saying in your rug analogy...but something still isn't quite fitting in my brain. Perhaps because in your analogy, the idea is that the tiny rug is complete, but can also be expanded upon, whereas the dialectic we are talking about is that the person is totally ok as they are and yet still NEEDS to work towards change. In your analogy, the tiny rug is totally acceptable with the potential to be more, but it doesn't NEED to be more, BECAUSE it is totally acceptable as it is. I think for me it still comes back to improving skills vs changing ME. To me it sounds fine to say "I am totally ok as I am, but I want to get better at coping with my big feelings" because this is saying I want to improve a skill that I DO, not that I want to change who I AM. 

Super big thank you for engaging in the conversation everybody (although it is a bazillion percent ok for you to not engage and instead just read along).