Hi @Phoenix_Rising and @Zoe7 and anyone interested in the work at DBT desk 🙂 Just adding my thoughts re the meeting this morning (which can definitely be filed away and/or gather dust if that's what happens).

Phoenix_Rising - you asked whether I might be feeling overwhelmed because I was imagining a shorter time frame or because it is daunting when batteries are low, which is a completely fair and reasonable question. This might sound a bit strange but doing things like the DBT reading/writing/adventuring kind of almost recharges my batteries (even if it takes some effort and energy to do). Maybe my recharging is more it giving me inspiration, motivation and hope. My reason for hitting the pause button on the bouncy energizer care bearing was more that I did not want to kick off the doing without getting an idea of how you and others may want to go about it.

When I mentioned to my psychologist that I was planning on "doing DBT" by reading through and practicing the skills in the manual, he made a comment about how compressing (I can't remember how many he said but it was much bigger than 2) weeks into 2 weeks would work well for me (he didn't know we are doing this together-but-not when he said that). If I was doing this as a solo adventure, that's what I would do. It's the way my brain works and is why I have found myself having read so much of the manual now. This is where maybe I am the odd one out here, which is ok with me. It's not right or wrong, just different as I think you'd say Phoenix_Rising. It gives me good practice at slowing things down that don't need to be all done all at once. I'm very ok with practicing and doing that here and think it could be a really useful thing for me to do 🙂

I do have that worry that this may be something that appears as a private conversation thing, also. I guess that the best we can do there is as you said Zoe, which is to be as inclusive and encouraging as possible, welcome any one who shows an interest, and invite anyone along who might be interested also. I had semi-drafted a kick off post when I was hit with whatever bus came at me over the last little while (I think it was one that had a giant "housing" sign written on the side). I had gone with the idea of adding open questions to the post at the end to ponder/write about/answer if wanting to, as a way of "opening up" a discussion for anyone who might be interested. It's pretty much what I've seen you do in some of the posts over there Phoenix_Rising.

I also got stuck on that first "week", which from memory is the general stuff. I didn't know what to cover or what to skip, made harder because I had covered some of it in my big overview post. I can't find the handouts online anymore (Ihave them saved on my laptop) as well and had some concern over what links could be shared here (which I meant to ask about but was run over - I will get there). Adding in to it, I had some confidence issues. Yay for overthinking melted snowflakey banana head :S (I think it should really become an official term!)

It was cool to read over the minutes of the meeting. As much as I have enjoyed "being" by the water at the desk, I am still excited about doing the do bit of this DBT adventure. I feel sad that I wasn't able to kick it off as I had planned, hoped and said I would. I think it's going to be much easier to share some of the load if/when you want, once I get an idea of what "doing" here looks like.

So I'm going to add this file now to the desk alongside the minutes of the meeting for if/when anyone wants to read 🙂